Fixed in Blood Read online

  “Which leaves us with the two majors,” Schuster said.

  “I’m following,” Micki said. “Their camera crews are larger. Even the assistants to the assistants would be capable of shots like what we saw in the snuff. And needless to say, the equipment is state of the art.”

  “Stay on it, Mick.” An idea occurred to Mort. “Question the camera people. Get a sense for how nervous they are that you’ve come calling. Check with the equipment folks, too. Like you said, the stuff’s state of the art. All that expensive gear has to have some security tied to it. See who might have checked out what.”

  “Will do.” Miki opened the pastry bag, pulled out a sugar-dusted jelly, and turned her smile to Jimmy. “Jeanine’s? Thanks.”

  “Let’s get back to what I sent you.” Schuster was all business. “I’ve watched it at least four times. Let’s see what the three of you think.”

  Mort signaled for Micki and Jimmy to join him at his computer. He looked up at Schuster the moment he saw the white arrow indicating the attachment Schuster sent him was a video.

  “Francie Michael?” he asked.

  The vice cop nodded. “Same site where we found Crystal’s. Whoever’s doing this is fast with distribution.”

  Mort swallowed the bitterness in his throat and clicked the video open. A slow pan of a windowless empty office came to a stop on a young woman bound and tied to a folding chair. Mort recognized the room immediately and focused on Francie. He’d only seen her once, but there was no doubt the brown-haired girl struggling against the bindings that held her was the same nineteen-year-old whose body had been discovered by the Realtor trying to rent a downtown office space. The camera zoomed in on her face. Francie’s terrified eyes were smudged with cried-off rivers of mascara. A yellow rag served as a tightly pulled gag separating her lips. There was no sound, but Mort could read her frantic facial grimaces and flaring nostrils.

  “She wasn’t drugged.” Mort paused the film. “This one’s different from Crystal.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Jimmy whispered. “This guy wants the whole panicked horror show caught on tape.”

  “That’s the point of these films,” Schuster said. “It’s not just the killing that brings in the market. These customers want the fear. They want to look into the face of someone who knows they’re about to die. Whoever’s offering this is a good businessman. He listens to the comments of his clientele. The comment section of Crystal’s film—”

  “There’s reviews?” Micki interrupted.

  “Oh, yeah. The sites are firewalled and difficult as hell to get to,” Schuster explained. “But once you’re in, it’s just like Amazon. Viewers give star ratings, offer suggestions to potential customers. For Crystal’s film the reviewers gave thumbs-up for production value but complained she’d been drugged. Looks like whoever shot this responded by giving clients the wide-awake version with Francie. And it reflects in the price. Francie’s film costs thirty percent more to download than Crystal’s.”

  “Capitalism at its finest,” Jimmy said.

  Mort resumed the video while Micki and Jim watched over his shoulder. No one was eating doughnuts anymore.

  “There he is!” Jimmy pointed to the screen. “It’s got to be the same guy, right?”

  Mort wasn’t sure. The camera followed the same pattern as Crystal’s film. Same shots of a man’s shoulder. This time in a brown leather jacket. Still no shot of the man’s face or hair. Mort found himself riveted to the screen, with the same thoughts he had when he saw Crystal’s film. Give me anything. One small slip. Something to go on. Somewhere to start. But the camera held steady. The viewer saw a leather-clad arm reach out, but not one shot of a hand. When the belt was draped around Francie’s neck, it came from above and the camera stayed focused on the panic in her eyes. Mort saw the buckle of the belt. Silver. Expensive looking. It bit into Francie’s neck flesh in the exact spot corresponding with bruises on her corpse.

  The close-up held Francie’s face as the belt was tightened by someone off-camera. Her mouth widened as she gasped for air in the still-silent film. Her brown eyes began to bulge. The camera zoomed in on tiny red lines beginning to burst around her iris.

  And then the belt was released. Francie’s head fell forward. Her shoulders heaved in what must have been ecstatic relief. Her head was yanked back and the camera caught Francie’s pleading face. Mort was sickened. He wondered if she was straining against the gag, begging with a choked-off tongue to be released. Promising she’d not tell anyone if they’d just let her go.

  The camera came back for a mid-shot. The belt was yanked tight again. In one instant the morbid dread leapt back onto Francie’s face. Her body shook with desperate spasms of a futile fight for survival.

  Now. Give me something now.

  Mort saw a side shot of the murderer. Jeans. Dark wash. Cut tight next to a muscular leg.

  A label. A rivet. I’ll take anything.

  The camera zoomed in on Francie’s eyes and Mort knew this was the end. The blood vessels in the whites of her eyes were now fully engorged. Francie blinked away tears in rapid staccato. Her head jerked from one side to the other.

  And then she became still. The camera traced a bead of sweat from her hairline to her eyelash. Mort recalled the attempt at artistry in Crystal’s film and was certain the same person who shot that controlled the camera here. A final zoom to her eyes showed one last flicker of being. Mort found himself wishing for an end to Francie’s torture.

  And then it came. The moment he saw the life leave. Francie’s lifeless head lolled to the left.

  Mort, Jimmy, and Micki leaned back in startled unison as the same blaring heavy metal rock piece that punctuated Crystal’s film blared from the speakers.

  “There.” Mort paused the film.

  “I see it, too,” Jimmy said.

  “A white guy’s hand.” Micki tapped a finger on the screen. “Just like in Crystal’s.”

  “I’m coming for you,” Mort whispered. “I’m coming.”

  Chapter 25

  “Why aren’t these monkeys in school?” Mort kissed Claire on the cheek and entered his son’s home. His two granddaughters were still in their pajamas, running down the stairs to greet him.

  “It’s a teacher conference day, Papa.” Hadley was the first to jump in his arms. Mort held her close and inhaled the scent of bubblegum shampoo.

  “Yeah.” Hayden grabbed hold of his right hand and climbed up his leg as skillfully as any mountaineer to join her sister in Mort’s arms. “We’re 10-10 till Monday.”

  “Off duty, huh?” Mort balanced a girl on each hip. He nodded to his son as he came down the hall. “Well, you look like hell. You sick?”

  “Papa cursed!” the girls squealed in unison. “Twenty-five cents in the jar!”

  Mort lowered the twin blond moppets to the floor, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a handful of change. “This ought to cover it. What d’ya say you feed the jar for me?” He watched them scamper upstairs before turning his attention back to Robbie. “What’s with the stubble? And those bags under your eyes are big enough to carry lunch.”

  Claire glided next to her husband and rested a hand on his arm. “He has slept not at all in three nights’ time.” Her French accent brought a gracious lilt to her dismal announcement. “And before that he tosses and kicks. That is correct, non?”

  Robbie kissed the top of her chestnut hair. “I’m okay.”

  Claire turned to her father-in-law and Mort saw the worry in her gentle brown eyes. “Do not listen to him. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t play with his little girls.” She stood on tiptoes to kiss her husband’s cheek. “He doesn’t play with his big girl, either.”

  In that moment Mort recalled a mild spring day nearly ten years earlier. He’d stood with Edie on the porch of the house where they’d raised their kids and watched Robbie escort the woman he met while on assignment in France up the walk. Robbie had been so gentle with her. He could almost feel Edie’s breath on his neck as
he recalled his wife leaning in to whisper, “Be nice, Mort. Robbie’s going to marry that girl.” Mort had been stunned by the surety of her announcement. “And if he listens to her,” he recalled her saying, “he’s going to have a very happy life.”

  You were right about her, Baby Girl. But our boy doesn’t look too happy right now.

  Robbie had called him not long after Schuster showed the team the new snuff film—this one starring Francie Michael. Robbie had asked his dad to swing by as soon as possible.

  “I’ll get you some coffee.” Claire headed down the hall. “Or perhaps a latte?”

  “Coffee’s fine,” Mort answered. “Thanks.”

  Robbie pointed his oversized mug toward the dining room. The two Grant men sat at the round oak table Edie’s mother had delivered the day Mort and Edie moved into their first home. It had been her mother’s. When Mort moved to the houseboat, he’d passed it along to Robbie and Claire. Mort ran a hand across the smooth surface and thought of that jigsaw puzzle Allie assembled when she was seven years old. A thousand-piece photo of the Paris skyline. The family ate in the kitchen for a month before his daughter agreed to take it down.

  “This came today.” Robbie shoved a blue velvet box the size of a dinner plate toward him. “Special courier. No wrapping. No postmark.”

  Mort removed the top to find two necklaces resting in a nest of folded silver satin. They were identical. Platinum chains, delicate in design yet sturdy in substance. Suspended from each was a shimmering round-cut diamond, each about the size of a garden pea. At the clasp was a small platinum oval. One engraved Hadley, the other Hayden.

  Claire entered the dining room and handed Mort a mug. She pointed to the jewelry throwing rainbows of morning light across the polished tabletop. “I do not want these in my home. I do not want my girls to see them or touch them or ask about where they came from.” She turned and left the room without waiting for a response.

  Robbie’s voice trembled with frustration. He ran a hand through his thick sandy hair. “She’s my sister. She spent hours teaching me word games to memorize enough parts of a dissected frog to get me through freshman biology. She took me shopping before my first date to pick out a shirt that made me look less like the geek I was. I love her.” He shook his head. “But she’s with Vadim Tokarev. My beat is local crime, but I know the international stuff. The man’s an animal. Worse. He’s built his syndicate on enough dead bodies to make Al Capone and the entire Mafia combined look like a UNICEF program. And she’s no better.”

  Mort wished he could argue against his son’s assessment. He’d spent months trying to tell himself Allie was nothing more than a misguided adventure seeker. But she’d kidnapped the wife and son of an innocent man to force him to set up that damned trust fund for the girls. And she’d manipulated her father and brother into a corner: accept this money or it goes to genocidal fundamentalists raining terror across Africa.

  “She’s coming after my girls, Dad. And she’s never going to stop.”

  Hurried footsteps halted any reply Mort might have made. In an instant his granddaughters dashed into the dining room.

  “You can swear four more times and have twelve cents left over, Papa.” Hadley beamed with pride at her math skills. “I put it all in the jar.”

  “I did a 10-59.” Hayden referred to a security check as she hopped on her father’s lap. “Your cuss money’s safe.”

  “Hey, what’s this?” Hadley reached for the velvet box. “Is it mine?”

  Mort snatched it out of the way, stood, and held it high. “No.” He looked Robbie in the eye. “I’ll deal with it.”

  “But what is it, Papa?” Hadley asked. “It looks like diamonds.”

  “You think everything looks like diamonds,” Hayden said.

  “Let me see it.” Hadley reached her delicate arms up to her grandfather.

  “It’s trash.” Claire stood in the arch separating the dining room from the kitchen. “And Papa is going to take it to the dump. Now you girls go upstairs and take a bath. There is no school, but there is no excuse to look like hobos.”

  “Daddy looks like a hobo,” Hayden teased. “Go take a bath, Daddy.”

  “Yeah, Daddy,” Hadley chimed. “Better go upstairs and make yourself pretty.”

  “Girls!” Claire’s snap brought both girls to attention as she pointed toward the staircase. “Now.”

  Two little blond heads dipped in submission. Hadley risked one last look over her shoulder as she trotted up the stairs. “Doesn’t look like trash to me.”

  Claire waited for the sound of a tub being filled. She stepped to stand behind her seated husband, put her hands on his shoulders, and leveled a determined stare at Mort.

  “You will take care of this, oui?”

  Mort nodded. If Edie’d had a French accent, she would have sounded just like Claire.

  Chapter 26

  I hate this shit.

  Boss Man knew he was screwed. Fucking celebrities. Think they can do whatever the hell they want and then hide behind their army of lawyers and publicists to make it all go away.

  The asshole promised me. Said he had it all under control. Crystal had been…what did he call it? Oh yeah, an “unfortunate accident.”

  That unfortunate accident had cost him twenty-five thousand dollars. Then the asshole went and offed Francie. He’d be limping for a month after that one. It was always the entrepreneur who took it in the shorts.

  And now the guy wanted to make another movie.

  Boss Man didn’t say “no.” He said “fuck no.” Staz had played a little whack-a-mole on his foot after Francie died. That fucking piece of tuna on the other end of his space phone might damage more important body parts if he crossed her again.

  And he didn’t need any more visits from the Seattle PD, either. Keep them around long enough, even they can smell something other than a doughnut.

  Captain Hollywood wasn’t playing games anymore. It was all out in the open now and he’d offered the major payday. Three hundred thousand dollars for one more girl and a quiet place to do the filming. Said he was hoping for something nautical this time. Money like that might make it worth the risk to a lesser man.

  But he wasn’t stupid. He told Hollywood to go shop somewhere else.

  That’s when it all came down. Not two hours after he told Glamour Gus to take a hike. How Mr. Fancy Pants made his connections that high that fast Boss Man would never know. But he did. And Boss Man got told in words leaving no room for doubt it would be in his best interest to accommodate the gentleman from Tinseltown.

  I hate this shit.

  What was he supposed to do about that uppity chick in charge? With all her fancy ideas about female empowerment and healthy work environments? He brought up his concerns and got handed his hat. Told in so many words to handle it. Just keep Hollywood happy.

  This ain’t no rock-and-hard-place thing the nuns were always talking about. I know who’s got the juice and what I gotta do.

  There was a knock on his office door. He almost barked for whoever it was to take a powder. But then it dawned on him. With this latest shit storm going down, he almost forgot he’d sent for her.

  “It’s open.”

  The ginger with the bad attitude stepped inside. She was wearing baggy sweatpants and a cut-off tank top. Boss Man looked at her flank. The skin was still raw from the scouring she took.

  “Would it kill you to dress yourself up a little?” he asked. “I got a whole closet of fancy clothes for you girls. There’s gotta be something your size. Which reminds me, walk a little taller. Show off the goods.”

  Delbe Jensen stared at him but said nothing.

  “Did you hear me?”

  She held her stare.

  I hate this shit.

  He pulled himself up out of the chair and braced himself against the shot of pain that ran from his foot to his spine and up into his neck. He shouldn’t have to deal with her attitude when he ought to be resting his injury and taking care of bus
iness. But the girl needed to learn.

  He forced himself to move straight and steady. Each step brought another electric jolt, fueling his determination to force the girl back in line. He stopped two feet in front of her.

  “I asked you if you heard me.”

  “Hear you?” Her mouth was full of sass. “Am I supposed to listen? You bark your orders like you’re some kind of king or somethi—”

  A fast backhand across the mouth stopped her mid-word. He grabbed a handful of red hair and pulled her to her knees.

  “I’m not some kind of king, Missy. As far as you’re concerned, I am the king. You got that?” He twisted his hand tighter and she grimaced in pain. “Now, like they say in the movies, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is you settle down. Take your assignments. Earn my trust. Check with the other girls. You earn my trust, you make your way out of the back rooms. Start getting the nicer assignments. Bigger tips. You can get your own apartment, have fun on an off night. You pay your debt and we go our separate ways.”

  “Or maybe I go straight to the cops the minute I get out of those back rooms. You’re no pimp. You’re a slave trader.”

  He kicked her on instinct. Hard and in the gut. He paid for it with another wave of pain from his injured foot.

  “Then we have the hard way.” He bent low, his words spitting on her face. “And if you think you’ve already seen the hard way…guess again. I got a whole category of men waiting for what I’m selling. And they’ll make the guys meeting you in the back rooms look like the Prince of Wales. Do we understand each other?”

  Delbe nodded. She lifted her hands up into her hair, trying to relieve some pressure. “I understand. Just let go of me.”