The Short Drop

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  “I understand completely,” Hendricks said. “This isn’t really about him, or any particular officer for that matter. We’re just looking for ways the county can improve and enhance their interactions with the community.”

  “Kate? Who is it?” A man’s voice from inside the house.

  “Some detectives with questions,” the woman called back into the house.

  “We’re not detectives, ma’am.”

  A moment later, a tall, thin man in chinos and a polo shirt came to the door.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Bill, these folks want to talk to us about the officer who took the report on our break-in,” Mrs. McKeogh explained.

  “Sir. My name is Dan Hendricks, and this is my partner, Jenn Charles.” He extended a hand, which Bill McKeogh shook.

  Hendricks caught Jenn’s eye while he repeated his spiel about consulting with the police. Making it very clear that they were not, contrary to his wife’s impression, detectives. The McKeoghs didn’t strike Jenn as child-kidnapping pedophiles. They would have been in their early twenties when Suzanne disappeared.

  The McKeoghs were more than happy to help. Hendricks produced a notepad and took notes as he asked a series of questions about the responding officer’s demeanor, helpfulness, and attention to detail. Jenn played along, asking follow-up questions to coax the details of the break-in out of them. Like most victims of minor crime, the McKeoghs were eager to discuss it.

  Mrs. McKeogh had come back from the grocery store and found the back door jimmied open. She’d called the police, and her husband at the office, which was only ten minutes away. She’d waited out front until the (very nice) officer arrived. The (very helpful) officer confirmed that the back door had been jimmied open and did a sweep of the basement and upstairs before letting them reenter the house. It didn’t appear that anything had been taken, although there hadn’t been time yet to look carefully. They didn’t have a lot of cash or expensive jewelry in the house.

  “The officer said it was probably just kids.”

  “Why?” Jenn asked.

  “Because there was no damage inside the house,” Mr. McKeogh said. “The officer told us that in most robberies speed is the main concern, so they would have ransacked the house. The officer said the house should be a disaster. Drawers dumped out, pictures thrown on the floor, looking for anything valuable. Usually there’s a lot of damage, he said.”

  “And you’re sure nothing is missing?” Hendricks asked.

  “No, not for sure. We really just started checking.”

  “The officer gave us his card and said to call him if we realized something was gone,” said Mr. McKeogh.

  “May I see it?” Jenn asked.

  Mr. McKeogh handed it over. Jenn copied down the officer’s information and gave it back.

  “What about electronics? Any computers in the house?”

  “We have a stereo and a couple of TVs. My wife has a laptop, and we have a desktop set up in the family room for the kids.”

  “We don’t want them looking at the Internet where we can’t see them,” Mrs. McKeogh said.

  Hendricks asked, “So your computers are password protected?”

  “Mine is, but the family room computer isn’t. Why?” Mrs. McKeogh asked. “Do you think that’s what they were after?”

  “Anything’s possible. You should probably check it to be safe.”

  Mrs. McKeogh went back into the house. She returned a minute later shaking her head. The computer appeared normal.

  “Mind if I take a quick look at it?” Jenn asked.

  The computer sat on a small wooden desk in the living room. It had an old CRT monitor. The tower sat on the floor beside the table, its front-access USB panel cover hanging open.

  “Do you mind?” Jenn asked, indicating the keyboard.

  The computer was in sleep mode. Jenn hit the space bar. The hard drive spun to life, and the monitor flickered on. Someone had opened a Word document and typed two words: “Terrance Musgrove.”

  The McKeoghs glanced at each other.

  “Do you know him?” Jenn asked.

  “No,” Mr. McKeogh said. “Well, not exactly.”

  “We bought the house from him,” Kate McKeogh said.

  “From his estate,” her husband corrected.

  “We bought the house from the estate. It’s kind of sad. I don’t really know the whole story,” she said.

  “It was only the second house we looked at. We lowballed them, figuring they’d counter, but they took it. It was a steal to be honest. Thirty-day closing. Nothing like a motivated seller.”

  “Any idea why?” Jenn asked.

  “It’s a touchy subject in the neighborhood. No one really talks about it,” said Mrs. McKeogh. “But we found out later… you don’t like to feel you’re capitalizing on someone else’s misfortune. It’s not the kind of thing you want to bring into your home. Bad energy.”

  Jenn cocked an eyebrow at them.

  “He killed himself,” Mr. McKeogh said.

  “William,” Mrs. McKeogh said in a shocked voice.

  “Well, he did. In the house somewhere. Why we got such a good deal. It sat vacant while his siblings figured out what to do.”

  “What happened to him?” Hendricks asked.

  Mr. McKeogh shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. It’s not something the neighborhood likes to talk about. Just a tragedy.”

  “And I don’t want to know,” Mrs. McKeogh interjected. “It’s in the past. It might have been one of the kids’ bedrooms. Then what would I do?” Mrs. McKeogh shut down the computer. “There. That’s better.”

  Jenn felt her phone vibrate. She stepped away to check it. It was an automatically generated text message from ACG saying that Vaughn’s virus had gone offline. She nodded to Hendricks, who wrapped things up with the McKeoghs. They all shook hands at the front door, and Hendricks and Jenn walked down the driveway. Jenn showed Hendricks the text message.

  At the end of the driveway, Jenn turned back to the couple.

  “One other thing,” she said. “How long have you lived in the house?”

  “Nine years in April,” Mrs. McKeogh said.

  “And how long was the house vacant?”

  “About two years,” said Mr. McKeogh.

  “Ah, okay. Thanks for your time.” Back in their vehicle, Jenn turned to Hendricks. “Where does that rate on your strange meter?”

  “What? That someone broke into a random house on gingerbread lane to download Vaughn’s virus onto a kid’s computer? All in broad daylight?”

  “Yeah, that,” she said.

  “About an eleven.”

  “But they’re not suspects. We agree on that?”

  “Those two? Yeah.”

  “So why do it? Why here?”

  “Maybe someone’s playing with us. Letting us know he’s too smart to be caught. Spinning us in the wrong direction.”

  “You think he’s just showing off?”

  “Well, this fits my definition of a wild goose chase.”

  “I don’t know. That’s a lot of risk. Break into a house? In this neighborhood? In broad daylight? And for what? To waste a couple hours of our time? Doesn’t seem worth it.”

  “Maybe he’s making an alibi for Tate. Possible there’s two of them.”

  “That we know of. There’s a lot you can do in a couple hours,” Jenn said. “We should get back to Grafton.”

  “Agreed.” Hendricks started the engine but left it in park. He stared at his partner. “What?”

  “I’m going to talk to the neighbor.”

  “The old lady?” Hendricks asked. “What for?”

  “I need to know what Terrance Musgrove has to do with any of this.”

  It was forty minutes before she got back in the car.

 
“Did she give you her recipe for snickerdoodles?”

  Jenn held up a finger to him as she took out her phone and called George. She explained the situation to George as Hendricks listened.

  When she finished, George asked her what they needed.

  “An open-records check on a Terrance Musgrove.” She spelled the name and gave his address here on Orange Lane. “Ten years ago, approximately.”

  She turned to Hendricks.

  “What county are we in?”

  “Westmoreland,” Hendricks said.

  George told her he would call ahead and smooth the way with the local police. Jenn dragged her tongue over her teeth. Either Tate had a partner, or they had the wrong guy. God help them if Tate was innocent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Gibson slipped inside the storage unit and pulled the rollaway door down behind him. The smell of stale sweat and vomit greeted him in the blistering heat. He heard movement from behind a chain-link fence that stretched across part of the room, and cautiously approached in the gloom.

  Kirby Tate was curled into a fetal position on a pile of straw. Despite the oppressive heat, he was shivering. Through narrowed eyes he watched Gibson with a feral wariness. Gibson forced a smile onto his face and held up a bottle of water that perspired in the heat.

  Tate licked his cracked lips.

  “Take it.”

  Tate shrunk back toward the wall as though Gibson were threatening him with a gun, not offering him a drink.

  “Take it,” he repeated. “It’s all right.”

  Gibson opened the bottle and placed it inside the chain-link fence. It fell over and rolled in a lazy circle, spilling water on the concrete floor. Tate followed the bottle with his eyes, calculating the risk. Hunting for the trap that must be there. He scurried forward without standing up, snatched the bottle, and squatted on his haunches to gulp it down. When the water was gone, he retreated back to his straw nest.

  Gibson set another bottle of water where Tate could see it.

  “Still thirsty?”

  Tate nodded.

  “I need to ask you some questions.”

  Tate became still.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t even come in there. Just come closer so I can see you. I’ll give you the water, and we’ll talk a little.”

  Tate shifted but didn’t move. Gibson tried again. Coaxing, reassuring. He put the second bottle of water inside the cell and sat on the ground outside the makeshift cell, hoping to seem less threatening.

  Gradually Tate crept to the front of the cell. Gibson needed to be able to see the man’s eyes. Tate took the bottle and sat cross-legged on the ground facing Gibson.

  “So don’t good cops get masks?” Tate said.

  “Who are you working with?” Gibson asked without preamble.

  “What?”

  “Who’s your partner?”

  “I ain’t got no partner, man. I ain’t got no partner ’cause I ain’t doing nothing. Like I told them other two motherfuckers.”

  “So you’ve been a little angel since they found that girl in your trunk?”

  A strange expression crossed Tate’s face. Part shame, part pride, and something else that made Gibson’s skin crawl.

  “Yeah, man, I’m on the up and up and up. Learned my lesson. Scared straight, you know?” Tate smiled his off-kilter version of an upstanding citizen’s smile.

  “And the kiddie porn on your laptop?”

  Tate’s smile faltered. “Man, that’s nothing. Come on. Just pictures, you know? For in my head. Keeps me outta trouble.”

  “Just something to take the edge off, huh?”

  “Yeah, man, yeah. The edge. You know… So my trunk stays empty.” Tate winked.

  Gibson choked back the urge to throw up.

  “Y’all right there, man?” Tate was grinning now. Messing with him a little.

  Gibson forced himself to smile. “I’m good. No, I get that. Keeping the edge off is the responsible thing to do.”

  “Responsible. Right. Responsible,” Tate agreed.

  “You’re just doing it for them. To protect them.”

  Tate nodded vigorously. “Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I don’t wanna hurt nobody no more.”

  In Tate’s mind, he was the good guy. He only looked at child pornography to prevent his bad impulses from taking over. He did it for the children.

  Right.

  An eternal truth of the human condition was that no one ever thought they were evil. No matter how reprehensible their actions, people always convinced themselves they were justified.

  “Was that why you were at the library?”

  “Yeah. He said that Fridays was the day the library wiped its servers so it was safe. No one would ever know.”

  “Wiped its servers?” That didn’t even mean anything. No one wiped servers weekly, and certainly not a public library.

  “Yeah. He’s a pro.”

  “He?” Gibson asked. “He who?”

  “Dunno, man. The guy. He, him. I got this letter a year ago. Well, it wasn’t a letter. It was just like taped to my front door. Said he was an ‘enthusiast’ just like me. That he’d found me on the Internet on some database where you can find ex-cons that done like me. Had my picture and address. He said he was reaching out to everyone in the area to see if, maybe, we could create a little ring of ‘like-minded individuals,’ that’s how he put it. All fancy and shit. Like-minded individuals.”

  “For what?”

  “To pool our… you know… resources.”

  “Trade pictures?”

  “Pictures. Videos. Uh-huh.”

  Gibson saw it. Someone had turned the National Sex Offender Registry into a social networking site for pedophiles. The start-up from hell.

  “And he told you about the library wiping its servers?”

  “Yeah, he said on Fridays during the wipe that it was all anonymous, and I could download as much as I wanted and no one would ever notice.”

  “But only on Fridays.”

  “Only on Fridays. Guy had it all worked out.”

  “So who is this guy, Kirby?”

  “Dunno, man. Never met him.”

  “Come on.”

  “No, for real. That was like rule numero uno—that everyone should be anonymous so we couldn’t flip on each other if shit went south.”

  “But he knew who you were.”

  “What?”

  “Well, he approached you. So he knows who you are.”

  That evidently hadn’t occurred to Tate.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know who he was, so…”

  He watched Tate’s stupidity collapse on itself.

  “Kirby, it’s only anonymous if everyone’s identity is secret.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I guess so. But, you know, he was real cool.” Tate’s wheels were spinning now. “He helped me out. He wouldn’t give me up.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  Tate stared at him for a long minute. Gibson made it a point not to look away. He watched the tumblers slowly fall into place in Tate’s mind.

  “Motherfuck,” Tate spat.

  The big man stood and stalked in circles around his cell, cursing. Gibson allowed Tate to blow himself out and slump back to the ground in front of him.

  “What did he tell you I done? I mean, we didn’t even trade all that much.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, man. I sent him some stuff at first, but he never had anything for me, so I quit sending.”

  “What about the other members of the group?”

  “Weren’t no other members. He kept trying to recruit some but couldn’t get them to go for it. Too scared, he said. Said we was the only ones with vision. I offered to help recruit, but he said it was safer if it was just him.
”

  “How’d you communicate with him?”

  “Notes at first, like on my door. Then after I got me a computer we’d talk on there.” Tate had a thought. “He told you I done the Lombard girl, didn’t he? That’s why you motherfuckers flew me to this hellhole. ’Cause he said I done her.”

  Flew? In the gloom, he hoped Tate didn’t catch his flicker of puzzlement. He’d worry about a mystery flight if it came to it. In the meantime, he just rolled with it.

  “That’s what he told us.”

  “Well, it’s bullshit.”

  “Do you have Internet at your house?”

  “My house? Nah. I ain’t got nothing at that shitbox.”

  “Why not?”

  “Can’t afford it, man. You know how much an ex-con child molester makes these days? Not much. People ain’t exactly falling over themselves to hire me. I do odd jobs for my uncle. Day work when I can get it, but the fuckin’ Mexicans like to hire their own, you know? Ain’t no way I’m affording no satellite. Besides, what I need the Internet for? I mean, all I gotta do is go to the library for that, so what’s the point?”

  “The Internet does other things, Kirby.”

  “No, man. Too much reading. Fuck that. Hurts my head.”

  “So why are you protecting this guy?”

  “I ain’t protecting him. I don’t know who he is. I ain’t got shit to do with him.”

  “You hacked into ACG for him. Or did you just do that on your own?”

  “Them other two was going on about that too. Man, I didn’t hack shit.”

  “Come on, Kirby. I’m trying to help you here, but you have to give me something. At the library on Friday, you downloaded about ten megabytes of data from ACG.”

  “No, man, no. I was just downloading, you know, pictures and shit.”

  “Don’t lie to me. We watched you. It was on your computer.”

  “Look, the only reason I bought the computer off him was to get my pictures. That’s it.”

  Gibson stopped. “He sold you the computer?”

  “Yeah, I was gonna buy a used one, but he said no, he could build me a new one. Make some tweaks to help keep me safe.”

  Gibson shut his eyes. Tate didn’t have a mysterious benefactor, and he didn’t have a partner. He had a puppet master. It was brilliant. Recruit a pedophile to a nonexistent kiddie-porn ring, custom build him a computer, and sell him some crap about Friday afternoons.