Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

"Partner?"

"Lily."

Dance glanced at him with a playful frown. "Lily. Is this where I start to be jealous?"

"Ah, Lily... My main squeeze. She's a second-generation Blue Gene/P four-way symmetric multiprocessor supercomputer with node-to-node logic communication. But as sexy as that is, you've got a better body."

At that moment O'Neil walked through the door. He blinked.

This reaction wasn't--it seemed--in response to Boling's comment about Dance. He was staring at Boling's bandages and bruises. "Jon, Jesus. What happened?"

"The dangers of going green. Bike accident. Banged up a little. I was lucky."

Dance said, "Maybe intentional."

"So he knows who's out to stop him," O'Neil said to Dance. "I'll order a protective detail to keep an eye on your place."

Not a bad idea. She'd also make sure the children didn't go anywhere alone. Certainly Wes couldn't take any more bike rides with Donnie. Not until the unsub was caught.

O'Neil had his mobile out. He asked Boling, "I'll order one for you too, if you want."

There was a pause. Dance said, "Just one. For my house is fine."

"Sure." And O'Neil phoned the request in. After a brief conversation he hung up. "There'll be an undercover out front in the evenings. Random drive-bys too. During the day." He had ordered one for her parents too.

She thanked him. Then glanced toward Boling. "Jon got into Stan Prescott's computer. And phone."

"Great."

Boling handed her the small USB-powered drive. The computer forensic protocol was that you backed up the suspect's drive onto an external, because there were often software booby traps in the computer itself.

She plugged it in and nodded at her keyboard. He took over.

"I've got access to Prescott's e-mails and the websites he visited. You should review it yourself but I didn't see any connection to the Solitude Creek incident or Bay View themselves. No personal connection, I mean. He didn't correspond with anybody about them--and he didn't delete anything about them either. I reconstructed the deleted files. All of them. Looks like he downloaded the pictures of Solitude Creek from a pay site."

"Pay site? What's that? I thought they were from a TV newscast."

"They were, originally. But somebody uploaded them to a commercial site where members can watch graphic violence--stills and movies. Do you know about them?"

Neither Dance nor O'Neil did.

"Oh, well, here, take a look." He hesitated a moment. "You better brace yourself."

"Brace?"

He typed and a page loaded.

Dance's eyes widened. "Oh, my. What's this?"

O'Neil walked around and stood on Dance's other side. The three of them stared at the website. It was called Cyber-Necro.com and the opening graphic revealed a computer-generated image of a man plunging a knife into the belly of a buxom woman strapped down to a medieval table.

Boling said, "It's a pay site devoted to graphic images of murder and rape victims, disasters, crime scenes, accidents, medical procedures. The Solitude Creek pictures were in the section on 'Theater and Sporting Events Deaths.'"

"That's actually a category?"

"Yep. People pay a lot of money to see those pictures and videos. I couldn't tell you why. Maybe a shrink could. Voyeurism, sexual, sadistic. Who knows? I've gotten quite an education in the past few hours. There're hundreds of sites like this. I might write a paper on it. Some sites are like this one." He nodded at the screen. "Real deaths and injuries. But you can also get custom-made videos. Actresses--usually actresses, men sometimes--being shot or stabbed or hit by arrows. Strangulation and asphyxia're popular too. Sexual assaults. Some hard-core. And the weapons? The special effects're good. Shockingly good. You'd almost think the women were actually being killed but they keep appearing in other clips. It seems some men have favorite actresses they want to see killed. Over and over."

O'Neil whispered, "I've never heard of this."