Deadly Web (24 page)

“In a few days, the murderer could be in Mexico!”

“He could be there now. Relax, Hannah. Wait a few more days. We’ll crack this thing wide open.”

Hannah wanted to scream, but she didn’t. She took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. She could never make Bernard understand how she felt, as if she were in a constant race in which the ground itself was escaping her feet. As if she were trying to catch a train that was about to leave, not knowing where she could buy a ticket. She needed to have results. She needed the captain and the chief to know they could trust her to crack cases, or… or… She took another deep breath.

“What aren’t we asking ourselves?” she said, her tone much calmer, in contrast with the way she felt.

“Where did the knife go?” Bernard asked.

“The killer probably took it with him,” Hannah said. “Why did Frank target all these women?”

“Misogyny?” Bernard guessed. “A dominant mother? Why do other internet trolls do what they do?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah said.

“Neither do I.”

“I need to pee.”

“Knock yourself out,” Bernard said.

Hannah went to the bathroom. She closed the stall door behind her, considered padding the toilet seat, and decided it wasn’t worth the bother. As she sat on the bare plastic, her mind began to wander. It hopped from an advertisement she’d seen on TV to a random thought about the weather to the case. Then she tried to remember when her dad’s birthday was. It was pretty close, but when was it exactly? She always forgot. She’d have to ask her sister. She used to be able to remember birthdays, but then Facebook began to remember them for her, and all the dates evaporated from her brain.

Then, suddenly, something clicked.

Jacob had once told her that he solved half his murder cases on the toilet. She was pretty sure he was exaggerating, but she couldn’t argue with the fact that being in the bathroom or the shower somehow gave everything a fresh perspective. And now, as she carefully thought over the things she’d heard in the past day, she arrived at a conclusion. It wasn’t an “Aha” moment—she hadn’t cracked the case, and there would be no twirling of mustaches. Just two puzzle pieces that clicked together, a new angle they hadn’t checked yet.

She flushed, washed her hands, and returned to the squad room.

“Jurgen told us that Frank liked having sex with the light on,” she said to Bernard.

“That’s right,” Bernard said, his eyes on his monitor, reading an e-mail.

“And Jerome said that Frank asked him if he had any sex clips to upload online to humiliate his ex.”

“Yup. He was a real awesome guy.”

“Do you think that maybe the reason that Frank liked to have sex with the lights turned on was because he was filming it?”

Bernard turned around and looked at her. “It’s possible,” he said after a second.

“And then maybe he uploaded those movie clips to the web. Just as another sort of abuse.”

“Maybe… what are you getting at?”

“Well, maybe he has an account on some porn site somewhere to which he uploads those movie clips. Our suspect list might not be complete.”

“Hang on,” Bernard said. “Are you looking for even more suspects? Don’t we have enough?”

“I’m not looking for suspects,” Hannah told him. “I’m looking for the killer. Bailey was right. People don’t kill because of a mean tweet.”

“Fine.” Bernard raised his hands in frustration. “Let’s have a look.”

They opened Frank Gulliepe’s e-mail account again, and began to search patiently through the e-mails for anything that might belong to a porn site. They almost missed it. They were looking for words like
porn
and
xxx
, but then Hannah noticed an e-mail for which the subject was “Ex-revenge: complete your account.” It piqued her curiosity, and she clicked it. It was a registration e-mail for the site
ex-revenge
. Its tagline was
Submit your ex-gf for our pleasure, and get your revenge!!!

The site had a depressingly large number of images and videos, mostly of women, for the most part uploaded without any consent. Each image, Hannah realized in disgust, could be tagged with the woman’s e-mail address, Twitter handle, Facebook account and even telephone number, so the site’s patrons could harass the victims of the site, and let them know their privacy had been deeply invaded.

“This is sick,” Hannah said.

“Yeah,” Bernard said.

“Let’s look for our victim,” Hannah said. “Though I seriously hope that whoever killed him gets away with it.”

The account name was
slut_punisher
. They searched the site for
slut_punisher
and quickly found his profile page. Three videos, eleven images to his name. He didn’t tag any of the videos or the images with the woman’s name or details, which was fortunate, or unfortunate, depending on the perspective. It definitely made Hannah and Bernard’s life more difficult, but Hannah was nevertheless relieved.

“We should try and cross-reference these with Frank’s Facebook friends, I guess,” Hannah said.

“Should we?” Bernard asked. “It would take forever. And we haven’t looked through the current list of suspects yet. Okay, so he was an even worse piece of garbage than we thought, but I’m not sure that—”

“She looks familiar,” Hannah said, pointing at one of the thumbnails of a girl straddling Frank in his bed, completely naked. She seemed oblivious to being filmed, a smile of pleasure on her face, her eyes closed. Her hair was in disarray, covering part of her face.

“I don’t recognize her,” Bernard said. He moved the cursor to close the browser window.

“Hang on,” Hannah said. “Click it.”

“You click it,” Bernard said sharply, then got up and walked away.

Hannah raised an eyebrow at the sudden outburst. She grabbed the mouse and clicked the image.

The video window appeared on screen. The recording was low quality, probably taken by a web camera. Hannah guessed it was the laptop’s web camera, since they hadn’t found any other recording gear in Frank’s apartment. The girl and Frank groaned in unison, the girl gyrating slowly. Hannah found herself transfixed by the movie. She had watched porn before, of course, but this was different. These weren’t actors, expertly showing the viewer what he wanted to see. These were two random people simply having sex for their own pleasure. The noises and movements were completely different, the camera’s angle a bit off.

Hannah suddenly realized she wasn’t even focusing on the girl’s face anymore. She was completely mesmerized by the scene. She shook her head, took a deep breath, and forced herself to look only at the girl’s face. The girl suddenly threw her head back, and the movement exposed her profile completely to the camera. Hannah paused the video, and stared at it. She frowned. Then she opened Frank’s Instagram page and scrolled down.

“Found her,” she called to Bernard. “It’s the girl he was dating. The one who was with Frank when Tarp threatened him in the restaurant.”

“Yeah?” Bernard said. “Jacob and Mitchell interviewed her.”

“Right,” Hannah said. She located the interview report and scanned it.

“Her name is Lyla Harper,” she said. “She works at Bill’s Pizzushi Place. It’s a restaurant, I guess.” She opened a new tab, googled
Bill’s Pizzushi Place
.

“Yeah,” she said. “Here. It’s an Italian-Japanese restaurant. What a stupid mix. Want to check it out? It’s located at…” she paused.

“What?” Bernard asked.

“The owner’s name is Bill Harper,” Hannah said. “Harper. Just like this girl.”

“You think they’re related?” Bernard asked.

“Probably.”

They sat in silence for several seconds.

“A sushi restaurant would probably have a large, smooth, sharp knife.” Bernard said.

“It definitely would,” Hannah agreed.

“Let’s check what Mr. Harper drives,” Bernard said.

Chapter Twenty-One

“You seem pissed off,” Hannah told Bernard as he drove them to Bill’s Pizzushi Place.

Bernard realized his jaw was clenched tight. “Yeah,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s this case. Got under my skin.”

“Yeah. Gulliepe is a real asshole.”

Bernard nodded. That wasn’t all of it. There was something that angered him even more. As they’d been looking at the images in Frank’s account on
ex-revenge
, Bernard realized he was turned on. He actually
wanted
to watch those women having sex, to watch those videos published without their consent. Frank had somehow managed to contaminate even him, making him a low human being who could find this invasion of privacy arousing. He thought of Frank’s victims. Women and spouses delighted to hear that a human being had been murdered. One of them had become sufficiently enraged to stab Frank repeatedly. Frank’s best friend had been driven to harass his ex-girlfriend. Frank Gulliepe had managed to ruin almost anyone he knew. He was a walking, breathing cancer.

They parked in front of Bill’s Pizzushi Place. The skies were beginning to darken; the sun had almost completely set. The faded sign was illuminated by a bright, ungainly neon frame. The restaurant’s interior was dim, though Bernard wasn’t sure if this was due to a desire to make the lighting a bit more romantic, or if it was just an effort to reduce the electricity bill. Whichever it was, one thing was clear in the dim light: the restaurant was empty.

They walked inside. Only one waitress worked in the small space. Lyla Harper was wiping one of the tables. As they walked in, she raised her head.

“Hello,” she said. “A table for two?”

“Lyla Harper?” Bernard asked, though he knew it was her. He flicked open his badge. “I’m Detective Gladwin; this is my partner, Detective Shor. We’re investigating the death of Frank Gulliepe.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice weak. “I thought it was investigated by those other two. I don’t remember their names.”

“They’re assisting us,” Bernard said. “Would you mind if we ask you some additional questions?”

“I…” It seemed for a moment as if she was about to refuse. Then she said. “Sure, no problem. Please do.”

“You were dating Frank Gulliepe, right?”

“Well… we only went on a couple of dates,” she said.

“When did you realize that he’d published a video of you two having sex?” Bernard asked. He hadn’t been sure if Lyla knew about it before he asked, but her face told him everything.

“What?” she asked, her voice shaking. “What do you mean?”

“You know what he means,” Hannah said. “Frank Gulliepe uploaded a video of you two online. We know that you saw it.”

A single tear ran down her cheek. “Yeah, I saw it,” she said.

“When?”

“It was during my shift,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Two customers had a laptop on the table, and they were looking at it… And then at me. They were laughing…” She paused.

Bernard found himself trying to avoid her eyes. He forced himself to look straight. “Go on,” he said quietly.

“I took a look. Just one look. At first I was just a bit disgusted. I mean, who watches porn in a public space? But then I recognized… I recognized Frank. And then I realized the other person on the screen was me.” She wiped her eye with her finger and sniffled. “I turned away and ran into the kitchen. I hid there until I was sure they were gone.” Her voice became bitter. “They left a huge tip, probably for the show.”

“It must have been horrible,” Hannah said.

“I would never have thought… I mean I’ve heard stories of people it happened to,” Lyla said. “I always thought it was a bit their fault, you know? But Frank seemed so sweet. The night that… that he filmed the movie? I slept over and he brought me breakfast in bed. Coffee and muffins. He bought them at a bakery down the street. It was just like in the movies. I actually thought that I might have found someone.”

“But then you saw the video.”

“Yeah.” She looked at them. “Did you watch the video?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes,” Hannah said.

“Oh.” Lyla said, looking at the floor. Bernard wanted to tell her that he hadn’t, that he’d refused to look, but his mouth stayed closed, his lips tight.

“What did you do then?” Hannah asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did you confront Frank? Did you tell anyone?”

“I… No.”

“Lyla, is your father here?”

She looked at them pleadingly. “Please don’t bring him into this. It’s been bad enough—”

“Excuse me,” a strong voice said. A man entered the room through the kitchen door, looking at them with his brow furrowed. He had thick, black hair, and his eyes were almond-shaped, just like Lyla’s. In fact, almost all his features were mirrored in Lyla’s face, Bernard realized. Thick lips, small ears, the same frown, almost identical eyebrows. The similarities between Bill Harper and his daughter were staggering.

“Is there a problem, Lyla?” the man asked.

“Bill Harper?” Bernard said, routinely. “I’m Detective Gladwin; this here is Detective Shor. We’re investigating the murder of Frank Gulliepe.”

“Yeah, my daughter told me about that guy,” the man said, his voice rough. “Why are you bothering her again?”

“Frank Gulliepe uploaded a video of your daughter and himself online,” Bernard said, doing his best to ignore Lyla’s despairing eyes. He focused on Bill’s face instead.

The man’s entire face had gone completely blank. Bernard knew that face well. It was the poker face of people who didn’t know what a poker face was. It was a poker face that screamed of deceit.

“You saw the video,” Bernard said quietly. “Didn’t you, Mr. Harper?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please leave; we’re about to close.”

“Frank Gulliepe was stabbed to death in his home. The murderer was seen leaving the scene in a red Toyota Corolla,” Bernard said. “Isn’t there a red Toyota Corolla registered to your name, Mr. Harper?”