The Cutting Room

The video stopped and the screen froze. The final frame captured the girl’s frantic face as the nude, muscular back of a white male, scissors in one hand, a long-stemmed red rose in the other, entered the shot. The entire clip had lasted less than a minute. On the far-right bottom of the screen were tiny red numbers: 29:12:14, and 11/07/06.

‘Jesus,’ Daria said as she sat back in her seat. ‘What the hell was that?’

Manny frowned. ‘Is that it? Is there more?’

‘No. Just that clip,’ Abby answered. ‘Like I said, I didn’t know what it was at first. I don’t know that girl and, while I can’t see his face, I don’t think I know that man. “Why would someone send this to me?” I thought. But after today, after what I heard, I think I understand now. This is what happened to the Skole girl. This is what you described in the courtroom today, Detective. The Skole girl had been tied up, and she had been injected with drugs and she had been raped. Just like what seems to be happening to this girl on the video. And someone sends it to me? Obviously because they know that Talbot didn’t do this.’

‘Maybe that’s your son in the video, ma’am,’ Manny said, nodding at the screen. ‘It looks like the same build. Maybe someone wants you to know that your son has done this before.’

Abby’s voice rose. ‘First of all, that makes no sense. Because why would they send it to me? Why wouldn’t they send it to you? So you’d at least have some evidence to support your twisted, sick allegations.’

Daria nodded. ‘Could be an extortion attempt.’

Abby frowned. ‘Extortion? There was no demand for money. Doesn’t there have to be a demand for money?’

‘We can’t be sure this is anything,’ Daria continued. ‘This could very well be homemade porn. Sure, it’s hard-core, but there’s no law against making home videos as long as they star consenting adults.’

‘Give me a break, Ms DeBianchi,’ retorted Abby. ‘This is not some Paris Hilton sex tape that was leaked to the public by the help. You saw that girl’s face. Does she look like she’s enjoying this? She’s terrified and you and I both know it.’

Daria’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’d be amazed what people do when the shades are drawn, Mrs Lunders. And what fantasies they get off playing out while their camcorders are rolling. All I’m saying is that we can’t be sure what this is and I’m not ready to jump to conclusions. Not even close. We don’t know why it was sent to you, or who sent it, for that matter.’

‘Say what you’re thinking, why don’t you? Come on — spit it out,’ Abby snapped. ‘“If someone even sent it to you,” is what you meant to say. What do you think I did? Do you think I surfed porn sites in search of a bizarre S&M video that I could pawn off as a copycat victim in a far-fetched attempt to exonerate my son? Please, check my computer. Do it. I implore you. Check my email. Do whatever you’re supposed to do as officers sworn to uphold the law and investigate crime. Because, while I’m no detective, this seems to me to show someone committing the exact same crime my son is accused of — and I am certain that that is not my son in the video.’

‘How’s that, Mrs Lunders?’ Manny asked.

‘Besides the fact that I am his mother and I know his body like I know my own, including the very prominent freckled brown birthmark in the shape of a waving flag he has between his shoulder blades, which is missing from that animal in the video, there’s also the time/date stamp on the bottom of the screen to consider. And on November seventh, 2006, my son was a patient at Good Samaritan Hospital in Palm Beach having his appendix removed. So, no, that is not my son in that video. But I believe it is your job to find out who it is, and why someone would want to send it to me.’

10

‘That’s one helluva coincidence,’ Daria remarked after Abby Lunders and her ostentatious, mouthwatering, elephant-gray crocodile Birkin bag had finally up and left her office.

‘What?’ Manny asked.

‘Not only did somebody else kill the girl who was last seen leaving a bar with your son, but that somebody else is now sending you video clips of the real murderer having freaky sex with another girl who looks like the girl your son murdered? Am I missing something, or does that sound a little out there?’

‘When you put it like that, it does.’

She frowned. ‘Well, how would you put it?’

‘I don’t know. This lady’s son is accused of rape and murder. Claims he didn’t do it.’

Daria shook her head. ‘They all claim they didn’t do it. When was the last time you had a killer take full responsibility for slitting someone’s throat? Give me a break.’

‘True. But you asked for the lady’s perspective. Her son says he didn’t do it. Her only kid, mind you. Claims he’s a victim of circumstance. Then she gets an anonymous email right before his bond hearing showing a lookalike blonde being what sure looks to me like tortured, and in the background are an assortment of syringes and chemicals — all the fucked-up goodies her son is accused of using on his victim. Except the person in the video is not her son.’

‘So she says. And the girl in the video is not dead.’

Manny shrugged. ‘Not that we know of.’

‘How the hell old was she when she popped out sonny-boy? Eighteen? All that Botox makes her look like his freaking sister. It’s weird.’

‘Careful, Counselor. You sound jealous.’

‘I am. Of her bag, not her face. I’m only twenty-nine. The wrinkles you’re giving me won’t show for a few years.’

Manny laughed.

‘And how old is Dad Freddy?’ Daria asked. ‘Isn’t he, what, twenty-three or -four years her senior? She must’ve been a trophy bride.’

‘It’s actually Stepdad Freddy. He’s about sixty-seven. Looks it, too. Abby is a trophy bride, but she wasn’t a teenager when she and Fred got hitched. She was thirty. Freddy adopted young Talbot and let him in on the family name. I think he gave him the Alastair as an adoption present so he would blend in more with the Kennedys and Rockefellers,’ Manny said with a chuckle. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket. ‘I, for one, thinks she looks pretty damn good for any age,’ he replied, taking a cigarette from the box and tapping it on her desk. ‘Not that that’s influencing my opinion.’

Daria frowned again. ‘Don’t light that in here.’

‘I’m getting ready for when I leave.’

‘Hmmm. Well, I’m still not seeing anything but a bunch of smoke from the flash-bang she just dropped, and you’re walking right into the room.’

‘Listen, I’m no sucker, but I am a little puzzled,’ Manny replied, sticking the cigarette behind his ear. ‘Aren’t you? I mean, what the hell is this video about? That’s pretty fucked up, Counselor.’

Daria sighed. ‘Her own attorney didn’t want to bring it up today, Manny, because he’s saving it for trial. Because he knew it wasn’t anything but smoke and he’d rather sandbag us with some highly prejudicial, totally inflammatory video after I’ve sworn in a jury and jeopardy has attached. It’s all bullshit — they’re setting up a reasonable doubt argument. The more attention you pay to it, the more that’s going to doom us when we get in front of a jury because it looks like we bought into the bullshit, too. It makes us look like we think there’s some validity to this.’

Manny nodded thoughtfully. He jingled the flash drive in his hand and stood to leave. ‘Probably. But I’m gonna see what else the lab can get from this clip. Maybe they can up the sound or enhance the video. And I’m gonna check out Trophy Mom’s computer, see if we can trace who sent it to her, or, even better, where the video originated from. I’m not a computer geek, but I know there’s a lot those geeks can do — I watch CSI,’ he added with a wink.

‘You’re walking right into this. You’re buying their “one-armed man” defense hook, line and sinker,’ she charged. ‘Let the defense spend their own time and money checking out the bullshit, please. Save the taxpayers of Miami.’

‘Like I said before, for such a pretty little thing, you have a tremendous set of steel balls on you. They must make it difficult to walk sometimes. Let me ask ya, just for my own clarification here: What do you do when you got a case that you can’t prove maybe, but you believe the victim was wronged? How do you handle those?’

‘Sometimes you have to walk away, Manny, and go after the ones you can solve. It’s not easy. And I don’t mean to sound callous, but sometimes you have no choice but to tell someone, “There’s no justice for you today. Sorry, Charlie.”’

‘That’s cold.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s life. Your job is to find the bad guy. My job is to prove he did it. If I can’t prove it, then there’s no case. It’s not a matter of right and wrong. And I don’t go looking for cases that might help the defense. I have a lot on my plate.’

‘Listen, Counselor, I’m gonna find out more before I walk away. I have to. If it’s nothing, then it’s nothing and all I did was waste a little time. And if it’s homemade porn, then maybe I’ll get lucky and get to meet the actress live and in person. But I’m personally gonna have a hard time sleeping, wondering whose terrified kid that is on that clip.’

‘How many children do you have?’ Daria asked. ‘No, no, scratch that — how many daughters?’

‘None and none. No little Mannys or Emanuelas running around. At least, none that I know of.’

Daria rolled her eyes. ‘I would’ve pegged you for the dad of a harem of teenage daughters with that last comment.’

‘I may not have kids myself, Counselor, but it doesn’t take much to imagine what it would feel like if my daughter was raped and whacked by a psycho with a camera and a thing for household cleaners. Maybe the dad of the girl in that video has no idea what happened to his kid. Maybe she went out one night and never came home and he has no idea what became of her. Maybe her family’s hoping she had a car accident and bumped her melon and has amnesia, and they wait for the day she walks back through their door.’

‘She’s a little old to be calling a kid. I’m thinking late twenties.’

‘Okay, so she’s not a kid. Then maybe she’s married and her hubby has been scouring every waterway within a ten-mile radius of their house thinking she had a car accident and that’s why she didn’t come home for supper. Or maybe she’s not dead. Maybe she was raped and her assault was caught on camera and the bastard uploaded it to YouTube. Those are just a few of the scenarios that popped into my head. You and I have had to deal with the families of enough murder victims to understand that not knowing is the worst. I don’t have to be a dad or a husband to feel for them.’

‘What if she left home at sixteen to earn a living as an adult entertainer in LA and this shit she does with her boyfriend is mild compared to the other tricks she can perform with a rope? I just thought of that scenario off the top of my head.’