Death of an Escort (6 page)

First, I ran back outside and moved my car to
a parking lot nearby and I ran back.

No police yet. Back inside the warehouse, I
moved through it as quickly as I could, which wasn't very quickly
seeing as how I couldn't see anything.

The warehouse was much bigger than the
office, and it took me more time than I expected to work my way
through it.

The cops were going to be here any minute
now, and it was making my heart beat faster and my palms a little
sweaty.

I got to the front of the warehouse, and I
found the door that led to the office. It was unlocked and I let
myself in. I was very close to Mickey's office, as the shop
entrance to the office was on the opposite end from the front
entrance.

First thing I did in Mickey's office was
close the window shade. Then I turned his light on. I knew it made
my location in the building conspicuous from the outside, but I
couldn't do any hunting without light.

I checked the floor first where he'd dropped
the item. It wasn't there. Then I checked his desk. It wasn't there
either.

So, I checked his trash. It was stuffed with
papers. Under the first pile, I found the item.

It was about the size of a normal sheet of
paper, but it was glossy like a magazine cover.

It was an advertising flyer, and it looked
like a direct mail stuffer. Like something that would come with a
package or other advertisements.

Either way, it was designed to advertise a
certain website. That was plain enough.

The site was listed in big letters as
www.TrueVoyeurLive.com. Underneath, the text said something about
how most voyeur sites were set ups, but how this site was totally
true to the voyeur niche. It even went so far as to say none of the
models had given consent because they didn't know that they were
being filmed.

A hard rap on the window made me jump. I
could see the outline of a flashlight beam as someone tried to peer
in.

It was the police. They were here and it was
time to get out. Past time for that actually.

I stuffed the advertising flyer in my pocket
and headed out. I started back for the warehouse and opened the
door to it, but stopped. What if they knew what door had caused the
fault?

But I thought, they probably didn't know
that, and even if they did, they would be focusing on the office
window with the light on in it, Mickey's office.

So I made my way back though the dark
warehouse, and did so without injury to myself. Considering I
couldn't see anything, I thought that was pretty good.

Back at my opened garaged door, I looked out
first. It would seem they did know where the fault in the alarm had
come from. There was a squad car parked right under the door.

No one was outside it, and I couldn't tell
for sure, but it looked like the inside was empty too.

Like moths to a flame, they'd all been drawn
to the lights. I heaved the door up, dropped down onto the hood of
the squad car, and got all the way down.

I started running across the lot and for the
road.

Another police car started down the main road
to the building right as I got to the middle of the road.

I was caught dead in the middle of the
headlights. The bar lights on top went on.

Crap!

Running to my car was a really bad idea now.
If they knew what vehicle was mine, they'd know who I was in
moments.

Crap!

So, I started running right at the squad car.
It slowed. The siren came on like a warning blast. For sure, he'd
radioed his buddies. The squad car window came down as I got
close.

"Excuse me, sir?" It was a woman cop.

"We need to talk," I said. "I saw someone
running away from here minutes ago. I was giving chase when all the
police started showing up."

She got out of the car, and shined a
flashlight in my face.

The only thing I could think of is she was
new. That had to be the only explanation for why she let me stand
so close. It would probably be the last time she'd make that
mistake.

My hand shot out and the heel of my palm
caught her on the chin. It didn't quite take her off her feet, but
it was close. She stumbled backwards and lost her balance as she
hit the side of her car.

I'll give her this. She was already getting
her gun out, and I didn't see it until it was completely free of
the holster.

Quickly I sprang in on her. We were
shoulder-to-shoulder, and then I head-butt her. Hard.

My forehead cracked against her face, and I
could feel her nose implode on the force, but it didn't make much
noise.

Neither did she. She crumpled to the ground,
hands on her face. I dragged her to the side, and like an idiot I
set her gun next to her, but lucky for me, she was in no condition
to use it. Then I got in the squad car and I backed it up and then
pulled it forward, and when I was done adjusting it, I had it
blocking the road.

I hopped out and sprinted for my car. Now I
had to get out of the industrial park before the other cops
realized what had happened and had their buddies set their own road
block to keep me in.

That would be a serious crimp in my plan. My
plan of getting home without getting arrested, that is.

I got out of the industrial park without
seeing another cop, and I headed for the main highway to head back
in the direction of home.

But, as I turned on the highway, I decided
that I didn't want to go home yet. Not just yet. I didn't want to
check out the voyeur website on my home computer.

That was better done from my work computer,
where my wife wouldn't see it. So, I decided I'd stop there first,
but it didn't require a change in direction. It was on the way.

Then the adrenaline crash began. I'd been
running on a natural high, but no more. Heck, I'd assaulted a
police officer doing her job. For that matter, I'd broken and
entered, and I'd escaped.

I was good at that. Escaping. So far
anyway.

The office building was nearing, and I slowed
and made the turn into the deserted parking lot.

I got out and locked my car. The air seemed
extra heavy or maybe extra still. Probably due to the early hour. I
looked at my watch. It was a little after two in the morning.

I let myself in and went up to my private
office. Some junk mail had been shoved through my slot. I threw it
away.

I turned my computer on, and it booted up
fast. I opened a web browser. Then I typed the address shown on the
pornographic flyer. A site opened up with a black background.

Why did all porno sites use a black
background?

It had more of the same verbiage about being
a true voyeur site. If that was really true, it meant it was also a
very illegal website. To film someone in a pornographic way, you
had to prove their age and keep that on file in a stated place.

Given that if someone wasn't giving their
consent to being filmed having sex, then it stood to reason that
there was no filing of their proof of age.

Very illegal, and the site was most likely
hosted outside the USA. I could check into that in a minute.

To access anything in the site, I was going
to have to pay. They didn't even have one sample video up. I
thought that was odd, but just the same, I wanted to see
inside.

The cheapest option was a three day trial
that automatically re-billed into a thirty day subscription.

However, even the three day trial seemed
expensive. It was $7.99, and thirty days cost $59.99. The site
claimed that the content was exclusive and not available anywhere
or on any file sharing network, and it claimed to be the only 100%
authentic voyeur site.

I didn't really get what was so neat about
voyeurism. After all, isn't all porn watching a voyeuristic
experience?

I had a dilemma here. I wanted to get in and
see what was there. It was a gut level feeling. I needed to see
what the fiancé was hiding. I knew it was important; I could feel
it. But the only way to do that was to buy a porn subscription. I'd
never done that before, and I really didn't want to start now, but
as I thought about it, this was a billable expense, right? I could
include this as a charge against the retainer from Macy.

So, I signed up, but not until I'd used an
online service to generate a one time use credit card number. That
way, I couldn't get re-billed. The credit card number deactivated
after a single charge, and the online service drew the money
against my bank account securely.

The webpage refreshed showing me the member's
only area. A link caught my eye.

It was a listing of the models on the site. I
clicked it and it took me to a page of links. Each link was a
model's name with a photo above the text. There were about twenty
of them, but some of them seemed deactivated; I couldn't click
them. I didn't know if that meant they had been models for the site
at some time, or if they were future models and were promoted ahead
of time.

It wasn't clear about that.

One of the faces was Kelly Brandt. At least I
thought it was. It wasn't clear. Actually none of the photos were.
It was like they were headshots that were cut from other
photos.

In other words, none of the women had posed
for the photo headshot. That did lend credence to the idea that it
was a true voyeur site.

I pulled up Kelly's website to confirm that
it was really her by checking the photo on her site against what I
was seeing on the porn site. After checking, I was sure. No doubt
about it. It was her.

I clicked her link, and a catalog of
thumb-sized images came up. It was a directory listing of videos.
There were eleven available.

I clicked one in the middle. It took a minute
to load. It started grainy and black, and then it showed a naked
woman. It wasn't Kelly. Moments later Kelly crawled onto the bed
with her.

They started kissing. You could actually hear
the kissing more clearly than you could see it. The video's only
caption was 4-11-09. It was a date, and it was only several months
ago.

I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't turned
on by what was playing on my screen, but it felt wrong. And the
wrong feeling was stronger than the desire to watch.

I clicked the back button. It was only then
that I noticed that the dates were listed to the right of each
video thumb.

The date listed for the most recent video was
06-13-09. That was only days ago. In fact, that was Saturday. That
was the day Kelly Brandt died.

I clicked on the thumb. The video didn't
load. After a moment, an error message popped up saying that the
video was unable to be loaded. I right clicked with the mouse and
selected the "View Source" option on the popup menu. The PHP code
that the website was written in came up.

I quickly searched the code for references to
an MP4 or an FLV file, as those are the two most commonly used
video file formats on the internet.

About a third into the page, I found the
file. It was called wefisd33992sx.mp4.

I tried to download the file directly, but I
got an error that the file didn't exist.

This was frustrating. It seemed that Kelly
had been filmed the day she died. Perhaps this was even footage of
her in the motel room that I'd examined. If only I could see it,
then I'd know.

Why was the video down?

Could it be that the murderer and the one
murdered were caught on camera? Then I had a really wild idea. Was
there some connection between the last to see her alive, the
uncooperative Carlie Smith, and Kelly's fiancé Mickey
Richardson?

I decided to print some of the headshots of
the other women. None of the women were identified by real names.
Kelly wasn't called Kelly on the site, but with the pictures,
someone might recognize one of other women.

My brain felt foggy. It was very late, and I
needed sleep.

I checked the WHOIS records. That was
supposed to show me who owned the website. However, WHOIS records
can be made private by paying more when registering the domain
name.

This one was that way. It was marked private.
I was unable to see who the real owner was.

I navigated to Google Alerts, and created a
new alert. Any time Google found a new reference to the keyword
phrase "Kelly Brandt", this Google service would automatically
email me.

This feature of Google was mostly used by
businesses to keep track of what was being said on the internet
about them, but it served us private investigators too. We used it
exactly how I was doing it now.

If anyone posted anything on the internet
about Kelly Brandt, and if Google found and indexed it, then I'd
receive an email from Google about it.

Time to go home now. It was really late.
Before setting my computer to do its cleansing routine, I saved a
copy of the webpage that showed the non-existent video of Kelly
Brandt the day of her death.

I dropped the saved webpage into a secure
encrypted folder in my computer. Then I started the Scrambler
program to clear any traces of what I'd been doing.

I locked up and headed home. The next day I
was back there.

What was it about criminals always returning
to the scene of the crime?

I was back at Brass Works Wholesale but not
in the office. And I didn't think it was a huge risk because no one
had seen me or been able to identify me last night.

For this visit I parked in a parking lot for
an adjacent business and walked all the way over to the Brass Works
loading dock. Yes, the same loading dock that I'd forced my way
into.

I had a hunch, and I wanted to follow up on
it. In my pocket was the paper that I'd printed with the headshots
of the models from that true voyeur website.

I wanted to see if any of these guys who
worked in the back end of this business knew anything about the
other women.