Survivor: 1 (39 page)

No, family members don't have their own keys to the
cabin. Everybody we spoke to denied using the cabin that
weekend. Some of them had used it before, of course, but-

Billy had leaped on that statement. Like when? Who?

And that's when the detective had come back with
one of those revelations that in thrillers always brings a
chill to the audience. It brought a chill to Billy when he
first heard it, and it gave him a chill now just thinking
about it.

One of the board members, guy named LanyAllen, said
he had a copy of the key made for a buddy of his a krv
years ago, but his Mend hadn't been at the cabin either. In
fact, the board had been meaning to have renovations
done to the place and Lany had mentioned it to this guy.
His buddy said he d take care of it for him, he knew a general contractor who would do the work, and he set it uµ
14 sent another team of detectives to question this friend
of Mr. Allen s and he checked out too. And... well, this is
where it gets weird His story really does check out 'cause
he was with the California Highway Ftinul in Ventura
County pretty much the entire weekend your client went
missing. You air t gonna believe this-

Who the fuck is it?William had hissed.

It's Brad Miller s father. Hunk Miller.

That was what had sent William Grecko over the edge.

Now William sat in his office drinking Bacardi 151 and
thinking about what he was going to tell Brad.

I've known Frank Miller for ten, fifteen years, he thought.
This has to be some kind of weird coincidence. I saw the
guy that weekend. He looked like he was a wreck. He was
going through the same amount of anguish and grief as
Joan and Brad were. He was elated when we found Lisa.
And he's going completely batfuck now at home, waiting
for word of the whereabouts of his daughter-in-law.

Or was he?

William had been trying to play connect-the-dots with
this for the past hour now. The alcohol had helped unlock a lot of the barriers he normally wouldn't have been
able to get past. He wondered if the alcohol was what
was now making him paranoid.

It was perfectly logical that Frank Miller and Larry Allen
would know each other. Larry was an executive at Fidelity, while Frank was an executive at a competing firm.
'They'd both been with their respective firms for twenty
years, so it was only natural for their-paths to cross, being
that they both worked in the financial industry. 'Iheyd
probably met at a business function, became friends. No
problem. Larry Allen was also a Christian, and by virtue of
his stock in Golgotha, one would think he'd be of the
squeaky-clean type. No alcohol, no drugs, and surely no
pornography, not even of the Playboy variety. Although
that image surely didn't provide guarantees. Lots of religious guys were closet freaks. Rank Miller was no heathen, but then he wasn't a terribly devout religious man
either. So where was the bond formed? The golf course?
The country club? Fbrhaps. It made sense.

William had formulated the relationship in his mind
over sips of 151, trying to make the connections. And the
connections he made weren't pretty.

Suppose they became pretty good friends. Maybe lorry
tried to convert fhaak at one point but Rank passed 1 can
buy that. But suppose there was still something they built
their friendship on. Maybe Larry told Rank about the Golgotha retreat and it intrigued Flunk enough that Zany had
a key made. ?told Flank that if he and his wik ever wanted
to use the cabin, he could. And Flank took the key. There's
no evidence that suggests he used it... 1W get to that
later. But suppose ... just suppose that Flank later
palmed the key to somebody else who used it for the snuff
film?

William shook his head. That wouldn't have worked.
Frank had been a nervous wreck that weekend. He was a
nervous wreck now. Billy had seen him, spoken to him.
Joan was flying off the wall and Frank was ...

Strangely silent.

William took another sip of rum. Admittedly, he'd never
seen Frank upset or emotional before this mess started.
And he knew from experience that people handled
stress and traumatic experiences differently. Some people, like Joan Miller, wore their hearts on their sleeves.
Others, like Frank, kept their emotions dose to the bone.
That's what he'd figured was going on when Lisa Miller
first turned up missing. Frank was trying to be the rock
for his family, was holding his emotions in. And he was
doing that now not saying much, being quiet, but still visibly shaken. But then ... suppose he was shaken because he was nervous?

William didn't want to consider that. It was absurd.
Completely against the character of the man he knew.
Frank Miller was a good guy. He was successful, he had a
good family, and Billy had never known Rank to be even
a purveyor of mild SEEM pornography. There was no way
that Rank would have commissioned a snuff film. And
for what purpose?

What did William Grecko know about snuff films, anyway? Not much. Like most people who worked along the
fringes of law enforcement, he was of the opinion that
they were urban legends. In all his time as a criminal defense attorney, he knew of no case in which a snuff film
had been found. There had been a case ten years ago in
Anaheim in which a furniture maker had been convicted
of murdering two prostitutes; it had been suggested they
had been slaughtered for the purpose of producing such
a film. However, no snuff film ever surfaced during the investigation. From what William remembered about the
case, the killer had lured the two women out to the
desert where he had stashed video-camera equipment
and various items of torture. Their bodies had been
found a few months later, scattered across the desert. A
pair of undercover female detectives, who had been
hoping to bust the man in an undercover sting, had testified that the suspect told them numerous times that he'd
wanted to produce a snuff film to sell to the underground extreme hardcore market.

The underground extreme hardcore market. The very
name conjured images of black leather and whips, people tied to chains in basements or empty warehouses,
strung up by their wrists as they were flogged or burned
with cigarettes or cut with knives or razor blades. Brad
had told him that the people who were into this stuff took
their S&M fetish way beyond the extreme into bizarre torture and mutilation, near death. William knew that there
were people into auto-asphyxiation, where they achieved
orgasm at a near-death state. What he found hard to grasp
was the inflicting of extreme pain and torture for sexual
gratification.

Well, didn't serial killers get their kick from killing?
Wasn't it all a power trip for them? Isn't that what rape was about? It wasn't so much about sex-that was a part
of it, but it wasn't the primary focus. Rape was the fantasy
of the perpetrator who sought to achieve a feeling of
power over his victims. Taken to the extreme, wouldn't it
be safe to guess that one who got their jollies watching
somebody being raped was a rapist by proxy? And
weren't snuff films nothing more than rape films in which
the victim was later killed?

William drained the bottle. He set it down on the desk
with a clink and sighed. There was no way that Frank
Miller was involved in snuff films. The man had a good
life; he had a loving wife, a successful child. He had a
great job. He wasn't like those assholes William defended
in court, those sexual psychopaths who-

Stop it! he thought. You were going to equate Frank with
the dichEd image that the public has of a rapist, the seedylooking guy with the stubbled chin, the low-wage common
day laborer, the animal who can't control his sexual urges.
Tat's bullshit. fbu know that a lot of these perpetrators
look like the guy next door: Hell, you just defended a kid a
few months ago who was accused of raping his neighbor.
The defendant in question was a nineteen-year-old student at Fullerton College who had broken into his neighbor's home and raped the thirty-eight-year-old victim
while the woman's infant son slept in the next room. The
defendant had been convicted of first-degree sexual assault. William's client hadn't come from the wrong side of
the tracks. If anything, he looked like a model citizen, the
kind of kid any parent would want as a son.

In a way, he resembled the man Lisa described who
had attacked and mutilated that woman Debbie Martinez.
The guy she had called Animal. She'd said the guy looked
like he could have been a lawyer or a young executive.

And if that was the case, then why do you find it so hard to believe that Frank Miller couldn't be involved in
this shit?

Because Frank Miller isn't a fucking pervert! I know the
guy! ff f had known he was into weird pom, f would have
known! ff f had known he got off on watching women being raped and killed, f would have been tipped off years
ago. Jesus fucking Christ, we talked about our sexual conquests enough times and leafed through those pom-shops
on Harbor Boulevard enough after work for me to get an
idea of what turned him on. And not once did f see him
venture into the leather-andchain crap in the back of the
store. Not once!

So what to do?

His private investigator was waiting for a call back.
William had told him he had some thinking to do before
he made his next move. The cops and the reds were looking at Rick Shectman and a few other individuals he was
connected with in the illegal pornography world. His FBI
contact hadn't been able to tell him much, just that they
were chasing down leads, talking to people in the S&M
world about the extreme hardcore element, hoping to
get a lead on that. Most of their leads kept returning to
Rick Shectman as a man who had a hand in producing
specialty product: mutilation films, some specialized
fetish stuff, usually by commission. So, naturally, the focus of the investigation was centered on him.

William knew that if Rick Shectman was involved, he'd
be crafty. He'd have to be if he was involved in producing
snuff films. How else could he have been involved in this
underground world and not be caught? He'd be very
careful now in the next few months, William was sure of
it. Therefore, he wasn't going to do anything to tip the
cops his way. What was the phrase Phil told him? q be
guys that partake in this stuff, both the sellers and the
buyers, they stay as far away from each other as possi ble." William believed that. Therefore, if Rick Shectman
were involved in any way in the snuff pornography market,
he'd be living a double life. He wouldn't be associating
with anybody in the extreme hardcore scene, especially
with any possible customers.

That decided it for him. William picked up the phone
and dialed Phil's number. The detective picked up on the
third ring. "Yeah."
"

"Phil, it's Billy."

"What's up?"

"I'm gonna give you an address," William said, reaching for his address book and flipping through it. "I'm also
gonna give you a name and a description. That's gonna
be the guy I want you to tail."

"So you don't want me to look at Rick Shectman?"

"No" William found what he was looking for. "The guy
I want you to tail is named Frank Miller. He lives at 3589
Snow Lane in Irvine. He's in his late fifties, five foot
seven, one hundred and seventy pounds or so, dark
hair turning gray, thinning a little at the top. He wears
glasses, has a ruddy complexion. Favors slacks and
polo shirts; conservative business attire Monday
through Friday. He drives a tan BMW, late model. I don't
have a license-plate number, but you should have no
trouble getting that. He-"

1sn't that Brad's father?" Phil asked.

The realization of what he was asking Phil to do settled
in the pit of his belly and burned a fire. "Yes," he said,
closing his eyes, hoping to God he was making a big mistake in this. "Yes, it is."

Rick Shectman was pissed.

He was sitting in the living room of his sprawling
ranch home, perched in the foothills of the San Gabriel
Mountains. It was a warm day, in the mid-eighties, typi cal weather for Southern California, especially the San
Gabriel valley. The windows were open, allowing a cool
breeze to blow through. Rick had been reclining in his
La-Z-Boy flipping through the cable channels blindly,
waiting for the confirmation that the job he had given to
Tim Murray was completed.

He had gotten the call, all right. But it wasn't the call
he wanted.

Rick was seething. He wanted to break something,
wanted to throttle somebody, preferably that fat fuck Tim
Murray. He hoped Tim was suffering right this minute,
slowly dying from his head injuries.

Provided, of course, the information he got was correct.

Rick Shectman took a deep breath and closed his
eyes, replaying the phone call in his mind. Admittedly, he
couldn't make out much of what had been said-the
connection had been really bad-but he did make out
Mabel's voice and a female in the background-Yelling?
Screaming? It was hard to tell. At first it had sounded like
a wrong number, a woman had started screaming, "Hello?
Who is this?" Rick had answered, asking if this was Timthe readout on his caller ID had identified the caller as
Tim Murray, and he had been thrown off by the woman's
voice. There had been static, then the woman came on
the line saying that Tim Murray was dying and that Rick
was fucked. "You're fucked!" she'd screamed. Then there
had been the sound of wind blowing and something else
in the background, as if whoever was carrying the phone
was trudging through rough terrain, and then the voice
came again, bellowing in the background. And what
Rick thought she'd said was "Let him hear you, granny"
And then he had heard the high, reedy voice-an old
woman? Mabel Schneider?-wailing. "The eyes! Rick
said I could have the eyes!"

Then the woman's voice came through loud and clear.
"Who are you?"

And Rick had shouted. "Who the fuck are you, bitch?
Where's Tim? Where's-"