'I went back to my office to play the tape.'
'And?'
Dinky's face crumpled. 'It's awful. I've never seen anything like it. When I realized what it was, I turned it off.'
Whatever Denver Holloway had seen, it had rocked her to the very core. There are only a few things guaranteed to produce that kind of appalled reaction in decent, law-abiding folks.
'Snuff film or kiddie porn?' I asked.
Dinky swallowed hard. 'I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and she wasn't even that old. It's monstrous.' She paused before continuing in a small, constrained voice. 'Ever since, all I've been able to think about is what'll happen to her now, and what about the baby?'
Alex reached out and put a comforting hand on Denver Holloway's wrist. 'The girl in the video is someone you know?'
Dinky nodded, her face a pasty white. Two gigantic tears spilled from her highly magnified eyes and dribbled slowly down her pale cheeks. 'It's Tanya,' she whispered miserably. 'Tanya Dunseth-my Juliet. She must have been only eleven or twelve, but I recognized her instantly. I'd know that profile anywhere. What's going to happen to her?'
Full of brisk reassurance, Alex patted the back of Dinky's hand. 'Nothing's going to happen to Tanya, and no one's going to hold it against her. She's the one who's been victimized. After something like that, it's even more of a wonder that she's been able to do what she's done. What a remarkable young woman!'
'But you don't understand,' Dinky added shakily. 'I recognized the man, too. The one in the videotape. He's younger than his picture in the paper today, but I never forget a face. It's him all right.'
Suddenly, it all came together for me. 'Martin Shore?' I asked in astonishment. 'Martin Shore is the one on the tape?'
Dinky nodded.
'The dead man,' Alex said, shaking her head. 'I can't believe it.'
'It's true,' Dinky replied, her face suffused with grief. 'I don't know what to do.'
'This is important,' I said at once. 'We have to take the tape to Detective Fraymore, no question.'
Dinky shook her head. 'I was afraid that's what you'd say. Why?'
'Because it's against the law to conceal evidence in a homicide investigation, that's why. We're talking motive and opportunity here. I, for one, don't want to be charged with being an accomplice after the fact, and neither do you.'
By now the restaurant had filled up. During our low-voiced, highly charged discussion, I had twice waved off the proprietor of Cowboy Sam's New Bistro. Now he approached us more determinedly. 'Would anyone here care to see the wine list?' he asked.
I took several twenties out of my billfold and fanned them out on the table. Then, using a cloth napkin to protect any possible fingerprints, I picked up the box containing the videotape.
'The lady isn't feeling well,' I said to Cowboy Sam, nodding in Dinky's direction at the same time. For her part, Denver Holloway did indeed look violently ill. 'I'm afraid we won't be able to stay for dinner. Not tonight.'
CHAPTER 7
Other people went to see Shrew in the Elizabethan that night. Alex and I didn't. Instead, we accompanied Dinky Holloway and spent most of the early evening closeted in Ashland's surprisingly modern city hall along with Detective Gordon Fraymore. He listened to what Dinky had to say in total silence. When she finished, he used a handkerchief to preserve fingerprints when he picked up the tape.
'Right back,' he said. 'I'm going to take this down the hall and have a look-see.' He was gone a long time-half an hour or more. Back in the office again, he placed the tape in the middle of his cluttered desk.
'Looks like Shore all right,' he muttered. 'I thought there might be somebody else in the film as well, maybe another male we might have seen before or possibly even another kid. They sometimes do that-use more than one, but not this time.'
'You watched the whole thing, didn't you?' Dinky said accusingly. 'That's disgusting.' Alex nodded in grim agreement, her lips pursed into a thin line of protest.
The expressions on both their faces said neither one of the women was buying Fraymore's excuse for watching the movie. I think they thought he was down the hall getting his rocks off. I wasn't fond of Gordon Fraymore, but I knew what he was up to. I didn't fault him for watching whatever was in that video because, unlike Dinky and Alex, I knew why he was doing it-because it was his job.
I think the general public has come to accept the idea that objects equal evidence. The video case, the letter, the envelope, all might possibly contain trace evidence or latent prints that could prove valuable. What is less apparent is the importance of the tape itself and what information might possibly be gleaned from it.
It's a lesson I learned the hard way back in the mid-seventies when I was a new guy to Homicide and there was no such thing as videotape. Vice brought in an especially ugly 16-mm snuff film that featured a twelve-year-old Seattle girl who had disappeared on her way home from school. I barfed my guts out the first time I saw it. My partner, a world-weary old guy named Bert Claggerhorn, sat us down in the film room, and we watched that damn movie over and over, hour after hour.
Finally, I raised hell and said I'd be damned if I'd watch it one more time, and I didn't. But Bert went right on ahead without me. The amateurs who specialize in pornographic films are just exactly that-amateurs. They're not overly concerned about production values. After watching the film enough times, Bert finally noticed that an overlooked television set was playing in the background. Either the cameraman forgot to turn it off, or, more likely, he was using the volume to help mask the sounds of what he and his pal were doing.
After spotting that one telling detail, Bert ordered blowups made, one from every foot or so of film. When the blowups came back, some of them showed soaps and afternoon game shows that can be seen on television sets anywhere in the country. But filming must have run long, with occasional pauses in the action. Toward the end, the programming carried on over into the evening news, and that's how Bert nailed those bastards.
Studying the blowups, he was able to identify several newscasters and a weatherman who appeared only on the local Bellingham station. Armed with that knowledge, we zeroed in on the Bellingham area. Once we narrowed down the locale and trained the full focus of our investigation there, it didn't take long to flush out our two 'movie- mogul' creeps. A bloodstained mattress, the same torn one that was clearly visible in Bert's blowups, was still on the bed. Eventually, those bloodstains were traced to the victim. Thanks to Bert's detailed study of that film, the killers were found and put away for good.
Fraymore seemed bemused by the intensity of Dinky's reaction. 'I'm conducting an investigation here, Ms. Holloway,' he said. 'I understand your abhorrence toward this particular film, but we have to be thorough. That movie gives us something we didn't have before-motive.'
In view of the first skirmish in Fraymore's and my little turf war, I should have kept my mouth shut altogether, but keeping my mouth shut has never been one of my strong suits.
'What are you going to do about Tanya Dunseth?' I asked the question straight out, recognizing my blunder as soon as Fraymore turned his narrowed gaze in my direction.
'What business is that of yours?' he demanded.
With Alex looking on, I didn't want to back down. I shrugged noncommittally. 'I just want to know, that's all.'
Fraymore's thick neck bulged over his eighteen-inch collar. 'Did I miss something here?' he asked. 'Did I turn my back and all of a sudden you hired on as an investigator with the Ashland Police Department?'
The sarcasm wasn't lost on me. There was no humor in his delivery. Fraymore was the local chief dog, and I was a mangy, out-of-town cur encroaching on previously marked territory.
'I don't believe I have to remind you that you have no legal standing whatsoever in this jurisdiction, Mister Beaumont,' Gordon Fraymore continued. 'The City of Ashland has no letter of mutual aid on file with the City of Seattle. In other words, butt out. That badge of yours is no good here. Furthermore, I don't appreciate interference from visiting firemen. You just go on about your business-see some plays, get your daughter married off, do
