“Johnny liked it. He liked watching me with other men. Sometimes women. Sometimes both.”
“How would you meet these people?”
“Oh, you know, the usual places. Parties, clubs. One guy we met a grocery store.”
“And they were cool with it?”
“Oh, yeah. People like being put on film. Makes them feel important. Famous, in a way. For Johnny, it was a kind of intimacy. He would introduce me to most of them.”
“And then what?”
“We’d go to a hotel or come back to our place. And…you know, let things happen.”
“And when you filmed these sessions, I presume you got their permission.”
Now she looked at him with a different expression. No longer playful, but wary. She said, “What is this?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Yeah. With their permission. It was all good.”
“But sometimes without their permission, right? Sometimes Johnny would hide the camera. Right?”
She glared at him for a few seconds. She curled her fingers around her wineglass and looked down at her lap.
“You fucker,” she said. “You son of a bitch.”
“Right?”
“No. Not right. We didn’t do that.”
“That’s not what Aaron said.”
“Aaron doesn’t —”
“Let me tell you something, I’m investigating two murders. One of the victims is the father of your children. So you better stop playing games with me or I’ll have you locked up for obstruction.”
“You misled me. You tricked me.”
“Answer my question: did Johnny film people without their permission?”
“You said you already know.”
“I want to hear it from you. Tell me.”
“Yes. Yes, he filmed people without their permission. It was nothing. We didn’t hurt anyone. We never threatened anyone. He just did it to get off. That’s it.”
“What did he do with these films? These taped sessions?”
“Sometimes he taped over them. Sometimes he kept the tapes.”
“Do you have any?”
“I have some here, yes. It’s private. And it was years ago. We were married then.”
“I’m not going to arrest you for taping yourself having sex. I don’t care about that. But if you’re not straight with me, all that ugly shit is going to come out. Your children will learn about it.”
“Fuck you.”
“No need to get mad,” Hastings said. “Just tell me what I need to know. Did he tape things digitally too?”
“Yes.”
“And stored those recordings on his computer. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Don’t guess. Tell me what you know.”
“I don’t know what he did after we split up. I don’t know everything, okay?”
“Before you split, when he taped you with these other men and women, how did he do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where did he hide the camera?”
She sighed. “There’s all sorts of ways to hide it. You can hide it in pens, in picture frames, in clocks, thermostats or smoke detectors. There’s all kinds of ways. It’s easy.”
Hastings got off the couch and stood in front of her. She repositioned herself, pulling her kimono around her. They had both resumed their true characters.
“You said clocks,” Hastings said.
“Yes.”
“The other day when I came to see you, I told you Johnny’s sister took a clock from his apartment. You seemed disturbed by that. Did you think she took a clock with a digital camera in it?”
“I thought so at first. But then you told me what kind of clock it was, the family heirloom, and I knew it was just a regular clock.”
“Did Johnny’s sister know about this filming habit of his?”
“No. His family didn’t know him at all.”
Hastings remembered what Johnny’s sister had told him. He was not a nice guy. A woman saying that about her own brother. Tudi Rodgers — fat, unattractive, uncharitable and unwilling to play perverted games. Who knew what cruel things he had done or said to her?
It was two o’clock in the morning before George Hastings went to bed. He lay awake for another hour or so, thinking about cameras and money and grown men and women who like to play games and have no genuine friendships. All part of humanity’s rich pageant, he supposed. Maybe the Johnnys and the Mirandas suffered genuine pathologies. Or maybe they were just bored children with too much time on their hands. They looked down on the squares and they made their fun. But surely, Hastings wondered, surely they must have gotten bored and depressed along the way.
Howard Rhodes said, “Yeah, it used to be you’d have to have some elaborate set up — a camera behind a two way mirror, something like that. Or you’d have to pay a lot of money for this tiny camera. James Bond stuff. Now, anyone can go on the internet and buy it. And it’s pretty inexpensive. And that’s not even to talk about cell phones.”
They were in Hastings’s office. Hastings had come in early after getting just a few hours sleep. Rhodes was the first in. He was an early riser, something left over from his days in the navy. Rhodes had also worked a couple of years in vice and he knew something about sleaze merchants.
Rhodes said, “It’s changed since I left vice. When I was there — and it wasn’t that long ago — all this stuff was more or less underground. Now you walk down the street and you see a five year old girl wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Future Porn Star.’ And if you’re in Hollywood, the quickest and easiest way to fame is to ‘accidentally’ release a porn film of yourself on the internet. You have kids, you start looking at these things differently. You heard about Phil Rounds, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“His daughter was on one of those girls gone wild videos. She was in Fort Lauderdale on spring break. He didn’t know about it until it came out. Long after it came out. Someone on patrol told him about it.”
“Poor guy.”
“You never had to work with him.”
“I heard he can be difficult.”
“Not so much difficult. It’s just that he acts like no one else ever did police work until he came along. Always preaching and lecturing. And he was always applying for these medals and commendations. And they were commendations for bread and butter things.…I think he got one for attendance. Anyway, one time this high school kid wanted to take photos of all the officers on Phil’s watch for some sort of school project. So Phil showed up on picture day in his dress blues wearing all his police medals. Well, the guys on his shift, they knew about his love for medals, so a couple of them came to the photo shoot wearing medals they’d gotten from their military service, before they became cops. They out-medaled him. It was really funny. He was like, ‘Er, where did you get those? I didn’t know you had those.’ And so on. Apparently, he’s still sore about it. Anyway, he’s kind of a holier than thou type, so there were more than a few cops who got a kick out of his daughter being on that video.”
“Still,” Hastings said, thinking of his own daughter. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. So…you feel pretty comfortable with this camera stuff?”
“If we’re going to be searching for it, I think it’d be a good idea to bring along a friend of mine from Vice. You know Benny, don’t you?”
“Benny Ruiz?”
“Yeah. He’s a character. He sits home on the weekends watching porn in his underwear, smoking cigars.” Rhodes smiled. “He’s a sick man.”
“A hazard of the profession,” Hastings said.
They re-inventoried the stuff they had taken from Johnny Rodgers’s apartment and they didn’t find anything. Then they returned to Johnny’s apartment and didn’t find anything there either.
After that, Hastings called Jeff Lacroix and told him what they were looking for.
Jeff said, “I didn’t notice anything new. But you’re welcome to come over and look.”
So it was Hastings, Rhodes, Klosterman and Benny Ruiz of the vice squad who showed up at Jeff Lacroix’s apartment.
Benny Ruiz was a very heavy, Hispanic man in his forties who looked like a janitor. He made a lot of jokes and quoted lines from Bill Murray movies that were well over twenty years old. Jeff Lacroix looked at Benny Ruiz with something like restrained horror. The cops pulled on their latex gloves and went through the apartment, Benny whistling You’re Nobody till Somebody Loves You.
About thirty minutes passed then Hastings called out from the bedroom closet.
“Benny, could you come in here please?”
Hastings gestured to a small rectangular clock radio that had its electrical cord wrapped around it.
“Hmmm,” Benny said. He picked up the clock with gloved hands and carried it to the kitchen table. He pulled a small set of tools out of his coat pocket. Using a small Philips screwdriver, he removed the top of the clock.
“Yes,” Benny said. He gestured to the digital video lens about the size of a Swisher Sweet cigar. “I’m familiar with this model. If memory serves me correctly, it has a 389 line resolution and a .25 lux low light rating with motion activation, time and date stamping. And over here we have the SD memory card.”
Benny pulled the memory card out. “Tada.”
Jeff Lacroix said, “Oh God. I had no idea.”
Hastings said, “Aaron never told you about this?”
“I didn’t even know he had the clock. We never used it.” Jeff added, “Not even to tell time.”
“If you did,” Klosterman said, “we’ll know soon enough.”
They watched the recording on Hastings’s computer back at the police station. Hastings, Klosterman, Rhodes and Benny Ruiz were all there. Murph walked in during the viewing, looked at the screen, and gave someone a somewhat alarmed, questioning look.
“It’s the Rodgers case,” Rhodes said.
Murph looked at the screen. “Yikes.”
A grainy black and white film of two men in bed. Grunting and saying things to each other.
Klosterman said, “Er, permission to be excused?”
“Denied,” Hastings said. “We know that’s Johnny there. But who’s the other guy?”
“He looks familiar,” Benny Ruiz said.
“I thought that too,” Rhodes said.
After a moment, Murph said, “He used to be on television.”
One by one the police officers turned to look at him.
Murph said, “On the news. I remember him now.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t remember his name. My wife would know, though. She watched him every night. Jesus Christ, the guy is a fucking newscaster.”
About six hours later, Hastings was preparing a search warrant when his cell phone rang. It was Henry Brummell.
“George, you busy?”
“Yeah, kind of. What’s up?”
“I’ll try to make it quick. The case against you has been dismissed.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. I’ll tell you what happened. I filed a motion for sanctions based on Bradbury’s refusal to answer questions in deposition. What I was seeking from the court was an order prohibiting them from being able to present Bradbury as a witness at trial because of his refusal to cooperate with discovery. The judge turned to Cray and said, ‘What’s the problem?’ And Cray raised his fifth amendment concerns. The judge, sua sponte, says that’s not a concern, your client has already been acquitted of the criminal charges. So they go back and forth and the judge asked Cray if he had any authority to support his position and Simon said he didn’t and the judge said, well, that’s it then, go back to deposition and order your client to answer the questions. Cray refuses. The judge, he can’t believe it. He said, ‘Did you just refuse to comply with my order?’ Cray says he can’t ask his client to do that because it will compromise him in another lawsuit that Rana is going to bring for wrongful death.”
“She’s going to do that?”
“Of course she is,” Brummell said. “I told her to.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I can do that.”
“Does Cray know you told her to do that?”
“He doesn’t, but I wouldn’t care if he did. She’s got her own lawyer and I’ll be shocked if they don’t file a wrongful death suit on behalf of Toni. Why wouldn’t they? An acquittal on a murder charge does not serve as a bar against a civil suit for wrongful death.…Anyway, now the judge is really mad at Cray. He says, ‘Do you mean to tell me Mr. Bradbury is refusing to answer questions in this suit because of that?’ And Cray says, ‘You don’t understand.’ Like the judge is stupid or something. And then the judge gets red in the face and says something like, ‘Counsel, I don’t care what you think of me. But you will respect this court.’ And Cray says — he’s such a dumbshit — Cray says, ‘I’ll give the court the respect its due.’ And then the judge held Cray in contempt, fined him and then dismissed the case.”
“Just like that?”
“Now, George, don’t get carried away. He dismissed it without prejudice. That means Bradbury can re-file it in twenty days. Whether or not he will, I don’t know. If he does, he’ll have to answer the questions I put to him. And he’s worried that if he has to do that, his answers will be leaked to the media.”
“Would you have done that?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Why you sneaky little devil.”
“This devil’s on your side, buddy. I’ll tell you something, George. Cray is a complete asshole and his ego really got him into trouble this time. But I don’t know that he had much choice.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well, I’ve sort of been in his place before. You have a client you simply cannot control. I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that at some point Cray told Bradbury, ‘You’re going to have to answer these questions.’ And Bradbury said, ‘Bullshit I do. Go in there and fix it.’ I think that’s what happened. A man like Bradbury just doesn’t believe the law applies to him. So…if we’re lucky, Cray might be thinking he’s had enough of Ryan Bradbury.”
“You sure?”
“No, I’m not sure. I have no specific knowledge of that. But I know how lawyers think. They like to get paid. It’s one thing for a lawyer to represent a guy on a criminal case and get paid a huge retainer. It’s another to take a contingency fee case that’s probably going to blow up in your face and then get nothing. Cray may be saying to himself, I don’t fucking need this.”
“If we’re lucky.”
“Well you’re better off today than you were yesterday.”
“I know I am. Thanks very much, Henry.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Hastings got off the phone. Klosterman walked in.
“Judge Reif is ready to see us,” Klosterman said.
They walked down the hall together, Hastings holding the draft of the search warrant and the supporting documentation.
Klosterman said, “You think we got enough?”
“I think we do,” Hastings said. “But sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”
The producer told Beth they were light again so again she exchanged some banter with the meteorologist, saying, “More rain tomorrow?” Like it was his fault. The meteorologist did his meteorologist thing, shrugging his shoulders in submission. Beth frowned out a disappointed smile and signed off.
She took off her microphone. In the hallway, she took off her jacket. Beneath the jacket she wore a white blouse and a black skirt. She saw the detective at the end of the hall.
Hastings held up his hands in an apologetic gesture. He said, “I’m sorry, I should have called first. I think I may have gotten the case resolved. And I remembered what you asked me. About maybe doing a story?”
“Oh,” Beth said. “Yes.”
“I hope it’s not too late to discuss it. It won’t take long.”
“It’s all right.”
Beth smiled at him. “Shall we go to my office?”
“I think that would be great.” Hastings picked up a briefcase and followed her.
In her office, she took a bottled water out of a mini-refrigerator. She took a liberal swig of it before she sat in the chair behind her desk.
She looked at him and smiled again, marking her self-consciousness. “Sorry,” she said. “It gets hot under the lights. Can I offer you something to drink?”
“No, I’m good.”
“So. What have you found out?”
“Well, we finally got a break the other day. Just after I talked with you, actually. It seems like Johnny was mixed up with a couple of fellows from Bosnia. A couple of tough guys who claimed Johnny owed them money.”
“For what? Drugs?”
“That’s what I thought it might be. But no, it wasn’t drugs. It was a car. Johnny test-drove a car they had and he wrecked it. Or, rather, his friend wrecked it. Or damaged it. Then after they damaged the vehicle, they just took off.”
Hastings laughed and Beth Tanner joined him.
“Yeah,” Hastings said. “Just took off. Didn’t leave a note or anything. Well, this really pissed these Bosnians off. And they came looking for Johnny.”
“I’m sorry for laughing,” Beth said. “I know it’s not funny.”
“It’s all right, I understand. Like you said before, you develop sort of a thick skin in this business. Anyway, as I was saying, these Bosnians came looking for Johnny. And they found him.”
“And then what?”
“Then — well then I believe they requested that he buy the car that he had damaged. I believe they demanded something on the order of six thousand dollars. And poor old Johnny, he didn’t have that. After that, it gets a little hazy. Johnny’s not around anymore, so we can’t really ask him what he did. I suppose he could have called his sister or his brother and asked them for the money. But then he didn’t really have any sort of relationship with them. He had written them off years ago. Which was too bad, because I think if he had called his father and told him the truth, his father would have probably given him the money. And then he wouldn’t have been killed.”
Bullet Beth (George Hastings police procedural) Page 20