WEBCAM (8 page)

“I have an iPhone,” Tom said. “The latest version. 4.”

“A 4s?”

“Uh, no. Just 4, no s. So I’m just a model behind.”

“The latest version is 6s. You’re five models behind.”

Tom stood up. “I’ll be at my partner’s desk if you need me.”

Tom took his handwritten notes and the case files, went to Roy’s workstation, and sat down. Then he stared at his partner’s screen saver, Chun Li from the Street Fighter videogames. Chun Li offered no inspiration on what to do next. But detective work wasn’t about inspiration. It was about pounding pavement and doing research. Since Roy was out pounding pavement, looking for video footage of the perp, Tom fired up Google and looked up
Tilphousia
, the screen name of the guy who’d harassed, and possibly killed, Kendal Hefferton.

Tilphousia, Megaera, and Alecto are three infernal goddesses in Greek mythology, known as Erinyes or Furies.

Tom could still see the word
FURIE
written on the wall of the last crime scene. He read on.

They had the wings of crows, and bloodshot eyes, and wore crowns of live spiders, and they punished the wicked for their crimes with pain and torture.

Tom clicked on a hyper-realistic drawing of a scowling, witch-like woman with spiders in her hair, flaying the skin off a screaming man’s back with a studded whip.

He searched for more information, and learned all about the furies’ history and depiction in art and literature. They were frightening, sadistic creatures, whose sole purpose was to inflict suffering. Tom read a scholarly paper about the absorption of Greek gods into early Christianity, and how the furies were refitted as demons, dragging sinners into hell for atonement.

Tom had no doubt this was his killer. A psycho who thought he was an avenging deity, taking out his warped agenda on webcam models. Just like his mythical counterpart, he first stalked and hounded his victims, tormenting them before swooping in to torture and kill.

Tom went back to the first report, the murder of Kendal Zhanping over five weeks ago. He and Roy had done extensive interviews with the webcam agency she’d worked for, along with a competitor. Their security was top notch. Models could live anywhere in the world, and they had full control over their client list. For example, a webcam performer who lived in Chicago could prohibit anyone from Chicago, or Illinois, or the Midwest, from accessing her page. Their own locations were hidden from clients, and the agencies gave the models tips on how to make their performance areas untraceable. Unlike sex workers, or exotic dancers, or even adult actors who go to conventions and greet fans, webcam models were particularly hard to find. And it made sense. You didn’t want stalkers finding you. But you also didn’t want your postman recognizing you from your Hitachi vibrator show.

Webcam models didn’t use their real name. The websites all used secure, encrypted connections. The models could block individual users, or entire regions. Yet The Snipper found two victims, and they were both named Kendal. Not their cam names. Their
real
names.

If it had been the same website, Tom would have suspected someone on the inside. But the two agencies weren’t related in any way.

“Hey, Firoz,” Tom called over the desk.

“What?”

“How hard is it to hack an encrypted website?”

“Depends. Different sites have different levels of security. What kind of site?”

“A porn site. Webcam models.”

“You’re too cheap to pay?”

“I want to know how The Snipper is finding out who these models are, and where they live.”

Firoz pushed away from my computer and laced his fingers behind his head. “Lots of ways. There are tools and programs. He could hack the source code to find passwords. If the site has HTTPS he could use a brute-force attack.”

“Sounds violent.”

“It means you use a program to keep trying random passwords until one works. This can technically be used on any system. Depending on password strength it can take minutes, or millennia. For example, it took me thirty seconds to crack your Facebook password. For the record, your last name plus the year you were born is used by millions of people. So are ascending numbers, like 1-2-3-4, or the word
password
. I hope your bank password isn’t so easy. Some morons use their social security number. Anyone who steals your wallet has your Social. People are idiots.”

Tom made a mental note to change his bank password. “So if you were looking for webcam models named Kendal, how would you do it?”

“I’d find the top webcam model sites, and I’d be searching for administrator passwords. That would give me webmaster access, so I could search employee records.”

“What if I needed you to start looking?”

“Then you’d need a warrant. And you aren’t going to get one. NSA aside, you can’t just hack the whole country hoping to find evidence of a crime. That’s not how the law, or the Constitution, works.”

Tom knew that. But he wanted to plant a seed in Firoz’s head, in case the man wanted to do a little hacking outside normal work hours. “That might be the only way we catch him. To find out who his next target is. It will be a webcam model in Illinois named Kendal. How many can there be?”

CHAPTER 16

Kendal opened her eyes, unsure of where she was. Linda stared down at her.

“Hey, slut. You scared the heck out of us.”

Kendal realized she was lying on the couch, in the living room. “What happened?”

“We heard something pound on the front door. It was your head. You were passed out on the porch.”

She reached for the sore spot on her scalp, found a lump. “How long ago?”

“Just happened. We were about to call 911.”

Kendal saw Hildy in the kitchen, the land line receiver in her hand.

“No!” Kendal said, louder than she’d wanted to. “I’m okay. I don’t need a doctor.”

Kendal knew where that path would lead. If she told anyone at the ER about the things she’d been hearing and seeing, they’d admit her for observation. That meant missing several days of school. Or weeks, if they decided her mental health issues were severe enough. Kendal could deal with it on her own.

“I’m fine.” She nodded at Hildy. “Really. I just tripped.”

Hildy said, “Whatevs,” and hung up.

The memory returned to Kendal. The dark van. The text. She patted her pockets. “Where’s my phone?”

Linda winced, then held up Kendal’s Samsung Galaxy, the screen cracked in a spiderweb pattern. Kendal reached for it. The cell didn’t even turn on.

“Shit,” Kendal said.

“I’ve got like six old cell phones. You can have one of mine. Just stick your SIM card in, it’ll work fine. But you should play this up.” Linda leaned forward and whispered, “Do a chat, show everyone. They’ll feel sorry for you and tip you crazy cash.”

Kendal didn’t want to do a chat. She wanted to get away from all the cameras. She could feel them all, like weights pressing down on her. Drills, boring into her bones. But the idea of leaving the house frightened her. Maybe the van was just a hallucination, or maybe it wasn’t. Kendal wasn’t ready to prove it one way or the other. She just needed some alone time, to think. Someplace dark and quiet.

The basement?

The sorority house had an unfinished basement, cement floors and walls, exposed beams and columns. It was dusty, and probably full of spiders.

No, thanks.

The bedroom, then. Cameras off, even though Kendal needed the money now more than ever.

Kendal said, “Good idea,” to Linda, then stood up. There was a pinch of dizziness that quickly passed, and then she was counting the steps to her bedroom. She touched the knob three times, went inside, and locked the door behind her.

After making sure all the cameras were off, Kendal logged onto her laptop computer. She stared at the built-in webcam at the top of the screen, frowned, and stuck a Post-It note over it. Then she went on Google and searched for “schizophrenic hallucinations.” She found the usual sites; Wikipedia, the National Institutes of Health, WebMD, but it was all the same stuff she’d known for years. Take your meds. Get counseling. Keep a journal. Confront the voices in your head.

But what if it wasn’t voices? What if it was a van? Or a text message?

The chat balloon appeared. A subscriber wanted to reach Kendal. She clicked on
IGNORE
.

The balloon appeared again.

I know you’re seeing things.

Kendal froze.

I can help you.

Kendal wasn’t sure what to do. If this was a hallucination, the doctors recommended confronting it, ordering it to go away.

But if it was some pervert, stalking her, Kendal needed proof.

How? Take a picture of the screen? Her phone had just broken.

Wasn’t there a way to do some sort of screen capture?

Kendal Googled it.

You can’t ignore me, Kendal. I’m your destiny.

Who r u?
Kendal typed.

Some call me Megaera.

What do you want?

What all people want. I want the righteous to prosper. And the wicked punished.

Kendal quickly read how to print a picture of your computer screen. All she had to do was press one key,
PRTSCN
. But where was that key?

Whores need punishment. I can give you Penance for your sins.

How do I know you’re real?
Kendal typed.

You’ll know I’m real when I stick the knife in.

Kendal spotted the
PRTSCN
button, above the
INSERT
key. She pressed it.

Nothing happened.

She went back to the Google page, and realized she needed Photoshop or something like it; some art or picture program to paste the screen capture she took. She clicked on the Start icon and began to search Windows for art apps.

What are you doing?

She clicked on the Accessories folder. There! A program called
Paint.

Stop it, Kendal. I’m warning you.

Kendal opened Paint, clicked on Paste. A screen shot of the chat filled the page, and offered her a choice of format options to save it as. Kendal chose jpg and—

Her computer switched off, leaving Kendal to stare at a blank screen.

CHAPTER 17

Joan stared at the blank screen, then switched on Tom’s laptop. As it whirred to life she sipped the swill that passed for coffee in his house. His Mr. Coffee was ancient, with more scales than a komodo dragon. It wasn’t a water issue, because she used bottled. It wasn’t a coffee issue, because she bought the coffee. It was strictly a machine problem. Every time Joan visited, she fought the impulse to buy a new one. But this was Tom’s place, and men didn’t like their cave messed with. Usually, she could subsist on Starbucks, but Joan was hungry, and if she went to the coffee shop she wouldn’t be able to resist getting a scone, and that would spoil her appetite and ruin her upcoming dinner with Tom, which she hoped would still happen despite all signs pointing to him cancelling. So it was drink sludge, or go without caffeine, and Joan needed caffeine like scuba divers needed oxygen.

Tom had given her permission to use his computer, but it still sort of felt like she was spying on him. They’d been dating, exclusively, for years. Because it was long-distance, there was still an intimacy gap that would have ended had they been living together. So Joan was in
his
small house, drinking
his
shitty coffee, sitting at
his
lumpy sofa, with
his
laptop, which was eight years out of date and had a WiFi connection slightly slower than the Pony Express.

On the plus side, the place smelled like Tom, which she loved. And she certainly loved him.

But she didn’t love living apart from him, and didn’t love Chicago, and didn’t love his job, which was worse than a mistress because mistresses usually came second, and Tom put his work first.

Joan knew she also put work first, but she made ten times the amount of money he did, so she allowed herself the double standard.

After dealing with a few emails that would have been a pain responding to on her phone, Joan noticed a folder on Tom’s desktop called
SNIPPER
.

Without thinking, she clicked on it and the pictures began to flash in a slideshow.

Big mistake.

Joan had produced several horror movies. She’d even done a sequel in a franchise about a serial killer who built his own unique weapons, which the liberal press gleefully dismissed as
torture porn
. And Joan, herself, had dealt with violence in the past, at the hands of some people who were the worst of the worst that history had to offer.

But she’d never seen anything, in movies or real life, that even came close to the atrocities in those pictures. They were beyond obscene. Those poor women had been butchered like… well… meat. Horrified, Joan couldn’t look away, even as one photo after another was branded onto her brain. By the time she’d managed to close the folder, Joan had seen things she’d never be able to unsee, enough for a lifetime’s worth of nightmares.

How could Tom stomach that?

Why did he continue to expose himself to such evil?

Joan didn’t ever think about marriage, and especially not children. But if Tom was the guy she was going to spend the rest of her life with, how could she allow that kind of darkness in her family? Joan had a hard enough time separating work life with private life, and a bad day for her was a superstar throwing a hissy fit on set. Tom was dealing with some seriously dark shit. She’d seen him moody. How long before the moodiness became the norm? At a Christmas party, Joan had met Tom’s former boss, a woman named Jack Daniels. Joan’s impression was that Jack had burned herself out. Jack was a tough broad, but the job still beat her down.

Was that the road Tom was headed down? Where catching psychos outweighed being happy? Where dealing with human misery put a permanent stain on your soul?