Fred Limberg - First Murder

The smile was back. Ray and Carol turned to look over the seat, amused looks on both of their faces.

“Why?” Tony asked.

“Guy’s an asshole,” Kumpula replied. “I hope it fried the servers.”

“But you got the episodes?”

“I got ’em.” He pulled a CD case from his pocket. “ Ur MoM is so Hott , episodes 1 thru 6 and the bonus tracks. I left him with a lovely parting gift.”

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“He’ll find out when they fix his power and he has to do a hard boot on the system. Sorry, Carol.”

“For what?”

“You won’t be getting any more dirty movies from Darcy DuPree. The little computer worm I left in his system is going to eat them all up. Damn viruses.”

They all got a good laugh and kept it going for most of the ride back to the Cities, but in the back of his mind Tony was afraid of what they might, or might not see on the dirty movies they had in hand.

Six hours. That’s how long the four of them had spent together in the car. Ray made sure they used the return trip productively. He guided and suggested and cajoled them while they discussed the case. They revisited the Fredrickson’s kitchen with Deanna’s sprawled bloody and lifeless body on the floor. They talked about the ‘Go Girls’-their looks, their attitudes, and their personalities.

And they talked at length about Sean Stuckey. It was Tony who pointed out that for all the conjecture about Stuckey they had very little face time with the guy. They touched on the husband and son and on the roommates, again deciding they had nothing to do with the murder.

No amount of pleading could induce Kumpula to reveal what he had traded to DuPree for the ‘ Ur MoM’ episodes.

The four of them were brain weary and talked out when they arrived back at headquarters. Kumpula vanished. Carol led Ray and Tony to the Sex Crime Unit’s computer lab. There were various stations set up cabled to a tall stack of servers, linked powerful computers they used to track pedophiles across the World Wide Web. She steered them to a side desk. A lonely desktop computer with an oversized monitor sat waiting, unattached to the system.

“Meet Sol,” she said as she powered the computer up.

“Sol?”

“Short for ‘solitary’. What Kump did to DuPree, planting the bug…you wouldn’t believe some of the shit out there.” She gestured toward the stack of servers. “We learned the hard way. Anything that might be infected goes through Sol first.” The monitor flickered to life.

“So if it’s a system crasher it just nukes the one PC?” Tony nodded thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have thought of that but it makes sense.”

“Sol gets a lot of attention. This is Sol 22 by the way. Twenty one others have given their lives in the line of service. One thing we do is capture cookies and source codes for viruses on old Solly here. Then the geeks can protect the servers when we apply power to a problem.” Carol inserted the disc while Ray and Tony dragged extra chairs over.

“Are you pissed that Kumpula fried your snitch’s computers?”

“Not really. He’s probably got a backup data dump off site or in the cloud.” Carol shrugged. “It’ll take him a while to get back in business, though. Ready for the show?” Tony and Ray both grimaced. Neither of them was looking forward to it.

Episode 1 came to life. As advertised, the lone camera was hidden, or was positioned to suggest that it was, and there were no stage lights used. It looked like a poorly done home video. A young man, not Sean Stuckey, led an obviously drunk woman who could have been in her late thirties or early forties to a sofa and began kissing and fondling her. The camera man, or boy, could be heard talking, whispering urgently to someone off screen. Amateur hour.

“I think we can fast forward through this one,” Ray said dryly.

Carol looked over her shoulder at him. “Your boy might make a cameo appearance.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Ray was right, it didn’t matter. The woman wasn’t one of the ‘Go Girls’.

Episode 2 was very similar in some respects. More room lights had been added and turned on. A different young man urged yet another, older woman; this one could have been fifty, to the sofa. This woman wasn’t drunk. She was excited and eager and pawed at his clothes even before they fell to the couch. She dug at his pants. Tony thought she looked disappointed when she pulled a normal sized penis out of his trousers.

“Next!” Ray announced just as the woman’s head began lowering to the victim’s lap.

“Two down, four to go.” Tony was embarrassed and trying to joke his way out of it.

By Episode 3 the nasty little-boy producers had almost gotten their act together, Tony thought. There were more lamps, but still not enough and not positioned well. Episode 3 had a title screen. Ur MoM is so Hott ! It also had a star.

Sean Stuckey entered the screen with his arm around the ample waist of one of the ugliest women Tony had ever seen in his life.

“Wow,” Carol said. “Where did they find her?”

“Don’t do it, Sean,” Tony said to the monitor. “Where’s your pride, man?”

“Maybe she’ll turn into a frog.”

“It’d be an improvement.”

Tony and Carol were laughing, pointing at the video image of Stuckey kissing the woman. They could tell he was working hard at trying to look like he was having fun. The ugly woman looked like she was in heaven.

“Look at those warts.”

“Look at those teeth!”

“Next!” Ray commanded. “Next! Next! Next!” He got up from his chair and walked a few steps away. Tony and Carol were laughing out loud.

“Look at his face.” The hag was on her knees digging furiously at Stuckey’s zipper. When she pulled him free she screamed, loud enough to nudge Ray to look back over at the monitor. Stuckey was staring at the ceiling. His face was contorted in pain and disgust, his great member limp and flaccid. It didn’t faze the woman. She inhaled it, determined to bring it to life. Carol thankfully hit the off button.

“Now that was one hot momma.”

Even Ray laughed. They unanimously decided to take a break. Carol bolted for the nearest exit to have a smoke while Ray and Tony searched for a coffee pot.

“That was disgusting.” Ray sipped the oily brew they had found. It was disgusting too. One sip was enough.

“We probably shouldn’t laugh.” Tony still had a smile, actually more of a smirk, on his face. He knew Ray wanted to stick to business, get through the rest of the episodes, go home and take a shower.

“In my day we’d call that gal a coyote.” Ray had a serious look on his face, but his eyes were bright and lively. Tony motioned for him to continue.

“See, you got your one-baggers, your two-baggers, and your coyotes. A one-bagger is a gal so ugly you put a bag over her face, right?” Tony smiled, nodding.

“And your two-baggers? They so ugly you put a bag on your own head in case theirs falls off. You heard this one?” Tony shook his head no. He’d heard it but he was having a fine time watching his new partner tell the joke.

“And then you got coyote ugly…a gal so ugly you’d gnaw your arm off at the shoulder rather than risk wakin’ her up the next morning.”

Both of them were laughing at the punch line when Carol returned. “What’d I miss?”

Back to work.

Episode 4 again starred Sean Stuckey. The young pornographers had obviously gotten some advice by the time they taped this episode, Tony noticed immediately. There was bright studio lighting and an animated title page. The woman was definitely a pro, store-bought top heavy, garishly made up and bored looking. Any pretense of luring a desperate housewife into wild sex was abandoned beyond a half-dozen lame lines of conversation. Episode 5 was the same. It was a different woman but so similar in appearance and mannerism Tony wondered aloud if there was a porn hooker training camp somewhere.