'What if there aren't any? Didn't Kelly and Jeremy say something about her folks dying in a house fire when she was little? That's how she ended up with a guardian.'
'There's always Amber's father.'
'Right,' Alex replied caustically. 'If he walked out the day Tanya found out she was pregnant, I'm sure he's great fatherhood material. There has to be something we can do.'
'Alex, listen to me. There's not one thing you and I can do. It's out of our hands. It never was in our hands.'
She looked at me reproachfully. 'I suppose you're right,' she said at last. 'It's just so awful. I mean, it's bad enough that she was forced to be in that terrible movie in the first place…'
'Hold it,' I said. 'You're jumping to conclusions. What makes you so certain she was forced? She may have been a willing participant. Not legally, of course. But Kelly and Jeremy said she was out on her own. She probably made good money.'
'At twelve?' Alex demanded. 'Are you kidding? Kids that age don't make informed choices.'
'Willing or not, here it is all these years later. She thinks she's put that part of her life totally behind her. Then, out of the blue, Martin Shore turns up and threatens to blow her nice, respectable new life right out of the water. I think he tried to blackmail her. When she didn't come across right away, he sent the tape to Dinky.'
'How could it be blackmail?' Alex returned. 'Tanya Dunseth doesn't have a dime. The actors down here aren't in it for the money. If she weren't poor as a church mouse, she wouldn't be living at Live Oak Farm.'
'Maybe he wanted something besides money,' I said.
'What?'
'Maybe he wanted her to work for him again, make another movie. In fact, since the tape showed up in Dinky's inter-office mail, maybe someone inside the Festival was working as Shore's accomplice. Anyway you slice it, a porno flick featuring a rising young legitimate actress would be a hot property.'
'I don't like the way you're talking about this,' Alex said levelly.
'How do you want me to talk? It's only a theory.'
'Whatever's in that video was bad enough to make Denver Holloway physically ill. Here you are talking about it as though it's the latest money-making sitcom some network is getting ready to put into syndication.'
'Porn's big business,' I told her. 'We're talking millions of dollars.'
'I refuse to think about it that way,' Alex returned. 'I absolutely refuse.' She didn't raise her voice, but the way she said the words should have warned me. I trudged right on.
'I'm a cop, Alex. I have to think that way. It's part of who I am. I've been working the streets for a long time now. Over the years, I've seen plenty of twelve-year-old hookers, little girls-and little boys, too, for that matter. Kids who would do anything for a price, including turn an unsuspecting John into a stiff. Once you've seen that a time or two, it's hard to regain your belief in absolute innocence.'
What followed was a long silence. As the gulf between us grew wider, I felt a dull ache in my gut. Alexis Downey and I were having our first major disagreement-one that couldn't be walked around or ignored or swept under a rug. It wasn't over something inconsequential like lumpy futons or man-hating cats. We were staring into the fundamental differences between us, grappling with disparities that arose out of who we were, what we did, and what we believed.
I was seven years older than Alex. I had been a cop for almost twenty years, more than half her lifetime. Cops see too damn much.
'Well,' she said finally, shaking her head and steadfastly pulling us back from the edge of the cliff. 'I still think for blackmail to work, Tanya would have to have money.'
The thought came to me then-a sudden, clear inkling of what else Martin Shore might have wanted from Tanya Dunseth. Just thinking about it made me feel incredibly old. And dirty. And right back on the edge of the precipice.
'Not necessarily,' I said. 'Maybe he wanted something else.'
'What?'
Alex still didn't understand, and I didn't want to tell her, didn't want her to have to know some of the things I know-the ugly things all cops learn sooner or later because they have to. Because they don't have a choice. Alex sat there, her eyes holding mine, waiting for me to say something.
'The streets aren't the only things that have deteriorated over the last few years,' I said. 'Other things have gotten worse as well.'
She frowned. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
Choosing my words carefully, I tried my best to explain it without having to come right out and draw Alexis a picture.
'Years ago, eleven- or twelve-year-olds were young enough for this kind of filth. Not anymore. In terms of perpetrators getting away with it, the best candidates for sexual abuse and exploitation are still female children under the age of three. They can't testify, can't say who did it or what they did.'
As she grasped what I was saying, Alex's eyes widened in horror. She studied me searchingly for some time after I finally shut up. 'You mean Shore would try to blackmail Tanya to let him use her baby the same way? To make a movie?'
'It happens,' I answered miserably. 'I swear to God, Alex, this kind of crap goes on all the time. You have no idea.'
'You're right,' she spat back at me, suddenly furious. 'I guess I haven't! And I don't think I want to, either!'
Without another word, she stormed out of the shop. I made no attempt to stop her. She needed to be alone for a while. So did I. It's no wonder so many disillusioned cops end up divorced and living alone. Who can live with them? According to the suicide statistics, they can barely stand to live with themselves.
I don't know how long I sat there. Eventually, one of the kids waiting tables came over and took away the remains of both root-beer floats. When he asked me if I wanted anything else, I looked up at him stupidly. The second time around I finally managed to order coffee. He must have thought I'd gone crazy.
Beating yourself up is simple, especially when you've had as much practice at it as I have. In retrospect, I could see exactly what I'd done wrong. Of course I should have kept quiet about my suspicions. Of course I shouldn't have brought up any of it. I was a dumb-ass bum for even mentioning such a thing. But I had, and now I couldn't take it back. The damage was done, and I couldn't see any way in hell to make it better.
Unless, I thought, brightening suddenly at the prospect-unless I could somehow come up with some other theory and prove myself wrong. For people who are expert self-castigators, it's easy to recognize how being totally wrong can turn into a walk-away victory. And if, in order to prove myself sufficiently wrong, I had to bend a few rules, so what? It wouldn't be the first time.
And that's how I really ended up getting involved in Gordon Fraymore's case. Personally involved, I mean. Not because I particularly wanted to, and not, God help me, because I wanted to make his life miserable. Not at all. What I really wanted was to find some way to redeem myself in Alexis Downey's eyes.
I had trotted out only one of my pet theories. I had plenty more where that came from. The first one had been ugly enough to drive Alex away from me and out into the night. There were no guarantees that the real answer, whatever that might be, wouldn't be even worse. But if it meant not losing Alex permanently, I had to make the effort.
So I sat there all by myself and drank cup after cup of coffee. I tried to think my way into Gordon Fraymore's case the same way I'd be trying to think myself into one of my own if I were back home in Seattle and officially assigned to a new homicide investigation. Only here there was an added dimension. My only access to the killer was through what I had learned or could learn from Detective Gordon Fraymore.
At the start of a case, I usually try to do a mental sort, drawing a picture of who all the players are and trying to see how they're interconnected. Because most people are killed by someone they know, that process often leads directly to the killer or to people who know the killer.
To that end, I grabbed a folded napkin out of the holder and began drawing little X's and O's all over it. At the center of the diagram were Tanya and Amber Dunseth. In a circle around them were Martin Shore, Jeremy, Kelly, Monica Davenport, Dinky Holloway, and me. I was about to quit when I realized there were two other people I needed to add, equal O's on the same line-Daphne and Guy Lewis.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember exactly how it had been when Daphne and Guy had stepped inside
