at an older basement. It was nothing like the pristine, smoothly formed walls in Paul’s dream basement. The cinderblock wall behind the woman looked dank and wet. There was a stained mattress on the concrete floor. The trash came from fast-food restaurants. Old wires and galvanized pipe hung from the ceiling joists.
Claire turned the sound back on, but low. The woman was whimpering. A man entered the frame. Claire recognized him as the same man from the other movie. Same mask. Same tight leather briefs. He wasn’t hard yet. Instead of a machete, he had an electric cattle prod in his hand. Claire waited until he was about to use it, then she paused the movie.
She sat back in the chair. The man was frozen. His arm was out. The woman was shrinking away. She knew what was coming.
Claire closed the movie. She went back to the files and opened the third one from the top. Same woman. Same set-up. Same man. Claire studied his naked back. She didn’t tell herself why until she confirmed there was no constellation of moles under his left shoulder blade, which meant that the man could not be Paul.
The relief was so overwhelming that she had to close her eyes and just breathe for a few minutes.
Claire opened her eyes. She closed the movie. The file names were in sequences, so she gathered there were ten more files of the woman in various scenes of torture before the death shot. According to their dates, Paul had watched them all the night before he’d died. They were each around five minutes, which meant he’d spent almost an hour watching the vile images.
“No way,” Claire mumbled. She was lucky if Paul lasted more than ten minutes. Was he watching these movies for something other than sexual pleasure?
She scrolled down to the next sequence of files. There were only five in this series. Paul had watched the first one ten days ago, the next was nine days ago, and so on until the night before Paul had died. She clicked open the most recent movie. Another girl. This one even younger. Her long, dark hair covered her face. Claire leaned in closer. The girl was pulling at the restraints. She turned her head to the side. Her hair fell away. Her eyes went wide with fear.
Claire paused the movie. She didn’t want to see the man again.
There was another question she should’ve put on the list: Is this legal?
Obviously, that all depended on whether or not it was real. If the police could arrest you for watching fake gore, every cinema in America would be part of a sting operation.
But what if Paul’s movies were real?
Agents from the FBI didn’t just show up at burglaries for no reason. When Julia first went missing, Helen and Sam had raised hell trying to get the FBI involved, but it was explained to them that by law, a state agency had to request federal help before the feds could review the case. Given that the sheriff thought Julia had run off in a fit of rebellion, there had been no request sent up the chain.
Claire opened the web browser and pulled up the FBI’s home page. She went to the FAQs. She scrolled through questions about all the various crimes the agency investigated until she found what she was looking for.
Computer-related crime: In the national security area, the FBI investigates criminal matters involving the nation’s computerized banking and financial systems. Examples of criminal acts would be using a computer to commit fraud or using the Internet to transmit obscene material.
Claire had no doubt these movies were obscene. Maybe she’d been right about Agent Fred Nolan yesterday. The FBI had tracked the downloaded files to Paul’s computer. Claire had seen a 60 Minutes story where a government whistleblower had said connecting your computer to the Internet was tantamount to jacking yourself directly into the NSA. They probably knew that Paul had looked at the movies.
Which meant that they knew that Claire was looking at them, too.
“Jesus!” The Mac was hardwired to the Internet. She grabbed at the cords plugged into the back of the computer. She yanked on the cables so hard that the monitor twisted around. Thin wires stripped away from the plastic plug, severing the Internet connection. Claire nearly passed out with relief. Her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it in her neck.
Her parole officer had made it clear that he would send her to