in the homicide. Nelson and the state’s attorney’s office negotiated the various clauses for several hours. It did not matter that Rhea might be dying or that Glover was getting away, possibly planning yet another murder. The law had its own pace.
By the time they sat back down to talk to Swenson, it was dark outside. They’d raided the snack machine and O’Donnell’s cache of nuts. O’Donnell was jittery with sugar and coffee, while a dull headache and nausea indicated her body wasn’t happy with the abuse.
This time, she had an earphone so that Zoe could provide her own input from the other room.
“When did you first meet Rod Glover?” O’Donnell asked.
“I knew him as Daniel Moore,” Swenson said. “He joined our community almost ten years ago. I don’t know the exact date. But one afternoon we started talking about baseball. Daniel surprised me because he was a fan of the White Sox, like me. Most of the guys in the church were Cubs fans.”
“Glover never gave a shit about baseball,” Zoe said in O’Donnell’s ear. “He just gave Swenson what he wanted to hear.”
“We went to a game together. He seemed like a good guy. Fun to be with. He didn’t give any weird vibes or anything, and I’m a good judge of character.” Swenson’s tone was defensive.
“Yeah, okay,” O’Donnell said impatiently. “But your friendship didn’t just focus on baseball, did it?”
“No. We talked about our jobs. About women. I went through an ugly divorce and told him about it. He liked talking about porn.”
“What kind of porn?”
“He never got into specifics, and it was all in a sort of cheerful half-kidding sort of manner, you know? But he was interested in stuff that wasn’t the usual internet vanilla.”
“Was there a reason he talked to you about it?”
“I . . . I don’t know. It must have come up somehow.” Swenson seemed confused, as if now that he talked about it, he couldn’t fathom how things had taken that turn. “Anyway, we were just joking around. Except a couple of years later, I met a few people online, on the dark web. They were starting a sort of marketplace for porn.”
“Why would they need to go to the dark web for that?” O’Donnell asked, already knowing the answer.
Swenson glanced at Nelson, who nodded at him. This was covered by the deal. They wouldn’t be able to charge him with that. “They sold illegal porn. Underage girls, fake snuff, bestiality, some really rough BDSM. People pay a lot of money for that shit. Not me. I’m a vanilla sort of guy.”
“So you told Glover about it?”
“I mean, I was sorta joking, you know? We were drinking, and I told him I knew of a place where he could finally find anything for his weirdo fetishes. It’s the kind of thing we’d say to each other.”
“So you led him to the marketplace?”
“I first had to teach him all about Tor and bitcoin. He didn’t know anything about it. He was kind of a dinosaur when it came to technology, which I always thought was weird because he worked in tech support. Anyway, he was really into it, so I showed him around a bit. Not just the porn stuff. Like, he told me he had a problem with his passport, that they always gave him a hard time when he went to Canada, so I showed him a place where he could get fake papers. I never used those services, but I knew about them.”
“That’s how he solidified his fake identity,” Zoe said.
“What did he check out in the porn marketplace?” O’Donnell asked.
“I have no idea. It’s not something we talked about, okay? Like, I asked him once, and he just told me he was into videos of my mom. That was the kind of conversations we had.”
“What happened then?”
“Nothing. We kept drinking together, occasionally going to a game.”
“Ask him why there are hardly any photos of him talking to Glover in church,” Zoe said.
“What about church?” O’Donnell asked. “Did you talk there? Sit next to each other?”
Swenson shifted uncomfortably. “We both kind of avoided each other in church. Daniel wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted around when listening to a sermon about God, you know?”
“So when did you notice Glover had a special interest in Catherine Lamb?”
“Never. I had no idea. Look, that’s all I know about that guy, okay? A couple of months ago he disappeared. I called him a few times, he didn’t answer, and I left