Chat - A Novel Part 15

He laid the belt back down. "It does connect. It would help if we found evidence of a second impact site."

She'd already grabbed hold of his upper arm. "Come here. Let's take a look at him, now that we know what we're after."

She led him to the storage cooler, which had two horizontal doors stacked one atop the other, and opened the upper one. A wash of cold air spilled out as she seized the edge of the drawer inside and pulled out a tray laden with the plastic-wrapped body of the man they'd found in the water days ago.

Quickly donning latex gloves, she expertly exposed the naked corpse, its torso pragmatically sewn back shut with a series of widely s.p.a.ced st.i.tches, and with Joe's help, she rolled it onto its side to reveal its back.

"That was the back of the belt, right?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said softly, already craning to study the blanched, fleshy surface before him. He touched the mottled body near its lumbar area. "Around here. If the shooter knew what he was doing, the second barb should have hit somewhere at or just below the shoulder blades."

"Here," she said, tapping the cold skin with her fingertip. "It's not an actual defect . . . more like a pimple."

She crossed the room to fetch a strong magnifying gla.s.s and applied it to the spot she'd found.

"That's it," she announced after a few seconds of study. "During an uneducated survey, it's nothing much to note. But with scrutiny, it's clearly not a pimple-more like a tiny burn."

Joe spread his fingers just above the body's back, measuring the distance between the lumbar spine and the small red dot. "About a foot and a half," he announced. "Which means the shooter was standing pretty close when he fired."

He returned to the pile of clothes to find some piece of clothing that might reveal a barb having been roughly torn lose. He found it in a tightly knit polar fleece vest-a mere couple of strands hanging loose from the fabric.

"Bingo," he said, bringing the vest back over to Hillstrom and holding it next to the cadaver.

"Lines up perfectly," she agreed.

She stepped back to consider him thoughtfully. "But what does that tell you, exactly?"

"Not much that's provable," he admitted. "It does suggest how to incapacitate a man in a motel room and then drown him fifteen miles away."

Joe drove from Burlington to Chelsea next, hoping to catch Rob Barrows in his office. He left the interstate at exit 4 and journeyed east through Randolph Center and East Randolph to take the Chelsea Mountain Road up and over Osgood Hill. This was also a roundabout way to reach Thetford and New Hamps.h.i.+re beyond, and more reminiscent of the challenges the state offered its travelers a mere half century earlier, before most of them were seduced by the ease and comfort of I-89. These now less used roads were, by contrast, old Vermont to Joe's mind, set among a countryside as p.r.i.c.kly as a porcupine's back with trees, and so enc.u.mbered with streams, ravines, and claustrophobic, pressed-together hills as to make progress before the advent of paved roads a quasi-heroic effort. Still, for all that, atop Osgood Hill, cresting a rise and emerging from the woods, he was abruptly rewarded with a sweeping view-long, curving fields, the sparkle of otherwise hidden water, and the solid ma.s.siveness of distant ancient mountains-and was won over yet again by his state's uncanny ability to both challenge and nurture those willing to carve out a living in its midst, while shaping them into something hardy, independent, self-sufficient, and sometimes a little cranky in the process.

Joe found Rob Barrows at the sheriff's headquarters in Chelsea, at the top of the northernmost of the village's two greens-an eccentricity particular to the town. The sheriff's office was tucked behind the United Church of Christ, in a nineteenth-century red-brick building neighboring Court, School, and Church Streets-a trio of names simultaneously bland, comforting, and a little peremptory, as if the founders of the village had better things to do-and more land to grab-in the late 1700s than to linger here and apply their imaginations.

"Hey," Barrows said as Joe entered the officers' room, a small, cluttered s.p.a.ce that served a variety of roles. "I thought you were going to give me a call, not actually make the trip."

"Nice day for it," Joe answered neutrally, choosing a chair beside Rob's desk. He did not go into how staring at his brother's inert form in the hospital for a half hour at a time was more than he could stand, even in his mother's company. "What did you get out of that?" He pointed at the equally blank-faced, remarkably filthy computer that they'd removed from Steve's Garage.

Barrows had been at his own console when Joe entered, and he now waved at his screen in explanation. "Just been following up on that," he said. "I got the software to get around the pa.s.sword. Hit pure gold. For one thing, he's cooking the books-the legit stuff is what we saw at the shop; the kickbacks and bill padding and bogus work claims are all behind the pa.s.sword. When everyone gets out of the hospital, I'd seriously recommend you get another mechanic."

Joe opened his mouth to respond, and to ask about Leo's car, but Rob was clearly building up steam and continued instead with "I also found out that somebody at Steve's has been filling his time with more than cars. I made a copy of his hard drive and transferred it to my computer so I wouldn't be tampering with evidence, but take a look at this."

He turned to the machine and began moving around from window to window, talking as he went. "Whoever's behind the pa.s.sword's been using one of the more popular chat rooms, in part looking for old car parts, but some other, much more interesting stuff as well."

He paused to cast a glance at Joe. "I won't bore you with all the computer geek stuff unless you're into that."

"Not me," Joe a.s.sured him, focusing on the screen. "But you said, 'whoever's behind the pa.s.sword.' You don't know?"

"I know Dan Griffis posted the profile using his real name, but technically, until we get more proof, he could claim somebody else did that to frame him. I just said what I did to be cautious, but do I think it's Dan? Sure. To be honest, old Barrie McNeil didn't look like he had the smarts to do more'n turn the thing on, if that.

"Anyhow," Barrows resumed, "I used a forensic software program we got to not only look at what he's been up to, but to read his supposed 'deleted' files, too. You can see he calls himself CarGuy-cute-and that he plays here a lot. I found more chats than I can shake a stick at, and most of it's recent."

The computer's cursor moved nervously across the screen, opening windows, closing others, almost as if it had a mind of its own, Rob narrating as it went along.

"A ton of this is pretty boring, so I went to the picture files as soon as I found a reference to a snapshot CarGuy wanted his contact to see. Worth a thousand words, right?" He laughed briefly as the computer burst forth with color photographs, primarily p.o.r.nographic.

"So far, so good," he commented contentedly, "but not too surprising, either. Usual raunchy stuff. Until . . ." He paused while he scrolled to the right set of pictures. " . . . You get to this-it's what he was referring to in his chat."

He sat back to allow Joe a full view of several baggies of white powder, neatly arranged on a tabletop for their portrait.

"Heroin, I'm guessing," Rob announced. "I already cross-checked with the back-and-forth that led me here. CarGuy is dealing drugs on the side. I captured a whole conversation where he and SmokinJoe-whoever he he is-set up a buy that took place two days ago." is-set up a buy that took place two days ago."

Joe straightened and looked elsewhere to adjust his eyesight for a moment. "Did you . . . ?"

But Rob cut him off. "Get warrants for all this? Yep. Step by step, all the way down the line. I've been calling the SA as I go, making sure everything's legal."

Joe nodded. "Okay. That's all I was wondering."

Rob was smiling broadly. "There's more, of course. Other deals, other dealers, other pictures. I doubt our office'll get to play with any of it for long. Maybe the drug task force will want it, or even the feds-I'll let the sheriff duke that out-but it's a cool start, and I love that we're the ones who got it going."

He returned to the keyboard. Given Rob's high spirits, Joe felt bad that he was, by contrast, mostly disappointed. Nothing mentioned so far tied Dan Griffis or the garage to what had put Leo in the hospital.

"No connections to my brother's accident?" he almost murmured.

"Not yet," Rob admitted, his voice upbeat. "I did take advantage of all this to do a search for your mom's name, and Leo's-just to see."

Once more the cursor was leaping about, and text blocks of chat dialogue cut in and out across the screen, making Joe slightly dizzy.

"Like I said," Rob continued, "there's a huge amount of material here, and I doubt what I found'll be the last of anything illegal. I mean, even the p.o.r.no stuff is likely to get us something. But I didn't hit on any of your names-except in the billing and service doc.u.ments, of course."

Joe suddenly sat straighter in his seat. "Go back."

Barrows froze his hand. "Where?"

"Maybe one click. I saw something. One of the handles, or whatever you call them."

"Screen names?" Rob asked, moving back.

"Yeah," Joe said, pointing at the screen. "What's going on here?"

Rob paused to study the doc.u.ment before them. "It's a general chat room. Bunch of people all talking at once. You do this sometimes, like at a party, when you're looking for someone special. When you do, you can ask that person to kind of step away for a private chat, like you were going into another room, just the two of you."

"What's the topic here? Drugs again?" Joe asked.

"Nope, it's the other favorite. s.e.x."

Joe tapped the screen with his index finger. "What about this one? What's he after?"

Rob leaned forward and began studying the exchange, scrolling through the short and, to Joe, virtually incomprehensible one-liners where almost every word was reduced to its purely phonetic root, if not merely replaced by initials-for example, "LOL" for "laughing out loud." The dialogue before him now might just as well have been written in a foreign language.

"Ugh," Rob finally said, sitting back.

"What?"

"Well, it's s.e.x, all right, but what that guy's looking for is young girls. There's a load of that s.h.i.+t on the Web. You see it everywhere. CarGuy's not biting, though, doesn't even address your man-different interests." He twisted around to face Gunther. "Why?"

"It's the name," Joe admitted.

Rob returned to the screen. "Rockwell? Where'd you run into that?"

"I don't know for sure if I did. I've got a John Doe case we're working on where all we've got for ID is the motel registration-N. Rockwell. I laughed when I saw it, because it reminded me of the painter." He pointed at the computer again. "Probably a big stretch. It's not that unusual a name."

Barrows was already typing, moving to another display. "Everybody has to register a profile with the chat room. It's a legal thing. They all lie, of course, but you're supposed to be able to check each other out if you connect. Most pedophiles pretend they're nineteen, or something." He laughed shortly and added, "Course, we lie, too, when we're trying to catch 'em. But the format is basically name, age, where you're from, what your hobbies are, and so on."

He paused so Joe could see what was before them. "Of course," he then added, pointing out a warning message, "there's always the flip side, too. They put a lock on their profile. We'd have to get a subpoena to open it, and, for that, a good reason to request one. Slim chance, given the innocuous language I saw."

Joe nodded, his enthusiasm undaunted. Despite what he'd just said, he actually didn't think that the name Rockwell surfacing twice in odd circ.u.mstances was too likely. They had to be connected. "Going back to the chat where CarGuy was, too, can you tell if Rockwell does hook up with anyone?"

"Maybe" was the answer, as Barrows went back to work.

"Yeah," he said a few minutes later. "Looks like Mandi144 and he hit it off. They certainly go off together."

"And Mandi is . . . ?" Joe asked leadingly.

Rob broke away from the computer to give him a sour look. "Well, let's put it this way: She says right up front that she's fourteen in the general chat. I'm guessing your Mr. Rocky wasn't."

Joe nodded slightly. "My Mr. Rocky is also dead."

JMAN: U hav a pic or cam? U hav a pic or cam?Mandi144: cams broke - howz this? cams broke - howz this?JMAN: wow. Hot wow. HotMandi144: U have a pic? U have a pic?JMAN: no. Im 6-1, tho. 170 no. Im 6-1, tho. 170Mandi144: no pic? How c.u.m? no pic? How c.u.m?JMAN: I can get 1. Id lik u 2 see me I can get 1. Id lik u 2 see meMandi144: me 2 me 2JMAN: Id lik u 2 do mor than that Id lik u 2 do mor than thatMandi144: me 2 me 2JMAN: how old r u again? how old r u again?Mandi144: 14. problem? 14. problem?JMAN: not a cop? not a cop?Mandi144: lol. I look lik a cop? lol. I look lik a cop?

Chapter 14.

Joe reluctantly turned away from the view outside. It had started snowing again, after too many dry days. He was of a mind that if you lived where snowfall was the norm, then it should come about regularly and heavily, satisfying everyone's worst fears. People were going to complain about it anyway-they should, therefore, have good cause.

He surveyed the small VBI office. Sam, w.i.l.l.y, and Lester were all at their desks, each occupied according to character-Lester on the computer, Sam sorting through case files, and w.i.l.l.y hara.s.sing them both.

"What handle do you use when you're chasing little girls online, Les?" he asked his colleague.

"w.i.l.l.y," was Lester's immediate response, to Sammie's appreciative laughter.

"Anything yet?" Joe asked Lester, who was in fact checking the BOLs they'd issued on both unidentified bodies.

Spinney sat back in his chair and shook his head. "Nothing. Guess we still get to call 'em Bald Rocky and Hairy Fred."

"It'll take all the fun out of it when we can't," w.i.l.l.y agreed.

"All right," Joe said, getting them back on track. "You all read my notes?"

There were a couple of nods and a muttered a.s.sent, none of them from w.i.l.l.y, of course.

"Well, in addition, I got a call this morning from Rob Barrows," Joe continued. "No big surprise; his boss is as excited about the possible drug dealing by Dan Griffis as he is totally uninterested about the possibility that Les's Bald Rocky is a s.e.xual predator."

"Typical," w.i.l.l.y growled.

"I probably would've done the same," Joe conceded. "Predator cases are a b.i.t.c.h to sell, and this one's not even in his county. The drug case is a gimme. To be honest, I'm just as happy, given my personal connections to the Griffis family."

"That mean you're handing everything over to the sheriff?" w.i.l.l.y challenged him incredulously.

Joe tilted his head to one side noncommittally. "On the record? Sure. Off the record? I have Rob Barrows on speed dial. By the way, since we're talking about it, there's been no evidence yet connecting Steve's Garage to my family's accident. Regular service records only, and nothing about tie rods. Looks like they had several layers of books, though, so it's still early."

He looked at Sam. "In the interests of full disclosure, I should also mention that I asked Sam to look a little beyond that interview the two of you did with Dave Snyder at P and P."

w.i.l.l.y let out a small bark of surprise as he stared at his girlfriend. "No s.h.i.+t? You didn't tell me that."

"Add it to the list," she tossed back at him.

"Now that a part of what happened to my family has become a formal case," Joe said, cutting off w.i.l.l.y's response, "I'd just as soon have everything out in the open. So, Sam, why don't you tell us what you found out."

"Not too complicated," she reported. "I chased down Beth Ann Agostini-we learned about her through Snyder-and she told me that Andy Griffis hanged himself because he'd been raped in prison. At least that's what it boiled down to. Pretty good reason for his family to be p.i.s.sed at you," she added.

Joe considered that, not for the first time, and suggested, "If he told any of them."

Sam had no comeback, not having considered the possibility.

"I'm guessing n.o.body in law enforcement knew about the rape at the time, much less who did it?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I checked six ways toward the middle on that. n.o.body knows who should know, and n.o.body's talking who might."

Joe squared his shoulders abruptly, as if shaking off a weight. "Okay. Let's put all that on the shelf for the time being. The other thing Rob Barrows gave me this morning was the name of a guy I'd like you, Lester, to contact directly." He quickly consulted a note lying on his desk. "John Leppman. A psychologist and computer geek out of Burlington-been working with the PD there and the state police, profiling Internet predators and making it easier to flush them out. Burlington's chief said Leppman was their go-to guy on this topic. I have his contact info here. Since it looks like we've stumbled into the middle of something having to do with the subject-at least for the time being-we'll be needing all the help we can get."

He glanced at the notes he'd scribbled down to help keep him on track. "Speaking of just that, let's look at what we've got so far. Two men without ident.i.ty or background"-he eyed Lester and added-"Bald Rocky and Hairy Fred-both appear in town, both rent motel rooms, apparently to meet up with someone else, and both end up dead. We're pretty confident that one, at least, was immobilized with a Taser before being dumped into the water. The other, we don't know." He looked up at them to explain further. "After we found a small Taser dart hole in Bald Rocky's back, Hillstrom went over Fred, inch by inch. She found nothing similar. She now knows that Tasers don't necessarily need to pierce the skin in order to work, but they usually do, and it's pretty unlikely that you'd get two people in a row with minimal to no markings. My gut tells me that the Taser was used only once."

"He probably only had the one cartridge," Lester suggested, "since it looks like it was stolen."

"I got a question," w.i.l.l.y stated. "You still need a gun to shoot the cartridge. You can get both online. Why buy one and not the other?"

"Too early to know," Joe answered, "but it seems like we're dealing with a very careful guy. We've got to a.s.sume that both Fred and Rocky were acting on instructions when they checked into their motels. Too big a coincidence otherwise. And, you've got to admit, every detail was thought out, right down to the extra key being attached outside the room door."

"Plus, the fact that they both came on foot," Sammie commented.