The bellboy asked Georgina which floor she would like.
She entered the lift.
‘Fourth floor, room 4072.’ She smiled at the youth dressed nattily in a dark suit and crisp white shirt with an immaculately tied black bow tie. His hair was sort and extremely neat, held in place with hair lacquer or gel. Georgina guessed the bellboy was in his late teens, probably his first job. The doors closed, and there was an embarrassing silence. There was neither sense of motion in the lift nor any sound to betray its machination, only the red LED display silently changing between floors. 2...3...4... the doors opened.
‘4072 is right along the end of the corridor through the double doors, ma’am.’
Another dilemma. Does she tip? She chose not to, merely smiling and saying a feeble 'Thank you’ as she exited. She could feel the flush of embarrassment rise from her chest, up her neck and through the now reddened cheeks of her face. She hated servitude.
The plush deep pile carpets absorbed any sound her shoes would make. Modern art paintings adorned the walls at intermittent spaces, mostly collisions of colour, abstract. Georgina thought she could discern shapes or outlines but wondered if the paintings were nothing more than colourful Rorschach inkblots. She pushed the double doors and they opened with silent ease. Everything about the hotel seemed to be geared toward noise reduction or total silence.
4069. She was close; her sweating palms had converted to a nervous stomach. She wanted to know the diary's contents. Georgina felt that somewhere within the pages were the answers to questions that she has asked herself during the solitude of night and space. 4072. A deep breath, before knocking.
As he suspected the photographs drew a blank, Leroy leaned back in his chair stretching the muscles in his lower back, too much sitting down in the job, too much driving, too much pen pushing and too many hours spent in front of flickering VDU's spent doing futile searches. He wanted to ring Lia. The photograph of Lia at Karl Frost's served as a painful reminder to what he once had, undervalued and subsequently lost. He fumbled through his pockets for the scrap of paper, which had Lia's aunt's phone number. The phone ringing halted his search. Leroy picked it up.
‘Hel-lo. Leroy LaPortiere?’ Leroy didn't recognise the voice at the other end of the line, a woman from the FBI forensic laboratory. ‘Hello, Mr LaPortiere. My name is Judy Wells. Agent Georgina O’Neil sent a tooth, with reference to the investigation that she's undertaking.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘We have made a match. Is she there?’
‘Nope. She's out for a few hours.’
‘Well, she asked me to pass the information on to you as soon as we found anything, if she was unavailable.’
‘Okay.’ He placed a pencil on the jotter pad in front of him ready to write down the information.
‘The tooth belongs to, or rather belonged to a Jordan Montoya from Chicago. She was killed in a car crash. The tooth matches DNA from her medical records and is a match from her dental records.’
The nib of Leroy's pencil began to bow under pressure and snapped backwards.
Georgina shouldn't have been surprised to be greeted by Barbara Dace. The reporter showed her into the hotel room.
‘Bang on time, Agent O’Neil.’
‘Don't like to waste tax payer's money.’ Georgina replied curtly.
Anna Piekarska was sitting on the edge of a sofa in the huge lounge. Her eyes told the story of her recent grief. She had not cried at all during the funeral but as soon as she got back to the room she found she could not stop.
‘Hello.’ Georgina held out her hand.
‘Forgive me, I am not in much mood for receiving visitors.’ Anna apologised. ‘My mother is asleep. The doctor has given her some sleeping tablets.’ Anna laughed a scornful snort. ‘Magic pills that make the world go away.’ Her emotion was raw. The envy in her voice for her mother's drug induced sleep, unmistakable.
Georgina pulled her hand away, no contact having been established.
‘I see you have the diary.’
Barbara sat next to Anna, as the young Polish woman tentatively opened the book.
Georgina took a seat opposite. ‘Only read what you want but there might be something in there that could help us find whoever did this.’
Anna tried to smile, a pain filled smile. Her fingers ran over the cover, passing a page between them before she focused on the first lines of hand written text. Korjca's writing was neat the pages, smudge free. Written, then forgotten. ‘This is the diary of Korjca Maria Piekarska. My life in a strange world....’ Anne looked up ‘It starts on the day Korjca left home to come to America.
This morning is the start of a new life. My rudimentary knowledge of English seems to have held me in good favour and I have found employment with a family in America. They have just moved to a new home from Chicago and need a nanny for their young son. America seems such an exciting place...it seems that anything can happen here...’ Anna's voice began to tremble, quavering under the pressure of emotion. She coughed and cleared her throat before continuing. ‘I am so excited...’ Anna took a sip from a glass of water. Georgina noticed a tape recorder whirring on the table. A small black voice activated dictation machine. Anna continued. ‘I have slept my first night away from my home. The family I am to look after are lovely. I have a large bedroom with a television and DVD recorder. They have even bought me some films, plus a small CD player that has a radio. The boy, Ray is friendly, though a bit shy. It is sad that he lost his sister.’
Anna continued reading the diary to the intense silence of the detective and the reporter.
‘I need confirmation.’ Leroy said to the FBI forensic agent.
‘No trouble, Mr LaPortiere. Do you have a PC with Internet access?’
Leroy stared at the PC on Rick's desk. He done his utmost to avoid learning or using computers but knew enough to get on line and access the Net's seamier side.
‘Yeah. Send down the information.’ Leroy gave Agent Wells his e-mail address and sidled over to Rick’s desk and powered up the machine.
An electronic voice prompt shouted POST as soon as the browser kicked in. Leroy guided the cursor to his electronic mailbox and opened it. Then waited for the download to begin.
‘You have 314 messages.’ Computers could be sarcastic when they wanted to be. Leroy’s backlog of unopened mail was entirely of his own doing. He groaned. ‘Oh man, I don’t need this shit.’ He scanned down the list. Half the e-mails were from people he had never heard of, some were from dubious Internet sites. The rest were work related but non-important. Everyone knew if they had anything-important dealing with a case, never to send it to Leroy via e-mail. The FBI’s e-mail had not yet arrived. Leroy started opening his post, the first message was from an unknown sender or at least an e-mail address he didn’t recognise. It was from a prisoner in the state pen that Leroy had caught and convicted of robbery with intent to endanger life and property. Leroy remembered the case. The man had tried to rob a gas station before flooding the forecourt and one of the sales assistant’s with gasoline, only he had used the diesel line. Leroy shot the man in the knee. He opened the message and read it.
Hope you die a painful death, motherfucker
‘Huh, fan mail.’ Leroy chuckled to himself unfazed by the message. He continued opening all sorts of messages some with attached files, others that were no more than blatant advertising. His mind began to go numb with the banality of it all. As he opened his one hundred and third message he was quite unprepared for the shock that greeted him. An anonymous e-mail which the sender had obviously taken a lot of time and trouble in removing any traceable aspects.
‘Let’s face it, you have no idea who I am. I could be sitting next to you. I could have been in the church today watching you all scrabble about for answers. I could be cutting all their little heads off…the boy has such soft skin. Cuts very easy. She tastes nice. I have kissed her more than twice and when drugged, my fingers found her oh so, so...accommodating. The stupid fuck of
a detective is such a disappointment though...Enjoy the photos. See you real soon’
Leroy opened an attached file expecting to see pictures of Rick and his wife and son but all there was, was a web address. He ran the cursor over the text hyperlink, clicked and was taken to a web site. A black background appeared, followed by an animated splash of red across the screen. Then four Polaroid’s began to download on to the screen. Three of them faces Leroy knew very well. The forth a photograph of Korjca taken soon after she had been killed. A Wav file began to transfer. Leroy picked up the phone and dialled an internal number.
‘Captain Frusco.’ Leroy waited while Frusco's secretary put him through.
‘Sir I've got something I think you should see.’
'I called Mama last night. I know she misses me, though she will not say so to me. She worries needlessly that I have not settled but nothing could be further from the truth. Ray is a lovely boy and very easy to look after, though the first three or four weeks were a struggle. Jo-Lynn is so nice. At the weekend they took me to a country park and we camped in a trailer until Monday evening. Everyone had such a good time.
March 10. Something strange happened today. I had dropped Ray off to school and returned home for a bath. One thing I think I shall not get used to is the hot weather. The doorbell rang, as I was about to get in so I put on a robe and went downstairs to answer. A young man was standing at the door looking very anxious. Very nervous. I took the small bottle of mace from the hall table before opening the door. He said he wanted to see Detective Montoya. All the time he kept looking over his shoulder. I could feel his unease but was weary of letting him in, so I told him that Mr Montoya was out at work. He said tell Detective Montoya that Stephen England called. In the evening when Mr Montoya returned from work I told him of his caller and he became agitated, telling me to forget that I had seen the man.
March 11. There is great excitement. A body has been found in the river. Talk at the school from the mothers and nannies, is that whoever he was, he was murdered. I know Rick is working on the case but he doesn't talk about it to me. Though everybody on Turtle Island seems to know something or have a different story.’
Anna took another sip from the glass. She knew there was another six months of entries to plough through of varying lengths. Occasionally she would glance up and study both the detective and the reporter’s face for reaction, both seemed to be deeply engrossed. Apart from the occasional mention of family members, Anna felt she was reading the diary of a stranger. Georgina shifted on her chair; she looked at her watch. Anna had been reading for about an hour and a half and moved through months of a fairly detailed record of her sister’s life. ‘Would you mind if I had a break for a few minutes please?’ Anna asked
‘Of course not. I could do with a break myself.’ Georgina said, standing and stretching her legs.
Barbara switched off the tape recorder.
Georgina felt the rush of excitement when Anna mentioned Stephen England in Korjca’s diary. She saw that Dace recognised the name too, and fought hard not show that she spotted the connection. This was their first real break.
Frusco was leaning over Leroy's shoulder staring at a computer screen. He chewed on his thumbnail, pulling away a bitten piece of nail and biting down on it. ‘Can we trace him through the internet provider?’
‘This page will have certain traceable aspects but they can be falsified. Also, in the scheme of things, if he wants to hide himself, which I’m sure he does, then this page is a thousand times smaller than a needle and the Internet is a million times larger than the proverbial haystack.’
‘Damn.’ Frusco pushed himself away from the back of Leroy's chair, which he was leaning on. ‘One way or another we're going to get this fucker and nail his sorry ass.’
‘There's also a wav file.’
‘A what?’
‘It downloaded automatically. Some sort of sound file.’
‘Can we play it?’ Frusco sat back against the edge of Leroy's desk.
‘Yeah.’ Leroy reduced the current screen and opened a wav player.
A virtual hi-fi appeared on the screen. Leroy clicked on open file and searched through his hard drive for the downloaded file. It had automatically saved as Torture.wav. He double clicked the file and pressed the play button once the file had loaded in the player. The voice was slowed, distorted, but coherent.
‘You are so slow. So far behind me. I have given you all the clues, all the chances you need.’ The sound of someone screaming ended the file. Leroy closed the file and returned to the main screen with images of Korjca and the earlier victims.
‘Can we work on the message to get rid of the voice distortion?’
‘I don't know. It's in digital form so I guess that it’s possible.’
‘Send a copy to voice analysis.’ Frusco picked up his coffee. ‘Fuck technology! It was easier in my day; these sickos just used to send you bits of bodies. You knew where you stood.’
Leroy ran the cursor over the image of Korjca with her throat cut. The pointer changed to a hand indicating a link to another page or web site. ‘Shit.’ He double clicked and a page started to download.
WELCOME TO DEATHCAM. Your chance to watch a killer doing what he does best…
Underneath the melodramatic headline was a list of familiar names starting with Max Dalton, Korjca Piekarska and finishing with Stephen England by the column of names was another line that said 'LIVE DEATHCAM'. Leroy guided the pointer to it and double clicked the mouse. The screen went blank as the browser started to search for the page. The arrow cursor changed once more to an egg timer.
‘What’s happening?’ Frusco asked impatiently.
The screen started to fill with images, like a jigsaw, one piece at a time. First the headline, then the text and finally what appeared to be a live feed to a water filled basement. Leroy read the headline.
TWO DAYS TO GO. Be witness to America’s first public execution in over a hundred years. Vote now who gets it first. THE BOY, HIS MOTHER, or HIS FATHER.
Click on the person of your choice.
There was a counter under each name and an accompanying photograph. The counter had already fifty thousand ‘hits’ against Jo-Lynn’s name and a similar figure against the other two.
‘Oh my God.’ Frusco visibly paled. In the corner of the main screen his eyes were drawn to some movement. The picture was not too clear but clear enough for him to tell who it was. Jo-Lynn’s head could be seen emerging from the dark, peering nervously toward something to her right.
May 13th. The arguments go on until late in the night. I hear them but in the morning Mr and Mrs Montoya act as though nothing has happened. Little Ray sleeps through it all. The workmen arrived today to start digging the pool. I think one of them has taken a liking to me. He is not too shy. He stares at me quite unashamedly. I wish he would ask me out. I need to get a life outside of here.
The more Georgina heard from the diary, the more she realised its importance. A much clearer picture was beginning to form.
Anna read on.
‘May 14th. A man called today. I don’t know why but I took an instant dislike to him. It was very early in the morning, but Mrs Montoya was already on her way to work and Mr Montoya had been working all night, another body has been found. People are becoming very afraid. The man barged his way into the house claiming to be a friend of Mr Montoya. His eyes were all over me. He said ‘Tell Rick, Charles, needs to speak urgently at his office.’ As he left he ran his hand across my back. He smiled an awful sneer and licked his lips. I was too ashamed to tell Mr or Mrs Montoya of his behaviour but gave Jo-Lynn the message when she got home. She seemed upset.
15th May. We are having a barbeque on Saturday. I am very much looking forward to it.
Leroy placed the cursor over the picture of Max Dalton and clicked. A grainy film started. There was no sound, just the image of Dalton tied to a chair in a basement. Somebody dressed from head to foot in black, from a ski mask down to black glov
es, was walking in front of the camera, barely visible in the gloomy interior. The camera zoomed in on Dalton’s face. He is terrified. His nose is broken, with light catching off a protruding piece of gristle through lacerated skin and his right eye is a mass of red. The white of the eyeball is engulfed in a sea of blood. A man walks toward Dalton with something in his hand. At first neither Leroy nor Frusco can quite tell what it is, until it is held up for the purpose of the camera. As the blades start to flash it became all too clear. Both Leroy and Norman Frusco had used one before, and knew how lethal an electric carving knife could be. The camera panned down to Max’s right hand. Within thirty sickening seconds both hands had been removed and the killer was starting work on the man’s feet.
Leroy could hear the screams even though there was no sound. Once Dalton’s feet had been removed the killer moved the knife into Dalton’s mouth and sliced through the tongue. Blood showered the killer who seemed to be getting more and more psyched up with each new atrocity. The camera followed every move. For his finale, the killer set about Dalton’s mouth with a hammer. Smashing every tooth he could hit then finished off with pinking shears, removing what was left of Max Dalton’s lips.
Captain Frusco pushed away the Pizza box, which he had delivered for dinner. ‘Well that’s cured my appetite.’
Leroy stared at the screen in disbelief. ‘He doesn’t think he’s gonna get caught.’
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