The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) (15 page)

“That’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“Abby has gone into hiding. She contacted the
university and told them she’s getting harassing and threatening messages and shit.”

“Did you get her location from the university?”

“They won’t tell us. Their attorney—what’s his
name, Ryan?”

“Arthur Vines.”

The chief shook his head. “Don’t know him.” He
scratched at his chin. “I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we could protect her
ourselves.”

“Me, too,’ I said. “Do you think we could call
Larry and see if he knows how to get that information from the university?”

The chief hit some keys on his computer, then
picked up his phone to call the prosecutor. His secretary told him Larry was
away on some other business. The chief asked her if she would have Larry call
him at home tonight. It was important.

“Best I can do at the moment.” The chief nodded.
“As soon as I hear from Larry, I’ll get in touch.”

“Thanks a lot, Chief. See you tomorrow.”

Back at our desks in the bullpen, I saw a note
from Robin, our evidence tech. It said, “You’ll want to see this.”

I picked up my phone and called her. She was still
there. She told us to come to her office.

We went down to the basement. Her door was open
but she didn’t hear us knock because she had her headphones on. I walked in,
anyway.

She felt the vibrations of my steps and took off
her headphones. “Hey, Karen.”

“You got something for us?”

“I think so.” She led us over to a long table
along the wall. “Here’s the banner you said you were looking for.” She pointed
to a computer printout, made of taped sheets of printer paper four feet long,
that read “Bye, Bye, Virginia.”

“Yeah, we figured. The shithead at the fraternity
already admitted he did this.”

“Here’s something I bet he didn’t already admit.”
She reached for a sheet of paper with pieces of masking tape on the four
corners. “This must’ve been stuck to a wall.”

Written at the top of paper was the phrase
“$/Fuck.” Underneath it was the number 500, crossed out. Under that was the
number 250, also crossed out. The numbers got smaller, each of them crossed
out. At the bottom appeared the number 50, the only number that wasn’t crossed
out. I turned to Ryan. “What the hell is this?”

He stared at it for a moment. “It means they hired
a prostitute, paid her five-hundred dollars. After the first guy did her, the
price per fuck was five hundred. By the time the tenth guy did her, the price
per fuck was fifty bucks.”

Chapter 17

At 7:59
am
, I hung my coat on the rack in the
corner of the detective’s bullpen and walked over to my desk. Ryan was already
working, already online. “Hey.”

“Good morning, Karen.”

“The chief get back to
us about what Larry says we can do to find Abby?”

“He didn’t get back to
me
.” Ryan hadn’t taken his eyes off the
screen. He was young enough to do at least two or three things at once. Or
maybe it’s only when he’s talking to me that he realizes he has some extra
brain power he’s not using productively.

“What’re you looking
at?”

“Porn.”

“You don’t have a
machine at home?”

He smiled. “My wife’s
always using it. You know, Tinder.”

I had no idea what that
was. I pointed to his screen. “Really, what are you doing?”

“Did you know there are
twenty-six million porn sites?”

“You saying you’re gonna
be here awhile?”

“Worldwide, porn is a
five-billion dollar industry. A third of all downloads are porn. A fifth of men
watch porn at work.”

“Like you’re doing now.”

Ryan finally looked up
at me. “I tracked down the distributors of the video with Krista and Abby.
CollegeGirlsXXX
is based in Chicago. I put in a call to
them. Left a message.”

“Tell them you’re a
cop?”

He nodded. “Assured them
we weren’t looking at them for anything illegal. We just needed some background
information on one of their videos.”

“Oh, then I’m sure
they’ll get right back to us.” I thought for a second. “Until we can get hold
of Abby, best we can do is interview Krista again. Sound good?”

“Sure. You want to ask
her about the dollars-per-fuck sheet from the fraternity? See if she was the
prostitute?”

I shook my head. “I
don’t want to do that. When we talked to her before, she was real clear about
how she wasn’t a prostitute. So even if it was her at the fraternity, she’s not
gonna admit that. Prostitution is illegal; making porn videos is legal. I think
that’s the better way to get to her. Besides, if we pile all this shit on her
at once, she might just shut down completely.”

We headed out to the
parking lot behind headquarters and drove over to Krista’s apartment. Light,
thin clouds had turned the sky a pale blue. The TV had said the sun would burn
it off by noon.

We climbed to the second
floor of the apartment complex and walked past a woman taking her young
daughter to the school bus stop. I knocked hard on Krista’s door.

I heard her footsteps
approach. There was silence for a moment; she was probably looking through the
peephole. I held up my shield. She opened the door.

She looked annoyed and
impatient. I didn’t know whether she got off work at two or three in the
morning or had to stay later to grunt along with some asshole before he headed
off to work or went home to the wife and kids. Either way, she couldn’t have
appreciated having to talk to us at eight
am
.

She was dressed in
panties and a loose, sleeveless T-shirt that revealed most of her chest, but
she didn’t seem uncomfortable with me and Ryan seeing her like that. Probably
the one good thing about being in her line of work when you’re young and trim:
not a lot of body-image anxiety. “What you want?”

“We need to talk with
you, Ms. Moranu. It’s about Virginia.”

She didn’t say anything
as she stood back to let us enter.

“We need to bring you in
to headquarters, have you make a statement.”

“Really? Now?”

“Really. Now.”

“I need twenty minutes.
Shower. Fix my hair.”

“I’ll give you thirty
seconds. Put on a pair of jeans and some shoes. You look fine.”

She stared at me for a
few seconds, then turned and walked back toward the bedroom. I got the feeling
she was pretty good at deciding whether she had to comply when someone told her
what to do. This time she concluded, correctly, that she did.

It wasn’t much more than
thirty seconds when she re-emerged from her bedroom. She had put on a bra, a
more modest T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and running shoes. Somehow, she had also
managed to comb her hair. She could have passed for a young mom—a young mom
with a skinny waist and big boobs.

We drove her to
headquarters and set up in Interview 1. She kept her movements to a minimum,
but I could see her eyes darting around. She took in the battered steel table
and the big mirror. She turned her head slightly; I saw her notice the camera
setup hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the room.

Ryan went over to the
controls on the wall and turned on the system.

I announced the time and
date and the names of the people in the room. “Ms. Moranu, we want to get some
information from you about the video in which you appear with Abby Demarest.” I
held her gaze and waited for her to respond.

Finally, she spoke. “Don’t know about video.”

Ryan had his tablet out. He slid it across the
table to Krista. She looked at it for about five seconds. From all her face
revealed, it could’ve been a detergent ad. She slid the tablet back to Ryan.

“That’s the video,” I said. “And that’s you. The
other person is Abby Demarest, a student here at Central Montana State
University. A student in Virginia Rinaldi’s course.” I stared at her. “Can we
get past the denials, Ms. Moranu? Save us all some time? The sooner you answer
our questions, the sooner you get back to your apartment. Do you understand
me?”

“What you want?”

“Why did you make this video?”

She was silent.

“I need you to answer my questions, Ms. Moranu.
Why did you make this video?”

“I like to do sex.”

I laughed. “Come on. You do sex for a living. I
like being a cop, but you don’t see me doing it off the clock—and recording it.
Why did you make this video? Did you get paid for it? Who set it up?”

“Video is legal. Why you ask me this?”

“Yes, making this video was legal. Putting it
online was legal. Killing Virginia Rinaldi wasn’t. You’re in a porn video with
a student from your girlfriend’s class. Someone kills your girlfriend. You
understand why we’re curious? You can’t give us an alibi for yourself. And your
pimp is a dangerous guy. You need to help us unravel this. So, let me ask the
question a different way: Did Christopher James Barrow set this up? Is he
trying to get you into porn?”

She turned her body a few degrees and looked at
the wall. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“How did you hook up with Abby? Did she approach
you? She knew you from that time you were the guest speaker in Virginia’s
course. Was it Virginia? Did she arrange it?”

“Don’t know who Abby is.”

“Who ran the camera? Was it Christopher James
Barlow? Virginia? Someone else?”

Krista just shook her head. Maybe she meant she
didn’t know. It certainly meant she wasn’t going to tell me and Ryan.

I opened the folder that Ryan had put on the
table. I pulled out the photo roster of the students in the course. “Do you
recognize any of these students? Did any of them shoot the video?”

She shook her head.

“How did the video get online? Did you arrange for
it? Did someone else?”

“Didn’t know it was online.”

I’ve done hundreds of interviews. Krista was an
extreme example of a suspect who was so afraid of something—something bad that
she’d already done or something that might happen to her—she wasn’t going to
tell us anything, even if it was in her best interest to talk.

Maybe she was afraid she was bisexual or a
lesbian. Maybe she was afraid of her pimp. Only one thing was clear: She wasn’t
sufficiently afraid of me. I needed to try a new approach.

I turned to Ryan. “Would you please excuse us,
Detective?”

Ryan looked a little surprised, but he must have
realized we had hit a wall with Krista. He nodded, stood, and left the room.

“I need to take a break,” I said to Krista. I
stated the time, then stood and walked over to the control box, turned off the
recording system, and returned to my seat. I moved slowly to give Ryan time to
get set up in the hallway where he could look into the interrogation room
through the mirror.

“Elena, I know you’re frightened—and you’re upset
about Virginia. But I need you to understand what is happening. Virginia was
murdered. We know that. It wasn’t an accident. And you’re right in the middle
of it. If you don’t help me, the system’s gonna come down on you. You’re a
prostitute—and you’re here illegally. Once we go public that it’s a murder
investigation, and it comes out you were living with Virginia, who do you think
the good people of Montana are gonna want to see arrested? You need to be clear
on this: If you’re found guilty of murder, or even of manslaughter, you’re not
gonna be deported. Not in a Montana courtroom. You’ll do the time—at least ten
or fifteen years—right here. Or, if the jury really likes Virginia and thinks
you took advantage of her before you killed her, you could get the needle.” I
paused. “You really want to start working with me.”

She was staring down at her hands, her fingers
interlaced on the table in front of her. She wouldn’t look at me.

“Elena.” After a few seconds, she raised her eyes.
She wore a big frown. “Listen to me. I’m forty-three years old. Divorced. I
have a son, age seventeen, who won’t talk to me, and the odds are very good
he’s gonna end up in prison in the next year or two. I’m an alcoholic. That’s
how I lost my family. And I lost my job. I went through a bad period. A very
bad period, where I did a lot of degrading things with men.”

Finally, I had her attention. Her expression
softened. “I hated myself. Hated what I had become. Then something happened.” I
paused. I had her now. “I met someone. A woman. A woman who had been through a
lot, just like I had. I’m not gonna go into details. It’s still too painful. As
wonderful as it was, I was so scared. Not scared that people were gonna find
out. Nobody gave a shit about me and who I was sleeping with. Why should they?
But I was scared because I didn’t know this about myself, didn’t know that I
could love a woman completely. Everything I knew about myself—it was suddenly
gone. I didn’t know who I was. I was frightened.”

Krista nodded. “What happened?”

“She died. She was a working girl, like you. And a
heroin addict.” I bit the inside of my cheek with some force. In a second I
tasted the warm blood. I felt a tear form and slide down my face. “She died.”

“I am sorry.”

“I know something about where you are right now,
Elena. I know you think you’re never gonna be able to get past this. But
believe me, you will. It’s gonna hurt for a long time. But you need to believe
me that some really bad shit is gonna happen to you if you don’t tell me the
truth. I don’t have a choice. My partner, Ryan? The guy? And the chief of
police. They’re the same kind of guy. You’re a hooker. They’re not exactly
gonna bust their balls to help you.” I shook my head. “I’m the only one who can
help you now. I’m all you’ve got, Elena.”

Her voice was soft. “What do you want to know?”

“I need to understand what happened with that
video.”

“Abby came to me. She offered me three-hundred dollars
to have sex with her.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I said yes. When I got
there, I saw it was for filming. I never did filming.”

“What did you do?”

“I say I do it for five-hundred dollars.”

“Who did the filming?”

“A man. I don’t know him.”

I passed the photo roster of Virginia’s students
over to her again. “It wasn’t one of these guys?”

She shook her head. “Not one of them.”

“And nobody associated with Christopher James
Barlow?”

“Not that I know.”

“Okay, so some guy shot the sex scene. Abby gave
you the five hundred and you left?”

“Cash and I go.”

“She didn’t say anything to you about putting the
video on the Internet?”

Krista shook her head.

“And you haven’t heard from Abby since you made
the video?”

“No hear from Abby.”

“Anything else you can tell me about the video?”

“Nothing. Honest.”

“All right, Elena. I’m gonna have an officer drive
you home.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

After she was gone, Ryan came back into the room
and sat down.

I looked at him. “Well?”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe her.”

“Why?”

“She’s not curious about why a college girl wants
to screw her?”

“Maybe the girl’s got some issues she’s trying to
work through,” I said. “Krista pockets the five-hundred bucks, which is her
rate.”

“She lets a guy shoot her doing a lesbian
scene—she’s not interested in what he’s planning to do with the video?”

“Her line of work, I wouldn’t be surprised if
she’s been videoed before.”

“You remember she said she ‘never did filming.’”

“I took that to mean she never did video to put
online.”

“You do realize that Krista’s in the business of
faking it, right?”

“I’ll let you know when I interview someone who
isn’t faking it,” I said.

He paused a moment. “That prostitute you fell in
love with? You never mentioned her.”

“The heroin junkie?”

“That one.”

“I was lying. You know, to make Krista feel she
wasn’t the biggest skank in the room.”

He nodded. “Good strategy.”

“But the story was half true. It was in LA, a
while ago. The cop was someone who busted me. I was the hooker addict.”

Ryan looked at me, his beautiful blue eyes a
little wider than usual. His voice was low. “You never told me …”

I closed my eyes, put up a palm, and shook my
head, too ashamed to even speak. I managed to squeeze out another tear.

I’m going to stop doing things like that to him. I
really am.