by Fred Limberg
“Why do you think I brought all of you guys along?” She laughed nervously and took out a cigarette.
“I wonder what Kumpula has to trade? He’s not into this stuff is he?” Tony directed the question more to Ray, who had known him longer.
“Kump comes across all kinds of things,” was all the answer he gave. They heard Darcy DuPree’s high pitched giggle from behind the door at the end of the hall.
“Why isn’t this guy in jail?” Tony walked over and peered around the corner of another doorway into a kitchen that could have been featured in a 1950’s era magazine.
“It’s not like we haven’t tried.” Carol shrugged. “At least he’s out here in the sticks where he can’t do much harm.”
“Why out here?” Tony stuck his hands in his pockets. He really didn’t want to touch anything. The kitchen table was covered in slick glossy porn magazines.
“This is the old family place.”
“Huh? The guy sounds like he’s straight off of Bourbon Street.”
Carol smiled and shook her head. “Nope, born and raised right here. We have quite a file on him.”
Another giggle echoed down the hallway. Ray was staring out the front window, across the desolate yard and the beaten down cornfield that stretched almost to the horizon. Tony joined him by the window.
“And we’re here why, exactly?”
“We don’t know exactly. Carol has a hunch there’s a further connection between Stuckey and the ‘Go Girls’. She’s real curious about the ‘bonus tracks’, whatever that might mean. So am I.”
“You think there’s a link?”
Ray turned his head slowly from the window and nodded. “I think it’s possible.”
They both turned when they heard the door from the computer room crash open. Kumpula was striding purposefully down the hallway. He had a CD case in one hand.
He headed directly for the front door, not pausing or breaking stride. He grabbed the knob and said loudly over his shoulder, “Let’s go kids, now!”
Carol hurried behind him and didn’t look back. Ray followed. Tony glanced down the hall.
The door was wide open. Tony caught a brief glimpse of Darcy DuPree, both hands fumbling with the front of his pants, his attention wholly on whatever image was flickering on an unseen monitor. He was laughing in his high irritating whiny voice, looking off across the room.
As soon as Tony hit the seat Carol dropped the car into gear and flung gravel and dust as she tore out of the farmyard toward the road.
Tony looked over at Kumpula. “What happened?”
“That is a sick, sick man.” Tony saw Carol’s eyes in the rearview mirror, the deep furrows on her brow.
“Stop the car!” Kumpula commanded.
Carol braked hard, throwing them all forward. Jonny got out of the backseat and pulled an oversized semi-automatic from beneath his jacket. He leaned on the car’s roof and sighted on the power line where it was connected to a tall pole by the side of the driveway. It only took three shots for the power line to drop, sparking and arcing into the ditch. Two more shots separated the phone line. Kumpula holstered the gun and got back in the car.
The smile was back. Ray and Carol turned to look over the seat, amused looks on both of their faces.
“Why?” Tony asked.
“Guy’s an asshole,” Kumpula replied. “I hope it fried the servers.”
“But you got the episodes?”
“I got ’em.” He pulled a CD case from his pocket. “Ur MoM is so Hott, episodes 1 thru 6 and the bonus tracks. I left him with a lovely parting gift.”
“Oh, yeah? What?”
“He’ll find out when they fix his power and he has to do a hard boot on the system. Sorry, Carol.”
“For what?”
“You won’t be getting any more dirty movies from Darcy DuPree. The little computer worm I left in his system is going to eat them all up. Damn viruses.”
They all got a good laugh and kept it going for most of the ride back to the Cities, but in the back of his mind Tony was afraid of what they might, or might not see on the dirty movies they had in hand.
Chapter 30
Six hours. That’s how long the four of them had spent together in the car. Ray made sure they used the return trip productively. He guided and suggested and cajoled them while they discussed the case. They revisited the Fredrickson’s kitchen with Deanna’s sprawled bloody and lifeless body on the floor. They talked about the ‘Go Girls’—their looks, their attitudes, and their personalities.
And they talked at length about Sean Stuckey. It was Tony who pointed out that for all the conjecture about Stuckey they had very little face time with the guy. They touched on the husband and son and on the roommates, again deciding they had nothing to do with the murder.
No amount of pleading could induce Kumpula to reveal what he had traded to DuPree for the ‘Ur MoM’ episodes.
The four of them were brain weary and talked out when they arrived back at headquarters. Kumpula vanished. Carol led Ray and Tony to the Sex Crime Unit’s computer lab. There were various stations set up cabled to a tall stack of servers, linked powerful computers they used to track pedophiles across the World Wide Web. She steered them to a side desk. A lonely desktop computer with an oversized monitor sat waiting, unattached to the system.
“Meet Sol,” she said as she powered the computer up.
“Sol?”
“Short for ‘solitary’. What Kump did to DuPree, planting the bug…you wouldn’t believe some of the shit out there.” She gestured toward the stack of servers. “We learned the hard way. Anything that might be infected goes through Sol first.” The monitor flickered to life.
“So if it’s a system crasher it just nukes the one PC?” Tony nodded thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have thought of that but it makes sense.”
“Sol gets a lot of attention. This is Sol 22 by the way. Twenty one others have given their lives in the line of service. One thing we do is capture cookies and source codes for viruses on old Solly here. Then the geeks can protect the servers when we apply power to a problem.” Carol inserted the disc while Ray and Tony dragged extra chairs over.
“Are you pissed that Kumpula fried your snitch’s computers?”
“Not really. He’s probably got a backup data dump off site or in the cloud.” Carol shrugged. “It’ll take him a while to get back in business, though. Ready for the show?” Tony and Ray both grimaced. Neither of them was looking forward to it.
Episode 1 came to life. As advertised, the lone camera was hidden, or was positioned to suggest that it was, and there were no stage lights used. It looked like a poorly done home video. A young man, not Sean Stuckey, led an obviously drunk woman who could have been in her late thirties or early forties to a sofa and began kissing and fondling her. The camera man, or boy, could be heard talking, whispering urgently to someone off screen. Amateur hour.
“I think we can fast forward through this one,” Ray said dryly.
Carol looked over her shoulder at him. “Your boy might make a cameo appearance.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ray was right, it didn’t matter. The woman wasn’t one of the ‘Go Girls’.
Episode 2 was very similar in some respects. More room lights had been added and turned on. A different young man urged yet another, older woman; this one could have been fifty, to the sofa. This woman wasn’t drunk. She was excited and eager and pawed at his clothes even before they fell to the couch. She dug at his pants. Tony thought she looked disappointed when she pulled a normal sized penis out of his trousers.
“Next!” Ray announced just as the woman’s head began lowering to the victim’s lap.
“Two down, four to go.” Tony was embarrassed and trying to joke his way out of it.
By Episode 3 the nasty little-boy producers had almost gotten their act together, Tony thought. There were more lamps, but still not enough and not positioned well. Episode 3 had a title screen. Ur MoM is so Hott! It also had a star.
Sean Stuckey entered the screen with his arm around the ample waist of one of the ugliest women Tony had ever seen in his life.
“Wow,” Carol said. “Where did they find her?”
“Don’t do it, Sean,” Tony said to the monitor. “Where’s your pride, man?”
“Maybe she’ll turn into a frog.”
“It’d be an improvement.”
Tony and Carol were laughing, pointing at the video image of Stuckey kissing the woman. They could tell he was working hard at trying to look like he was having fun. The ugly woman looked like she was in heaven.
“Look at those warts.”
“Look at those teeth!”
“Next!” Ray commanded. “Next! Next! Next!” He got up from his chair and walked a few steps away. Tony and Carol were laughing out loud.
“Look at his face.” The hag was on her knees digging furiously at Stuckey’s zipper. When she pulled him free she screamed, loud enough to nudge Ray to look back over at the monitor. Stuckey was staring at the ceiling. His face was contorted in pain and disgust, his great member limp and flaccid. It didn’t faze the woman. She inhaled it, determined to bring it to life. Carol thankfully hit the off button.
“Now that was one hot momma.”
Even Ray laughed. They unanimously decided to take a break. Carol bolted for the nearest exit to have a smoke while Ray and Tony searched for a coffee pot.
“That was disgusting.” Ray sipped the oily brew they had found. It was disgusting too. One sip was enough.
“We probably shouldn’t laugh.” Tony still had a smile, actually more of a smirk, on his face. He knew Ray wanted to stick to business, get through the rest of the episodes, go home and take a shower.
“In my day we’d call that gal a coyote.” Ray had a serious look on his face, but his eyes were bright and lively. Tony motioned for him to continue.
“See, you got your one-baggers, your two-baggers, and your coyotes. A one-bagger is a gal so ugly you put a bag over her face, right?” Tony smiled, nodding.
“And your two-baggers? They so ugly you put a bag on your own head in case theirs falls off. You heard this one?” Tony shook his head no. He’d heard it but he was having a fine time watching his new partner tell the joke.
“And then you got coyote ugly…a gal so ugly you’d gnaw your arm off at the shoulder rather than risk wakin’ her up the next morning.”
Both of them were laughing at the punch line when Carol returned. “What’d I miss?”
Back to work.
Episode 4 again starred Sean Stuckey. The young pornographers had obviously gotten some advice by the time they taped this episode, Tony noticed immediately. There was bright studio lighting and an animated title page. The woman was definitely a pro, store-bought top heavy, garishly made up and bored looking. Any pretense of luring a desperate housewife into wild sex was abandoned beyond a half-dozen lame lines of conversation. Episode 5 was the same. It was a different woman but so similar in appearance and mannerism Tony wondered aloud if there was a porn hooker training camp somewhere.
By Episode 6, when a third porno-clone dropped to her knees before young Stuckey, Tony was dejected as well as disgusted. They had seen nothing to link Stuckey to any of the ‘Go Girls’. Carol had gotten fidgety, checking her watch often and making noises about where she needed to be soon. Ray had her show him how to control the videos with the keyboard and wished her a good evening. There was only one clip left to watch, an out take. DuPree had called it the ‘fucked-up episode’. Tony was grateful when his phone rang. He left Ray to view the clip.
“De Luca.”
Tony didn’t recognize the number that flashed on his ID screen. He hoped it was Sue Ellen calling from a safe house phone. The long strange day was nearly over.
“Agent XXL checking in.”
“David, I mean XXL, what’s up?” Tony decided to play along with his spy. He needed any humor he could get after sitting through six episodes of ‘Ur MoM is NOT Hott’. He was never going to use the correct title again. There was nothing remotely ‘hot’ about any of it.
“Sean was here a while ago. He just split so I can talk now.” Tony stepped further from the computer so he could hear better and concentrate.
“Okay, what have you got XXL?”
Hong chuckled before he went on. “This is weird, Tony. This afternoon I got a call here at the house from Karen…Karen Hewes.”
“What did she want?”
“She pretended she was checking in on us, looking for Scotty, some bullshit, you know. Then she asks me if I’ve got a number for Sean.”
Tony’s thoughts downshifted and his mind high-revved to what Hong was saying. What the hell did Karen Hewes want with Stuckey’s phone number? “Did you ask her why?”
“I’m sorry Tony. I fucking froze, man. I was thinking the same thing but it came out in mumbles.”
“That’s okay, David. I was just thinking out loud.”
“I gave her the number.” Hong’s voice was low, confessional, like he shouldn’t have done it.
Tony thought about it for a minute. There was something in play he couldn’t put a finger on. Karen, who they knew had contact with Stuckey in LA, who they knew had recognized Stuckey at the boy’s house, and who they suspected had seen Stuckey lurking outside her own house was asking for his phone number.
“That’s okay Dave, really.”
“I knew she was scoping him.”
“She say anything else?”
“Nope.” Tony heard a loud banging sound behind him and spun around. He was too far away to make out what was on the computer monitor but whatever it was prompted Ray to slam his fist on the desk top…hard.
“Good work, David. Keep in touch.” He powered the phone down and didn’t hear Agent XXL sign off. Whatever was playing on the screen had Ray upset…cussin’ mad in fact.
Ray re-cued the video and was digging through his notebook when Tony wheeled a chair over next to him.
“The cop in LA…I know it’s here, damn it.” Pages flew while Ray pawed through the tablet. “Got it! This clip was the last one they made with women off the street or whatever. It’s called the ‘fucked-up episode’ because they never finished it...it was aborted. Watch.” Ray hit the play button.
The clip showed some technical improvements over the third episode. There still weren’t studio lights but more lamps and brighter bulbs gave off plenty of illumination. It was the same set, the same sofa, and the camera was still set in a fixed position. There was the sound of a door opening and closing off camera, a woman’s throaty laugh and then Sean Stuckey appeared, nearest the camera with his arm around a woman’s waist, her head buried, nuzzling his neck.
Karen Hewes was drunk. Not falling down drunk. Not incapacitated. But she was slurring her words and plopped heavily onto the sofa dragging Sean down with her. She seemed oblivious to the camera. Maybe it was hidden pretty well after all, Tony thought, or maybe she just didn’t care. She clumsily unbuttoned Sean’s shirt, never taking her mouth from his while she did.
“Never saw the guy before in her life,” Tony mumbled, repeating what Karen said when Ray showed her the picture of Stuckey. Sean had her blouse open and was roughly kneading her breasts now. Karen was concentrating on his zipper—first one handed, then two.
“No Deanna. Where’s Deanna?” Tony whispered, mesmerized by the scene he was watching. He had allowed himself one or two brief flashes during the interviews, imagining what Karen looked like without her clothes. She was a beautiful woman. He’d been proud of himself for knocking those thoughts down quickly, staying professional. But now here she was, half naked, pulling Sean Stuckey’s great stiffening member out of his pants while he removed her bra and skirt.
“Isn’t this enough, Ray?” His partner had called time out this far along in all the other episodes. Tony felt himself getting aroused.
“Watch.”
“Okay, boss.”
Karen, dressed only in her panties now, was on
her hands and knees slobbering all over Stuckey’s huge phallus while he struggled with his pants. Once they were off Stuckey roughly spun Karen around. He glanced over at the camera, a wicked smile plastered to his face, then pulled her back toward him. Tony realized he was positioning Karen in the center of the camera’s view.
“Not much more now.” Ray’s voice was calm. He was concentrating wholly on the video. Stuckey entered Karen from behind, thrusting fully into her. She gasped—a fierce intake of breath at first and then she shrieked, either in pain or pleasure. Tony couldn’t tell which. He found his breath quickening. Karen’s breasts were flapping in rhythm with Sean’s frantic strokes.
“Now. Listen.” Ray cocked his head, not paying attention to the sex on the screen but the soundtrack. Tony listened harder too. There was the sound of pounding. Someone was furiously pounding on a door it sounded like. Then there was a muffled voice.
“Karen?” It was a woman’s voice, shrill and high and panicked. “Karen?”
On the screen Sean faltered, missed a stroke, distracted by the voice and the pounding. The camera wobbled. Karen looked off to the right, back toward where the sound must have been coming from.
The cameraman whispered harshly off screen, “Get the fuck rid of her.” The camera jerked again.
Sean had stopped altogether. Karen’s eyes were closed and she took over the effort, thrusting desperately against Stuckey, slamming her buttocks into him, pleading…begging him to come on.
“Hurry, goddamn it!”
There was a loud crash, the sound of a door being slammed open then a woman’s scream. It wasn’t Karen.
“You bastards!”
Ray and Tony heard the sound of a slap, a hand striking flesh, then another.
A young sounding male voice cried out. “Fucking bitch!”
Stuckey had withdrawn, his penis going limp already. He was bent double, trying to pull his pants up, and waddling almost comically, trying to escape the unseen attacker. Karen collapsed on the sofa, hands over her face, tucked into a fetal position, racked with sobs. The camera tilted and then dropped hard to the floor and the screen went black.