Familiar Lies (10 page)

“If anybody did that it was her. She’s the one who decided to get involved with an underage kid in the first place. She brought this on herself.”

“People make mistakes.”

“Have you ever made a mistake like that? That’s a hell of a lapse in judgment.”

“She didn’t deserve to die for it.”

“Look, I know you feel responsible, but you didn’t cause any of this. It’s not your doing. You’re caught up in it now because you wanted to be a good parent. You want justice for your son, same as I want for my daughter. I hold no delusions that she’s still alive. Justice is all I have left.”

“I should find out what happened.”

“From who? The cops aren’t going to talk to you and the best you’re going to get from the Nosey Rosies is hearsay.”

A man stepped out of the house wearing dress slacks and no-nonsense blue shirt with a tie loosened around the neck. Another man followed, dressed in a similar fashion.

“That’s Cook,” Liz said.

“Which one?”

“The one up front.”

“Who’s Cook?”

“The detective working Amanda’s case.”

“Shit.”

“This is all connected, Max. Vanessa, Josh, Amanda, all of it.”

“It’s not proof.”

“Why else would Cook be here if there wasn’t a connection?”

“I’m not saying it’s connected, I’m just saying we don’t have concrete proof. We still need that proof, something tangible.”

Liz thought about that for a moment. “The basement where you found the DVD; there’s physical evidence there. You said there were bloodstained sheets. Syringes, stuff like that. That’s DNA evidence, Max. Why didn’t you go to the police with that information earlier?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought I needed something to bring them. A direct tie. And hindsight is twenty-twenty. I know more now than I did then.”

“We should go back to that flophouse.”

“What if whoever did this to Vanessa is there?”

“You said it was abandoned.”

“It was.”

“Then let’s go there and check it out. We’ll look for proof, for evidence, and then we’ll bring the cops in. You’ll tell them the whole story, all of it. Then the pieces will fit together.”

One of the coroners backed out of Vanessa’s front door, pulling the gurney. On it, Max saw a black body bag. He felt his stomach twist into a knot.

“Let’s go,” Liz said. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

Max started the car and did a u-turn, leaving the horrors of the scene behind them.

Max found the flophouse by using the GPS data stored on his phone from the night he followed Gabe there. The row houses lining the subdivision street looked even worse in the daylight; derelict, defunct and neglected. Some lights burned inside the houses, indicating that at least a few souls still called this area home. Max couldn’t imagine staying the night in one of those houses, much less living there indefinitely.

“Which one is it?” Liz asked.

Max pointed out the house as he parked the car a few houses away, an overgrown front yard and an equally shitty house with darkened windows on their right. A For Sale sign lay discarded in the yard, overrun by tall grass.

“It looks empty,” Max said, staring at the house.

“Agreed.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“No.”

“Thanks for your honesty.”

“Honesty is exactly what we need now.”

Max took a deep breath, preparing himself for the task at hand. The last thing he wanted to do was go back into that house but he knew Liz was right. “You should stay here.”

“No way.”

“If someone comes I need somebody watching.” He thought of the mystery texter and wondered if maybe they were being watched right then.

“It’s not like I can do anything if I see them coming.”

“You can leave, go get the cops.”

“Whatever’s in that house I want to see for myself.” She opened the passenger door. “If you want to stay back that’s fine, but I’m going in.” She got out and closed the door behind her.

Max watched as Liz walked across the road and headed toward the house.

“Goddammit,” he muttered to himself as he got out of the car and caught up with her.

* * *

The door was unlocked this time, so they walked right in. The first thing Max noticed was how bare the kitchen was. The ashes and burnt matches littering the countertop and the floor had all been removed, swept away and discarded somewhere else. The place wasn’t clean, but there certainly wasn’t anything substantial left behind.

“Someone’s been here,” Max said, scanning the kitchen. “It’s been cleaned up.”

They walked through the kitchen and headed into the center hallway of the house, where all the rooms converged. Max glanced into the bedrooms to find them just as empty as the kitchen. All the blankets covering the windows had been removed.

Max walked out of the second bedroom. “There were boxes in both of these bedrooms.”

“Boxes of what?”

“I don’t know. I never got the chance to look.”

“They’re covering their tracks. They know somebody’s on to them.”

“What are the chances that there’s anything left in the basement?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Max opened the door to the basement and the smell of bleach hit him in the face. He covered his mouth with his shirt and they headed down into the darkness, Max in the lead, his cell phone’s flashlight pointed into the darkness. He had a flashback of being in the house by himself in the dead of night, the first time around. The basement wasn’t any more inviting now with daylight about than it had been at night, but he did feel a little better having someone with him this time.

The basement was almost as dark as it had been in the dead of night. Blankets covered the windows down here still, allowing only thin slivers of light into the space that did little to show the way. A few passes with the cell phone’s light revealed what Max had already suspected: the place was bare. Nothing on the floor; no trash, no condoms, no needles and no mattress. No bloody sheets or anything else resembling evidence. Just a clean concrete floor and the skeletal frame of the rooms remained. If Max didn’t know any better, he’d have thought he was in a different house.

Max felt his enthusiasm dry up and blow away. There was no evidence now. Maybe the people who cleaned this place missed some kind of DNA evidence—there must have been an abundance of it all over—but the freshly bleached surfaces might very well yield nothing at all in terms of proof. Considering how strong the chlorine smell was, Max wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d flooded the entire space with the stuff.

“This smell is making me sick,” Liz said.

“They bleached it all to get rid of the evidence.”

“Does that even work, or is that just in the movies?”

“I don’t know. It can’t be good, though.”

“If I don’t get out of this basement I’m gonna puke.” Liz covered her nose and mouth with her shirt. “There’s nothing here anyway.”

Max agreed, so they headed back to the steps and began to climb, Max in the lead.

He made it to the top step when a man stepped out in front of them, driving a fist into Max’s nose and sending him tumbling down the stairs toward the bottom.

Max felt himself fall backward, the shock of the punch to the nose temporarily disorienting him. He suddenly felt like he’d snorted a mixture of cayenne pepper and glass before everything went dark.

What felt like only moments later, he came to on the floor of the kitchen. He sat up. His face felt as if it’d been hit with a baseball bat and his head actively pounded with the worst headache he’d had in years, including any of his monster hangovers. He touched his nose and winced at the pain. He could feel crusted, dried blood around his mouth and chin. He could also taste the coppery residue in his mouth.

He squinted his eyes in the dying light of the day and tried to focus them. It took a moment before it all came flooding back; he was in the flophouse with Liz and the place had been scrubbed clean. There had also been someone at the top of the steps waiting for them to come up from the basement.

“You’re awake,” Liz said from behind him.

Max turned to see her standing beside a man tied to a chair in the middle of the kitchen. He recognized the man instantly.

Gabe Harris.

A gag had been placed in Gabe’s mouth. He wore a t-shirt and khaki shorts. He had a bloody wound on his leg. Upon closer inspection—and considerable effort to get his eyes to focus—Max saw the tip of a bone sticking out through the laceration. Gabe’s face contorted into a mask of pain and suffering.

“What happened?” Max asked.

“This asshole punched you in the face,” Liz said. “You took a pretty bad fall down those steps.”

“How did
he
end up like
this
?”

“He sure didn’t tie himself up.”

Gabe made a noise through the gag. Max found it did a surprisingly good job of keeping Gabe muffled, better than he thought it might. Max attempted to stand, but the room began to spin, forcing him back down to a seated position.

“You okay?” Liz asked.

Max nodded. He tried again, this time with more success. He wondered if he might have a concussion, but hardly had time to think about it given the hot pain roaring through his entire face. “I think he broke my nose.”

Liz inspected Max’s face and shrugged. “Maybe.”

Max looked at Gabe sitting in the seat, bound and gagged. Things sure had escalated quickly. “What do we do with him?”

“We ask him some questions.”

Max turned his attention to Gabe. “If I take this gag off are you going to yell?”

Gabe shook his head.

Max stepped toward him. The room spun again for a moment but righted itself quickly enough. He untied the gag. It was soaked with spit. That was something you never saw in the movies.

“You guys have made a mistake here,” Gabe said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“I think my friend’s broken nose would suggest otherwise,” Liz said.

“You shouldn’t be in this house. You brought that on yourself.”

Max considered all the questions he had and found it difficult to choose one to start with. He decided to just begin with the first one that came to mind and work his way out from there. “Who owns this place?”

“I don’t know.”

Max frowned. “Who do you work for?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“I can’t. Not if I don’t want to end up dead.”

“You work for someone who would kill you?”

Gabe didn’t answer.

“This house has been cleaned up. Somebody moved the stuff that was here. Who did that?”

“How would you know that?”

“I saw it.”

“When?”

“Doesn’t matter. Tell me what happened to the stuff that was here.”

“I don’t know.”

Max felt frustration fill him up. Almost as if he were watching someone else from afar, he took a step toward Gabe and kicked his broken leg. Gabe screamed, something Max hadn’t considered. If anyone in the neighborhood still cared, they’d be on the phone with the cops in no time.

“Shut up before I put the gag back on you and go to town on that leg of yours,” Max said. He was surprised how easily he slipped into the role of torturer. Maybe even a little afraid of it.

Gabe quieted down, but his eyes remained wet around the edges. “Don’t do that again. Please.”

“Stop lying then,” Liz said.

“Okay, okay,” Gabe continued. “You’re right; there was stuff here and the place has been cleaned up, but I don’t know who did it, I swear. I don’t get paid to know.”

“What do you get paid for?” Max asked.

“I…coordinate.”

“Coordinate what?”

Gabe went silent.

Max took a step forward.

“No, no, no…wait.”

Max waited.

“I handle the girls, okay? I coordinate the shoots and the paperwork. Stuff like that.”

Max tried to force Gabe’s hand. “I know about the videos.”

Gabe looked at him for a few moments. Just as Max thought he would have to kick the son of a bitch again, Gabe began to talk. “It’s all legit.”

“Explain.”

“We pay the girls. We pay them good, actually, considering how little you can make in porn these days.”

“Go on.”

“They sign a form, do a few videos. They make good money. Everybody wins.”

Liz huffed, but Max continued his questioning. “I saw syringes downstairs.”

“Are you a cop or something?”

This time, it was Max’s turn to remain silent.

“You have to tell me if you are,” Gabe said.

“That’s only in the movies, dummy.”

Gabe reconsidered. “I still need to know.”

“Would a cop tie you to a chair and torture you for information?”

“You ain’t a cop,” Gabe said. “If you were, you’d know that’s exactly what they’d do.”

“Fine, I’m not a cop. Does it matter?”

“Who do
you
work for then?”

“I’m the one asking the questions here.”

Gabe looked at him for a while, considering. He began to talk. “Sure, some of the girls are on the needle. Comes with the territory. I’m not their dad or their life coach. I don’t pretend to know what’s good for them.”

“But you pay them to have sex on camera?” Liz asked. “Is that good for them?”

“Like I said, I don’t pretend to know. Besides, it ain’t nothing new.”

“I think when the police find out that you filmed a minor having sex on camera they’ll disagree,” Liz said.

“Whoa, we don’t film minors. Don’t go saying that shit.”

“I have proof that you do,” Max said.

“What proof? I background check these girls. They’re of age. I’d get my ass into a lot of trouble if they weren’t.”

“Does the name Amanda mean anything to you, you sack of shit?” Liz said.

Gabe appeared offended. “Easy on the name calling. And no, it doesn’t. It’s a pretty common name.”

Liz took a step forward.

Max touched her shoulder and she hesitated. “You don’t remember a girl named Amanda Potter? You would have filmed her sometime over the last year.”

“That name doesn’t ring any bells, no. But I have all the paperwork for each and every girl we film. That’s my job and I’m good at it.”