“I have nothing to hide from my family. What the hell is this all about, anyway?” He was getting angry and upset now.
“It’s about a kidnapping, sir. We’d like to ask you about the kidnapping last night in Greenport.”
Sheila broke in, despite the angry look from the agent. “I already told them that we were home all last night, Fred, but they won’t listen to me. They won’t go away.”
“Why don’t you just come with us, sir?” The younger one had spoken for the first time, the impatience prominent in his voice. Fred was somehow slightly relieved when he saw the squad car pull up, with the Huntington police, who got out carefully, hands on their holsters, ready for action. As they walked up the driveway, the older agent very slowly and carefully opened the side door and held his gold badge up high, telling the police, “We’re federal agents, Officers. Everything here is under control.” The cops walked in and looked at the badge. One of them walked out and looked at the license plate on the car, then got on his radio. The other one just stood in the kitchen doorway, surveying the scene.
His partner came back after putting the radio down and said to Fred, “They’re legitimate, sir. I’m afraid there’s not much more we can do.” The cops backed out, but sat in their car to watch.
The older agent let out a big sigh, turned to Fred, and said, in a not very friendly voice, “Look, sir, time is precious right now. We are trying to find this girl. Are you coming with us or not?”
“No, not until I find out what the hell you are bothering me about it for. My wife told you we were home all night. I don’t think I’ve been out to the North Fork in twenty years. What is this all about?”
“Fine, sir, if you want to do this in front of your family, that’s up to you. Do you spend a lot of time on your computer, sir?”
“I spend some. I don’t know if it’s ‘a lot.’”
“Do you ever visit chat rooms, sir?”
“Occasionally.” For the first time, Fred’s voice quivered ever so slightly.
“Do you use the screen name ‘Hotdamndaddy’?”
Fred froze at the mention of the name. His knees buckled a little and he thought he was going to faint. He couldn’t speak. He looked at his wife, asking for forgiveness and understanding all in a fast glance. He looked at his daughter, knowing she would have the most trouble with this. She read his eyes and started crying again. “Ohmigod, Daddy, what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything, Pumpkin. It’s all a misunderstanding. Let me go with these gentlemen, and I’ll get it cleared up.”
As they left the house, Fred noticed the television crew just setting up by the curb, the reporter rushing to get her microphone in his face. Instinctively, he put his hands in front of his face, hiding himself, like all the common criminals he’d seen on TV. The reporter stuck the mic out and brusquely asked, “Excuse me, Mr. Miller, do you know anything about the kidnapping of Amanda Leavy?”
He took his hands down for a moment and looked straight at her, not at the camera, as he barely whispered, “No, no, I don’t.” As the agent put his hands on Fred’s head and helped him into the backseat of the sedan, he began to cry, ever so softly, to himself. As they backed out of the driveway, he could see the reporter talking to Sheila on the front steps of his house.
They drove him over to Smithtown, no one talking on the way. As they entered the office, one of them, the younger one, asked him if he wanted a drink of water. “Yes. Please,” he stammered, hardly audible.
The interrogation started: “Where do you work?” “What do you do?” “Do you love your wife?” “Have you ever been arrested?” The agents were relatively polite, but slowly they inched closer to him. The younger one began to stick his face right in front of Fred’s, commanding a hold on his eyes, gripping them like a steel trap. “How often do you look at porn sites?” “Do you own any porn magazines or videotapes?” “Do you like little girls?” The lights and the questioning were beginning to suffocate Fred. He was sweating. He was answering all of their questions truthfully. He hardly ever looked at porn sites; he was normal; he was a good husband and a good father. He hadn’t done anything.
They finally honed in on the few facts they had. “Look, we have retrieved everything off her hard disk. There is a record of where she surfed. She had software that captured her chats. The owners of the site are cooperating fully. They have determined that ‘Hotdamndaddy’ is you. Look at this.” The young one threw some stapled papers at Fred.
He glanced down and looked at the typed transcript, his eye running quickly through the cryptic lines of sexual innuendo. He could feel himself paling, the blood draining from his face as he reached the final damning passage:
SWEETNESS: have u evr bn with a virgin
HOTDAMNDADDY: I’ve had my share... have you ever been with a daddy?
Shortly after typing that question — or was it an offer? — he had grown uncomfortable. He didn’t know why he was there, exchanging sexual suggestions with a stranger. He had quickly logged out of the chat room, discomfited, if a little titillated.
They started in on him again. “So you like little girls? You’ve had your share of virgins?” Up until this point, the older agent could have been an executive at Fred’s company. He had been polite and businesslike. Suddenly, he slammed his hand down on the desk and screamed at Fred, spittle spraying into Fred’s face, “WHERE IS SHE? DID YOU KILL HER? OR IS SHE HIDDEN SOMEWHERE? TELL US NOW, AND WE CAN HELP YOU. IF SHE DIES WHILE YOU’RE JERKING US AROUND, WE’LL PUT A NEEDLE IN YOUR ARM FOR SURE!”
He told his story again. “Look, my brother-in-law was over for the holidays. He’s single. He’s only twenty-six. He must have used my computer to visit some of those sites. He asked me if he could check his e-mail and of course I let him, but I didn’t watch him. After that I started to get all these junk e-mails, enticing come-ons: triple X, enhance your size, adult pictures, teenage pictures, all nude... all kinds of this crap. I deleted most of them, most of the time, but every now and then I clicked on one. I went to a few of the sites, but never for very long and never for very deep. I never paid a penny. I’d only see the tamer stuff that they show for free. But I did see nude pictures. I did see what looked like teenage girls. I felt guilty, thought of my own daughters. Then one day, for some reason, I guess I was bored, I did click on a chat-room button. I slid right into this joking that you see, back and forth, a few times. I don’t know how it happened. I can’t explain it. It only lasted a few minutes and I caught myself and logged off. I never even looked at that kind of site again after that. I was disgusted with myself. I didn’t know who ‘Sweetness’ was. She could have been an old woman in Sweden for all I knew. Or a fag pretending to be a young girl. I know all those things happen and I felt so foolish. I made a mistake. And I’m sorry. But it’s not what you think. I’m not a pervert. I had nothing to do with this poor girl’s disappearance.”
It went on like this all evening, throughout the night, and into the next morning. He was exhausted, tired, hungry. His spirit was broken. Each telling he’d get harder and harder on himself, feeling worse and worse for his indiscretion, beginning to believe that he was a pervert, that he did do something to hurt this girl. He cried, out loud now, visibly sobbing. He banged his head against the table as he blurted, “What do you want me to confess to, for God’s sake?”
Just then, the older agent was called outside, and he stayed outside for a good five minutes. The younger one lit up a cigarette, blew smoke into Fred’s face. When his partner came back in, he was a changed man. He looked defeated. He walked over to Fred and said, “You can go home now.”