Footsteps around the side of the SW.
She backed up, heart pounding. A moving cloud blocked the sun, plunging the desert in shadow. Tim appeared at the end of the SW, his features a twisted grimace. Bitch!"
And then she plunged forward, throwing her arm back and pitching the fistful of sand she clutched in her right hand the way a baseball pitcher throws a curveball..She threw the sand directly at Tim's face.
Tim flinched and howled, hands shooting up to his face, doubling over. "You bitch!" he screamed. "You threw sand in my eyes!"
She stopped, torn between rushing him again and beating him and turning to run. She glanced around. The SUV was still there, as was a four-door Saturn parked nearby. Both vehicles were useless without keys. And since she was pretty certain she had been transported in the SUV, Tim probably had the keys on his person.
She took a step forward and heard a scream. It didn't come from Tim Murray.
She looked up.
Animal was standing at the crest of the incline. He looked terrifying, larger than life, more monstrous somehow than she had ever seen him before. His left hand was covering his left eye. He was screaming and moaning in pain and anger.
His right hand clutched a huge butcher knife.
Lisa rushed forward, knocking Tim to the ground. He went sprawling, landing on his back, hands still covering his face. She fell beside him and her left hand grabbed a rock.
The sound of footsteps and falling stones to her left as Animal ran down the hill toward them. His footsteps were erratic, his voice tinged with pain.
She shifted the rock to her right hand, brought her arm up.
Tim Murray, as if sensing the blow, raised his left arm to protect himself.
Scurrying footsteps growing loser, accompanied by Animal's voice. "Fucking bitch, I'm gonna kill you… fucked up my eye.. "
She shifted her position over Tim, grappling with him.
The sand she had thrown in his face had helped her more than she had thought it would. His eyes were fluttering, tearing profusely; he was fighting disorientation and irritation.
It made it easier for her to get the upper hand and get a good aim.
And bring the rock down on his head.
Tim crumpled like a limp doll, and she hit him again for good measure. Both blows to Tim's head sounded like a watermelon being split open.
The running footsteps were growing loser, along with Animal's yell of rage.
Another burst of adrenaline exploded in Lisa's system. She rose to her feet.
And met the challenge head-on.
Twenty-nine
Despite the fact that William Grecko was completely shitfaced drunk, he was thinking very dearly.
Learning shocking news probably helped keep his mind operating in a more-or-less sober manner.
William Grecko sat behind his desk, nursing a bottle of 151. No use drinking out of the flask now. Why hide it? His staff knew he was an alcoholic. He'd been in rehabil itation centers six times for his alcoholism in the past twenty years. He'd lost two wives, three partnerships, and most of his friends to the disease. He'd been pulled over ten times for DUI, arrested once. When he began gaining notoriety as a high-profile criminal defense attorney, the cops who pulled him over usually let him off with a warning for some strange reason. But one thing he hadn't lost was his ability to reason when it came to protecting his clients. And right now he had to use his mind to the best of his ability to think and strategize this latest tragedy.
What the hell am I going to tell him? William thought, running a hand through his greasy hair. What the hell am I going to tell him?
It was two P.M. Lisa Miller had been missing for five hours. The last report he had gotten from the Las Vegas PD was a whole lot of nothing. The feds were at least doing somewhat better. A team of detectives had questioned Rick Shectman very casually, and naturally Rick Shectman had maintained his innocence. Mr. Shectman not only didn't know the Millers, he had never seen the people in the photographs the agents showed him. 'Best picture we had was the one with that guy at the bank, the good-lookin' dude who escorted Mrs. Miller inside," William's FBI contact, Phil Krider, reported. "Shectman takes one look at him, says he never saw him before."
That was the official story. Phil related that he was pretty confident that Rick Shectman had been lying when he denied knowing the men in the photographs. "l could tell by the way he looked at those photos. He didn't even give them a real look. Just glanced at them, looked back at us, and said, 'Nope, don't know these guys. The man didn't even give the pictures the time of day, like he knew what they were of. That tells me he knows something."
Besides, as Phil Krider and the feds reported, Rick Shectman had ties with the underground pornography market. One of his associates had been busted for producing bestiality films, and Rick's father had an illustrious history that stretched back to the early seventies. Old man Shectman was even rumored to have been involved in the production of a snuff film, so it stood to reason that his son was following in Dad's footsteps. After all, the print shop the younger Shectman now operated had been run by his father. And Boris Shectman had been convicted twice of producing child pornography out of that very shop. Talk among the underground porn world was that the younger Shectman had his hands in the business, despite a lack of hard evidence. "The print shop's been raided at least three times that I know of and we never found anything," Phil told William. "He hasn't been raided in five years because of lawsuits. Also, Rick Shectman has been contributing to various political figures lately and that's helped keep the heat off of him, if you know what I mean."
William Grecko knew what Phil meant, but that wasn't what was worrying him this afternoon. Not by a long shot.
He took another sip from the bottle. He had sent Marilyn, his secretary, home at lunch. He couldn't stand hearing her outside his office. It wasn't as if she was particularly annoying, it was just that hearing her perform her normal duties was distressing to him. Listening to her was reminding him of Lisa. And Lisa was reminding him of Brad, and Brad was reminding him of-
He gulped down another shot-and sighed as it spread through his system. The warmth flooded through him. He dosed his eyes. First things first. Sift through what you've just been told, then make an educated decision based on the evidence. No need in getting Brad worried and riled up now.
Shortly after noon, while Marilyn had still been in the office, William had taken a call from one of the detectives working on the Golgotha angle. They had finally questioned all of the board members of the Golgotha Multimedia Corporation and all their alibis and backgrounds had checked out.
William had been expecting that, but he still had to ask the detective a little more about the board members themselves. What had they been like?
Rich country-club executive types, the detective had said. Smug, pampered bastards. Oh, not smug in the sense that any of them were suspicious-they all really did check out fine. No criminal records, their stories and alibis checked out, the whole nine yards. But you know they've got money. ft's like they all had fucking Teflon coated to their skins, y'know?
William had nodded, feeling a little dejected at the news. Yeah, so what else is new?
The detective had given him the rundown. The cabin was used as a retreat for business functions, usually meetings. Sometimes they had weekend retreats, where they drove up for the weekend, went skiing, talked shop, the usual bullshit. The cabin was primarily a tax write-off. Did they ever go up for personal use? Billy had asked.
Oh yeah, all the time was the reply. They all had keys to the place. It's just that the weekend your clients went missing, all twelve board members were at other locations; none of them were within a hundred miles of the cabin. We checked. Their alibis are tight.
Billy had just been about to ask if the men had family members that perhaps used the cabin when the detective beat him to it. Of course we questioned friends and family members. That s only following the logical nnil, you know? And everybody's story
corroborated. Each man had only one key to the place. That key was on that member's person, and since each member was away that particular weekend, far from Big Bear Lake, it makes it impossible that any of them could have been involved
The detective had been rambling, and Billy had had to steer him back to the question he wanted to ask. Did family members have their own keys? Was it possible a family member had used the cabin that weekend?
No, family members don't have their own keys to the cabin. Everybody we spoke to denied using the cabin that weekend. Some of them had used it before, of course, but-
Billy had leaped on that statement. Like when? Who?
And that's when the detective had come back with one of those revelations that in thrillers always brings a chill to the audience. It brought a chill to Billy when he first heard it, and it gave him a chill now just thinking about it.
One of the board members, guy named LanyAllen, said he had a copy of the key made for a buddy of his a krv years ago, but his Mend hadn't been at the cabin either. In fact, the board had been meaning to have renovations done to the place and Lany had mentioned it to this guy. His buddy said he d take care of it for him, he knew a general contractor who would do the work, and he set it uµ 14 sent another team of detectives to question this friend of Mr. Allen s and he checked out too. And… well, this is where it gets weird His story really does check out 'cause he was with the California Highway Ftinul in Ventura County pretty much the entire weekend your client went missing. You air t gonna believe this-
Who the fuck is it?William had hissed.
It's Brad Miller s father. Hunk Miller.
That was what had sent William Grecko over the edge.
Now William sat in his office drinking Bacardi 151 and thinking about what he was going to tell Brad.
I've known Frank Miller for ten, fifteen years, he thought. This has to be some kind of weird coincidence. I saw the guy that weekend. He looked like he was a wreck. He was going through the same amount of anguish and grief as Joan and Brad were. He was elated when we found Lisa. And he's going completely batfuck now at home, waiting for word of the whereabouts of his daughter-in-law.
Or was he?
William had been trying to play connect-the-dots with this for the past hour now. The alcohol had helped unlock a lot of the barriers he normally wouldn't have been able to get past. He wondered if the alcohol was what was now making him paranoid.
It was perfectly logical that Frank Miller and Larry Allen would know each other. Larry was an executive at Fidelity, while Frank was an executive at a competing firm. 'They'd both been with their respective firms for twenty years, so it was only natural for their-paths to cross, being that they both worked in the financial industry. 'Iheyd probably met at a business function, became friends. No problem. Larry Allen was also a Christian, and by virtue of his stock in Golgotha, one would think he'd be of the squeaky-clean type. No alcohol, no drugs, and surely no pornography, not even of the Playboy variety. Although that image surely didn't provide guarantees. Lots of religious guys were closet freaks. Rank Miller was no heathen, but then he wasn't a terribly devout religious man either. So where was the bond formed? The golf course? The country club? Fbrhaps. It made sense.
William had formulated the relationship in his mind over sips of 151, trying to make the connections. And the connections he made weren't pretty.
Suppose they became pretty good friends. Maybe lorry tried to convert fhaak at one point but Rank passed 1 can buy that. But suppose there was still something they built their friendship on. Maybe Larry told Rank about the Golgotha retreat and it intrigued Flunk enough that Zany had a key made.?told Flank that if he and his wik ever wanted to use the cabin, he could. And Flank took the key. There's no evidence that suggests he used it… 1W get to that later. But suppose… just suppose that Flank later palmed the key to somebody else who used it for the snuff film?
William shook his head. That wouldn't have worked. Frank had been a nervous wreck that weekend. He was a nervous wreck now. Billy had seen him, spoken to him. Joan was flying off the wall and Frank was…
Strangely silent.
William took another sip of rum. Admittedly, he'd never seen Frank upset or emotional before this mess started. And he knew from experience that people handled stress and traumatic experiences differently. Some people, like Joan Miller, wore their hearts on their sleeves. Others, like Frank, kept their emotions dose to the bone. That's what he'd figured was going on when Lisa Miller first turned up missing. Frank was trying to be the rock for his family, was holding his emotions in. And he was doing that now not saying much, being quiet, but still visibly shaken. But then… suppose he was shaken because he was nervous?
William didn't want to consider that. It was absurd. Completely against the character of the man he knew. Frank Miller was a good guy. He was successful, he had a good family, and Billy had never known Rank to be even a purveyor of mild SEEM pornography. There was no way that Rank would have commissioned a snuff film. And for what purpose?
What did William Grecko know about snuff films, anyway? Not much. Like most people who worked along the fringes of law enforcement, he was of the opinion that they were urban legends. In all his time as a criminal defense attorney, he knew of no case in which a snuff film had been found. There had been a case ten years ago in Anaheim in which a furniture maker had been convicted of murdering two prostitutes; it had been suggested they had been slaughtered for the purpose of producing such a film. However, no snuff film ever surfaced during the investigation. From what William remembered about the case, the killer had lured the two women out to the desert where he had stashed video-camera equipment and various items of torture. Their bodies had been found a few months later, scattered across the desert. A pair of undercover female detectives, who had been hoping to bust the man in an undercover sting, had testified that the suspect told them numerous times that he'd wanted to produce a snuff film to sell to the underground extreme hardcore market.
The underground extreme hardcore market. The very name conjured images of black leather and whips, people tied to chains in basements or empty warehouses, strung up by their wrists as they were flogged or burned with cigarettes or cut with knives or razor blades. Brad had told him that the people who were into this stuff took their S&M fetish way beyond the extreme into bizarre torture and mutilation, near death. William knew that there were people into auto-asphyxiation, where they achieved orgasm at a near-death state. What he found hard to grasp was the inflicting of extreme pain and torture for sexual gratification.
Well, didn't serial killers get their kick from killing? Wasn't it all a power trip for them? Isn't that what rape was about? It wasn't so much about sex-that was a part of it, but it wasn't the primary focus. Rape was the fantasy of the perpetrator who sought to achieve a feeling of power over his victims. Taken to the extreme, wouldn't it be safe to guess that one who got their jollies watching somebody being raped was a rapist by proxy? And weren't snuff films nothing more than rape films in which the victim was later killed?
William drained the bottle. He set it down on the desk with a clink and sighed. There was no way that Frank Miller was involved in snuff films. The man had a good life; he had a loving wife, a successful child. He had a great job. He wasn't like those assholes William defended in court, those sexual psychopaths who-
Stop it! he thought. You were going to equate Frank with the dichEd image that the public has of a rapist, the seedylooking guy with the stubbled chin, the low-wage common day laborer, the animal who can't control his sexual urges. Tat's bullshit. fbu know that a lot of these perpetrators look like the guy next door: Hell, you just defended a kid a few months ago who was accused of raping his neighbor. The defendant in question was a nineteen-year-old student at Fullerton College who had broken into his neighbor's home and raped the thirty-eight-year-old victim while the woman's infant son slept in the next room. The defendant had been convicted of first-degree sexual assault. William's client
hadn't come from the wrong side of the tracks. If anything, he looked like a model citizen, the kind of kid any parent would want as a son.
In a way, he resembled the man Lisa described who had attacked and mutilated that woman Debbie Martinez. The guy she had called Animal. She'd said the guy looked like he could have been a lawyer or a young executive.
And if that was the case, then why do you find it so hard to believe that Frank Miller couldn't be involved in this shit?
Because Frank Miller isn't a fucking pervert! I know the guy! ff f had known he was into weird pom, f would have known! ff f had known he got off on watching women being raped and killed, f would have been tipped off years ago. Jesus fucking Christ, we talked about our sexual conquests enough times and leafed through those pom-shops on Harbor Boulevard enough after work for me to get an idea of what turned him on. And not once did f see him venture into the leather-andchain crap in the back of the store. Not once!
So what to do?
His private investigator was waiting for a call back. William had told him he had some thinking to do before he made his next move. The cops and the reds were looking at Rick Shectman and a few other individuals he was connected with in the illegal pornography world. His FBI contact hadn't been able to tell him much, just that they were chasing down leads, talking to people in the S&M world about the extreme hardcore element, hoping to get a lead on that. Most of their leads kept returning to Rick Shectman as a man who had a hand in producing specialty product: mutilation films, some specialized fetish stuff, usually by commission. So, naturally, the focus of the investigation was centered on him.
William knew that if Rick Shectman was involved, he'd be crafty. He'd have to be if he was involved in producing snuff films. How else could he have been involved in this underground world and not be caught? He'd be very careful now in the next few months, William was sure of it. Therefore, he wasn't going to do anything to tip the cops his way. What was the phrase Phil told him? q be guys that partake in this stuff, both the sellers and the buyers, they stay as far away from each other as possi ble." William believed that. Therefore, if Rick Shectman were involved in any way in the snuff pornography market, he'd be living a double life. He wouldn't be associating with anybody in the extreme hardcore scene, especially with any possible customers.
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