Light Before Day (26 page)

"What kind of mask?" I asked.

"Uh . . . black. Leather, I think. It had this big smile on it."

Elena turned on her heel. Before I had time to blink, the front door to the apartment had slammed and the hallway behind Melissa was empty. Melissa didn't seem to notice her friend's sudden departure.

"And the boy?" I asked. "What did he look like?"

Her eyes met mine. "He looked like an angel," she gasped.

"What color hair?" I asked sharply. "His eyes?"

"Blond. Bright blond. Like it was bleached. His eyes were closed. I told you. He was drugged. He had a round face. . . . He was
clean."
This last detail seemed to baffle her.

"Was there any message in the e-mail?" I asked, surprised by how steady my voice sounded.

"Any words at all?"

She shook her head.

'Where's the computer?" I asked. "What's left of it, I mean."

"I threw it away."

I couldn't hide my reaction to this news.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"The morning Danny died," I said. "You guys had a fight."

"I told him," she said weakly. "I told him what I had seen. He didn't say anything. He just left. I knew he wasn't coming back."

She turned away from me and her left leg knocked into one of the dining room chairs. It was a small impact, barely enough to jostle the chair, but it sent her butt-first to the carpet. Now her sobs erupted without sentences to stanch them.

I went over and brought her to her feet, feeling helpless without Elena Castillo to guide me. I walked her down the hallway to her bedroom and pulled the comforter back on the bed. She fell onto the bed without removing her robe, and I brought the comforter up over her.

I stood next to the bed until her sobs subsided, thinking about Nate Bain, wondering if it was my mission to stand at the bedsides of those whose attempts to protect themselves from the truth had left them defenseless.

"Tell him I'm sorry," she finally whispered. "If you find him, tell him I'm sorry."

"The boy?" I asked.

"No," she said, turning to face me. "Corey. Tell him he was right."

She did not have the slightest suspicion that Corey had produced the movie she had been forced to watch part of against her will. I couldn't bring myself to tell her. Elena Castillo knew, and that was enough for the time being.

I left the room.

I found Elena Castillo sitting on the same wooden bench where I'd first met Melissa, staring out at the ocean. Her eyes were dry and her hands rested limply on her lap. A heavy cloudbank on the horizon was making for an early dusk. A few persistent surfers bobbed in the meager whitecaps.

"She needs to go to the police," I said. "I can lead her to Scott Koffler. I've got an eyewitness that puts Danny with Koffler in West Hollywood last Wednesday night. But I can't lead her to Corey. Not yet. I don't have enough."

"She didn't even suspect Corey?" she asked with disgust in her voice.

I couldn't answer; I had been just as surprised by this as she was."Who's going to believe her?" Elena finally asked.

"I believe her."

"Great," she whispered. "She knew Corey was telling her the truth. She knows she harbored a pedophile for four years. Who knows what Danny was doing to other kids."

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and looked abstractedly at the sun vanishing behind a thick line of shadowed clouds.

"She thought they were going to stay together forever. That's why she got her tubes tied. She was afraid of what he'd do to their kids, but she didn't want to leave him."

The disgust in her voice had turned into a kind of breathy amazement.

"That fucking Philip knows where I live," she said suddenly. She got to her feet and brushed herself off. "I've got an uncle down in San Diego. Maybe I'll stay with him for a few weeks."

"Take her with you."

"No thanks."

"Elena, think about this one," I said, trying to put the force of my experience in my words.

"Think about this one real hard."

She straightened up and gave me a piercing dismissive look.

"I'm meeting with Scott Koffler tonight," I said. "Let me see what I can get out of him."

Elena Castillo sighed and resignedly gave me her cell phone number. Then she brushed past me without a proper goodbye. I stared after her until I was sure that she was walking in the direction of her apartment building.

C H A P T E R 12

I drove for an hour before I noticed that the skateboard's wheel had left me with a navy-blue bruise that extended up the bridge of my nose from just below my right eye. Even as I examined it in the rearview mirror, it seemed to belong to someone else.

It was eight-thirty by the time I made it to Jimmy's house. Brenda was walking toward Jimmy's office as I approached. When she got a good look at my face, she asked me if I wanted some kind of pain pill I had never heard of. I didn't respond. We walked into Jimmy's office together. I was surprised when I felt her hand come to rest on my back, as if she worried I might fall over backward.

The look Jimmy gave me was both fixed and alarmed. I briefed him on everything that had taken place that afternoon, my face aching as I moved my jaw. Brenda sat slouched in the Eames chair next to mine, hanging on my every word.

"Thirteen," Jimmy muttered. "What's the difference between seventeen and thirteen?"

"Puberty," Brenda said.

No one said anything else for a while. It was Jimmy who broke the silence. "A handler displays the kid for the camera, holds him up by the back of the hair, makes it clear that he's been drugged. There's a white backdrop. Brady's been dressed in a leather jacket and a black mask to conceal his identity. According to Melissa, the kid is
clean.
Groomed. Prepared."

He let these details hang in the air. "We're not talking about a night vision camera tucked behind a bookcase. This is not a simple blackmail video. This is a full-on video production—and a production requires an audience. A paying audience."

A paying audience. These words stopped my breath and made Brenda shift in her seat. I waited for Jimmy to comment on how high the stakes had just become if his theory was correct, but he continued in a voice that lacked anything that sounded like fear or disgust. "We know that Corey hired Scott Koffler on his own. We know that Corey went to Billy Hatfill and threatened him. We also know that Scott Koffler provided transport. But he probably didn't get the kid. The kid's too young. So what did Billy Hatfill bring to this whole equation?"

"The kid," I answered.

"Yep," he answered. "What does Billy Hatfill also have in his possession? Somewhere out there."

"Joseph Spinotta," Brenda answered.

"And what did Joseph Spinotta bring to this?" Jimmy asked. "He brought the kid—and he brought the paying customers."

"You think Spinotta's operating a child porn ring from wherever he's hiding?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "And I think Corey's uncle is one of his paying customers, and that's how Corey found out about this entire operation. Once he did, he decided to use it to his advantage.

To get revenge on his old pal Daniel Brady. To broadcast Daniel Brady's disease to the widest audience available."

The three of us pondered this scenario. Then Brenda asked, "How did they get Brady to wear the mask? Isn't that a dead giveaway that he's being filmed?"

"No," Jimmy replied. "Koffler tells Brady that the mask is for his protection in case the drugs wear off and the kid wakes up."

"And the white backdrop?" Brenda asked.

"Who knows what kind of room they were in," Jimmy said. "The whole room could have been white for all we know."

I raised my hand. Jimmy furrowed his brow and pointed at me.

"This isn't it, Jimmy," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"No one would be able to tell who Brady was besides his wife," I said. "What kind of revenge is that?"

"The revenge is that they let Brady know," Jimmy said quickly, defensively. "They tell Brady that his little night with a thirteen-year-old has gone—"

"They didn't let Brady know," I said. "It was sent to Melissa's account and not her husband's.

She said the e-mail didn't come with any message attached. There was nothing about a child porn ring. Nothing about anyone else seeing it besides her."

Jimmy reddened and slouched back in his chair.

"I don't even think it was Daniel Brady that Corey wanted to get back at," I said. "I think it was Melissa. Melissa was the one who threatened him. Melissa was the one who forced him to go AWOL. If this video really went out to a wider audience, why would Corey leave out that fact? It would be too good. It would be the ultimate punishment."

Jimmy bowed his head and rubbed at his forehead with the heel of one palm. "It doesn't matter," he said. "We're done."

"What?"
I shouted.

"You heard me," he said. "Horny teenagers who can't legally consent are one thing. This shit is another. I don't do child molesters. I've never written about them before, and I'm not going to start now."

I realized I was standing. Brenda was giving me a narrow look, but it appeared to contain her muted version of sympathy. She had known this was coming. My mouth moved, but I couldn't summon anything more than a surprised snort.

Jimmy pushed himself to his feet. "I'll go to the goddamn cops myself if Melissa Brady doesn't drag her ass out of that apartment."

"Fine," I said, hating the desperate tone of my voice. "We go to the cops. But, Jimmy, that doesn't mean it's over. We still don't have anything concrete that connects Corey to—"

"Adam, it doesn't matter!" Jimmy barked. "This is over. Tomorrow morning you and I start on something else. Something that doesn't involve one of your friends. Something we don't have to
solve,
for Christ's sake. I need a book, not a medal!"

"This is bullshit!"

He turned a trigger finger on my chest. "You want to know why that kid in the video wasn't masked? Because revealing his identity was not a risk! That means the kid is out of circulation!"

He let this sit. I hadn't thought of murder.

"I'm done! And so are you!"

"So I let Dwight Zachary look for the kid," I said. "That doesn't mean I can't—"

"Yes, it does," he said, in a voice that came from deep in his chest. "This is it. I'm pulling the plug."

"You can't pull the plug, Jimmy. You didn't invent these people!"

"Oh, don't bore me with that Psych 101 shit!" he roared. "For the first time in your life, just shut up and do what you're told—and you might not end up with a hangover and a nosebleed!"

Jimmy charged across the office as fast as his cane would take him. He flung open the door.

I listened to Jimmy's hurried footsteps across the flagstones outside. I heard Brenda say my name in a mollifying tone of voice. She said it again louder as I strode out of the office.

I saw Jimmy slip inside the back door of the main house. I went in right after him. For a second, I mistook the sound of my pulse for my own footsteps.

When I entered the living room, he had just taken a seat on the leather sofa. He ignored me and pressed a button on the remote in his hand. The TiVo welcome filled the television's massive screen.

"How dare you talk to me like that, you pompous asshole!" I burst out. "I spent the last week laying my personal shit out for you on a silver platter so you could have another best seller. So you could get yourself out of whatever kind of midlife crisis falls on spoiled, best-selling writers who have too much yard to get lost in!"

"Who said this is going to be a best seller?" he asked.

"You write a novel that lures a murderer to your house, to your bedroom, and then you pull this shit on me about being afraid! I go down to Oceanside and have the kind of day I had today for you and for
your
book, and then I come back here and you talk to me like I'm your fucking D-girl!"

His eyes stayed fixed on the screen behind me. He started flipping through the TiVo menu.

Every time he pressed a button, the TV made a sound like a cartoon water drop hitting a piece of cartoon cement.

"Who do you think you are?" I shouted. "No, who do you think
I
am— that I would put up with this bullshit from you? I've slept three hours this week while you kicked back watching
City
Confidential
and spinning a bunch of theories. When I have a problem with one of them, you flip out and pull the plug."

I knocked the remote out of his hand. Jimmy and I watched it spin across the tiles into the foyer.

James Wilton's entire body sagged with something that looked like defeat. I felt a cold flood of shame that drowned my anger, the same feeling I would experience when I realized that I was out of cocaine and the sun was up and it was time for me to enter another day as just another drug addict.

Suddenly Jimmy was giving me a frank stare. I could see that I had wounded him, and I had to blink tears from my eyes.

"I was wrong," he finally said. "I thought Billy was using you to free himself of Spinotta. I thought that was why Billy was helping you. But I was wrong."

"How?"

"Christ, Adam. You tell me in exquisite detail how Billy Hatfill says he despises you. Billy Hatfill picks you up off a street corner two days after Corey goes missing. He plants the story in your head that Corey came to his house to talk about
you.
He guarantees that you come to him the minute you find out Corey is missing. He gives you a meeting with Martin Cale five minutes after you get there."

"I know."

"No, you don't," he groaned. "You've been using words like setup, revenge. Blackmail. Rage.

Lover. Are you even hearing yourself?" He let this sink in.
"You're
the one being set up, Adam.

Whatever this deal was between Corey Howard and Billy Hatfill, it wasn't simple blackmail, and it wasn't just about Daniel Brady. Whatever dirt Corey had on Billy, it got the conversation started. Maybe. But those two men
did
talk about you that night. And they made a deal."

He gave me a few seconds to absorb this.