Death of an Escort (11 page)

The link I clicked loaded a thread about some
of the most violent rape scenes.

It looked like the posters were competing to
see who could find a link to the most revolting rape scene.
Revolting to me. Apparently, by their comments, they were turned on
by this stuff.

Post sixteen on the second page was the one
that had a link to the Kelly Brandt scene. The post read like this
. . .

Chapter 10

"Not sure where this is from. She's hot, and
she fights back. Feisty bitch and she never gives in the whole
scene. She actually gets a bite out of the guy half way.
Bloody."

Under that was a link to 4SharedU.com, a file
sharing network. Part of the link had "KellyBrandt" in it, and that
was what Google alerts had found.

I clicked the 4SharedU.com link and I was
taken to the landing page for the file. 4SharedU.com urged me to
buy a premium membership in their file sharing website so I could
have faster downloads.

I ignored the hype and clicked the link for
the free download. A timer started counting down. It said I had to
wait forty-five seconds for the download link to show up. Under
that it urged me again to stop waiting and buy a premium membership
and avoid waiting.

I stood up and walked over to my office door.
I felt the need to stretch. Really, I felt the need to brace myself
for what I was about to see.

The seconds ticked by. At the end of the
forty-five second wait, a download link appeared. I clicked it, and
my web browser asked me if I wanted to download the file. I clicked
yes, and the download began.

It was going to take several minutes, and I
didn't want to hold still. I picked up my keys and locked the
office behind me.

The hallway felt better. I realized I was
anxious about what I was downloading. In the back of my mind, I
knew that rape and other devious things were a dark subset of porn.
I knew that there were guys out there that got off on that stuff.
Heck, some guys could only get off on that stuff.

They were sick, and needed help, but they
were out there. Now, here I was going to come face-to-face with
it.

To make it even more twisty, it was
apparently a video of the dead woman Kelly Brandt. And according to
Kelly's daughter, my client, her mother was against porn. She
didn't participate. She had no use for it.

Despite that, she seemed to be showing up in
a lot of porn, and not nice stuff either.

First a voyeur site, and it seemed to be
real, not staged. And now a rape scene. That was totally gross.

I didn't want to watch a rape scene.

And something was really strange here. How
does someone who's all against porn end up in all this porn?

The real question was how trustworthy was
Macy, my client? I was going on her word. Perhaps, she was the one
I should be questioning. My hand dropped into my pocket. Past the
brass knuckles, all the way at the bottom, I felt the giant
button.

We needed to talk. I took out my disposable
cell phone and punched in her number.

"Ray?" she answered.

"Hi," I said. "Are you back in town?"

"I will be this afternoon," she said. She
sounded all bright and cheerful. Not at all how I felt.

"Good," I said. "I need to see you this
afternoon."

"You've made progress?" she asked.

"I'll tell you when I see you," I said. There
was one big hang-up with suspecting her. She'd hired me. Her
mother's death was ruled a suicide. If she had something to do with
it, why hire me? I had no answer for that one.

The download would be done or almost done by
now. I let myself back in. It was seconds away from being done.

When it finished, there was a momentary pause
while it copied from the temporary download folder to the computer
desktop. There I double clicked it.

It opened in Windows Media Player. It was a
clip of a video. There was no front matter. It went straight to the
video.

It was very clearly the naked body of Kelly
Brandt. The camera zoomed in on her face. Her nose was
bleeding.

The camera pulled back. A guy was pulling his
pants down. Two others were holding her down.

She was fighting and screaming, but they had
her pinned. I paused the video. This was sickening.

With the video paused, I saw something I
hadn't noticed before. Very faint and a little small in the corner
was a watermark. It looked like text, but I couldn't make the
letters out.

That was probably the clue to where the video
had come from. I took a screenshot of what was showing on the
computer screen by pressing the PrtScn button, which was to the
right of the F12 button.

Then I opened a paint program and pressed
Ctrl and the "V" key to paste the picture in. I cropped around the
logo and enlarged it. It was even more fuzzy and distorted now.

I saved the image as it was now and opened it
in Gimp, a freeware image editing program. Now I sharpened the
picture. I had to do it several times, but the outline of the word
was now visible.

It was YouDisgustMe.com.

With some trepidation, I typed that into my
web browser. It loaded a black background. Huge white text warned
me that I should only proceed if I was eighteen years old or
older.

I clicked the enter link. The website's
background stayed black, but thumbnail images began loading.

They weren't nice looking pictures. This was
a rape site, however, unlike the voyeur site; this one didn't say
it was "the real thing", or anything crazy like that.

I searched in the box for Kelly Brandt.
Nothing came up. I searched the site for Brandt. Nothing again.

This time I searched for Kelly, and I got
lots of hits. I started scrolling through the thumbnail images. Six
down, I recognized Kelly Brandt. She was tagged as performer
Kelly-Star.

I clicked the link for Kelly-Star and a page
came up that loaded a dozen thumbnails of Kelly Brandt. Each was a
video of her being raped. I tried to click on a link, but I was
redirected to a signup page, and I was prompted to enter my credit
card info for full access.

I did a WHOIS search on this site, and the
privacy guard was not enabled. That was odd. I could see who
registered it, but then I realized that it wasn't real.

When you purchased a website name, you had to
enter your info such as name and address, phone and email address.
In theory, when someone wanted to know who owned the website, they
could do a WHOIS search. It was free and many websites offered this
ability.

For an extra fee, you could have a privacy
guard put on your info. Now this didn't hide it from the
authorities or domain name registration sites or from Google for
that matter. But John Q. Public couldn't see who owned the
website.

However, there was a much better way to cover
your tracks if you didn't want anyone to know who owned the
website.

Spoof, or make up, the info. Put in a fake
name and address. Use a fake email and phone.

This was what had been done here. It was
obvious because the site was listed as belonging to John Smith, 123
Main Street, New York, NY 10001.

The company used to register the domain was
Registry-Rocket.com. I typed the website in and discovered
something I hadn't known before.

This company let you buy a domain name with
e-gold. E-gold was an untraceable internet-only currency. It was
mostly used by people in countries with high rates of credit card
fraud, and by the undesirable element. There had even been whispers
in the past that terrorists used it to move money and skirt money
laundering laws.

I now did a WHOIS search on
Registry-Rocket.com, and found that they were based in New York
City as well. I did further research on them, and they seemed to be
legitimate.

It didn't make sense to me that a company,
such as Registry-Rocket.com, would let someone get a domain name
without any further traceable info on them. That would leave the
registrar open to legal action if the untraceable party did
something illegal like spam or hosting child pornography.

Most likely, Registry-Rocket.com's New York
address wasn't the real headquarters, but just a token office. If I
had to guess, I'd say they had to be owned by someone outside the
US and in a place the US couldn't get to them legally.

The thing about New York City, however,
tickled something in the back of my brain.

Yes, that was it. Father Patrick O'Sullivan,
the pastor of my church, was from New York City.

It hadn't been that long ago he'd moved here,
and he'd said he had lots of family still in the New York area.

It was worth a shot. I picked up my office
phone and called the church.

"This is Patrick," the father answered in his
calm voice.

"Father, this is Ray Crusafi," I said.

"Bless you Ray," he said. "I didn't get to
give you thanks for all your hard work at the church rummage
sale."

"Not a problem, Father," I said.

"How can I help you, Ray?"

"Could we meet?" I asked. "This is better
done face-to-face."

"Is it urgent?" he asked.

"If you're busy, it can wait," I said, but I
sounded disappointed.

"I'm open right now," he said. "Just having
lunch. Come over. We'll talk."

"Thank you Father," I said. We hung up.

Before leaving, I deleted everything off my
computer. I dropped the video in the encrypted folder on my
computer. Then I started the Scrambler program to wipe away the
tracks of what I'd been doing on my machine.

Checking the hall before exiting, I stepped
out and locked up.

At the church, I was able to let myself in.
The doors were unlocked. Father Patrick was like that. He said that
all through history churches were always open. They were to be a
place of refuge whenever it was needed, he said.

I had tried to tell him that today was
different. Lots of people were up to no good. Some were even
dangerous.

It had been then that he'd reached under his
robe and showed a massive handgun he was carrying. It was a 44
magnum, one of the most powerful handguns.

He smiled. I then told him carrying like that
was illegal, and he nodded.

We had gotten along really well after
that.

I walked in and saw no one in the church.
Moving deeper in, I could hear him off to the side in the front.
Moving down the center aisle, I passed the altar in the center and
the podium, which was set off to the side.

Up in the corners there were some offices.
Father Patrick was up in one of them. I poked my head in and saw
him eating a giant sandwich. He set it down and indicated a seat
opposite him.

I took it and waited for him to finish
chewing. The smell of bacon and some kind of a sweet pepper sauce
hung in the air.

The chair was high-backed and carved of wood.
It wasn't exactly comfortable.

He swallowed. "Yes, Ray?"

"Father," I said. "You still have family in
New York, don't you?"

He nodded.

"Father, could I ask you to sin for me?"

He looked a little shocked. "Only our Savior
is the complete propitiation for us."

"No, no, Father," I said. "I mean I need you
to assist me in something. Your family actually."

He looked questioningly at me. He didn't say
anything because he'd taken another big bite out of the monstrous
sandwich.

"There's this company in New York that lets
people register domain names for the internet. But this company
lets people pay in an untraceable manner."

He set the sandwich down again. "You're
trying to find out who owns a certain internet address?"

"I am," I said.

"For some job you're investigating?"

"That is correct," I said.

"I think I know what you are going to ask,
but go ahead and ask," he said. There was a twinkle in his eye.

"Could someone you know back there enter the
premises of this place at night and tell me who owns a certain
domain name? They must have some kind of record, if only for
liability reasons."

He looked at me and I think he was trying to
give me a disapproving look.

"I would compensate you and the person in New
York," I said. "It wouldn't have to be for free."

"No," he said. "No payment. That wouldn't be
right."

"So, you won't help?" I asked. I had to
admit, I kind of expected this.

His eyes twinkled again. "I never said that.
Give me the info, and I'll see what my family can do for you."

I had to smile. This guy was all right. "The
website is YouDisgustMe.com."

"An interesting name," he said and made a
note on his sandwich wrapper.

"And the company that allowed the name to be
registered with them is Registry Rocket." I then gave their New
York address, and he jotted that down too.

"I'll call you," he said.

"That's it?"

He'd taken another big bite of sandwich and
couldn't answer me right away. Finally, "What do you mean?"

"You'll help? Simple as that?"

He shrugged. "Why not?"

"You don't really know much of anything about
what I'm asking or why?" I said. What was I trying to do here?
Convince him not to help? I needed to shut up and leave.

He shrugged again. "You are a good man, Ray.
You are trying to help someone. I know you, and you need this
information to complete your task."

I nodded.

"I trust you, Ray," he said.

That sent a shiver down my spine. "Thank
you," I said quietly. "Sorry for interrupting your lunch."

He shook his head. "No problem."

I got up and left the church. Outside I
called Macy.

"Are you available to meet now?" I asked.

"I'm at a restaurant having lunch," she said.
"Have you eaten?"

Did two bananas count? "Not really," I
said.