Cody McFadyen - Shadow Man

I look toward the shadows that Alan is sitting in, wanting to do something. But Callie is right. And I need to be brought up to speed.

"Fill me in," I say, accepting this. "What do we have?"

I turn to James as I say this. He stares back at me, and I can see the hostility flaring up in his eyes. He radiates disapproval.

"You shouldn't be here," he says.

I fold my arms and look at him. "Yeah, well, I am."

"It violates procedure. You'll be a liability to this investigation." He shakes his head. "You probably don't even have psych clearance yet, do you?"

Callie remains silent, and I'm thankful. This is a key moment, something I need to resolve myself.

"AD Jones cleared me." I frown at him. "Jesus, James. Annie King was a friend of mine."

He stabs a finger toward me. "All the more reason you shouldn't be here. You're too close to the investigation, and you'll fuck it up."

Some part of me registers that an outsider, listening to this, would be aghast. They would not be able to believe that James is saying what he is saying. I'm inured to it--to some extent. This is James. This is how he is, and what he does. Besides, it's working for me. I'm feeling something stir inside. The old coldness, what I always used to use to handle James, to rein him in. I grip on to this and let it leak into my eyes.

"I'm here. I'm not going away. Deal with it, and give me all the details. Stop fucking with me."

He pauses for a moment, examines me. I see him settle back. He shakes his head once in disapproval, but I know that he's given in.

"Fine. But I want it on record that I think this is a blatant violation of Bureau policy."

"Duly noted." My voice is a knife edge of sarcasm that dulls against his indifference.

"Good." Now I see his eyes unfocus a bit. He doesn't have a file in front of him, but that computer brain of his is putting all the facts at his fingertips. "Her body was found yesterday. They figure she was killed three days before that."

I start at this. "Three days?"

"Yes."

"So how was the body found? Where?"

"The SF cops got an e-mail. It included an attachment, some photos. Of her. They went over to check it out, and they found the body and the child."

My heart thuds in my chest, and I sense my stomach acids churning. I feel a sour burp just waiting to get out. "Are you telling me that her daughter was there for more than three days with her dead mother?"

My voice comes out loud. Not a yell, but close. James looks at me, his face calm. Just relating the facts.

"Worse. The killer tied her to her mother's corpse. Face-to-face. She was tied like that for the whole time."

Blood rushes to my head, and I feel faint. The burp comes up, silent but awful. I can feel its taste in my mouth. I put a hand to my forehead.

"Where's Bonnie now?"

"She's at one of the local hospitals, under guard. She's catatonic. Hasn't said a word since they found her."

Silence at that. Callie breaks it.

"There's more, honey-love. Things we need you to hear before we land. Otherwise you are going to be caught flat-footed."

I dread what is coming. I dread it like I dread going to sleep at night. But I grab on to myself, hard, and shake. I hope no one notices. "Go ahead. Hit me with all of it."

"Three things, and I'll just lay them all out, one after the other. First, she left her daughter to you, Smoky. The killer found her will and left it next to the body for us to find. You're named as the guardian. Second, your friend was running a sex site on the Internet that she was personally starring in. Third, the killer's e-mail to the cops included a letter addressed to you."

My mouth hangs open. I feel like I have been beaten. As if, instead of speaking, Callie had grabbed a golf club and whacked me with it. My head is spinning. Through my shock, I register a very selfish emotion, one that shames me, but one I also grab on to with a death grip. It is fear of losing it in front of my team. Of how that will make me look, especially to James. Selfish, yes, but I recognize it for what it is, the tool I can use to get myself under control.

I grapple with the shock and sorrow that are struggling for dominance and manage to push them aside enough to speak. I'm surprised at the sound of my voice when it comes out: flat and steady.

"Let me take this point by point. On the first one, I'll deal with that myself. Let's address the second one. You're saying she was some kind of . . . Internet prostitute?"

A voice pipes up. "No, ma'am, that's not accurate at all."

It's the young kid from Computer Crimes. Mr. Earring. I look at him.

"What's your name?"

"Leo. Leo Carnes. I'm on loan here because of the e-mail, but also because of what your friend did for a living."

I give him a good once-over. He returns my gaze without flinching. He's a good-looking kid, probably twenty-four or twenty-five. Dark hair, calm eyes. "Which was what? You said I wasn't accurate. So explain it to us."

He moves up a few seats nearer to us; invited into the inner circle, he leaps at the opportunity. Everyone wants to belong. "It's kind of a long explanation."

"We have the time. Go ahead."

He nods, a gleam coming to his eye that I recognize as excitement. Computers are his thing, what he is passionate about. "To understand it, you have to understand that pornography on the Internet is an entirely different subculture from pornography in the 'real world.' " He's settling back, relaxing, getting ready to give a lecture on a subject he knows everything about. It's his moment in the spotlight, and I'm happy to let him have it. It gives me time to settle my thoughts and my stomach. And something to think about besides little Bonnie, staring at her dead mother's face for three days.

"Go on."

"Starting in around 1978, you had something called BBSs--Bulletin Board Systems. Actually the full name was Computerized Bulletin Board Systems. These were the first nongovernment, public-accessible networks. If you had a modem and a computer, you could post up messages, do file sharing, and so on. Of course, back then, almost all the users were scientists or supernerds. But the reason this is relevant is that BBSs became a place to post up porn pics. You could share them, trade them, whatever. And at this point, we're not just talking Wild West, we are talking undiscovered country. No oversight, nada. Something important to porn users because--"

James chimes in: "It was free, and it was private."

Leo grins and bobs his head. "Exactly! You didn't have to sneak in the back of some porno shop and brown-bag it. You could lock your bedroom door and download your porno pics without fear of discovery. It was HUGE. So, BBSs were the only public game in town, and they were everywhere, and porn was already everywhere on them.

"BBSs pretty much drop away as the Internet evolves and Web sites start coming out, and browsers, and dot-com names, and all that stuff. BBSs were always basically for posting, with the viewing being done after download. Now you have Web sites, where you can see it as fast as you connect to it. So what happens with porn?" He smiles. "What actually happened is twofold: You had some smart businessmen--I'm talking guys who already had money--who started to develop adult Web sites on the Net. Some were from the audiotext industry--"

"Which is what?" I interrupt.

"Sorry. Phone sex. These guys who were already raking in the dough on phone sex saw the Web and realized its potential for porn. Private, pay-per-view, on-demand whack-off material for the everyday guy. They poured a bunch of money into buying existing pornography. Pics scanned in by the hundreds of thousands and posted up on Web sites. In order to view them, you had to whip out your credit card. And that is where things changed in porn."