The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) (18 page)

Chapter 20

It was a couple minutes
past eleven when my phone rang. The screen read “Unknown Caller.” I hit
Speaker.

“This is Detective Seagate.” I don’t usually make
it that formal, but I figured Abby Demarest would be nervous, and I wanted to
be clear.

“Um, is this Detective Seagate?”

I remembered her from our meeting in the sociology
department as a big, strong girl, but that wasn’t what I was hearing now.
“Abby, yes, I’m Detective Seagate. Thank you for calling.”

“I’m not exactly sure why you wanted to talk to
me, but Mr. Vines—at the university?—thought I should talk to you.”

“I’m glad you called, Abby. Listen, I’m gonna tell
you what our thinking is, and give you an opportunity to ask any questions you
want, but first I want you to know I’ve put you on Speaker so my partner,
Detective Ryan Miner, can hear what we’re saying and participate if he wants.
Is that okay?”

“You’re not tape recording this, are you?”

“No, you have my word on that. We’re not recording
this. Nothing you say will be entered into any record or published in any
way.
 
This is a completely informal
discussion, and it’s totally off the record. Do you understand me?”

“I’m just
kinda
freaked
out about my privacy, you know what I mean?”

“I absolutely understand. What you’re going
through is a terrible thing. A terrible invasion of your privacy. And let me
assure you: Our purpose is to find out who’s harassing you and threatening
you—and use every resource of the law to stop it immediately. And if a crime
has been committed, we’ll do everything we can to prosecute that person or
persons. The county prosecutor is totally on-board with this. So I want you to
know you can trust us to do whatever is necessary to protect you.” I paused.
“Let me start, okay?”

“Go ahead.”

“Tell me about making the video. Why did you make
the video?”

There was silence for a few seconds. “I thought
you were going to help stop people threatening me. What difference does it make
why I made the video?”

“Abby, bear with me. Like I said, if we’re gonna
stop people from hurting you, we need to understand how the information about
the video got out. To do that, we need to start with the facts about how the
video was made. So let me ask you again: Why did you make the video?”

“You’ve seen the video?”

“Not the whole thing. Enough to know it’s you.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Abby, I used to work in the vice detail. I’ve
seen thousands of videos. Men, women, children, animals. I look at them as a cop.
You know what it says on the side of our cruisers? To protect and to serve.
That’s all I’m doing.”

“The other detective, did you say he’s a guy?”

“Yes, his name is Ryan Miner.”

“I don’t want to talk about this in front of a
guy. Could you ask him to leave the room?”

“Of course. I understand.” I turned to Ryan.
“Detective, would you please excuse us?”

“Absolutely.” He put up his palms to ask if I
really wanted him to go. I shook my head and waved my hand down to signal him
to stay.

I waited a few seconds. “Okay, Abby, he’s gone.
Tell me about making the video. Why did you do it?”

There was silence, then I heard her clear her
throat. “It was maybe ten days ago. You know, Krista was at our class, maybe a
month ago, at Professor Rinaldi’s house … well, I guess it was Krista’s house,
too. I mean, she lived there. Anyway, Krista had been talking about what she
does. She’s an escort.”

Ryan raised his eyebrow at the word
escort
.

“We started talking, and she was, like, really
nice. She asked if I wanted to go out for a drink. I asked her if, you know,
that would be all right with Professor Rinaldi. She sort of laughed, which I
think she meant that the professor’s not the possessive type. Or jealous or
anything. Anyway, the two of us went out for a drink. I’d heard Krista’s story
in her talk to our class, but I never felt she was telling us anything beyond
the official story. You know, like what Professor Rinaldi wanted us to learn
about the sex business, or whatever it’s called.”

“Okay, so you’re out with Krista, at a bar,
right?”

“Yeah, we’re out and having a good talk. At this
point, it’s not romantic or sexual or whatever you want to call it. But one
drink become three or four, then I don’t know how many, and pretty soon I’m
really drunk, and so is Krista. We start talking about, you know, women. Which
I’ve always been curious about. Not curious as in I ever did it. But, you know,
in Professor Rinaldi’s course we talked about a lot of different things,
including how sex workers sometimes separate their professional lives from the
personal lives. Some of them only hang out with other women, even though they
aren’t, you know, lesbians. I mean, they don’t see themselves as lesbians. I
just wanted to know about Krista’s story, and she told me. We made a date for a
few days later, in the evening.”

“Where did you meet?”

“My place. I knew my roommate would be out. So
Krista shows up. She’s carrying a bottle of wine, and she’s got this guy with
her. She tells me he’s gonna video it and give it to me, like a souvenir? Like
she’s done this before. I’ve made some amateur videos with a couple boyfriends,
but they were really bad. You know, a camera on a tripod. So the three of us
start drinking the wine. I had too much. Anyway, Krista and I get undressed.”

“The guy’s not there to have sex with you, too?”

“You know, I didn’t know if Krista had a three-way
in mind. He was a good-looking guy, and I’m not sure what I would’ve done if
that was the plan. Part of my attraction to Krista was that she knew all kinds
of shit I didn’t know about. It was very mysterious—and daring, you know, to a
girl like me. But the guy wasn’t there to have sex with us. He really was there
just to film it. Krista and I had sex, and it was fantastic. At the end, the
guy packs up his gear—he’s got all these bags for the camera and the lenses and
whatever. I asked him to give me the video like Krista said he would. He says
he wants to edit it a little and put some titles on it and some music, and then
he’ll run it by my place tomorrow.”

“And that seemed okay with you?”

“Sure, I mean, I was pretty drunk.”

“What happened then?”

“The guy left, me and Krista did it once more, and
we agreed to meet again.”

“What did you two have in common?”

I glanced over at Ryan. He was rolling his eyes,
like that was the stupidest question I’d ever asked anyone. Stupid, maybe, but
the stupidest? Hardly.

“Professor Rinaldi. Krista told me about her—you
know, what she was like, why she liked Krista. What she was like in bed. I
don’t know, I’m not the best student. I can’t compete with Professor Rinaldi,
who’s super-smart and super-accomplished and everything. It just seemed
exciting to me that my teacher’s girlfriend was cheating on her—with me.”

“So you thought you were gonna take Krista away
from Professor Rinaldi?”

“I don’t think I’d go that far, but it just seemed
that I was, you know, special. A little bit special. For a while.”

“Okay, so when did you start to get harassing
messages?”

“Let me think.” She paused, like she was trying to
get the date right. “Two or three days later.”

“Can you describe the messages?”

“A lot of them were, you know, fans. Horny troll
fans. They liked when I did this, they liked that. You know, that move I did at
3:14 in the video. That kind of creepy thing. A lot about how they’d like to
get together with me and Krista—”

“They knew the other woman was named Krista?”

“Yeah, and they knew my name was Abby.”

“That must have been confusing. Because at this
point you didn’t know that the video was online. So how would they even know
your names?”

“I mean, right? I’m totally confused. I’m thinking
Krista showed the video to some of her friends or something. Or the guy did.”

“What form did the messages take? Were they
emails, texts?”

“Both. A lot of the emails were from CMSU
students—at least they had CMSU email addresses. They could’ve been employees,
whatever. Some of them had addresses you couldn’t tell who they were from. A
lot of texts, from area codes I didn’t recognize.”

“That must have been disturbing, knowing that
people knew your phone and email.”

“Exactly, because I’m not in the phone book or
anything, so how are they getting my information?”

“And the harassing messages? What did they say?”

“A lot of name-calling. You know, the obvious.
Skank. Whore. Cunt. Then a bunch of names I’d never heard. Cum dumpster. Swamp
donkey.”

“What else did the messages say?”

“How I shouldn’t be in Montana, shouldn’t be at
CMSU. How I should go to LA or New York or someplace and just be a whore, which
is what I am anyway. Some of them scared the shit out of me.”

“What did the scary ones say?”

“Some of the emails were about how the guy was
going to track me down and fuck me so hard I’d stop being a lesbian. Some said
I had to be removed from campus because I was polluting it. How I was indecent,
like I was contagious or something and had to be killed. Really weird shit.
There are some sick people out there. I’m still scared, you know what I mean? I
can’t sleep. I’m not eating. I mean, I can’t even take a decent shit.”

“It must be very disturbing.”

I saw Ryan jotting a note. He slid it across his
desk to mine. It said, “Will she let us have access to her email and phone?” I
asked her the question.

“Sure, I don’t care. Mr. Vines from CMSU asked me
that, and I told him, whatever you want.”

“Abby, how do you think the video got online?”

“You know, that’s what I’ve been asking myself,
over and over. I found the video online and tracked down the company, but they
wouldn’t talk to me. I don’t know who did it. It was either Krista or the guy
who filmed it. Maybe the guy is her pimp or whatever. Maybe Krista’s getting
into porn. Or the guy did it without telling her. You know, went behind her
back.”

“Do you think it could’ve been Professor Rinaldi?”

Abby Demarest was silent for a moment. “I never
thought of that.” She paused. “Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she found out about the video
and wanted to take you out of the picture. She figured since Krista’s a
prostitute, it’s not gonna be the end of the world for her. But for you—a
college student—she figures there’s no way you’re gonna keep seeing Krista.”

“Holy shit. You know, that makes a lot of sense.”

“I don’t know, just throwing out ideas here.” I
paused a second. “Abby, tell me about the guy who filmed the video. Can you
describe him?”

“I don’t know. White, mid-twenties, average build.
Maybe one-eighty. He had a neck beard. You know, the kind where you don’t shave
it at all? T-shirt, dark blue. Blue jeans. Black sneakers: Chuck Taylors. He
had a baseball hat on, backwards.”

“Can you remember any identifying marks? Tattoos,
scars? Anything like that?”

“Not really. I was
kinda
paying more attention to Krista.”

“You said he spoke to you, how he was gonna edit
the video and give it to you the next day. Anything you can remember about his
voice, the way he spoke? Do you think he sounded like a CMSU student?”

I heard her sigh into the phone. “I’m sorry. He
didn’t really make an impression. I do remember being impressed that he really
knew what he was doing with the camera equipment. He worked fast, had the whole
thing set up in a minute. So maybe he’s a film student or a professional
photographer. That’s where I’d look.”

“That’s good information. So you never got the
video from him, right?”

“That’s right. The next day, when he didn’t show,
I was going to get in touch with Krista, but I realized I didn’t even have a
phone for her. And I didn’t even know this guy’s name.”

“And you couldn’t ask Professor Rinaldi for
Krista’s contact information.”

“I wanted to, but I knew the first thing she’d ask
is, Why do you want to know?”

“So you found out the video was online when one of
the trolls told you?”

“Yeah. A bunch of them told me the Web address. I
went there, and I tell you, I almost died when I saw it up there. It had, like,
a couple thousand hits in three days.”

“Abby, you say you started getting these harassing
and threatening messages about a week ago, right? When did you report it to the
university?”

“Yesterday.”

“Why did you wait so long?”

“I was scared shitless. Plus, totally ashamed of
what I’d done. Like I’d been tricked. You know, like those scams you read
about, where assholes email you and tell you
you
just
won a lot of money but you
gotta
give them a few
hundred to get the money? I felt like someone had set me up, and I just walked
right into it. I hoped it would stop, and I wouldn’t have to tell the
university. But so many of the messages were coming from the university I felt
I didn’t have a choice. There was one other thing, too.”

“What was that?”

“My parents. I was scared out of my mind they
would find out.”

“They would freak out, make you come home?”

“I didn’t care about that so much.” I heard her
sobbing. “It would kill them. Their little girl in a porn video—a lesbian
video—on the Internet? It would kill them. That’s why I was afraid to call the
police. I could just see it getting into the newspaper.”

“I understand, I do.” I understood, but I didn’t
know quite how to make her feel better about what had happened. “Abby, do you
think the guy—the one with the beard and the baseball hat—you think he might’ve
had something to do with what happened to Professor Rinaldi?”