Survivor: 1 (24 page)

"Sorry, Al," Rick said. He turned and nodded to Animal. But I can't afford to have a weak link in the business. If I don't deal with it, my clients will."

Animal stepped forward and Tim loomed in front of
him. He was holding a syringe. He depressed the plunger
and liquid squirted out of the needle. Tim's eyes were indifferent as he bent down and sank the needle into the
side of Al's left buttock. "No!" Al yelled, eyes bugged out
in stark fear. "Noooo!"

"Relax," Rick said, smiling. "'This isn't going to knock
you out. It'll just ... how shall I say it? Immobilize you
for a moment."

Al struggled, fighting madly as Tim and Rick held
him down, trying to yell and scream. Animal stepped
forward and rammed a piece of cloth in Al's mouth as
he screamed, stifling him. A minute later, Al felt the effect of the drug slow his movements. Thirty seconds
later, he was unable to move. Oh God no!

Tim and Rick grabbed Al's legs and spread them apart.

No! Al began to sob as Animal took position between
Al's legs. No, please!

And as Tim stepped behind the camera, Animal began to work the blade in, partaking in the work that he
liked best.

The following twenty-four hours was a whirlwind for Brad.

William Grecko spent the night on his sofa. When
Brad woke up the next morning, Lisa was still asleep.
Brad walked in the kitchen to the smell of perking coffee. Billy was still dressed in the clothes he had worn last
night. His hair stuck out like tufts of horns behind his
ears. He looked like Dilbert's boss in the Scott Adams
cartoons.

"Coffee smells great," Brad said.

"Thanks" William searched through the cabinets and
found two mugs. He poured them coffee and set Brad's
mug on the table. They sat down at the table. "I've been
doing a lot of thinking," he began.

"So have I," Brad said. He took a sip of coffee.

"I'm going to go home real quick and shower and
change," William said. He took a sip of coffee and sighed.
'Tben I'm going to the office. I'm going to call Detective
Orr and tell him everything you told me last night. Then
I'm going to arrange to have him come here today to talk
to you and Lisa."

"She's not going to like this," Brad said, clutching the
mug with both hands.

"I know, but we have to do it." William's eyes were red
from lack of sleep. His stubble looked rough on his
cheek. "I'm going to be here when Orr comes over. I'm
going to emphasize that you and Lisa are under my pro tection until the guys that did this are caught. I'm going
to arrange to have you and Lisa flown out of the city by
this evening."

This surprised Brad. "Bitty! Isn't that-"

"A little drastic? Maybe. But I don't want to take the
chance. You have to get out of town."

"What if On has other ideas?"

"I'll handle Orr," William said. He took a hearty gulp of
coffee. "In the meantime, you're going to have to get
ready to be away for a while. It may take a few weeks or
so to find these guys."

"It could take months, too," Brad said.

William frowned. "True."

"Suppose Orr doesn't L elieve us?" Brad asked.

"If Orr doesn't believe us, I'll enlist the services of a private detective.!

Brad sighed. He rubbed his face. "Christ, Billy, I don't
have that kind of money anymore. All the money in our
savings is gone!"

'Don't worry about it," Billy said gently. "I'll bear the
costs myself."

"Shit" Brad felt powerless. He hated to have other people pay his way, and the situation he and Lisa were in
now made him feel like they were in a bind. He wondered what would happen if he didn't know Billy. He and
Lisa would be nowhere. They would have to pick themselves up and run, try to go underground and hide on
their own. Brad wouldn't know a thing about living on
the lam.

"Where are we going to go?" He asked.

"I'll think of a place," William said.

"What if you can't find these guys?"

`We'll find them!

"No, I don't think you understood me." Brad faced
William, feeling desperation rise in him. "I did a lot of thinking about this whole snuff-film business, and the
thing I kept thinking was that something so underground
and taboo must be hard to crack. Shit, I never thought
things like this existed. It has to be so far underground
that the average person wouldn't even hear about it.
We're average people, so how the hell are we going to
catch a group of guys that, by all accounts, even the police can't catch?"

"Leave it to me," Billy said again, and Brad could tell
by the look in his eyes that the .lawyer didn't know how
they were going to find the men responsible for Lisa's kidnapping and near murder.

Brad drank his coffee, at a loss for words. He felt helpless. He supposed that the best thing to do was to place
his and Lisa's lives in the hands of his friend, William
Grecko.

When they were finished with their coffee, Billy stood
up. "I've got to go. I'll call you in about an hour."

Brad refilled his mug. "I've got to get somebody over
here to look after Lisa. I should probably dash out and run
a few errands before Detective Orr comes in. Maybe I'll
call Lisa's assistant at the office and see if she'll come in."

"Fine," William said. Brad walked him to the front door.
"Try not to be too long. If you want, I could have somebody come over."

"I'll be fine," Brad said.

"Okay." William shook Brad's hand. "We'll get through
this, buddy. Leave it to me."

When William Grecko left, Brad turned and headed to
the bedroom to check on Lisa.

Lisa was still in a sound sleep when Brad checked on her.
He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. The red digital
numerals read five minutes after seven. She had only been asleep for nine hours. She might sleep at least another hour, hopefully. Brad left the door to the bedroom
open and went to the second bedroom, which they had
converted to a study, sat down at the desk, and turned on
the computer.

He sipped his coffee as the computer booted up,
thinking. He hadn't been able to sleep at all last night. All
he could think about was the story Lisa told him, and'the
men who worked in the snuff-film business. And the
question that kept popping into his head was Hour could
people do this kind of thing?

He found it hard to believe that money would be the
primary factor. He knew of some greedy people, but it
was hard to believe that people would actually pay to
watch somebody being tortured to death for sexual gratification. But then I've heard of equally weird things, he
thought. Pedophiles exist. That's a fact. Some people like
to fuck dogs and sheep. That's sick as all hell. I guess if
that kind of sickness exists, others do, too.

When the PC was up, Brad connected to his Internet
service provider, then launched his Web browser. When
the browser came up, he typed "snuff films" in the search
engine and hit the EWTER key.

The search engine spit out two hundred and fifty-six
Web pages dealing with snuff films. The first entry was an
article called "Snuff Films: Urban Myths or Grim Reality?"
Brad clicked on the hyperlink and brought the page up.

The article in question was on a Web site called APB-
news.com, which looked like a news service about crime
and law enforcement. Brad read through the article
slowly, reading each word as he digested the information. What he read was disturbing and frustrating.

According to the article, the FBI had been looking for
snuff films for twenty-five years and hadn't found evi dence of a single one. It also revealed documents the FBI
had been maintaining about their search, reporting that
despite widespread tales of rape, torture, and murder being committed in front of the camera for monetary gain,
the leads all eventually fizzled to nothing.

Brad found the article riveting. According to the story,
rumors of snuff films began circulating as early as 1969
when it was suggested that the Manson Family had
filmed a murder. A few years later, snuff films were mentioned by a group called "Citizens for Decency Through
Law," who claimed that young women were being raped
and killed for the pornography industry. The Bureau's
Special Crimes Unit, which investigated violations of interstate trafficking of obscene material laws, investigated
and found no truth to the story. The rumors of snuff films
continued. An FBI memo from February of 1975 showed
that an unnamed source tipped the Bureau to the existence of twelve or so snuff films shot on 8-millimeter film.
The informant's story fell apart when he later admitted to
the Bureau that he had never seen the films himself.

Rumors continued from Atlanta, Chicago, New York,
Los Angeles, and Cleveland. The stories were similar. The
films were usually rumored to originate from California
or Mexico. The victims were always described as being
runaways, drifters, or smuggled immigrants.

Then, in 1976, one of the greatest hoaxes ever to be
perpetrated in the film industry capitalized on the snufffilm rumors. A low-budget film that had been shelved
three years previously was resurrected by its producer
with ten minutes tagged on at the end of the original
print. Dubbed "Snuff," its tag line on promotional posters
read "Made in South America ... where life is cheap!" The
poster depicted a screaming woman cowering from a
knife. The film premiered first in Indianapolis, then in New York. "Snuff" purported to tell the story about a sinister satanic cult roaming the country slaughtering people.
The producers also claimed that it was the "bloodiest
thing to ever happen in front of a camera'

In the last segment of the film, separate from the
movie's plot, the supposed real murder takes place. On
the screen, a male member of the film crew tells a previously un-introduced woman, "You know, that last gory
scene really turned me on! Other members of the crew
then restrain her while the man proceeds to slash the
woman with a knife, amputate two of her fingers with
bolt cutters, and, finally, reach into her body and pull out
her heart. The film runs out and voice-over says: "Did you
get all that?" The response is: "Yeah, let's get the hell out
of here."

End of credits.

Feminists protested the original theatrical release of the
film, and the media hoopla over it caught the attention of
law enforcement. Pathologists viewed the film and concluded that the staged murder was a theatrical production and not real. The FBI got interested, and the actress
who was killed in the last scene revealed herself to be
alive and well. So much for the great snuff-film conspiracy.

Brad shook his head as he read the article. Weird, he
thought, as he scrolled down. What he read next chilled
him. He read it to himself aloud. -There is legislation
currently pending in the California Assembly that would
outlaw snuff films along with crush videos, which graphically depict small animals being crushed to death. What
the fuck?"

Then he remembered something from a news item a
few months before that he and Lisa had seen on television one evening after work. A woman had been tried
and convicted of cruelty to animals after videos depict ing her stomping mice to death were discovered. The
video had been shot by another party, a male, for a thriv-
ing"crush film" industry, which were S&M porn films that
depicted actresses in spiked high heels crushing small
animals to death. Brad remembered watching that segment with Lisa, making a comment to her along the lines
of, "Guess there's not much a pervert will find taboo,
huh?" If only he could have foreseen what was to come.

Brad clicked on the back arrow button of the search
engine and scrolled down the list of Web pages. He saw
another link that grabbed his interest. This was a definition of the term snuff-films, from a site called "'Ihe Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices." It defined a snuff film
as one that portrays the actual murder and mutilation of
one of the actors. Brad hit the back arrow button again
and continued his search. The next item that caught his
eye froze him. Cops: Snuff films found among child porn.
He clicked on it.

It was a Reuters story about a recent raid in Italy. As he
read the article, he quickly realized that the APBnews
piece had been published a year previously, and that this
piece was only a month old. As he read the article in
shock and disgust, the words of an FBI agent quoted in
the APBnews article kept coming back to him: "Despite
25 years of searching, I have yet to find hard evidence
that snuff films exist." Wonder what this guy thinks now?
Brad thought, feeling a pit of dread in his stomach.

The news item was about eight Italians who were arrested on charges that they used the Internet to traffic in
child pornography, with most of the children coming
from Russia. The material, ordered over the Internet, cost
anywhere from $300 to $6,000, with the images being
burned on CD-ROM. The more horrific the sexual acts
the customer wanted, the more costly the price tag. The
most gruesome products were coded "Necros Pedo," in which children were tortured and raped until they died.

"Jesus,* Brad said. He couldn't take it anymore, but he
had to find more information, as disturbing as it was. He
clicked on another link and read on.

The story in question was in direct relation to the Italian case, this one involving a British man belonging to
the same international ring. British police reported that
Italian detectives, after a lengthy investigation, raided 600
homes and had evidence against 500 people ranging
from businessmen to public employees. Many of the suspects were married and had children of their own. One
suspect, accused of producing child pornography, was
found with a client list that included people from America, England, Germany, and Italy.

Finally tired of the research, and depressed by the subject matter, he turned off his Internet connection, then
shut down the computer. He sat in front of the computer,
his mind running a mile a minute, everything clicking
into place.