Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Charlie opened the computer but was unable to get past the login screen. He tried some of the letter and number combinations from the sheet of paper they had found in the writing room. Tull had obviously used a password familiar enough to him that he hadn't bothered to put it on the list he'd hidden away in Emily Post's book.

"We'll have to take it back to the office," Charlie said. "I can use some software I have there to figure out the pass code. I hope you don't mind, Mrs Cameron."

"Take it," she replied. "The less I know about what that man recorded on it, the better."

Declan said, "Did you know about this room?"

"I knew about the tunnel, and I heard a rumour once that there was a hidden room to stash bootlegged whisky, but I'll be truthful, I don't like it down in the damp and never really explored too far. And that keypad looks new. Mr Tull must have had it installed on a day when I was out visiting my sister. How he knew about the room down here is a mystery that only he can explain, and he's dead now."

Declan said, "The room looks like it might have been used for…"

"His visitors? I guess that might be. But truthfully, he usually met them in his office and I kept to the kitchen. I never saw him head down to the cellar with anyone, but I suppose they could have met at the back entrance to the tunnel. Had I known this was going on…" She shook with anger. "And with a young boy in the house, no less."

Declan probed, "Did he always have visitors to the house?"

Mrs Cameron shook her head. "No, it was only recently. Just when I thought I couldn't hate the man anymore."

Declan said, "Well, let's lock up the room and we won't trouble you any further."

They turned off the light, closed the door and made their way up from the cellar. Henry was waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

"I had hoped we might find you at the kitchen table doing your homework," Mrs Cameron said to him.

Henry ignored her and looked towards Charlie. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Charlie smiled and held the laptop in the air. "Yup. And it's all thanks to you."

Henry's eyes lit up. "Can I see what's on it?"

"We have to take it back to the office to find out," Charlie said. Then he whispered, "I'll let you know if we find anything important."

Charlie winked at him. Henry winked back.

* * * *

Traffic was light and it only took an hour and a quarter to get back to the office. Charlie set the laptop up on his desk and got to work. Declan stood behind him, watching. Charlie pursed his lips. "How about I come and get you when I have something to show you?"

"Right," Declan said, patting him on the shoulder. "Don't drive the tech genius crazy by hovering. I'll be upstairs putting on a change of clothes if you need me." Declan disappeared into the office and up the stairs to his apartment.

Charlie sat at the laptop working his magic and in less than thirty minutes he was in. The desktop showed dozens of folders. Interestingly enough, the primary documents folder had nothing in it, which meant that, on an old machine like this, Malcolm Tull likely wasn't automatically uploading his files to the cloud. If that was true, it meant the files on the desktop were probably only accessible through the machine in Charlie's hands.

Charlie scanned the names and honed in on two folders that caught his eye. One was labelled ‘Manuscript', and the other was labelled ‘Videos'.

The ‘Manuscript folder' contained a single file called Untitled_ME.

The ‘Videos' folder held three files which were named SmoothStud123, BurlyBiker27 and Wordsmith105.

As tempted as he was to look at them right away, Charlie thought Declan should be down there for the big reveal. He took the laptop into Declan's office and hooked it up to the large TV monitor, then popped up to the apartment above. Charlie tapped on the door. "We have something, and I think it's good."

Charlie led Declan down to the office and sat him in his office chair, then went to the computer and opened the manuscript file. The title page identified it as Untitled by Marjorie Ellis.

Charlie started to scroll through the document. Within the first few pages, he lost track of the number of obscenities and improbable sexual positions it contained.

"Is this why Marjorie Ellis was your mother's favourite author?" Declan said, with a sly grin on his face.

"If my mother saw this, I think she would have dropped from a heart attack after page one. I don't get it. Maybe he was writing a raunchy spoof of her work just to piss her off?"

"Let's see what Sinclair says when he comes in," Declan suggested.

"That'll be in"—Charlie checked the clock on the computer—"thirty minutes."

"Let's move on to the videos," Declan said.

Charlie opened the main folder.

"Okay," Declan said, "let's start with the one labelled Wordsmith105."

Charlie opened the file. It had definitely been shot in Tull's playroom. A figure walked towards the bed and started to undress. He was only visible from the back. He looked tall and well-muscled. Charlie quietly inhaled when the figure peeled off his underwear, unveiling a perfect ass. The man slowly turned around. It was Sinclair.

"Well, you said he looked great in a Speedo, and now we know why," Declan said.

Charlie fast-forwarded through the video, stopping every few minutes to see if there was a clear shot of the person other than Sinclair in the room. Never once did Sinclair give the impression that he knew he was performing for the camera. He followed the instructions of an off-camera voice. It was a deep voice, sensual and controlling, often correcting Sinclair, having him repeat sexual acts like he was a teacher and Sinclair was his eager pupil. Some scenes were done zoomed in and included actions involving the other man. The quality of the image led Charlie to believe that the close-up shots were done digitally after the film was recorded, possibly to allow the identity of the person who filmed the scenes to be cropped out.

"I think we can assume that the other man is Tull, given the fact it was shot in his playroom," Charlie said.

"I gotta give Sinclair credit—for such an uptight guy he seems really into it."

"Yes," Charlie agreed, "but you can see why he wouldn't want this out in the open."

Charlie opened one of the other videos labelled SmoothStud123. The man in the video was leaner. He also acted as if he didn't know he was being filmed. Each video showed only one of the men fully while all that could be seen of the other participant was a hand or body part. Sometimes the man was penetrating the lead performer with fingers, hands or toys. In the second video, he was choking the man, a bit of erotic asphyxiation.

Declan said, "Before we go any further, can you copy all of this to your cloud server, just in case something happens to the computer? Not for our own kicks…I have a hunch these videos might be important and I don't want to risk losing them if we turn over the computer to Sinclair."

Charlie said, "So we're going to give Yamada the computer?"

"That's what he hired us for," Declan replied.

"But don't you think there's a lot more going on here? What's on this computer might impact other people. I mean, look at those videos."

"I'll tell you what," Declan said, "before we turn everything over, I'm going to ask Sinclair some hard questions and we'll see what my gut says."

Charlie nodded. He spent the next ten minutes uploading the files to a safe place where only he could access them.

"Other than these files, do we have anything else to work with?" Declan asked.

"Oh, it keeps getting better. Do you remember the password list we found in the book?"

"Yeah."

"One of the passwords was for a Proton account."

"I have no idea what that is," Declan confessed.

"It's a security-encoded email system. Luckily Tull didn't use his internet incognito browsing window, so his username, BakuBondageBoy, was saved by the computer. And it looks like he had been sending out some interesting emails."

"Oh?"

"BakuBondageBoy had demanded money from BurlyBiker27—I assume the same BurlyBiker27 of the video-filename we haven't watched yet. The email indicated that if BurlyBiker27 didn't pay up, BakuBondageBoy would release the videos to ‘you know who'. As you can see, BurlyBiker27 replied with a threat to kill him if he didn't give him the files."

"Kill him?" Declan said, his eyes widening. "The guy actually threatened to kill Tull?"

"Well, he threatened to kill BakuBondageBoy, who I am assuming was Tull."

"Was Tull blackmailing anyone else?"

"SmoothStud123. Same threats. Money or he would give the video to a prominent judge. No idea who that would be. SmoothStud123 was almost in hysterics in his responses."

"Did SmoothStud123 threaten to kill the blackmailer?" Declan asked.

Charlie shook his head. "No threats of violence. And then there's Wordsmith105, who we know from the video label is Sinclair. He was also in an email war with Tull."

"Tull wanted money?"

"No. It's just like Sinclair said. Tull wanted a book published, untouched. He demanded it be printed just as he wrote it, no changes. And if that wasn't done, he threatened to…what did he say? Oh, yeah ‘I'll bring down the mountain on all of your heads'. I wonder what that means?"

The security alarm beeped from the street-level door, and Charlie checked his watch. It was one o'clock.

Declan smiled. "I guess we're about to find out."