by Reid, Joseph
“Finally gave up, huh?” Drew asked. He picked up the phone and ran his thumb over the sensor. “Don’t feel bad, Mr. Walker. I may have dropped out of law school, but you’re certainly not the only one I’ve outsmarted in this life.”
“I’ll give it to you,” I said. “You’re pretty damn smart. But you forgot about one little detail.”
Drew looked up from the screen, eyes piercing into me. “What do you mean?”
“The password reset.”
I could see he was confused, and I glanced at Peña, only to find the same reaction.
“The software you used—it’s designed for setting up commercial web pages. They figure you want to have customers come and go. Customers who might, say, forget their password.”
Peña’s eyebrows rose. “So you—”
“I told it I forgot my password and asked it to send me a temporary one in e-mail. Since I had access to Mr. Drew’s e-mail, I grabbed the temp password, then went back over and used it to log on.”
“So you deleted the file?” Peña asked.
“Nope, it wouldn’t let me.” I jerked my head toward Drew. “He set it so the file couldn’t be deleted. But, he didn’t change any of the administrator settings on the website. So I created a new, twenty-six-character password for the account, changed the recovery e-mail to one of my addresses, and turned off the reset option. Now”—I turned back to Drew—“I’m the only one who can get in there.”
The color had blanched from Drew’s face, rendering his deep tan an odd, almost greenish color.
“You hear that, Max?” I said, moving to the mirror. I spoke loudly, just in case the microphones hadn’t caught the whole thing. “You’re free. Nobody’s ever gonna see the video sitting on those servers. And someday, when their rent expires, the owners will come along and erase them to rent them again.” I wished I could see her expression.
“You’re pretty proud of yourself,” Drew said. “But I still own the rights to all her songs. When I walk out of here—”
“I don’t know that I’d jump the gun on that just yet,” I said.
Drew stared at me. Still defiant, but now the slightest bit uncertain.
“I talked to a lawyer friend of mine.” Scrunching my face, I nodded. “Unlike you, he’s an actual lawyer. Anyway, he told me copyright assignments by minors are only valid if they’re made for the benefit of the minor. I don’t think a court’s going to look at the documents Max’s child-pornographer-rapist father forced her to sign and think those were for her benefit.”
Drew shook his head. “You’re missing the point, Mr. Walker. Rape? Child pornography? Those are legal concepts, defined by statute. I haven’t done anything that would fall under those definitions. What I did was legal—you admitted that yourself.”
“To be fair, I actually said what you did in Saint Lucia was legal. There’s still the tiny matter of hiring the Second Guerrillas to have Max killed. That’s conspiracy, attempted murder, and murder for hire. Federal charges, federal prison.”
“And how do you plan to prove that, exactly? With your hearsay testimony about a supposed confession from the head of an international crime ring? Once a jury hears how you went off the reservation, kidnapping my daughter and dragging her all over the country, I don’t think they’re going to be too sympathetic.”
“There’s Max.”
“You’ll put her on the stand? Oh, good luck with that. By the time she gets cross-examined about her drug use and behavior, no one’s going to be looking to do her any favors.” Drew gave me a fake pout. “If that’s the best you’ve got, I’ll take my chances.”
The truth was, I’d thought through all that, too, and Drew was right. The odds of getting him convicted for attempted murder on either Petén’s word or Max’s were pretty long. I turned to Peña. “You think if he was into kiddie porn in the Caribbean, he was into it here, too?”
Peña shrugged. “I’ve always heard pervs like that, they can’t help themselves.”
“That’s what I’ve heard, too.” I dug into my pocket as I circled the table to the corner where Drew’s suitcases stood. Taking the soft computer case off the top, I brought it around so I was standing at the corner of the table to Drew’s left. Peña and the camera were directly behind me. “Let’s see what we’ve got in here.” I unzipped the bag. “Laptop, power cord.” I set each one on the table. Then I turned the bag over, letting pens and other supplies pour out of the pockets.
A small plastic thumb drive hit the table and clattered to a stop.
“What have we here?” I asked, picking it up and turning to show Peña.
Drew exploded out of his seat. “That’s not mine! I’ve never seen that before!”
“That’s what every tweaker says, too, when you find the dope in their car,” Peña said.
I handed him the USB drive. “You wanna go check it?”
“Sure.”
After he’d left, I turned back to Drew.
He was shaking his head. “You’ll never get away with this, Walker. I’ll prove that wasn’t mine, and then you’ll burn.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But if you’re wrong, and if a jury doesn’t like whatever’s on that memory stick and concludes it belongs to you, that prison stay of yours is gonna be a helluva lot worse than it would be for murder.”
Drew blinked at me, his cheek starting to twitch.
I stared him right in the eyes and stepped closer. Close enough that he could hear me even as I dropped my voice to a low hiss next to his ear. “I loaded that thing with the most disgusting filth I could find in the bowels of the Internet. You get one parent on that jury, and you’re toast.”
He grunted. “That’s how you think this is gonna go?”
I nodded. “The only questions are how long you go away for, and what your cellmates are gonna do to you while you’re in there.”
Drew’s chin dropped toward his chest, and he shook his head slightly. “You really think you’re so smart. You think you have it all figured out. But you don’t know anything.”
Here was the moment. I’d gotten him out on the limb—would he jump? “Oh really? Enlighten me, then.”
His head rose again, his eyes locking on me. “You don’t just need one juror, Mr. Walker. You need all of them. I need one—just one to acquit. One poor schlub who’s suffered through the same kinds of things that I have.”
“You’ve suffered?”
“Oh, you have no idea what those bitches did to me—Max and her mother and Petén. They’re all the goddamn same, really. You think I can’t find one guy on a jury who feels screwed over by the women in his life?”
“I think you’re going to have an awfully hard time finding anyone sympathetic to setting up the rape of your sixteen-year-old daughter.”
“For chrissake, will you stop calling it rape? It was legal! And it was never even supposed to go that far. If she’d just listened to me in the first place . . .” Drew’s hands balled into fists, and his muscles all clenched the same way they had when I’d arrived at his house that night. Then, suddenly, he relaxed. His voice softened. “Why can’t you see—I’m really not the bad guy here. I’m the victim.”
Now it was my turn to shake my head.
Drew looked past me, to the corner of the ceiling where the camera was mounted, and started approaching it. “You want to hear it? The truth? I might as well tell you since the authorities here are going to try and frame me. I might as well tell you everything, so you know my side before you hear the stories made up by that . . . that juvenile delinquent.”
“That ‘delinquent’ is your daughter.” I really didn’t like the way he was speaking to the camera instead of me.
Drew whipped around. As soon as his back was to the camera, his eyes lit up, and his lips spread into a smile. “Funny you should say that,” he whispered. “Goes to show how little you know.”
CHAPTER 30
Drew spun on his heel again to face the eye in the sky.
“I wanted to be
a lawyer from the time I was seven years old. My father worked in a Missouri steel mill, and I saw him come home dirty and exhausted every night. I told myself that when I grew up, I’d build a better life for myself and my family than that.
“But a funny thing happened on the way to law school: I met a woman. A beautiful, beautiful woman who stole my heart. Her name was Deborah, and we got married the week after we both graduated from Mizzou.
“Now, as much as I wanted to be a lawyer, that’s how much Deborah wanted to be a mother. She absolutely adored children—she’d studied to be a kindergarten teacher. So, even though everyone politely warned us that law school wasn’t the best time to start a family, in between the first and second years, we found out we were pregnant. Max came along just before spring exams.”
Drew had started pacing back and forth, gesturing as he talked.
“Now, the second summer of law school is an important time. That’s when most students apprentice at whatever firm they’re hoping to join after graduation. I was fortunate enough to make the law review, and I had a summer job at one of St. Louis’s biggest firms. Needless to say, juggling work with a newborn wasn’t easy. But as hard as it was on me, it took an even larger toll on Deborah. We didn’t know as much about postpartum depression back in those days; they called it the ‘baby blues,’ and she had a particularly bad case. I would come home from work each night in my suit to find her lying on the couch, crying. Max’s diapers hadn’t been changed; sometimes she hadn’t been fed.
“Although I got my job offer at the end of that summer, when we went back to school, it was clear things weren’t right with Deborah. The doctors had prescribed her pills to help her sleep, but she’d started taking more than she should. Eventually, she left us.”
Drew’s voice cracked on that last part, and I wondered whether it was real, or just for effect.
“That left me in a precarious situation,” he continued. “I tried to keep going—the school and the firm were both extremely gracious—but I just couldn’t figure out a way to be a single dad to a six-month-old and a full-time law student. I dropped out of school, took a job. Not the one I wanted, mind you, the one I’d dreamed about, but one that paid the bills. And I settled in to an even more important role: being Max’s father.
“I’m sure many people watching this know how difficult—and expensive—it is to raise a child these days. We certainly had plenty of bills, including paying back the loans I’d taken to go to law school. Without the law-firm salary I was expecting, it was almost impossible to make ends meet. Ultimately, I had to default on the loans and declare bankruptcy. My credit was ruined.”
I didn’t know if Drew had practiced this or was just winging it, but he hit every beat, every pause, exactly right to maximize the solemnity of it all.
“Then one day, something magical happened. A tiny glimmer of hope. I came home from work and there’s Max, playing on the floor and singing. I think to myself, ‘Hey, that sounds pretty good.’ I start thinking, ‘Maybe this could be a way out. Maybe I’m not the one who’s destined to succeed after all.’
“Encouraging Max’s talent wasn’t easy. Or cheap. Little girls are easily distracted. And there were lessons. Recording sessions. I spent every night researching what I could do to help her make it in show business. I booked her small gigs. I found Charlie Garcia, a well-known producer here in Austin, and persuaded him to listen to her. When she finally broke through, I dropped everything in Missouri, the only place I’d ever lived, and moved us here so she could chase her dream.”
Drew took a long, deep breath, then sighed it out heavily.
“They warn you show business can be a dangerous place, but nothing really prepares you. Record producers, movie producers. Everyone looks to make money off your child, and no one wants to pay a cent more than they have to. Max was lucky in some ways—with the things I’d learned in law school, I was able to protect her. Stand up for her rights. Keep her from being cheated.
“Through it all, my only goal was her long-term success. I mean, in the short term, sure, I wanted to recoup the money we’d invested in her. And make no mistake, we had a pretty deep hole to dig ourselves out of. But I knew, as long as I could look out for her, manage her brand, get her exposure and endorsements to augment her recording career, I knew our debts were just a speed bump.
“What I didn’t know was that, as soon as we’d had just our first sniff of success, a man would come calling. A man named Jed Cooper. He showed up on my doorstep one night a year and a half ago, claiming to be Max’s biological father.”
My eyes darted to the one-way glass, wondering what Max’s reaction was behind it. Cooper must have been the man Petén mentioned. But Max’s real father?
Drew continued talking. “I’m sure you can imagine how that rocked me to my core. It impacted me so much, in fact, that I did a very stupid thing.” He paused here and turned directly to the camera. “When Cooper asked for money, I paid him.
“I didn’t believe him, mind you. I figured Cooper was just some kind of con man, looking to capitalize on Max’s success. But Max and I’d had a tough enough time since her mom left. The last thing I wanted, the last thing I thought I could afford, was planting any seed of doubt in her head that I was her father. Because I honestly believed I was.
“Now, why do I say paying Cooper was a mistake? Because if you pay a man like that once, he’s going to come back for more. And that’s exactly what Cooper did. This time, though, I thought I was better prepared. When he knocked on the door again a few months later, I told him he could shove off, and went to slam it right in his face. But Cooper surprised me. He handed me a sealed envelope. He said a paternity test inside would prove he was Max’s father. He said he’d release it to the world unless I paid him an ungodly sum of money.
“Now, I shoved that envelope inside a drawer and swore to never look at it again. I still didn’t believe him. But I knew I had a real problem. Even if I was correct, if Cooper went to court, they might take Max away from me while custody was decided. I might lose the one thing I had left.
“I brought all this to Max’s producer, Charlie Garcia. I figured he might have dealt with something like this before. He listened and told me not to worry. He told me he knew someone who could help.
“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got involved with the Second Guerrilla Army of the Poor. Garcia introduced me to their leader, a woman named Petén. In exchange for a percentage of Max’s earnings, she promised to scare Cooper away. Not hurt him, mind you—I insisted on that—but just scare him away, so we would never see him again.”
“You know,” I said, “you spin a pretty good story.” I meant it, too: Drew had built up so much momentum, anybody watching might easily have believed him about all of it. “But I don’t think it quite happened that way. I think you found Petén, not Garcia. But even after you got her to eliminate Cooper, there was still one small thing you couldn’t control.”
Drew had turned away from the camera to face me. Now he put his hands on his hips. “What’s that?”
“Max,” I said with a little shrug. “She wanted to live it up, to go on tour. But you couldn’t have that, so you got her hooked on the drugs.”
Drew shook his head. “The drugs were all Petén’s idea.”
“You know, Petén’s one convincing woman. She sees all the angles—she even tried to make me a deal. So maybe she suggested the drugs. But, ultimately, you said yes to them. You agreed to get your own daughter hooked on Oxy, just so she’d be more pliable.”
Drew spun back to the camera. “I had nothing to do with that. Absolutely nothing. “
“Even on the drugs, though, you still couldn’t control Max the way you wanted, right? She wouldn’t do your sexy photo shoots, she wouldn’t listen to you.”
“Anyone who’s a parent out there knows teenagers have minds of their own. They always think they know best. That’s why it was so important that Max stay with me, so I could guide her, and keep her
safe—”
“But she would have given anything just to get away from you,” I said to the back of Drew’s head. “She even told you that. Boy, that must’ve hurt. Your ‘big investment,’ the kid you’d sacrificed your career for—one day, she announces she’s going to cast you off, just like her mom did.”
Slowly this time, Drew turned to face me. I could see the rage burning in his eyes.
“Is that when it happened, Mr. Drew? Is that when you decided you could sacrifice your own flesh and blood for a couple of bucks?”
“You don’t know anything,” he said in a low, controlled voice.
“Oh, Max told me exactly how she threatened to get rid of you.”
“There was a time,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at the camera, “when I hit rock bottom emotionally. Thanksgiving, last year. I was worried I was losing my daughter to all these outside influences. In a fit of depression, I pulled out that envelope I said I’d never open.”
Drew’s face contorted into something sorrowful, something pathetic, and then he turned back around to the camera, his hands upturned.
“And when I looked at that paper and I learned Max wasn’t mine, you know what I discovered?” He was talking through tears now, having seemingly produced them on cue. “I discovered it really didn’t matter. She wasn’t my blood, but I loved her just the same.”
“Oh, I don’t think that paternity test made you all lovey-dovey,” I said. “Just the opposite—I think it liberated you. You could finally hate Max for what her mother had done.”
Drew pointed a finger back at me, and told the camera, “That’s a lie!”
“Is it? Why else wouldn’t you stop those men in Saint Lucia? Why would you let them assault your daughter?”
“That’s not—”
“Because there was a piece of you that enjoyed it. That’s why.” Now my voice was peaking. “You stood by, and you let them take advantage of her because you wanted Max to suffer. And then, once you had that tape, you figured it would bind her to you forever.”