“He did that sometimes. I’ve told you that and so did he. It scared the hell out of me,” Lorne said.
“Me, too,” Gavin replied with a sigh. “It would be just like him to decide to do it this time. Perhaps he’d already started paving the way, so he could begin shooting the story when we got back from my assignment.”
“If he had, and Durant and his people found out…” I left the implication out there.
“Yeah,” Gavin replied. “This is all supposition, but if it is the reason the paper wanted him on the story…Move over, Brant.”
I took it as a given that he wanted on the computer and got up. He motioned for us to move away, which I knew meant he didn’t want us, or specifically me, to see how he got into the site he needed.
“All right,” Gavin said a few minutes later. “There are no wants or warrants out on Durant or any of his close associates, or anything which implicates any of them in sex trafficking. None of them have been arrested for anything more than speeding tickets. The one thing I did discover, however, was a report about a dead homeless kid found by a dumpster behind his Rotunda Motel in Topeka. It probably would have been put down to his dying of exposure, given the fact he had on nothing but a T-shirt and tattered jeans and it was mid-January. However, he’d been sexually assaulted, to quote the report, and also severely beaten before being left there. The police did a cursory investigation but there was nothing to tie him to the motel or any of the other businesses nearby, including a triple-X rated movie house.”
“In other words, someone raped and killed him,” Lorne said, horror in his voice and demeanor.
“More likely he was tortured by a sadist, if he was part of Durant’s sex ring,” Gavin answered, not looking up from what he was doing. “A man who went too far and it killed the kid.”
“It could have been Kyler, if he’d managed to go in undercover,” Lorne whispered.
Gavin turned to look at him. “He wouldn’t have done it by pretending to be homeless. First off, he was too old, if we’re right and Durant is recruiting homeless kids. My bet is, he planned on getting a job at one of the motels and taking it from there. It would have given him more access to the rooms and what went on behind closed doors.”
Lorne gave a nod, but he didn’t look as if he believed him, so I said, “He wouldn’t have been able to take photographs of the main players if he was one of the sex workers. I suspect he was smart enough to know that.”
“It’s really a moot point at the moment,” Gavin said. “He died before he could infiltrate the organization.”
“True,” I agreed. “But if you’re right and he began to set it up before the two of you were supposed to leave on your assignment, and someone caught on to who he was. Did his face go in the bylines for his stories?”
“Sometimes,” Lorne replied.
“Yeah,” Gavin said at almost the same time. “On the puff pieces as he sometimes called them. The landscape and architectural ones, for example. Not on the documentary, photojournalism, or editorial ones. On those he even used a pseudonym if they involved criminal activity.” He glanced at Lorne. “He wanted to keep you safe.”
“I know. With the same last name and looking as alike as we did, he wasn’t about to take a chance someone would come after me to get to him. To pay him back for bringing them down.”
“Okay, let’s get back on topic,” I said, wanting to change the subject before both of them broke into tears. Not literally, of course, but they sure weren’t happy campers. “We need to figure out how to prove our theory and find out who killed Kyler.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Gavin replied. “One of us can try going in undercover, but it might not lead us to anything more that proving Durant is running a sex ring—if we get lucky.”
“I could pretend to be a homeless kid at one of the shelters,” Lorne said after taking a deep breath. “I don’t look as old as I am. You said so yourself, Brant, the first time we met.”
“Fuck no! Not happening,” I told him. I admit I was as startled as they seemed to be at the adamancy of my response. I can put it down to not wanting to send in an amateur, but I suddenly realized it was more than that. I honestly liked the kid. Okay, he wasn’t a kid, but for damned sure he wasn’t my age by a long shot. Not that it mattered, since I had no designs on him. He was a guy who wanted to find out why his brother died. It was the same for Gavin, and for sure I didn’t see him as more than someone like me who wanted to learn the truth. Lorne, though…?
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to react so strongly to your suggestion, Lorne, but like I said, it’s not happening. You don’t have any experience in what it takes to go undercover, and probably no defensive skills if things go bad.”
“Does getting the hell out of there count?” Lorne asked with a tiny grin.
“If you can, but it’s not always possible,” Gavin replied. I caught him looking at me in speculation. He turned his attention back to the computer the moment he saw that I had noticed.
“We can pretty well figure the motel in Topeka is part of the ring, since there’s a homeless shelter there that Durant supports,” I said. “But are they looking to hire anyone to work there. As far as that goes, are any of them? The ones in other cities where he’s helping fund a homeless shelter.”
Gavin shrugged. “Only one way to find out and that’s to check the list and then see. Of course nothing says the kids he recruits stay in the city where he finds them. The smart move would be to take them halfway across the country. I wish to hell we knew where Kyler planned on infiltrating.”
“Think back, Gavin,” I said. “You told us he was tense, the last couple of days before his death, and that he said it was because he was trying to figure out what tack to take for his next assignment. Did you see him on the computer and do you remember what he was doing?”
“I wasn’t around during the day. At night we had more important things in mind than staring at a screen, computer or TV, whether we were at my place or his.” He winked at Lorne. “Sorry to be so personal about things but it’s the truth. Even after two months, we were still into each other enough that we didn’t want to waste time on stupid things like that.”
“It’s okay. I get it,” Lorne replied. “I’d probably feel the same way if it were me.”
Gavin gazed off into the distance, a small smile on his face. I had the feeling he was remembering their time together. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “I came by his place earlier than usual, the night before we were supposed to leave. He was on the computer and seemed, well rattled is the best way I can describe it when I came into the room unexpectedly. He minimized whatever he’d been working on. When I asked, he told me he’d gotten an inquiry about using some of his pictures for a website and was trying to decide how much to charge the guy. The thing is, I got a brief look at what he had up. It included a photo with what looked like white tents in the background against a clear blue sky.”
“Huh? Tents?” I said.
Gavin nodded. “I swear to God that’s what they looked like.”
“My bet is they weren’t tents,” Lorne said. He went over to the desk and asked Gavin to move, which he did. It took a moment before Lorne asked, “Did they look like this?”
Gavin and I looked at the page Lorne had brought up. “Yeah. What the hell? An airport?”
“Yep,” Lorne replied. “They’re very distinctive, practically landmarks, and if he was doing a search for flights into that city…Is it one of the ones where Durant has a motel?”
“Yes,” Gavin said after checking the list. “And where he supports a shelter. Now all we need to do is find out if Kyler tried to get hired to work at that particular motel.”
“Let me,” I said, sitting when Lorne got up. “Not happening anytime soon,” I told them a few minutes later. “Which in and of itself tells us something. They have security up the wazoo on their computers. I can do a better job at home but I won’t make any guarantees I can get in.”
&n
bsp; “So they’re hiding something big,” Gavin said.
“That would be my guess,” I replied. “A client list, a list of the kids they’ve brought into the ring. Who knows?”
“Find out.”
I lifted an eyebrow at Gavin’s dictatorial tone of voice but replied calmly, “I’m going to try, but not tonight. We all have jobs, which require us being awake in the morning to get to them.” Not really true in my case. Lorne didn’t know that however and I wasn’t about to tell him.
“Gavin, I hate to be a bother, but where’s your bathroom?” Lorne asked at that point.
“Go down the hallway. It’s to your left, next to the kitchen,” Gavin told him. The minute Lorne was out of earshot Gavin said, “You’re interested in him.”
“I don’t know, if you want an honest answer. Maybe. Not that it’ll do me any good if I am. For obvious reasons I don’t do personal relationships.”
“I might have…okay, I did think the same thing until I met Kyler. Not for the same reasons, but still. It’s hard to maintain a relationship when I couldn’t be honest with the guy about the details of what I was doing, like why I would disappear for a time when I had to go undercover.” He put one hand on my shoulder, looking hard at me. “Don’t let your feelings get in the way of our plans. Lorne’s as involved as we are. He’s going to want to continue to be a part of things and I’ve got the feeling nothing we say or do will change his mind.”
“If I go undercover—and it has to be me—there’s no way I’m letting him come along, if the two of you think I might need backup,” I told him.
“Why you?”
I smiled grimly. “I have nothing to lose, you do. I don’t think your bosses would look too kindly on you going off the reservation on a personal vendetta.”
“If it stops Durant’s sex ring…”
“After the fact they might agree, but how would you explain being off their radar for however long it takes us to catch him, and to find out if he’s the one who killed Kyler—or if he sent one of his people to do it?”
“You have a point, I guess. On the other hand, I’m not letting you go off on your own. Like you said, you might need backup. Lorne’s going to feel the same way, so keep your personal feelings for him out of this.”
“I will.” A promise I hoped I could keep.
Lorne came back and we left. He was silent on the way home, occasionally glancing at me but that’s it. It wasn’t until we got to his place that he said, “If you plan on going undercover at that motel, or any of them, I’m coming with you. Not to the motel, but to the city.”
“Why do you think it’ll be me? Gavin’s the expert.”
“Okay, this is just my take on it. He’s got a personal stake in this, the same as I do. It might make him take chances he shouldn’t. You don’t and I’ve got a feeling you know what you’re doing. I’m not sure why, but I do. Maybe, for starters, it’s because you managed to get me to talk about why I was at the club. Then you were able to find out that ‘Rob Roberts’ was really Gavin.” He smiled briefly. “If I were to guess, you hacked into the club’s files to do that. So…” Again, he smiled. “There’s more to you than working as a financial planner. I won’t ask what because it’s none of my business.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” I told him. “I’m exactly what I seem to be. A guy who likes the challenge of being able to find out things other people would rather no one knows.” Then I outright lied. “I don’t do anything with the information. Or I haven’t until now. These people need to be stopped and we have to find out who killed your brother, for your sake and Gavin’s. Neither of you will give up until that happens. If I can help, I will.”
“Thank you.” He started to get out of the car, then said, “I was right. You’re the one going in undercover.”
“Yeah, for the reason you said, the two of you are too personally involved.”
“Then I hope you know what you’re doing.” With that, he got out, closed the car door, and walked up the path to his apartment building.
“I do,” I replied quietly, although obviously he didn’t hear me. Now all I had to do was pull it off and find what we needed to end it. Then I could get my life back, without any more complications.
I had the feeling that would be difficult on two levels. One, Gavin might have something to say about it, since he knows what I am and what I do. Would he arrest me? He said he wouldn’t, but that was because he needed what I could offer. After the fact? Hell, who knows.
And then there was Lorne. I didn’t think he was interested in me on a personal level. He hadn’t said or done anything to say that he was. Okay, there might have been a couple of small things—a look, a word, the fact he was worried about my going undercover. But a friend would have been worried, too, and he was definitely becoming one. Did I wish it was more? Yeah, I think so. But it wouldn’t, it couldn’t be. We were too different on too many levels.
Chapter 7
After getting home from meeting with Gavin and Lorne, I spent the rest of Tuesday night and into the wee hours of Wednesday morning trying to break into the computers at the Rotunda Motel that we thought Kyler might have planned on infiltrating. It took every bit of my hacking skills but eventually I succeeded.
The first thing I found was the résumé he’d sent them. It was fairly innocuous as those things went, with two exceptions. To begin with, he’d applied as Kyler Johnson, which was stupid in my opinion. Kyler isn’t anywhere close to being a common given name. Perhaps he figured he didn’t want to take the chance he wouldn’t respond if he was using another name. You’d think, if he’s gone undercover as often as Lorne said, he’d be used to that.
Secondly, there were the two former employers he’d listed. When I ran a check on them, one of them didn’t have him listed as having been employed by them. Again, sloppy, I thought, for someone who did what he did. I put it down to his wanting to get his résumé out there before he and Gavin took off on their trip.
I hit the mother lode as I dug deeper into the motel’s files. In an extremely well secured one titled ‘Rotunda Contributors’ was a list of over forty men, first names only—with phone numbers. Linked to it was a second list, only accessible if you knew the password. It took me a couple of minutes to find it, but I did. That list held the men’s full names, where they worked, and where they lived, and their phone numbers—two of them, which I figured were home and business. I downloaded both lists and sat back, thinking, while they printed. Then I called Gavin.
“Yeah, what? Do you know what time it is?” Gavin said sleepily when he answered his phone.
“Time for you to wake up and get your brain working.”
“Give me a minute,” he muttered. It took five, but when he got back to me he sounded as if he was awake and aware. “What do you need?” he asked.
“I found what we’re looking for.” I told him about Kyler’s résumé. His response was about the same as mine, that Kyler had been sloppy.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Yeah. I found a list of what, I’m presuming, are their regular johns. Possibly ones who rate a call when a boy who fits their needs is working at the motel. So I was thinking. Since I’m looking at the list now, how about I add you to it?”
After a brief pause, he said, “I like it. Put me down as Perry Young. It’s an alias I used about three years ago. I still have the ID related to it. What else do you need besides a name?” When I told him, he gave me a phone number for what he told me was a burner phone and said, “I work for Q&A Global, which you undoubtedly know by now. Put them down.” He gave me the phone number for his boss there. “I’ll make certain he covers for me if anyone calls. Did you find a list of the kids?”
“Not yet. I’ll try later, now that I know how to get in to the system’s hidden areas.” I put his name and information on the list.
“Make sure you don’t leave any footprints.”
I rolled my eyes. “I do know what I’m doing. Okay. I need some s
leep. I’ll call you later if I find anything more.”
“Let’s meet tonight, with Lorne. We have to finalize details before we head out there. Damn. Lorne’s going to need to ask for time off work.”
“And hope he can get it without jeopardizing his job,” I replied. “I’ll give him a call as soon as we hang up.”
“Do. Then I won’t be the only one who’s pissed at you for waking them at the crack of dawn.” I heard laughter in his voice so I knew he wasn’t upset that I had. “See you tonight.”
I did wake Lorne. He didn’t seem anymore upset about it than Gavin had been. When I told him to ask for time off, he said he had two weeks’ vacation due him. “They won’t like it when they find out I’m taking it on such short notice, but they’ll deal. They like me.”
Me, too. Of course I didn’t say it out loud. “It’s Wednesday. Have it begin on Saturday. That’ll give us time to finalize our plans before we head out of town.”
He agreed, then before hanging up I filled him in on what I’d found out.
There was one more call I needed to make, but I decided to do it after I got some sleep. I had to tell Dora to reschedule any appointments I had in the next two weeks. Not that there were many, but I didn’t want to upset any of my regular clients.
* * * *
“Did they give you your vacation time?” I asked Lorne as soon as he was in the car.
“Yep. They weren’t happy, but when I told them I had to go home because Mom was having major surgery next Monday and wanted me there, they agreed.”
I chuckled. “You’re getting into this whole secret agent thing.”
He looked defiant as he replied, “I’ll do whatever it takes to find Kyler’s killer. If they’d refused, I’d have quit.”
“Don’t go overboard,” I said, shooting him a warning look and gripping his shoulder as I returned my attention to driving.
I was surprised when he put his hand over mine momentarily, saying, “I’m not. I’m doing what’s necessary, although I’m not sure how much help I’m going to be when we get there.”
Everyone Has Secrets Page 7