Downstairs in my SUV, I said, “Did you really trust them to stay in our home without us around?”
“Hiram’s my brother. He may not like the fact that I’m gay, but he’s still my brother. He and his family need help. He may or may not be grateful, but letting them stay would be the least I could do. Making the offer was the right thing to do.”
We picked up the Sunday editions of the
Chicago Tribune
and the
Sun Times
before we hit the expressway. Each had an article about the murder, the
Sun Times
doing its best to be more lurid. The articles were long on gossip, sensation, and speculation but short on any information that would lead to an arrest.
We took Lake Shore Drive to the Stevenson Expressway at its beginning at McCormick Place and headed southwest to St. Louis.
The scenery was fantastic. I stayed awake on the drive far longer than usual to enjoy it. Ultimately, I grabbed my nap pillow and snuggled down to some serious snoozing.
I awoke around Springfield. As far as I’m concerned, two of the most important reasons for existence are chocolate and napping. I can devour enormous quantities of the first, and I excel at the second. Always go with your strength, I say. I work out diligently so I can continue to indulge the former. We even keep pillows in both cars so I can luxuriate in the latter.
I’ve napped through some of the most spectacular scenery in America. I figure the view is always pretty much going to be there, but a nap is a fleeting thing, needing to be nurtured and taken advantage of whenever the opportunity presents itself.
The only two things more important than chocolate and naps are Scott and sex. My love for him wins by a wide margin, but sex is right up there.
We arrived before six. We crossed the Mississippi River on the Poplar Street Bridge and took US 40 West. The bridge and the upper level of this highway give a spectacular view of the Arch and the St. Louis skyline. We exited at Kingshighway and took it north to Lindell Boulevard. Forest Park on our left, scene of the 1904 World’s Fair, rivals Central Park in New York as an ocean of green among urban sprawl. Our destination was Westmoreland Place, one of the gate-guarded streets between Kingshighway and Euclid, north of Lindell.
Ethan’s parents had given us the key and the secret code to get past the security devices. Parking on St. Louis’s west end can be difficult at best, but within the gated street there was plenty of space. Ethan’s home was a three-story, brick, rectangular block. The sun was setting. Lights shone in a few homes. Ethan’s was dark. The evergreen trees, two on each side of the path to the door, had seen at least fifty years of growth. The lawn was well tended. The shutters were painted brightly white.
I unlocked the front door, and we stepped inside. I flipped the light switch on the right-hand wall. A small lamp on an antique rolltop desk lit up. We were in an extensive foyer. Very pale pink rose wallpaper matched the wine-dark, rosepatterned square of carpet that covered the middle of the floor. A hat stand in one corner, a working fireplace in a wall to the right, a closed door painted black straight ahead of us. A horsehair sofa that looked brand-new. A stairway next to it leading up to the right and a landing and more stairs. To the left was a set of closed double doors.
Scott said, “It feels funny walking into a dead person’s home.” A collection of knickknacks sat on the fireplace mantel. A tiny brown, plastic football was among a bunch of other kids’ things: toy trucks, a small rag doll, a pink Nerf ball, tiny plastic cars.
I walked over and touched the little football. I felt a small tear start down my cheek.
“What’s wrong?” Scott asked.
“I remember this from the night he and I made love for the first time. It was on his dresser. It was the last thing I remember looking at before I closed my eyes as we kissed. It was the first time I kissed anybody.”
“There’s probably lots of little brown, plastic footballs. Are you sure it’s this one?”
I turned it over and looked at the bottom. Ethan and I had scratched our initials into the bottom. They were still there. I held it out to Scott. “I’m surprised he kept this all these years. Him being dead is like losing a piece of childhood I can’t get back again.” I gently squeezed the small plastic ellipsoid. “It’s not the value of the piece involved, it’s the depth of the memory.”
Scott took my hand and squeezed it. He murmured, “If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to.”
“I’ll be okay. I’m not sure I hope we do or don’t find something that explains why he was killed. A lot of me would rather have the memory of him from when we were in love with nothing in between. I’m afraid whatever we discover will tarnish his memory.”
“I thought you were pretty much angry about what happened.”
“It did end badly. That part couldn’t have been worse, but the beginning couldn’t have been better.”
“Unfortunately, the murder is going to taint his memory forever,” Scott said. “What we find could make it worse.”
I sighed. “I guess I’d like to know what happened.”
The entire house was as clean as if a hired maid service had gone through it within the past day or so: no dust and nothing out of place. A narrow hallway opened to a kitchen on the right. A toaster and a coffeemaker on the counter, no dirty dishes. The refrigerator was nearly full. The cupboards had plastic containers, pots, pans, and a large assortment of expensive dishes. A junk drawer crammed, not startlingly, with bits of junk. Under the sink, cleansers. Behind the kitchen, a study. In there on a large desk, from right to left, sat a charge-card machine, a computer keyboard, a monitor, a mouse pad, and a tower underneath with a built-in zip drive.
I turned on the computer. I’m far less intimidated by them than I used to be, which does not mean I now consider myself an expert. If there was time, I would look through all the programs on the hard drive and on the software. I wondered if we could just take it with us. We had his parents’ permission, but did we need the cops’? The house was quiet as only the homes of the very rich can be. We heard the soft hum of electric appliances. The only movement came from the digital clocks counting minutes. In the study we examined every drawer and folder. We found a mountain of canceled checks, income tax records, family photos.
Leafing through the pictures, Scott found one of me in a football uniform. I glanced at it. Scott said, “You were very sexy then, too.”
“That was probably senior year. After they did a team picture, they did individual shots for all the starters. I’m surprised he kept it, but more surprised he even had a copy.”
“Why would you be surprised he had a copy of this one?”
“They only gave the photos to our families. The starting team got theirs in the yearbook.” I touched the sides of the picture. “I don’t think this is cut out.”
In the pictures we looked through, I recognized many from our childhood. A few were from vacations his family and mine had taken together when we were kids.
We found nothing in the study that gave a clue to his murder or who Michael might have been. The master bedroom had a king-size bed and a matching set of walnut dressers. I found he wore white, cotton boxer shorts. There was no dirty laundry. In the closet, a rack of boring ties, simple suits, one each beige, blue, black, gray, plus slacks, winter coats, shoes, athletic clothes, jockstraps, running shoes, T-shirts.
We passed through three kids’ rooms. Perhaps for when his various sets of children came to visit. One had twin beds and wallpaper filled with bunnies. The lampshades were all stark blues, whites, and pink. Another room was mounded with dolls, a third crammed with footballs and sports posters.
In the guest rooms we were more cursory with our inspection. We found only unfilled dressers and empty closets. Attic stairs led to a barren, dust-filled space. The basement yielded a washer and dryer, along with dank and mold and nothing else. Back at the computer I began calling up all the programs on the hard drive. Some I needed a password for and couldn’t get into.
Scott began examining all the bills: “This year’s seem to be kind of a jumble, but roughly chronological.” We worked silently for an hour. Then Scott said, “I’ve got a series of monthly bills for a public storage facility.”
“He was paying rent?”
“No. That would be fifty or a hundred bucks. These have to be mortgage payments.”
I read over his shoulder. We examined the papers for fifteen minutes.
“Maybe it was just an investment,” Scott said.
“I’m not sure. There are paid-for goods that were delivered there, and look.” I held up part of the records. “There’s a block of four of the largest bays in Building K that have no record of payments.”
“It could mean anything.”
The address was on Grand Avenue on the south side of the city. “Let’s check this out next,” I said. “I don’t have the expertise to get around those passwords. Let’s take a break and go see this storage space. He certainly didn’t need to rent any more room. This place is immense.”
Among the bills, Scott had found the key code to get into the storage facility. At the gate he got out and punched in the numbers. The rusted metal barrier jerked and rumbled open. The facility covered several acres. Building K, which, according to the receipts, was reserved for Ethan, was the last one before the property ended at the concrete wall of a vast warehouse. Building K consisted of four of the largest-size bays.
The weather was in the sixties with overnight temperatures expected in the low fifties. At one point I zipped up my leather jacket to keep out the creeping coolness.
One of the keys Mrs. Gahain had given us opened the lock. We rolled up the sliding door. A floor-to-ceiling wall of boxes met our view. On the left there were seven-foot-high towers of flat priority-mail video boxes. Next to these were flattened eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch boxes. We inched through a narrow aisle on the right. Behind the first neat piles were mounds of used boxes all jumbled together. I picked one up and looked inside. Empty. We began wading through the mess.
“This is nuts,” Scott said. “Who saves empty boxes?”
“My grandmother does. You should see her collection. She’s loath to throw out a box because she just might need one of exactly the size she’s got on hand.”
“Her grandson seems to have somewhat the same problem.”
I admit I’m a pack rat. While I doubt it is a genetic defect, Scott has found need to mention this peccadillo on more occasions than I prefer him to.
Scott said, “But these are all the
same
size.”
“I didn’t say it was logical. Let’s see how deep this thing goes.” At the back we discovered someone had cut a doorway into the side of the wall to the next storage compartment. The lights from the front of the complex were dim back here.
Outside the door we listened intently, but heard no sound. The second of the two keys that Scott inserted fit this lock. We couldn’t find a switch to illuminate the darkness. The light grew dimmer as we crept forward. We found flattened mailers in a variety of sizes as well as massive piles of plastic tape containers. In some larger and heavier boxes I discovered hundreds of blank cassettes.
We came to another door and used the same key to open it that had opened the second door. We listened again and moved cautiously into the third room. We were moving parallel to the drive outside.
This time we found a light switch. Scott flipped it on. The wall directly ahead of us, front to back, floor to ceiling, had shelves bolted to it. These were completely filled with VCRs. The display lights on all of them were set to the correct time. A three-foot-wide-by-nine-foot-long wooden workbench sat in the middle of the room. A computer and a printer nestled on the far end of it. The wall on either side of the door had rows and rows of tapes all labeled and dated. Each of the narrower perpendicular walls had five four-drawer filing cabinets.
I picked a tape at random and inserted it into a VCR that was connected to a small television. The first screen showed an opening disclaimer about the age of the people in the video, an FBI warning, and a date-of-production announcement. The film that followed was shot from one unvarying angle. It was a locker room. Guys were entering, taking off clothes, and putting on football uniforms. The men on-screen were obviously not performing erotically for the camera. It was a real locker room, with real guys, bantering, horsing around, and getting ready for a game. It was hard to guess exactly what year it might have been recorded. The hairstyles and clothing were from the midnineties. The quality of the film was a little grainy, but the images were clear. The logo on the uniforms said Iowa Teachers University.
I said, “We’ve found the storage facilities for their Internet pornography business.” On one shelf the tapes were organized by month and date. Another had hundreds of them numbered consecutively. Others were alphabetized, many color-coded, some a mixture of these. I tried one of those dated thirty years before. The same warning labels appeared, but this time the guys’ clothes and hairdos indicated it was from the early days of disco. It was still a locker room, but definitely not the same as the first one. There were fewer guys, and the angle was different. This time they were putting on wrestling singlets, and there were only a few men at a time. On this one the photographer had caught a portion of the showers. The film quality was much poorer than that of the other.
We spent nearly an hour looking through the materials. We opened numerous boxes from the previous room. Some contained hundreds of still shots, multiple copies of dozens of guys, sometimes the same guy in multiple poses. One box I found had movie underwear shots, different actors who’d appeared in films in Skivvies. I stuck in a tape I found in this box. Someone had frozen each frame from the start of the underwear-clad crotch’s appearance to the end, then made a continuous videotape of the sequential frames. Another had stills of nude scenes from famous movies.
One of the most recent tapes had clips of male actors in movies or television. The video showed crotch shots of them either walking or sitting. For example, all the moments in
Dawson’s Creek or White Squall
when the hunky young actors were moving, standing, or sitting in such a way as to reveal a detailed outline of dick and balls through their pants, or revealing a prominent bulge. Presumably that being where a guy’s dick and balls must be. The scenes from
White Squall
included around thirty seconds of each frame of every instant of Ryan Phillippe appearing in his white briefs.
Another film had clips from baseball games. These emphasized players with prominent crotch bulges and/or guys groping themselves. In the filing cabinets the tapes and boxes were cross-indexed by type of sexual activity, by sport, by movie, by year, and so on.
One of the cabinets was filled with receipts in chronological order dating back over ten years.
“He’s definitely been selling this stuff,” Scott said. He’d been hunting through the receipts. For the most recent years we found computer printouts of orders. Thousands of them made from two Web sites: sexandnakedstars.com and nakedathletes.com.
Another drawer had a folder labeled PERSONAL. I found individual photos here. Many of these looked posed.
I flipped on the computer. The Internet connection came on instantly. I called up the sites. Each was basically a catalog with extensive listings combining pictures of stars along with text describing the action contained within videos. It also had lists of photo sets being offered. None of the names stood out prominently. We found no references that would indicate a specific Michael was more significant than any other. Nothing of me or anybody I knew. Scott was not listed in the sports section.
Where there had been blocks and codes at Ethan’s home, I found none on this computer. Perhaps he felt no need to hide here. At home a kid or an ex-wife might have been able to stumble onto something unexpectedly. On the hard drive I found a master list of the cast members. It ran on for page after page. If it wasn’t all of them, it had to be most of them. I printed it out. There were no names I recognized. I wasn’t surprised. Porn stars didn’t use real names. There were lots of variations of Rock Hard and Lance Thrust. They weren’t going to be helpful. I did not find model release records. As far as I was aware, all legitimate porn operations kept or were required by law to have on file ID, date of production, and release forms for people who performed in their videos.
We found bank records. Ethan had at least four separate accounts. None had less than $50,000 on hand. In the last week alone $5,000 worth of orders had been filled.
“This business was that profitable?” Scott asked.
I said, “I’m obviously in the wrong profession.”
Behind the last filing cabinet on the left near the back was another doorway. I asked, “Why was this one blocked with these filing cabinets? If the cops had a search warrant, wouldn’t they move everything and find it? Maybe it was just to deter possible thefts, if the crooks were in a hurry.”
“Is there a big market for stolen porn?” Scott asked. “For that matter, why steal it in the first place? All you have to do is buy one copy and start making your own.”
We emptied several of the drawers then wrestled the cabinet out of its slot. Scott unlocked the door.
We entered the next storage space. From the soft, pale light dimly glowing behind us, we saw a room that seemed much deeper and narrower than the others. We groped for a hand’s span along each wall trying to find a light switch. Nothing. Guided by the light from the room behind, we carefully stepped forward. A central set of bookcases contained tons of electronic equipment: still, digital, and video cameras galore; computers, monitors, and more VCRs stacked to the ceiling. The aisles between the shelving in the center and the walls were so narrow, we had to turn sideways to pass through.
Scott did say, “Isn’t this the point in teenage slasher movies that someone says they should leave and they don’t? Then a few seconds later someone dies?”
I said, “I thought we didn’t admit to watching those.”
“As long as we don’t admit it publicly, we’re okay.”
We didn’t even discuss splitting up and going down separate sides. Even somebody who never watched teenage slasher movies knew better than to split up.
The dark was nearly complete as we approached the far side of the room. The equipment in the center was on cheap, metallic, eight-foot-high, black bookcases. I could barely see my hand in front of my face. When the center shelving ended, we stepped into pitch-dark, empty space.
Scott let out a squawk, then said, “What the hell?”
“What?”
He sputtered and then whispered, “Something just brushed against my forehead.” I felt his arm reach up. I heard a soft click. A dim bulb flashed on.
Six inches from my left hand an upturned face stared sightlessly at the ceiling.