Cody McFadyen - The Face of Death

"Okay, we get the idea," Alan says, looking distressed.

"Sorry. All of that, however, seemed to have been for personal consumption. It supports what we already know: Mr. Vargas was an unpleasant individual. His e-mail wasn't revelatory either. The video clip, however, was."

"Video? Of what?" I ask.

She indicates her monitor. "Crowd around and I'll show you."

We form a semicircle. The media player has already been invoked.

"Ready?" she asks.

"Go ahead," I reply.

She hits play. A moment of blackness. An ugly rug comes into view.

"I recognize that," I murmur. "The carpet in Vargas's apartment."

The camera jitters and the shot moves up, rolling around like a drunk as the camera is wrestled onto a tripod. It settles down to autofocus on the same sad bed, the one I'd found Vargas and the girl dead on. A nude girl clambers onto the mattress. She's too young, only just pubescent. She takes a moment to arrange herself. Gets on her hands and knees. Her wrists are in handcuffs.

"That's the girl from last night," I say.

A voice outside the shot murmurs something. I can't make out the words, but she turns her head up and looks right into the camera lens. Her living face is placid, almost docile. It's not all that different from her dead face. She has beautiful blue eyes, but they're as hollow as a drum. Full of nothing.

Jose Vargas comes into view. He's dressed, wearing blue jeans and a dirty white T-shirt. He looks his age. His back is slightly stooped. He's unshaven. His face is tired, but his eyes, they're bright. He's looking forward to whatever it is he's about to do.

"Is that a switch in his hand?" Alan asks.

"Yes it is," Callie replies.

The switch is a thin branch that's been stripped from a tree. I can see a hint of its green core at one end. Vargas has prepared for corporal punishment the old-fashioned way. He moves behind the girl. Leans forward, seems to be checking the camera. Nods to himself. He gives the girl a critical eye.

"Ass higher in the air, fucking puta ," he barks. The girl hardly blinks. She wiggles a little, forcing her posterior higher.

"That's better." Checks the room again, the camera, again. "That's good." A last nod to himself and Vargas gives the camera his full attention. He smiles and it's an ugly smile, full of brown teeth or the spaces where teeth should be.

"Man needs a dentist," Alan mutters.

"So, Mr. You Know Who," Vargas begins. "Hello. Buenos dias . It's your old friend, Jose." Vargas gestures at the girl. "Some things, I guess, never change." He spreads his hands to indicate the room. Shrugs. "Other things, they change a lot. Money is not so good these days. All that time in prison, it left me with not many--what do they say?-- job skills ." Another gap-toothed smile. "But I have skills, yes? You know this. I remember them, the things you taught me when I was younger, in those times that were better. I'll show you how much I remember. Yes?"

Vargas holds up the switch. Smiles.

"Teach the property. But never leave marks that make the property less valuable. Jose remembers."

Vargas pulls his arm back. His mouth falls open. It's almost cavernous. An indescribably hungry look comes over him. I doubt he's aware of it. The switch pauses at the top of the arc, trembles in his excited hand, and then comes whistling down. The impact on her feet is barely audible, but the girl's response is extreme. Her eyes bug out, her mouth opens in a wide O. A moment later, silent tears begin to fall. She clenches her teeth, trying to ride the pain.

"Say the words, puta !" Vargas barks.

"Y-you are the God," the girl stammers. "So I t-thank you the God."

"Accent sounds Russian," James notes.

Vargas comes down with the switch again. His eyes are brighter, his mouth wider. He drools a little. Madness.

This time, the girl arches her whole body, and cries out.

"The words!" Vargas shouts, grinning now.

It goes on like this a few more times. When it's over, Vargas is panting and sweating and his eyes are fluttering. I can see a bulge in his jeans. The girl sobs openly.

Vargas stumbles a little, seems to remember his original purpose. He brushes a lock of greasy hair from his eyes, gives the camera another sly and dirty smile.

"You see? I remember everything ." The girl sobs louder. "Shut up, fucking puta !" Vargas snarls at her, incensed by the interruption. She puts her hands to her mouth to stifle the noise.

"I think, Mr. You Know Who, that you will give Jose money for what he remembers." Another grotesque smile. "You go now, watch this again. I know you will, anyway, yes? Jose remembers that about you. You enjoy these things. You watch this again and you think about what you are going to say to Jose when you talk to him. Adios. "

Vargas glances at the sobbing girl, rubs his crotch, and smiles at the camera.

Blackness.

"Wow," I say. I feel ill.

"Mr. You Know Who. That's original. So we have Vargas blackmailing someone who's familiar with this whole practice of caning feet," Alan says.

"Behavior modification," James opines. "Torture combined with forced, repetitive usage of a degrading phrase that admits subservience."

"Beats the feet so as not to mark up other parts of the body and reduce value," Alan adds.

"It continues to fit," I say. "The Stranger has the same marks. That's no coincidence. Vargas's attempt at blackmail confirms the involvement of others and it points toward the sexual abuse, as well."

"You know," Alan says, shaking his head, "if he'd stuck with Vargas and his kind, I might not have much of a problem with our perp." His face is grim. "Man that would do that to a child? That's a man that deserves to die."

No one argues this point.

"I did a thorough search of his hard drive," Callie says. "I was hopeful. Vargas encoded the video for some reason, I thought he might have uploaded it to a server somewhere or the like." She shakes her head. "No such luck. I suppose he encoded it and then he burned it to disc and sent it to whomever he was blackmailing."

"This seems to lead back to the human-trafficking angle," I say.

"Barry says that was handled at our level. Here in California, actually. It's a key point of follow-up." I rub my face, move back to the front of the office. "Okay, what else?"

"Key change in his behavior," James says. "When he murdered the Langstroms, he took steps to conceal himself. Now he's stepped out into the open. Why?"

"All kinds of reasons that could be," Alan rumbles. "Maybe he's sick, dying, running out of time. Maybe it's taken him a while to figure out the identities of the guys he thinks need killing. The interesting confluence is that it's all happening at the same time that Vargas is getting his blackmail scheme going. Looks like some things that were buried dug themselves up."

"It points to an endgame," I say. "He knows that we'll be after him. Hell, he's invited it. He sees things coming to a conclusion."

"So where do we go from here, honey-love?"

I consider this question. We have many different directions we could go in. Which are the most likely to bear fruit?

"Time to divide and conquer. Alan, I want you to take the Langstroms. Gather up all the information you can get on them, their deaths, their background. No stone unturned. Find out who the grandfather is. If my hunch is right, he's important. Call Barry if you need someone to run local interference."

"Got it."

"James, I want you to work on two things. I want a VICAP search on the murders of our poet and philosophy student. Let's see if we can find out who they were."

VICAP stands for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Its purpose is to create a collated database of violent crimes that allows for a nationwide cross-referencing of violent acts.