text that had popped up on Remington’s screen proved to be a burner, probably untraceable. Remington had duly informed the department of the incident. She kicked it around with a few other detectives. They decided she should text back
“who r u?”
She did so, but had received no reply. Her commander directed some uniformed deputies who were attached to the Homicide Bureau to try to track down where the cheap, disposable phone was sold. They might get lucky with a store surveillance video that showed the buyer.
“Priapus?” Tull asked now. “You’re kidding, right? Yeah, I heard about somebody reaching out to you with a mystery text. But you’ve got to understand, that screen name, that avatar, in some parts of the Web it’s pretty much the most common pseudonym there is. You search for ‘Priapus,’ it’s like searching for John Smith or John Doe or something. I wrote some code and turned up twenty-five hundred separate IP addresses without even trying.”
“What part of the Web might that be?” Remington already knew the answer, she just wanted it confirmed. “I mean, where, exactly, might Priapus be a real common screen name?”
“Oh, you know, Priapus is all over the hookup sites, fetish, bondage, S & M, anything like that. Anywhere a male might want to boast about, you know, his skill in the sack. Which is pretty much everywhere on the Web.”
“Like the Rose and Thorn websites.”
“Yeah, you bet.” To prove the point, Tull performed a quick search of the several dozen Rose and Thorn pages they had just visited. He turned up multiple threads that featured posters who called themselves some variation of “Priapus”:
Priapus666, Priapus_CM,
a more imaginative one who used
Priapussy
.
“I told you to be careful with this business,” her father warned when she filled him in on new developments later the following evening. They were in the Glendale condo. Gene had cooked up one of his specialties, an especially creamy version of macaroni and cheese.
“What you told me was to approach it with a cold eye.”
“Now you’ve got a guy who returns a dead body like it was a deposit bottle, who knows your phone number, who reaches out to ask if you enjoy his work.”
“Might not be a bad thing. Could be a way to nail him.”
“You’re thinking like a police. I’m thinking like a dad.”
—
One of the aspects of law enforcement that doesn’t get a lot of notice—an element that the endless number of cop shows, cop novels and cop movies don’t feature—is the grinding, painstaking, oftentimes routine nature of investigation. Her father had been a police clerk all his life. Remington had to remind herself of that fact whenever she got bogged down in a morass of clerical duties.
Mark Twelve Enterprises, the company listed on Merilee Henegar’s pay stub, wasn’t registered with the California secretary of state as an incorporated entity, a dba, or subchapter S corporation. Remington went sideways and checked with the secretaries of state in Nevada, New York and Florida, turning up nothing. She finally found a single mention of the name on an outdated list of “talent agencies” in the Los Angeles area. After that, the trail seemed to dry up like a pool of water in the desert.
A talent agency. In Los Angeles, the phrase was so flexible as to be absolutely meaningless. It could refer to anything from sucker houses offering introductions to top producers for outrageous fees to pimp scouts for the porn mills of the Valley and licensed agencies offering roles in movies, TV and commercials. In that world, even the apparently legit was suspect. The spectrum ranged from shadowy to pitch-black.
One element of the Henegar case kept coming back to her. During her brief conversation with Brandi Henegar at the task-force missing-persons event, on the evening when her daughter’s body reappeared, the mother made a stray comment. One of the reasons she wanted to speak to Remington, Brandi Henegar
“who r u?”
She did so, but had received no reply. Her commander directed some uniformed deputies who were attached to the Homicide Bureau to try to track down where the cheap, disposable phone was sold. They might get lucky with a store surveillance video that showed the buyer.
“Priapus?” Tull asked now. “You’re kidding, right? Yeah, I heard about somebody reaching out to you with a mystery text. But you’ve got to understand, that screen name, that avatar, in some parts of the Web it’s pretty much the most common pseudonym there is. You search for ‘Priapus,’ it’s like searching for John Smith or John Doe or something. I wrote some code and turned up twenty-five hundred separate IP addresses without even trying.”
“What part of the Web might that be?” Remington already knew the answer, she just wanted it confirmed. “I mean, where, exactly, might Priapus be a real common screen name?”
“Oh, you know, Priapus is all over the hookup sites, fetish, bondage, S & M, anything like that. Anywhere a male might want to boast about, you know, his skill in the sack. Which is pretty much everywhere on the Web.”
“Like the Rose and Thorn websites.”
“Yeah, you bet.” To prove the point, Tull performed a quick search of the several dozen Rose and Thorn pages they had just visited. He turned up multiple threads that featured posters who called themselves some variation of “Priapus”:
Priapus666, Priapus_CM,
a more imaginative one who used
Priapussy
.
“I told you to be careful with this business,” her father warned when she filled him in on new developments later the following evening. They were in the Glendale condo. Gene had cooked up one of his specialties, an especially creamy version of macaroni and cheese.
“What you told me was to approach it with a cold eye.”
“Now you’ve got a guy who returns a dead body like it was a deposit bottle, who knows your phone number, who reaches out to ask if you enjoy his work.”
“Might not be a bad thing. Could be a way to nail him.”
“You’re thinking like a police. I’m thinking like a dad.”
—
One of the aspects of law enforcement that doesn’t get a lot of notice—an element that the endless number of cop shows, cop novels and cop movies don’t feature—is the grinding, painstaking, oftentimes routine nature of investigation. Her father had been a police clerk all his life. Remington had to remind herself of that fact whenever she got bogged down in a morass of clerical duties.
Mark Twelve Enterprises, the company listed on Merilee Henegar’s pay stub, wasn’t registered with the California secretary of state as an incorporated entity, a dba, or subchapter S corporation. Remington went sideways and checked with the secretaries of state in Nevada, New York and Florida, turning up nothing. She finally found a single mention of the name on an outdated list of “talent agencies” in the Los Angeles area. After that, the trail seemed to dry up like a pool of water in the desert.
A talent agency. In Los Angeles, the phrase was so flexible as to be absolutely meaningless. It could refer to anything from sucker houses offering introductions to top producers for outrageous fees to pimp scouts for the porn mills of the Valley and licensed agencies offering roles in movies, TV and commercials. In that world, even the apparently legit was suspect. The spectrum ranged from shadowy to pitch-black.
One element of the Henegar case kept coming back to her. During her brief conversation with Brandi Henegar at the task-force missing-persons event, on the evening when her daughter’s body reappeared, the mother made a stray comment. One of the reasons she wanted to speak to Remington, Brandi Henegar
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