Death of an Escort (14 page)

Mickey Richardson's office was locked. I
hadn't really expected that, but it was. I went to the
receptionist's desk, and opened her top drawer. There was some
tissue, candy, and a few coins.

I checked the other drawers. In a side
drawer, I found a small ring of keys. Receptionists often had keys
in case the people who were supposed to have them lose them.

I took the ring back to Mickey's office and
found one that fit. I let myself in.

His desk was nice and clean, but his trash
hadn't been emptied. The cleaning people obviously didn't have his
office key, and didn't know where to find it.

I turned his computer on. There were no
passwords, and I got lucky with that. However, I was prepared to
deal with that too, if I had run into it.

Once it had booted up, I did a search for a
file called wefisd33992sx.mp4, which had been the name of the file
that was deleted from the website. I searched his entire hard
drive, but nothing came up.

The screen glared and provided all the light
I needed for this. I hadn't turned any other lights on.

I ran a search of his entire hard drive for
any MP4 files. He had none on his hard drive.

There were two web browsers installed on his
machine. One was the standard Microsoft browser and the other was
the Google Chrome browser. I checked the history files of both.
Neither yielded any visits to questionable sites, but both had
private browsing functions that wouldn't leave any traces of where
they'd been.

Next, I opened up his deleted files. That
folder was empty. The next thing I did was download a freeware
program that would scan for deleted files. No deleted file was
really gone after it was deleted, and that was why I always ran the
custom made Scrambler program on my work computer.

The program I was downloading was small, and
the download was done quickly.

Some deleted files would be damaged by my
installing this program on the hard drive, but that was
unavoidable. Besides, it was so tiny, I thought it was worth the
risk.

I set it to scan for deleted files that were
still recognizable on the hard disk.

It found over fifty files.

To my disappointment, none of the fifty
recovered files were named what the missing video was called, but
on a second inspection I saw that two of the files were MP4
files.

I dragged them to the desktop and opened the
first one. It was a pornographic, voyeuristic file. But it wasn't
the one I was looking for. Neither person was recognizable in the
video clip.

I opened the second one. This was it. Even
though the picture was grainy and dark, I recognized the motel
room. It was taken in the Sleep EZ Inn. Not only that, but lying on
the bed was Kelly Brandt. And another woman was over top of
her.

Chapter 13

The other woman turned a little, and I could
see it was Carlie Smith, the last to see her alive.

I had the video clip.

I looked down at the counter to see how long
it was. It said it was a little over fourteen minutes in
length.

I settled in to watch the poor quality video.
It was heavily pixilated, and I figured that was due to the poor
lighting. They'd had the lights off while they did their thing.

The whole video hung. It froze. The counter
underneath was still running. After a few moments, the video turned
into giant pixels. They cleared out, and it was back on the two
women.

I rewound the player to play over that spot
again. The exact thing happened again. It was damaged there.

As I found out, that wasn't the only place it
was damaged. Multiple places through the video whole chunks were
missing.

However, when I got through the damaged part,
nothing was different. In fact, it was kind of boring watching the
two go at it.

There was no zooming in, and the lights were
off. On top of that, neither was performing for the camera. Often
you couldn't really see anything at all, only the back of one of
them. There was sound, but it was tinny and hard to hear.

Finally the video came to the final minute.
This was what I really wanted to see. But nothing happened. The two
women continued to do their thing, and the video suddenly stopped.
That was all there was.

Why?

Had Mickey cut out the ending when it all
went down? If so, where was that? I scanned the recovered files
again. Mostly it was word processor files or spreadsheets. I opened
some of them, but they were strictly business related.

I watched the final minute of video footage
again. This time I noticed some darker pixilation where the window
was, but that was nothing. It had looked like a rectangle grouping
of dark pixels appeared seconds before the video cut off. I watched
the whole thing again.

There was nothing that was helpful to me in
it, but I decided to take a copy for further study anyway.

Outside in a closet near reception, there
were office supplies. One of them was a spool of blank CDs. I took
one and burnt a copy of the video onto it.

Before shutting down, I opened a web browser
in private mode and typed in TrueVoyeurLive.com. I logged into my
trial account, and I tried to find the webpage where the Kelly
Brandt video should have been.

But that page was gone. Probably, Mickey had
it taken down after I told him about it. To be sure, I search the
whole site again. That webpage had been deleted.

I shut the computer down, relocked the
office, and made my way to the shop to let myself out of a door
that would lock behind me.

Outside was quiet. I surveyed the area after
stepping outside. There was nothing there. No cops or anything.

The garage door had a large piece of plywood
blocking it, and it had been nailed in place from the inside. The
axe was gone, but I had removed any trace of fingerprints. So I
wasn't worried about that.

I walked up the road and beyond the ghostly
silent buildings that made up the industrial park toward my
car.

There was plenty of light to see by. Each
parking lot had at least one sodium vapor lamp shining its dull
orange light over the area.

Oddly, my car sat alone in the parking lot
where I'd left it. The other car was gone. I shrugged and walked
over to mine.

As I was inserting the key into the door, a
sound made me stop. It wasn't loud, but I knew it well.

It was the metallic click of a switchblade
knife opening.

I spun around. Two dark figures had closed in
on me. They had me pinned against my car. One held the knife. The
other had a length of chain in his hands. He was holding it taught,
and that was why it hadn't made any sound.

"Hold on, guys," I said. "You can have my
wallet."

They stepped towards me. I pressed my back up
against the door of my car. They were four steps away now.

Three steps away.

Two steps away.

I held my hand out in a stop motion. "Guys,"
I said.

The one on the left swiped at me with the
knife. I lurched into the other one to avoid the blade, but the
other wrapped me in the chain.

The first one swiped at me again. I managed
to twist enough to the side so that the cut missed me. The guy
holding me grunted as I threw my body to the side. I was putting a
lot of strain on the chain in his hand.

Whoever these thugs were, they weren't here
to rough me up. They were here to kill me.

I had a gun concealed around my ankle. It's
not a great spot for a concealed weapon, and now I knew why. I
couldn't get at it.

"Hold him still," the first one said.

"I'm trying," the other said.

"Guys, guys," I said. "I think we're on a
security camera." I jerked my head up towards the corner of the
closest building.

They both looked.

I smashed my heel down on the instep of the
guy holding me. He groaned and the chain loosened the tiniest
amount.

I threw my body forward. He let the chain
slip up. It lodged under my chin.

The chain tightened. He was going to garrote
me. The links dug into the soft flesh of my neck, and all my air
was cut off.

The other stood over me watching.

But now my hands were free. Moving quickly, I
plunged my hand into my pocket and came out with my knife.

"He's got a knife," the first one yelled.

I snapped my wrist to open the blade. The
first guy kicked at my hand and knocked the blade clean out of my
fingers. I heard it skidding and dancing across the pavement.

I grabbed up at the chain and tried to force
some space so I could breathe. The first guy slashed at my fingers
with the knife.

My vision was closing in, and I was feeling
the panic of suffocating, but I controlled it as much as I
could.

I grabbed at the blade as it flicked at my
fingers a second time. I got the guy by the wrist above his
hand.

Yanking hard, he tumbled off balance, not
expecting that. He hit me and drove me back into the one choking
me.

The chain loosened.

I gasped and gurgled as I breathed. The guy
holding me must have fallen because suddenly there was no tension
on the chain. And we were all on the ground.

I pulled it off from around my neck, and I
whipped it down on the second one who'd been holding me. He saw it
coming and rolled out of the way.

The chain made a loud smacking sound as it
collided with the pavement.

The first guy had jumped up on my back now.
He threaded his arm around where the chain had been. He was going
to choke me.

I clamped my chin down on his arm, and I
reached around my ankle for the gun. Up under my pant leg, I got
it.

As soon as I had a grip on it, I discharged
it. I shot it into the ground.

The sudden explosion and flash startled
both.

I slithered out from under the first one and
kicked him in the head. The second was merely feet away, and he was
holding a knife now.

"Hey," he said. "Let's take this easy. I
think there's been a misunderstanding."

I kicked the first guy in the head again. And
again. And again. The whole time I kept my eyes on the other.

I kicked the first guy in the head five more
times. They were hard, bone-rattling kicks. He wasn't moving
anymore or making any sounds.

"Who are you working for?" I asked.

"Dude, look. We were just after your car. I'm
sorry. Don't shoot, man."

"After my car?" My neck hurt. It felt like it
was bleeding too. "My car? I don't think so. You were trying to
kill me. Why?"

"Dude. I'll leave right now—"

"Do, and I'll shoot you," I said.

"Oh, man," he said despairingly.

"Get on the ground," I said. "Move!"

He got down and put his hands over his
head.

Careful to not get too close, I circled him.
"Who hired you?"

"No one, man."

"I'm not a nice person," I said. "And I
expect to get an answer. I'll do whatever I need to do to make you
talk. Understand?"

"Oh come on, man," he said starting to sound
whiny. "Please. It was a carjacking gone wrong."

"Why shouldn't I shoot you now?"

"Are you kidding?" he asked. "That's murder,
dude."

Then a sharp pain dug into my ankle. I
wavered and then went to a crouching position. A throwing knife
stuck in my ankle. Somehow he'd done that without my detecting
it.

The guy was jumping up. I tried to train the
gun on him, but suddenly the gun was out of my hand. In the light
from the streetlights, I could see that a knife had hit it too.

He was throwing knives? How many more did he
have? I yanked the one out of my own ankle. It wasn't a deep or
dangerous cut. In fact, it was barely in me.

The guy, however, wasn't throwing any more.
He was diving after my gun.

I threw the knife at him, but it hit him butt
first and harmlessly dropped to the ground.

He got to the gun and spun around. I
flattened against the ground. A shot was fired.

If I stayed here, I was dead. I jumped up and
ran in a random sort of pattern toward the main road, which was
close.

The gun fired again. My ankle hurt a little,
but not enough to slow me down and let me get shot.

The guy was wearing some heavy boots, and I
could hear him clomping behind me. I would have been putting
separation between us if it hadn't been for the cut in my
ankle.

I kept changing the direction I was running,
and I didn't let a pattern form in my direction changes.

The gun fired a few more times, but it missed
each time.

Up ahead, the main road stretched out. It was
empty at this time of night, but a car was coming.

What luck! It was a police car.

I ran across the road and the guy must not
have seen the cop, because he fired across the road at me and right
in front of the oncoming police cruiser.

The car screeched to a halt, and I heard two
doors opening. Then there was shouting and yelling. No more shots
were fired.

I turned around and knelt down in the tall
grass off the side of the road. The cop car was at an angle on the
road. The bar lights had been flipped on, but there was no
siren.

There were two cops. Both had guns drawn and
pointed at the prone silhouette of the guy.

They were talking, yelling at him. I think he
was answering, but I couldn't be sure. The volume of the cops'
voices drowned out his responses.

I had a dilemma. Who were those two working
for? If it was Mickey, that wasn't a big deal. I expected him to
try something.

I hadn't expected something that good. Those
two had been well hidden, and it meant Mickey knew I was the one
who'd broken in too.

However, there was a chance they didn't work
for Mickey. If they didn't, if my past had caught up to me, I
needed to know that. That would mean I'd have to leave immediately
if I wanted to stay alive. More, much more would be coming if it
was them.