“You can make this hard, or you can make this easy,” she said.
“Easy sounds better,” he said.
“Tell me where you stored the Cassandra videos.”
“They were on a cell phone that I purchased, but they were erased.”
“You’re saying you don’t have them.”
“If you don’t believe me, you can check. My laptop is in my study. The password is ‘jimmybuffett,’ all lowercase. My cell phone is on the balcony on the floor. The second cell phone that had the Cassandra videos is next to it.”
“Why do you own two cell phones?”
“I’m working a job. I bought the second one using a false identity so I could look at data that a guy had stored on it.”
“That’s against the law.”
“I think I knew that.”
She retrieved the laptop and placed it on the dining room table so he could watch her look through it. “What am I going to find on here?” she asked.
“Mostly bootleg concert videos of Jimmy Buffett that I shot on my cell phone,” he said. “There’s also a video of me fishing with a buddy of mine.”
“No kiddie porn?”
“No, ma’am. Would you like me to explain what’s going on, or do you prefer stumbling around in the dark?”
She shot him a pair of daggers. “Watch your mouth.”
“Just trying to help.”
She took her time reviewing the videos stored on his laptop. Finding nothing illegal, she went onto the balcony and got the two cell phones, and reviewed their contents while he watched. It was an old interrogation trick. She was hoping he would twitch when she got close to finding what she was looking for. When the cell phones turned up empty, she marched into his bedroom and began pulling open drawers and dumping their contents onto the floor.
“There’s nothing to find,” he called out to her.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she replied.
She returned to the dining room and opened the drawers on the china cabinet he’d taken from his parents’ house after they’d passed away. Each item she pulled out of the cabinet was given a cursory examination before being placed aside. His grandmother’s porcelain serving ladle slipped out of her grasp and shattered on the floor.
“Are you trying to provoke me?” he asked. “Because if you are, it won’t work.”
She did not apologize for the breakage. She was filled with hostility, her rage simmering just below the surface, and he imagined her in the trunk of the Hanover killers’ car, facing certain death. It was the kind of experience that most people never got over.
“You’re wasting your time,” he said. “I don’t have any kiddie porn. I’m a private investigator on a job.”
“Keep talking, and I’ll put a gag in your mouth.”
The kitchen was next. He craned his neck and watched her pull out the silverware drawer and turn it upside down. Then she attacked the cabinet stocked with canned goods. She was going to wreck the place if he didn’t stop her.
“You’re the girl in the Cassandra videos, aren’t you?” he said.
The commotion came to a halt. She returned to the dining room and stood in front of his chair. The blood had drained from her face, her cheeks white.
“What did you just say?” she said.
“You’re Cassandra,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. I just figured it out. The FBI decided to create the Cassandra videos and posted them on the internet to draw out sexual predators. It was a clever idea, except for one thing. You couldn’t use a real underage girl to make the videos without breaking the law, so you volunteered, and a company of video magicians age-regressed your face and body and Cassandra was born.”
Daniels looked like she wanted to strangle him. She had spent a lot of the FBI’s money creating the Cassandra videos and hadn’t expected anyone to figure out the deception. He rattled his handcuffs and she glared at him.
“Are you going to let me go? I can help you.”
“Not until I finish searching your place.”
“What are you expecting to find?”
“Evidence. I’m not buying your story. You’re a pedophile, and pedophiles keep libraries. Once I find your library of videos and images, I’m going to arrest you, and throw your sorry ass in jail.”
“You’re wrong. I’m working a case and found the Cassandra videos stored on a guy’s cell phone.”
“And then you erased them.”
“I didn’t erase them. The guy did. He found out what I’d done, so he used a computer to go to his account and erase the videos.”
“Your story sounds like bullshit. Sit tight. I won’t be long.”
He was growing angry. He hadn’t done anything wrong, yet she refused to hear him out. It was time to show his hand. “What if I told you that I was working a job for your sister and brother-in-law, and that it led me to you?”
“Nice try. My sister lives on the other side of the world with her family.”
She finished wrecking his kitchen and then moved to his study. The wall in the study was covered with framed photographs of him as a SEAL and as a detective, and he wondered if she noticed them or cared that he’d once been a cop.
She came out of his study looking pissed. Her eyes canvassed the dining room, and fell upon the hall clothes closet. It was the one place she hadn’t checked, and she marched over to it and yanked open the flimsy door. On the top shelf was a cardboard box containing his collection of bootleg recordings of the Jimmy Buffett concerts he’d attended. She pulled the box down and started to rummage through it. Finding the CDs, she grabbed a handful and waved them in the air.
“Gotcha,” she said.
Chapter 27
Sisters
Daniels placed him under arrest and read him his rights. When he asked her to play the CDs on his laptop, she tuned him out. It was a classic case of tunnel vision. She thought he was a pervert, and nothing he said was going to change her mind.
She got a knife from the kitchen and cut him free from the chair. With his wrists still handcuffed behind his back, he stood up. One of his legs had gone to sleep, and he shook it awake. She took it as a hostile action and drew her gun and aimed it at him.
“Don’t do that again,” she said.
“You think I’m going to jump you?” he said.
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“But I’m handcuffed.”
“Trapped animals will try anything.”
“Am I an animal?”
“You most certainly are.”
The breath caught in his throat. Daniels wanted to shoot him. She had decided he was a monster and was looking for a reason to pump a bullet through his heart. If he made another sudden move that she deemed a threat, his life was over.
“I’m not a monster. Call Melanie. She’ll tell you.”
“Melanie?” she said, not understanding.
“Yes, Melanie Pearl, your sister. Call her.”
“I don’t have her number.”
“How can you not have your sister’s number?”
“My sister lives in Dubai. We haven’t spoken in years,” she said.
Daniels didn’t know that her sister had returned to the United States and was living in Fort Lauderdale. He was not going to pass judgment on her about this. He had a brother he hadn’t spoken to in years, so he knew how torturous family relations could be.
“I hate to be the messenger, but your sister and her family left Dubai three months ago and resettled in Fort Lauderdale,” he said. “Your brother-in-law now runs the neurology department of a local hospital. They’re my clients. I was looking through your niece Nicki’s laptop computer and saw a photograph of you wearing an FBI windbreaker. That’s why I contacted you.”