Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

I am not blind to the differences between men and women, but I have seen the truths: The capacity for violence is there in all of us, and there’s a world of difference between the flawed and the evil.

It’s this knowledge that let me keep doing what I do after Sands’s assault. I was worried that I’d be driven by rage, or a desire for revenge, and that these would cloud my judgment. I was relieved to find that I was driven instead by my desire to save the flawed and not by a need to destroy the evil. It’s a small thing to say, but the difference inside your heart is immeasurable.

“Let’s take a look at the chat,” I say.

“Which one?” Leo asks.

“Bitch Chat. I imagine that’s where he found Douglas Hollister. Douglas doesn’t strike me as the philosophical kind.”

Leo clicks on the menu option and the chat loads into the browser. A long list of names appears.

“Pretty active place,” Alan says.

Callie leans forward. “Look at the names. USAWomenSuck. Single4life. NotYrBalls. I continue to see a theme.”

“Some chats require a log-in to observe the conversation. This one doesn’t, so you can watch without participating,” Leo explains.

I read the back-and-forths, fascinated at this subculture of aggrieved man-boys.

Marriage is just another form of prostitution.

You got that right. My wife actually had a system. If I worked on the honey-do list, fucking was an option. If I completed it, sucking was an option. If I sat and watched the game, nothing was an option.

What did you have to do to get her to swallow?

Find another woman!

LOL!

“Charming,” I observe.

The dialogue continues elsewhere.

Thing is, I still hope sometimes to find a decent woman I could spend my life with. Does that mean I’m a pussy?

Various responses fly:

Yes!

Pussy!

Not really. We all hope for that to some degree. If we say otherwise, we’re lying. But the odds of you finding an American woman who’s not a cunt-on-wheels is pretty slim. You should look outside the U.S. if and when you’re ready.

Mail-order bride? I don’t know.

Russian women, Romanian women, Thai women. All of them know how to treat a man. And they’re all looking for American husbands. Supply and demand goes the other way, in those places.

This is just one of three or four conversations going on in the chat.

“Why are some of them silent?” I ask Leo. “I see some names that are just sitting there, not typing anything.”

“They’re probably PM’ing—private messaging. One of them can double-click the name of another, and a separate chat window will open up. Then they chat privately. No one else can read the conversation.”

I scan the names and their activity. “Quite a few of those, I guess.”

“The really personal stuff generally takes place in PMs. Anything you say here can be read by anyone.” He sweeps a hand to indicate all of us. “Including law enforcement. In sex-based chat rooms, for example, you rarely see anything steamy going on out in the open. People come in to the primary chat to flirt; they use PMs to … you know.”

“The word you are searching for is fuck , honey-love,” Callie purrs, teasing him.

“Right,” he says, blushing a little. “Point being, the same applies here. If someone isn’t comfortable talking about something out in the open, they’ll ask for a PM.”

“You talked about ’bots,” I say. “You said they could be programmed to respond to a private message.”

“A canned response, sure.”

“Then why don’t we just go down the line of names there and start clicking? We should be able to tell who the ’bot is, if there is one, right?”

“If I were him, I wouldn’t have set up a canned response for just that reason. He’d assume someone like me could figure it out.”

I frown. “Won’t a lack of response raise a red flag too?”

“Not really. It’s fairly accepted that if someone doesn’t reply to your PM, they’re either not interested in talking to you or they’re already busy.”

“So much for easy,” Alan says. “If we want to find him through the Net, we’re going to have to develop a real cover for this one. The whole enchilada.”

“What’s that mean, exactly?” Leo asks.

“One of us is going to have to make himself an enticing target for our perp,” Alan explains. “That means developing a full identity that will stand up to scrutiny. It means coming up with a name, backed by verifiable information, and a cell phone that he can call and that’s traceable to that identity. So on.”

“It means having an address that matches the identity,” Callie chimes in. “In case he has some way of tracing the Internet provider you’re using. Mostly,” she says, “it means a lot of research. Reading all the ‘manifestos’ of the very lovely men from this website, wading through hundreds of forum postings. Et cetera and on.”

“I get the house and cell phone, but I don’t really see the need for research. Things seem pretty straightforward here.” Leo smiles. “Just put on my wife-beater, drink some beer, and say ‘bitch’ every now and then, right?”

“Wrong,” I tell him. “What you’re talking about is a stereotype, and it’s a common and sometimes deadly mistake in undercover work. A stereotype is a two-dimensional view. You need to exist, when you adopt an identity, in three dimensions.”

“For example,” Callie supplies, “you are a computer nerd, yes?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, then, all I need to do is put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, grow some pimples, and know the difference between an IP number and a DNS server, right?”

“Okay. I get it.”

“Who do you want doing this?” Alan asks me.

“You and Leo. It needs to be men doing it. I might miss something unconsciously as a woman. I want you as a backup. Leo’s too inexperienced. No offense, Leo.”

“No, you’re right. I’ll feel better if Alan’s there.”

“Shit,” Alan grumbles. “But that means I’ll be stuck.”

“Why?” Leo asks.

“He might have seen my face at the wedding, when he dumped Heather Hollister. If he’s watching the house, and he sees me, the jig’s up. Which means you’ll be doing all the shopping, roomie.”

“Wait,” Leo says, “are you saying I’ll have to live there? Full time?”

“Of course.”

“But how do I explain that to my girlfriend?”

“You lie.”

“Lie?”

Callie pats him on the top of the head. “Ah, I was once young and naïve too. Yes, honey-love, you’re going to lie. Tell her something exciting. You’re being whisked away on a top-secret mission; you might not come home alive. That’ll cover you and perhaps get you some hot good-bye sex too.” She winks. “Women love secret agents.”

“Fuck,” he mutters.

Alan claps him on the shoulder. “Think of it as an adventure.”

Leo nods glumly. “What do you want me to do about the other stuff?” he asks me. “Liaison with CCU and the past cases?”

“Those go on hold for now. You said the LAPD CCU was competent enough.”

“Okay.” He sighs, resigned to his fate.

“Division of duty,” I say. “James, you stay on the job of getting those files to Earl Cooper.”

“He’ll have everything by end of day.”

“Good. Callie, I want you to do all the legwork of setting up the identity and location. You know who to liaise with. I’d like to have things in place by tomorrow.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult. It doesn’t have to be fancy. We can have him work from home, so we won’t have to contend with building a workplace cover. I’ll have to find him an ex-wife. That might take a little longer.”