James Swain - The King Tides

She chewed silently and stared at the road. He unwrapped the quarter pounder and bit into it. He offered her a bite, and she shook her head no.

“I didn’t see anything in those reports,” she said. “The red flag was the voice mail you left me. You referenced the Cassandra videos, and that was all I needed to hear to hop on a plane and come down here.”

“You mean because I’d seen them.”

She nodded. “You’ve got a stellar background, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t be a predator. You should see some of the guys I’ve arrested. Lawyers, doctors, I even busted a circuit court judge once. They were all leading double lives. In public they were very respectable people. In private they were monsters.”

“How many guys have you busted because of those videos?”

“I’ve personally busted sixteen. Other agents around the country have also made busts. The last time I checked, the total number was over forty.”

“That’s a big haul.”

“It is. And we’re not done yet.”

“Creepie and his partner are the prize.”

“Yes, they are.”

He finished his meal. The Cassandra videos were bait, and the men that took that bait deserved no sympathy. But he still wasn’t clear on why an agent in their local office hadn’t paid him a visit, instead of Daniels doing it herself. Something in his background reports had raised a red flag that had made her personally fly here from Washington, and that bothered him.

She pulled into Inverrary Resort and parked in front of a deserted valet stand. She got out and grabbed her briefcase before they headed inside. Inverrary had once been a playground for the rich and famous, with fine dining and sprawling golf courses, but it had fallen on hard times and now rented rooms to drug addicts and assorted miscreants.

“This could be the set for a horror movie,” she said.

“Wait until you see the rooms,” he said.

“You’ve stayed here before?”

“When I was in uniform, we got called here every night.”

The desk manager was a gaunt Pakistani wearing a white dress shirt. He studied Daniels’s ID and search warrant before handing it back.

“Is Rusty in trouble?” the desk manager asked.

“He’s in a lot of trouble,” Daniels replied. “Are you friends with him?”

“We are not friends. I ask because he’s behind on his rent.”

“That’s too bad. I need to see his apartment.”

They all took a creaky elevator to the third floor and were soon standing in Rusty’s one-bedroom. The overhead light didn’t work, and Daniels drew the blinds so that sunshine flooded the interior. “I guess housecleaning isn’t included in the daily rate,” she said under her breath. The carpet was torn, the wallpaper was peeling, and a sink ran in the bathroom. The desk manager tried to turn the water off and cursed under his breath.

“I will have to call a plumber and get this fixed,” he said.

“Not so fast,” she said. “We’re going to have a look around, and then a team of FBI agents is going to pack everything up and take it away to be analyzed. I don’t want any workers in here until that’s done. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

The desk manager made himself scarce. Daniels placed a call on her cell phone to the local FBI office and requested a team be sent to pack up Rusty’s things. Ending the call, she unzipped the side pocket on her briefcase and removed two pairs of white latex gloves, one of which she tossed to Lancaster.

“Put these on before you touch anything,” she said.

“Will do. What else do you have in that briefcase?”

“You’d be surprised.”

A laptop computer sat on a small desk that was bolted to the wall. Daniels pulled up the room’s only chair and powered up the laptop. The screen saver was a beach at sunrise taken from a lifeguard’s high chair, and Lancaster guessed that Rusty had taken the shot. He wasn’t going to be seeing many more of those where he was going.

Daniels tried to gain entry and was denied. The laptop was password protected.

“I know a good hacker,” he said.

“So do I,” she said.

From her briefcase she removed a black box with an electrical cord and a USB connector, and she connected the box to the back of Rusty’s laptop. Soon the device was running tens of thousands of passwords per second through the laptop. Daniels leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“The FBI hired a hacker to build them for us. It’s now standard equipment, just like the firearms we carry.”

“Can I get one?”

She shook her head.

“What if I help you catch this guy?”

The device beeped, indicating it had found the correct password. Daniels brought her face up to the rectangular screen and began her search.

“Do you mind if I look around?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He searched the room and discovered that Rusty had little in the way of material possessions. There were assorted articles of clothing, a boom box, a pair of flip-flops, a pair of sneakers, and a jump rope. On the floor of the closet was a cardboard box that begged a closer look. It was heavy, and he popped the lid to find it filled with old laptops. He carefully removed each one and placed it on the bed. There were eight in all, with models by Dell, Gateway, Sony, and Apple. Their combined value was more than all the other items in Rusty’s possession.

“What do you think of this?” he asked.

Daniels glanced at the bed out of the corner of her eye. “Isn’t that a nice collection. Don’t bother turning them on. The hard drives have been erased.”

“How can you be sure?” he said.

“Because that’s what guys who share kiddie porn do.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. He thought he understood but wanted to be sure. “Is that the game? Rusty buys a new laptop every six months and transfers his porn library before erasing the hard drive on the old one. He gets a new IP address with each new laptop, which makes it harder to catch him. He also moves around a lot, just in case the law gets him in its crosshairs.”

“That’s the game,” she said. “The smart ones also get new email addresses.”

“How does that work?”

“Gmail lets a user create multiple email addresses under different aliases. There’s a tutorial on YouTube that explains how to do it.”

“The internet is heaven for these sick bastards, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. We still catch them, it just takes longer.”

The minutes dragged on. He went to the room’s only window and gazed down at the rear of the property. A narrow concrete sidewalk ran alongside the brown fairway of the resort’s eighteen-hole golf course. The golf course was no longer in use, and a family with several small children sat on a blanket enjoying a late-afternoon picnic.

The sidewalk was busy with residents of the hotel having a cigarette or taking a stroll. An elderly man pushing a wheelchair came into view. He wore an orange tracksuit and was pushing an emaciated woman who appeared to be in the final stages of life. As the wheelchair got close to the others on the sidewalk, they moved out of its path but did not speak to the elderly man or the dying woman. Watching this happen gave him pause, and he thought about the near-abduction of Nicki at the Galleria mall. Nicki’s abductors had used a wheelchair, and now he understood why.

Daniels slapped the desk. She pulled out her cell phone and typed in a text message, then punched the screen with her forefinger.

“You found Creepie’s email,” he said.

“Yes, and I just sent it to FBI headquarters in DC,” she said. “The FBI has an unwritten agreement with the country’s internet service providers. When we want to find out who an email belongs to, the ISPs will tell us without a subpoena. It comes in real handy during investigations.” Her fingers tapped the desk impatiently. “We’ve been searching for these monsters for a long time. Let’s hope this leads us to him.”