“Oh yeah,” I said.
“According to the files, every charge was dropped when the witness or victim suddenly changed their story.”
“I guess I’ll be checking him out today.”
“Do you need any help?” Leo asked. “I don’t have anything on my plate.”
“So far, I’m staying out of trouble. Mostly. There are a lot of college girls in this town though.”
“Oh, really,” Leo said lecherously. “Roll Tide.”
“I think that’s the wrong school,” I said.
“Dude, it’s Alabama. It’s the only school.”
“I’ll holler if I get in a bind. Did you hear anything about the other guy?”
“Nope, he didn’t show up in any of the hospitals in Memphis. If you see him, he should be limping on his left leg.”
“At least I can out run him.”
Leo joked, “Probably the only person you can outrun.”
“Thanks,” I said hanging up on him.
7
As I did some internet searching, I found out a lot about the area that I didn’t know. The whole Shoals area was famous for its musical heritage, a fact that I was surprised I didn’t know. Muscle Shoals was home to Fame Studios which is famous in its own right, hosting names like the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Buffett, and Lynard Skynard. Lynard Skynard increased awareness of the Shoals area in the song Sweet Home, Alabama. Living in Memphis, I was surprised at the musical connections to my home. W.C. Handy, the blue’s musician who traveled to Memphis in 1909 to play on Beale Street, was born in Florence. The original log cabin appeared to be maintained there. Additionally, Sam Phillips, famous for discovering Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, was also a native of Florence. According to the internet, he moved to Memphis in the mid-forties and started Sun Studios.
I digressed from the musical history and began searching for Jackson Morgan. Leo had given me his address, and I mapped it in Google. He lived in Sheffield, which was a smaller community bordering Muscle Shoals. I could head across the river and see if Morgan lived with anyone, but I thought a search for him online might generate a Facebook page. I mean, killers can want to connect with old friends too, right?
Unfortunately, this particular killer didn’t seem to have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media outlet. Googling his name brought up nothing, which seemed odd if he had any arrests. I found it especially odd when the local paper, which the hotel delivered with the USA Today, had a crime blotter with everything from drunk and disorderly to home invasions listed.
A thought popped in my head, and I grabbed the paper. The Shoals Daily Journal was a small paper, but it seemed to cover most of north Alabama. The Journal wasn’t half the size of the Memphis Post, but it was definitely bigger than the paper in my hometown of Hellenston, Arkansas. I skimmed through the articles and found the by-lines of the reporter who seemed to cover the bigger stories. Turning back to the internet, I searched her name, Elizabeth Warlow. Warlow might be a good source for information. Having been a reporter, I expected that any information might come at a cost. It was a game I had played for years.
One trip for certain today would be to find a change of clothes. I wasn’t offensive yet, I hoped. But two full days of wear might push the line on this shirt. So, I left the hotel. The weather was cooler than yesterday, and I noted that the trees here were beginning to show tinges of yellow and red. The Indian Summer this year had left the trees green for longer than usual, a treat that I was very happy to enjoy. Warm weather has always been my preference.
The trip across the river to Sheffield took about twenty minutes. Morgan’s house was a small cottage style house that could have benefited from some paint and a new roof. The front yard had no grass, but at least the dirt seemed maintained. I wasn’t quite sure what my approach was going to be, so I decided to wait. I parked three doors down so I could watch the house.
The entire street seemed empty. The houses, like Morgan’s, were older, smaller, and less maintained than some that I passed coming through Muscle Shoals. The streets were empty because everyone was at work or school. This was not a neighborhood of stay-home moms or retired folks. This was a working class neighborhood, where mom and dad sent the kids to school so they could both go to work.
It was a quarter till two, and I wasn’t sure how long the neighborhood would stay quiet. Schools let out soon. Then latch key kids would be trekking back through the streets. Seemed like now was a good time to see if anyone was at home.
I walked up to to Morgan’s house, looking around for anyone alive in the surrounding houses. I knocked loudly and waited. When no answer came, I knocked again. After thirty seconds of silence I tried the door. Not surprisingly, it was locked.
I moved around to the back of the house. A sliding glass door looked out from the house over a backyard littered with beer cans. The glass door was also locked. I looked around the yard and found a rusted shovel. I pushed the edge of the shovel into the crack between the door and the frame. Prying the shovel against the door I felt the latch pop causing the door to swoosh open. I carried the shovel to the back of the lot and tossed it into some brush hoping that, if the break-in were reported, the shovel would be far enough from the door to be the suspected tool of entry.
The inside of Morgan’s house was a lot like the exterior. The kitchen had old linoleum floors peeling up at the edges. Worn and warped hardwood floors went through the rest of the house. There was a sixty inch television with an X-Box connected in the living room. A shaggy, orange couch sat opposite the TV.
Morgan had very little personal stuff. No pictures of family. No baubles. No art, unless you count wrestling posters and the collection of Hustlers that were stacked near the couch. The bedroom had an Alienware computer, that looked to be more expensive than the house itself. Morgan might have been a gamer, but a tripod and video camera were aimed at the bed, causing me to think video games were not his priority.
I turned it on and waited as the machine whirred to life. I poked around the bedroom as the computer started. The closet was full of clothes. I found two 9mm and a .357 in the top of his closet. A 12 gauge shot gun with a pistol grip was leaned up against the back wall.
Under his bed, I found a box that contained three bags of cocaine. There was probably two to three thousand dollars worth of coke in that box. If he was distributing it, I didn’t see any other bags to divide it up.
In college, I roomed with a guy that sold coke to pay for his school. He spread it out over the kitchen trying to divide it up into eight ball bags. That was not a lifestyle I was keen to be involved with. I might drink like a fish, but outside of a few hits of weed, I have never done drugs. I quickly moved out and found my own apartment.
Just from that experience though, I didn’t think that Morgan was distributing coke. At least not from this house. This was a lot of cocaine, but it was probably his own stash. Of course, a drug dealer might have two million dollars lying around just waiting for someone like Lauren to grab it up. The question that might be worth pursuing is where did Morgan get his cocaine.
The computer was at the start screen. Morgan was in fact a gamer. Icons for Grand Theft Auto, Skyrim, and Battlefield popped up on the desktop along with an assortment of other games that I wasn’t familiar with.
I opened the web browser. I found his email account in the history. Morgan had a few emails, mostly spam and nothing important. His web history was an assortment of porn sites, some beyond bizarre for even me, and sports betting sites. The other programs I found were a bit more interesting.
Let me clarify that computers are not in my wheelhouse. I can use them fairly proficiently, but I’m no expert. However, I was aware of certain programs that could mask the computer’s identity and onion browsers that allow for anonymous web surfing. Morgan had a couple of those programs.
Onion browsers, as I understand them, work in layers, like an onion, so that if someone were trying to track online movements, when they r
emoved the first layer there would be another. Then another. Then another. Onion browsers are used often for going places on the dark web. Mind you, all I know about the dark web I read in Newsweek. Morgan’s choice was Tor, one of the most popular onion browsers.
I opened the browser which opened in a window. The home page was simple. A small box on the side informed me that the browser was accessing the internet through Russia, Egypt, Iceland, Spain, Colombia, and Guam.
There was no history on this browser, and the search bar didn’t offer suggestions based on past visits.
I abandoned this function figuring my expertise had maxed out. I opened up the folders. The documents folder was filled with uninteresting files. The music folder chock full of early 2000’s grunge rock. Based on the sheer number of songs, I deduced Morgan was probably a Phishhead in his day.
The video folder though was full of videos. Morgan was a budding pornographer. I opened one video. The production quality was not as low as I would have guessed. The scene involved a young girl in her twenties lying on the bed five feet from me naked. She seemed to be the only star in this little snippet. He had hundreds of videos. Some were less than five minutes and some over forty. After clicking through about ten, I never saw Morgan in any of them.
There was a sub-folder, I opened it up. There were six videos in it. I opened the first one and within the first fifteen seconds felt myself get sick. The same bed had a young girl, maybe nine years old, wearing a little girls bra and panties. A voice was instructing her to dance around. She obeyed. After a minute, the voice told her to take off her underwear. When she did a figure joined her on the bed. I stopped the video in disgust.
Up till now, I wasn’t very sorry that Morgan had been killed. He had murdered Lauren. Now though I wished he were still alive. I wanted to punish him myself. I swallowed hard and clicked on the next video. It was a different girl around the same age and a boy who looked a little older. It took no time for me to turn it off in disgust. The other four videos I clicked through quickly. The first girl showed up a couple of times. The videos seemed to get worse with her being pushed to do more. Two of the videos were not shot in this room.
I closed the folder and stared at the computer. I was angry. I wanted to rip the computer from its socket and smash it. What I really wanted was to find these monsters on the screen and kill each of them.
When Morgan disappeared or his partner reported him dead, would they think to come scrub this computer. I knew that Leo would make sure that Morgan was probably not found, but these guys didn’t. They might be worried that police involvement would uncover their little video sessions.
I looked through the drawers. There was a couple of flash drives in the bottom drawer. I plugged them in and found more videos. I wondered if there were more. I didn’t watch the videos on the memory stick. Since there was still plenty of room, I moved the sub-folder onto the stick. The other flash drive had some spreadsheets and plenty of memory. I started moving the other videos over to it. They might have some of the same guys that were less concerned about their identity in the adult versions. I was also curious if Lauren was anywhere on them.
Copying the videos was taking a long time, and I was beginning to get antsy. I don’t know if Morgan lived alone, but I could hear the street outside begin to come to life. Kids were coming home from school. First shifters were getting off work.
Ten minutes passed before I maxed out the memory on both sticks. I got most of the adult videos onto both of them. I pulled them from the computer and shut down the computer.
I headed back out the sliding glass door. I found a screw driver in the kitchen, and I straightened the latch on the door. The lock may never work again, but without a close inspection, my visit should go unnoticed.
I walked behind the neighboring houses and then to the street. When I got in the truck, I noticed the school bus that pulled onto the street. Fifteen kids climbed off the bus, most between seven and ten years of age. I wondered if this was Morgan’s pool of actors and actresses. I wanted to kill him all over again.
8
My mind was wrestling with what to do next. I considered calling the police, however with Morgan already dead, I didn’t want to put law enforcement on his trail. Especially given that his trail ended in my kitchen.
I called Leo.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Complications. Our friend has a rather disturbing hobby.”
“Really?” Leo asked. “He seemed so down to earth.”
“Yeah, well, he was an amateur videographer.”
“Did he make cat videos?” Leo joked. “Someone has to do it.”
“No, less cute. Kids.”
Leo didn’t say anything for a second, then he responded, “Kids? I was too quick with him then.”
“I got over a hundred videos. There were only about six or so of that persuasion. The rest were consenting.”
“What do you want to do about it?” Leo asked.
“Well, there were other people in the videos. I’m also wondering if we could find these kids. They need some help, if they are still in this situation.”
“You know, I am pretty okay with anyone’s perversion of choice, but this one pisses me off.”
“Here’s the thing. I don’t have any desire to watch these, but if I can pull some images of the kids or even the adults, can you find who they are.”
“Max, I’m not the NSA. I don’t have facial recognition software.”
I sighed. “I know, I just mean what can we do?”
“The kids will be tough. You could always start with the schools. Get me a decent face picture, and I might be able to see if they pop up somewhere. They will have to have a record.”
“Here’s hoping. Morgan did. Any sign of his partner?”
“No, not at the hospital or the morgue.” Leo asked, “Do you think Lauren was involved?”
“I don’t know. The guy had several thousand dollars worth of snow that seemed to be his party favors. And his computer and video set up was high dollar too. The rest of his stuff could have been thrift store furniture. He had money somewhere?”
“Do you think he kept the videos for himself?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand the psychology. Is there a market for this kind of thing?”
“I imagine there is a market for everything. He did have plenty of protection on his computer. He was hiding his IP and running an onion browser.”
“Ah,” Leo said knowingly. “He might have been selling these videos on the dark web.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea about that.”
“Well, let’s say you want certain services, or products, that normal means of commerce might bring out the attention of the government. Then you can basically go to the dark web and sell it.”
“Can’t the government still watch those sites?”
“Sure, and some they do. But the thing that makes it the dark web is that these sites aren’t cataloged. They aren’t called hitmenforhire.com. They just exist, and you can’t exactly search them. You have to already know about them.”
“Okay,” I said. “How does anyone ever know about them if they can’t look for them.”
“Dude, think about it like this. I’ll break it down to 1920’s lingo for you. Think speakeasy. It’s not advertised. It doesn’t have a sign. Yet, everyone who wanted a whiskey knew where to find it. How?”
“Word of mouth.”
“Exactly. So say you meet a guy on a chat room in the regular web. Maybe some porn site or even on Craigslist. You might get to know each other, share some vanilla photos of whatever your flavor of choice is. Then when the conversation moves to more illicit things, one of you recommends a site. Which works great if the guy recommending the site is selling whatever illicit things you are seeking.”
“Aren’t cops looking for this kind of thing?” I asked.
“Sure, but there is so much illegal trading of
everything online, it’s really difficult to police. Feds spend a lot of time online trying to bait people. The ones they catch are a small drop in the bucket compared to all the ones out there.”
“So is this kind of thing trackable at all? Can we find him?”
“I don’t know. Depends on the scope of this type of service. Let me ask a guy.”
“This wasn’t just Morgan.”
“No, this probably wasn’t.”
“Let’s find the rest of them.”
After hanging up with Leo, I decided to head back to the hotel. Extracting pictures of these guys was going to be paramount to finding them. It was also a task that made me queasy. I would need a computer. Mine was still at my house.
I drove into Florence until I saw a Best Buy. Buying a computer can seem like buying a car sometimes. The salesperson tried to sell me every upgrade. After an hour, I left with a laptop and several memory sticks.
It was nearly five by the time I made it back to the hotel. I set up the computer on the table. I downloaded some good video editing software that would allow me to capture an image from a video.
Knowing that watching these videos would take awhile, and probably in an effort to put it off a bit longer, I started thinking about going out for dinner. I picked up my phone and walked into the bedroom. Lindsay’s note was still beside the bed.
I can appreciate the irony. She is a young girl, but she was legal. She was attractive and fun. Maybe feisty is a better term. And besides Cole, the server downstairs, she was the only person I knew in town.
Dialing her number, I walked back into the living room.
“Hello,” Lindsay answered.
“Hi, Lindsay. It’s Max.”
“Well, hello,” she said with a tinge of surprise in her voice. “A call the day after.”
“Always the gentleman,” I said.
“You definitely seemed so.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you leave this morning.”
Crimson Blood (Max Sawyer Book 4) Page 5