The girl’s name is Lanie Porter. She’s thirty-two, redhead, blue eyes, and she looks like a hooker. Gross.
OK, I’m done with the desktop folders. It’s all on the up and up. He’s got contracts, STD tests, and photocopies of their driver’s licenses. It’s obvious to me that Ark’s real business is not this public fuck porn. Because that’s all legitimate and I just know that deep down, he’s as illegitimate as they come.
I check the hard drive for more folders, but there are none. Which means he uses this computer for personal stuff and maybe the initial steps in the digital record chain, and then all the files get transferred somewhere else.
I look over at the three tall filing cabinets that look like expensive pieces of modern art made of steel, wire, and glass.
No. That’s too easy. He wouldn’t keep paper records. Would he?
Obviously if one has filing cabinets—custom-made filing cabinets, no less—one keeps files in them. I pull on the latch on the stainless steel box but it’s locked.
I try each one, but nope. They are all locked.
If this was a nineteen-twenties gumshoe movie where the reporter was the heroine, I’d find the key in the oversized desk drawer. But the desk has no drawer and even if it did, I’d never find the key in there. Because the lock on those filing cabinets requires a fingerprint and a code.
“OK, then,” I say to myself as I walk out of his office and slide the doors closed behind me. “Operation Ambush Ark is over.” I’ve got nothing but an unsettled feeling about those pictures of us. It was like… it was like… he was creating something from it. But I’m not sure what.
I shake it off. Because that stuff was personal and if I want to know personal stuff, I’ll have to ask him myself. So I walk down the hallway to JD’s bedroom and then flick the lights on before entering.
JD’s room has the same custom furniture as Ark’s office, and the rest of the house, for that matter. Steel boxes instead of cabinets. Cables and wires to add to the industrial effect. And glass. But there are some subtle differences between the two rooms.
One, JD is not neat like Ark. His shit is all over the place. And two, he’s not nearly as worried about security. Because he’s got porn everywhere. Most of it is him getting his dick sucked by these random girls. Girls who look a lot more enthusiastic than that one blowing Ark, that’s for sure. And JD is animated and talkative in his starring roles. He pulls their hair and slaps their faces. He always makes them come, too. It’s just fingering, but hey, it counts.
Ark never acted like that with the woman in his movies. And that makes me feel better for some reason.
JD, for being the guy who does all the acting, has plenty of cameras in his possession. Big expensive ones with zoom lenses. Small pocket-sized ones. Video cameras, everything from a professional one that goes on your shoulder, to a little hand-held hiding in the back of a knocked-over stack of video games.
The cameras all have photos of him and girls on them. Some sexual, some not. Just random conversations with people.
But this little hand-held video camera has more than forty hours of video on it. All of it is of JD, and none of it has girls. Because it’s a video diary. The last entry was five days ago. The day he met me.
I press the button that will take me to the beginning and then press play.
The first was four years ago.
I look around, suddenly ashamed of my snooping. Do I watch it? It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But then the little screen in front of me comes to life and there’s a face.
I almost don’t recognize him, that’s how different he looks. He’s skinny, for one. Gaunt. And his face is black and blue. The kind of black and blue you see in police photos after a mugging.
Someone beat the ever-living fuck out of him. And that seals the deal.
I need to know how he got so broken and all I have to do is not turn it off.
“Hey,” JD says from the camera. He stops. Just one word is enough to shut him down. His eyes begin to water and for a moment I think it’s because it’s painful to talk. From the beating.
But then he swallows hard and wipes his eyes. He clears his throat. “Hey,” he repeats. “I just want you to know, I miss you.” Another pause. Tears well up in his eyes. “I got this camera from a guy I met today, baby. And he said I could use it. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t trust anyone bearing gifts. I know. I shouldn’t trust him. But I got no one, Marie. I’ve got no one else.”
JD lies down on something, and from this close-up angle I can’t tell if it’s a bed or the floor. But I suspect it’s the floor because he looks homeless. He looks nothing like the healthy, charming JD I know.
“So I’m gonna take a chance and help him out. He’ll help me if I help him. That’s what he said. He’ll help me look for you. And when I find you, I want you to know that I never gave up. I never stopped looking. So I’m gonna record it all on this camera.” JD stops and his eyes dart back and forth. Like the lens is a pair of eyes. “I love you. I love you, and I love our baby. I’m so sorry and I will never stop looking.”
There’s silence after that. Well, not quite. There’s no more talking, but the film goes on for three more minutes of sadness. Of JD looking into the camera, desperate for his Marie to see him. To see his grief. To believe that he’s gonna save her.
I stop the recording because an overwhelming despair washes over me. He didn’t save her. He lost her. She was killed, or died on her own, or whatever. Ark said so the other day. And there’s no baby here, so obviously there was no happy ending with that either.