City of Fire (21 page)

Lena moved her cursor over to the icon depicting a movie camera and clicked it. A small window about two inches wide appeared on her screen. Below the window a caption read,
Visitor’s Section: Image changes every 30 seconds. For hi-res quality, join Mounds-A-Plenty.com!

Her eyes rose to the image inside the small box. A woman with black hair, maybe twenty-nine or thirty, sat on a couch removing her bra. When the next image appeared thirty seconds later, the couch was empty. When a third rendered, the woman was back on the couch with a middle-aged man dressed in a suit and tie and with a full head of curly brown hair. Lena eyed the background, noting the sliding door behind the couch. The image was hazy, the
quality, degraded. Still, the hills outside that door were unmistakable.

The source of the webcam was Los Angeles.

Lena slid her cursor across the menu, clicking open a hot button that read
JOIN NOW
. As she read the membership application, she felt a slight chill tickling her spine. Then she found Upshaw’s number in her notebook and grabbed the phone. After five rings, he picked up without a hello, stating in a disagreeable voice that he was busy. Lena couldn’t explain it, but she found something about the guy endearing.

“It’s Gamble.”

He laughed. “I was just about to give you a call.”

“It’s not the images. It’s the passwords.”

“Don’t be fooled into thinking that because it’s porn, these guys are idiots. They’re not. Their brand of computerese is more sophisticated than any high-tech stuff out there. These guys know as much about hacking as any hacker. Maybe more. It’s gonna take me time to break through.”

“That’s the point,” she said. “I’m looking at the second site right now. Romeo didn’t hack his way through the front door, and he didn’t spend an hour and forty-five minutes staring at a garbled thumbnail image that recycles every thirty seconds. He’s a member.”

She looked up. Novak was standing behind her, gazing at her monitor. Inside the two-inch box it looked as if the middle-aged man in the business suit was getting down to business without his suit.

“That’s why he deleted the files on their computer,” Upshaw said excitedly. “He’s a member. The computer would have recorded his password.”

She looked back at Novak. Their eyes met.

“And to get a password,” she said, “you’d need to use your credit card.”

It settled in. Their first lead. Novak’s face took on a glow as he realized what had just happened.

“That site you’re looking at is based in L.A.,” Upshaw said. “I’ve got their address.”

“Send it over.”

She could hear Upshaw typing furiously in the background. When he stopped typing, she heard a hard click.

“It’s on its way,” he said.

“Thanks.”

She hung up the phone and clicked open her mailbox. Within a few seconds Upshaw’s message appeared, along with the Web site owner’s name and address. Charles Burell did business in the Valley.

Novak shot her a look. “We’ll have the DNA results in two hours,” he said. “Let’s roll.”

LENA caught the look on Charles Burell’s face and knew he read them as cops the moment he cracked open the front door. The address Upshaw had given them wasn’t a business location. Instead, they were standing on the front porch of an upper-middle-class home in Sherman Oaks. Children were playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. Another two were riding bikes in the cul-de-sac at the end of the block. Novak flashed his badge to make it official and looked pumped.

“Mr. Burell?” he asked.

The man nodded, eyeing them suspiciously.

“We need to have a word with you,” Novak said. “May we come in?”

“I’m busy,” Burell said in a gruff voice. “What’s this about?”

“Do you own and operate Mounds-A-Plenty dot-com?”

“If I did, it’s perfectly legal. Every model is over eighteen.”

“That isn’t the issue, Mr. Burell. This is a homicide investigation.”

Charles Burell didn’t bat an eye. Nor did he make a move to unlatch the safety chain and open the door. Although half his body remained hidden, Lena guessed from the lines on his face that he was in his early fifties and that the hair clinging to the sides of his shiny scalp was dyed from a bottle purchased at the grocery store. Every hair was exactly the same color, a dull shade of brown that reminded her of wood stain. He was a short man with a clean shave and what looked like
an artificial tan. From the way he was dressed, Lena couldn’t help but think of the directory at the mall. She caught Ralph Lauren’s name on the jeans and Tommy Bahama’s on the shirt. His bare feet were sheathed in a pair of Gucci loafers, his belly hanging four or five inches over a belt with Calvin Klein’s name engraved on the buckle.

“I don’t know anything about a homicide,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

Burell started to close the door. Novak stopped it with his fist.

“We’d like to speak with you inside,” he said, glancing at the children within earshot on the sidewalk. “You can make it easy, or you can force us to take the long way around the block. Easy works both ways, Mr. Burell. It’s your choice. We’re not going away.”

Burell met Novak’s eyes, considering his options with a well-worn grimace. Then he closed the door long enough to free the safety chain and finally opened up.

“I used to be an attorney, you know.”

“Good,” Novak said as they entered. “Then maybe you’ll understand why we think you can help.”

“My office is downstairs.”

Burell closed the door and flipped the lock. As he led them through the house, Lena glanced at the living room, noting the absence of color. The white carpet and white walls, the white couch and chairs, the glass coffee table and a grotesque sculpture of Cupid on the mantel over a gas-burning fireplace. The cheap, sterile feeling only intensified as they reached the kitchen and she picked up the scent of disinfectant in the air. The counters were bare and she figured Burell didn’t eat many meals here. As they reached the steps, she noticed a photograph on the windowsill above the sink. A picture of Burell with a woman and two young children.

“You have a family,” she said, following the man downstairs.

“No,” he said. “We’re divorced.”

“Where do your wife and children live?”

“Phoenix. I don’t see them anymore.”

Lena sensed the bitterness in his voice and wondered why he kept the photograph around, then lost her train of thought when they reached the lower level and the smell of disinfectant became oppressive. The floor wasn’t divided into rooms. Instead, she counted four different movie sets separated by removable walls. A living room was directly before her and she recognized the couch and sliding door from the webcam she’d seen on the Internet. To the left was a makeshift hospital room beside the furnishings for an office. To the right, a bedroom complete with a king-size mattress sealed in a plastic cover. Outside the glass door, she saw a pool and hot tub. She looked around for the nude model with black hair and the businessman who’d lost his suit, but didn’t see either one.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“The smell,” Lena said. “You use a disinfectant. I couldn’t help noticing.”

“I like to keep things clean,” he said. “Very clean. Now follow me, and please don’t touch anything.”

She watched him push a wardrobe rack out of the way. As they crossed the bedroom set to a door, she traded quick looks with Novak. All things being equal, Charles Burell’s entry point into the World Wide Web had exactly the same feel as a public restroom at the bus station.

Burell opened the door, ushering them inside and then closing it behind them. It was more of a control room than an office. Workbenches lined the walls, supporting three computer terminals and what looked like the Web site’s server by the window. And the air was noticeably cooler here and almost free of that strong smell.

Novak cleared his throat as they sat down. “You work here alone, Mr. Burell?”

“It’s a small business, but extraordinarily profitable. Like I said, I used to be an attorney. The hours are about the same, but this line of work has more perks.”

“Do you practice safe sex?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t sell. But every model gets checked out.”

“What about you?”

He wouldn’t answer the question. Novak moved on.

“Is this Web site your only source of income?”

“I bought this house with cash,” he said impatiently. “I own two Mercedes and a condo at the beach. I paid three grand for this ring I’m wearing. This Rolex cost me ten. You bet. This is my only source of income. It’s all I need.”

“Besides the money and women, what are the perks?”

His beady little eyes drifted over to Lena, then flicked back to Novak. “What else is there, Chief?”

Novak winced but didn’t say anything. Burell’s eyes lost their focus, staring into the Rolex as if it were a magic looking glass.

“I can go out with any babe I want,” the man was saying. “They see the things I own, the way I dress and tip at clubs, the presents I buy them. It doesn’t take long before it sinks in. If they give me what I want, I’ll give them what they want.”

Burell must have sensed Novak’s disgust. He had become defensive and was about as warm and appetizing as a dead fish. And something about his crimsoned skin hinted at an illness. Lena’s eyes drifted over his shoulder to the bottle of prescription pills on the counter behind him. Although she couldn’t make out what was written on the label, she recognized the little blue pills as Viagra. When she spotted the hairpiece on the counter, the curly brown hair, she looked back at Burell’s face and realized that he didn’t really have a tan at all. He was wearing makeup, his skin still blushing from the drug. Beads of sweat were bubbling out of the man’s forehead. Whatever he was using to highlight his eyes had begun to drip down the bridge of his nose. It had been Burell playing the businessman with the naked woman on the couch.

Before the image could take root in her mind, Lena sketched out the reason why they were there in three or four quick sentences. She left out the names of the victims. And she made every effort not to look at the makeup smeared against the little man’s nose.

“What we’re looking for is a list of members who logged
on to your Web site between three and five a.m. on the night of the murder.”

“What about privacy issues?” he shot back.

“We’re trying to save time,” Lena said. “If it gets that far, we’ve got enough evidence to convince a judge that the man we’re looking for logged on to your Web site. We can provide the paperwork for a warrant, but it’ll take a couple of hours.”

“You said you used to be an attorney,” Novak added. “Maybe we’ll hit a judge you know.”

Burell’s eyes widened a little and he fidgeted in his seat. They had found a soft spot in the man’s façade. It seemed obvious to Lena that there was a disconnect between Burell’s former life and the one he lived now. Something he wanted to keep hidden in his basement and didn’t necessarily want to advertise.

“Let’s see what’s out there before we bother a judge,” Burell said.

He swiveled his chair around to the computer. Opening a window on the screen, he began scrolling through what looked like a spreadsheet. Lena and Novak moved their chairs closer to the workstation. Burell pointed at the screen.

“This program is really nothing more than a time line. When a member logs on to the Web site, the time and date is recorded beside their user name and password.”

“What about their account information?” Novak asked.

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Burell said. “If you’re lucky. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. Most people don’t log in. Only about five percent ever join. Most people just open the visitor’s webcam because it’s free.”

The information on the monitor was going by too fast to read. Lena realized that the number of people who accessed the site over the past four days was well into the thousands. At $19.95 a month, it added up to more than a gold watch.

“Thursday night,” he said, scanning the monitor as he got closer. “Friday morning. Okay, we’re here. Now what?”

Maybe it was the lawyer in him, but Burell was trying to be difficult again. He would do what they asked, but nothing
more. Lena opened her notebook, checking the times she’d jotted down from Upshaw’s e-mail.

“According to the Web provider, the computer we’re examining hit your home page at exactly three-sixteen on the night of the murder.”

“How come you won’t tell me the victim’s name?”

Novak stared back, deadpan. “We don’t have all day, Burell.”

The man turned toward the monitor, wiping a speck of dust off his keyboard before toggling down the time line. Unfortunately, no one logged on to his Web site until 3:18 a.m.

“You understand that the times will differ,” he said. “The time he arrived at the site will be different than the time he logged in.”

“By a minute or two,” Lena said.

“Sometimes it’s longer if they forget their password.”

“Let’s try everyone who entered the site within the first five minutes.”

“Whatever you say.”

Burell highlighted the first user name, then paged down the time line. “Looks like we’ve got fifty-seven names.”