Blood Sunset

24



SPARKS DIRECTED US BACK to the squat on Clyde Street, the Falcon jolting over the bluestone roadway as we came alongside the house. I looked for the fat trannie in the red dress but couldn’t see him anywhere. He’d probably found a client.
‘Keep drivin’,’ Sparks said. ‘Park at the end of the street.’
I did as instructed and he ran back to the house, disappeared into the drive. From this angle any view of the squat was blocked by a brand new double-storey townhouse with a ‘For Sale’ sign out the front. I was wondering idly if living next door to drug addicts was part of the real estate agent’s sale pitch when Sparks reappeared with what looked like a black carry case for a laptop. But he wasn’t alone. A brindle-coated dog leapt after him.
‘No way, Sparks. No dogs in the car.’
‘Huh? He’s just a puppy, mate. Six months old.’
‘I don’t care. I’m not having a pit bull in my car. Take it back inside.’
‘He’s not a pit bull. He’s a bull mastiff.’
‘Whatever. Take him back.’
Sparks backed out of the car, put down the laptop case and dug out a DVD in a plastic sleeve.
‘Look, man, you wanna see what I got here or not? This is some bad shit, but I’m not leavin’ my little mate in there with those guys any longer than I have to. Either Hooch comes or I go back inside with him.’
I looked at the dog. He was dirty and underfed, his ribs clearly visible, the back half of his body wobbling, his tail whipping back and forth.
‘All right. Get in, but make sure you hold on to him. I don’t want any dog puke on my seats.’
Sparks hoisted the dog inside, but failed to keep him still and he leapt into the front. Cassie laughed, enticing the dog off me and onto her. Eventually Sparks took control of the animal, settling him on his knee.
‘Where to now?’ I said, frustrated. It was just after six and I was supposed to be meeting Ella in two hours. ‘Why did you ask me if I had a DVD player when you’ve got that laptop? Can’t we just watch it on that?’
Sparks explained that the laptop didn’t belong to him and that he’d tried to use it but there were passwords blocking his access. When Cassie asked how he’d watched the DVD, he said he’d broken into his mum’s house while she was at work and watched it there. It was a plausible enough story.
‘So we need a DVD player,’ said Cassie. ‘Obviously the one in the watch-house mess room is out of the question.’
She was looking at me as she spoke and I wondered whether she meant the station was off limits for me or for Sparks. For a moment I contemplated suggesting we go to my apartment and watch it on my own telly, but there were lines even I didn’t cross. Having crooks in my house was one of them.
‘I’ve got a laptop,’ Cassie said instead. ‘On my desk. Fully charged too. Drop me off out the front, I’ll run in and get it.’

I took the backstreets and double-parked across the road from the station. Just ahead of us, a group of local junkies gathered around a phone box, probably waiting on a dealer. Sparks slouched in the back seat, muttering about not wanting to be seen.
‘Right, where do you wanna go?’ I asked him when Cassie was back in the car.
‘Go to Anal Park,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you why when we get there.’
‘Anal Park?’ Cassie repeated.
‘Alma Park,’ I said. ‘It’s a gay beat at night.’
When we crossed into East St Kilda, Sparks instructed me to park just shy of the railway line, opposite a bicycle track that wound through the western section of the park. We followed him to a picnic table adjacent to the bike track, where he let his dog off the lead and set his laptop on the table next to Cassie’s.
‘Got another condition,’ he said. ‘If I give ya what I’ve got, ya gotta go blind for somethin’.’
Cassie rolled her eyes. ‘Depends what you’re talking about. If you mugged somebody, we can’t turn a blind eye to that.’
‘I didn’t roll nobody!’ he said, throwing a stick. The dog ran after it but didn’t see it land and became confused, running in circles. ‘Few days ago I hit a joint just down the road from here. One of them big old joints, like all the Jews live in. It was about two in the arvo during the week, so I figure I’ve got a good chance nobody’s home.’
‘Because you’ve done it before?’ Cassie asked.
Sparks just looked at her.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Don’t pretend it’s your first time.’
‘I’m not. Who cares anyway? I mean, all those rich mother-f*ckers have insurance.’
Cassie went to reply but I cut her off.
‘Come on, Sparks. Give us some credit. We’re not going to arrest you for a pissy little burg. We’ll just add it to the jemmy bar we found you with in the car park today. That’s two points for us.’
‘Yeah, righto. You want this or not?’
‘Go on.’
He threw another stick for his dog. This time the dog found it and began to chew it.
‘Dall asked me to do the burg,’ he said when he came back to the table. ‘I hadn’t spoken to him since we got out. Like I said, we went our separate ways. Anyway, one night last week he finds me on the street, says he’s got a job for me. I told him to get rooted since the last time I accepted a job from him I ended up in the can. But then he showed me the cash. Two large for a shitty burg, mate. Gave me a grand up-front and an address, said all I gotta do was slip in during the day when the rich-prick owner was at work. Said he’d give me the other grand on delivery.’
He shook his head in frustration and sat on the edge of the table.
‘Delivery of the laptop?’ I said, looking at the case in front of me. ‘This is what your voicemail message was about?’
‘Yeah. Sounds simple, right – do a burg and hoist a laptop?’
Cassie and I both nodded.
‘No one pays two large to rip off a laptop unless they’re plannin’ somethin’ with it,’ he said. ‘I knew I wasn’t just doin’ a burg, but an earn like that doesn’t come along every day for a shitman like me, so I took the cash and said I’d do it.’
He paused and we waited for him to go on.
‘Anyway, few days ago I door-knocked the joint and made sure no one was home. When no one answered I went around the back, climbed the veranda and went in through the bathroom window. No alarms upstairs in those joints.’
I nodded at the familiar method of entry. The kid was definitely no rookie.
‘Went in the first room and found the laptop, exactly where Dall said it would be,’ Sparks continued. ‘Then all of a sudden I hear a car pull up out the front. I look out the window and see this Beamer in the bloody driveway. I’m high-tailing it when I see a set of keys on a table. So I swiped the f*ckers and hauled arse out the window like a monkey.’
‘Do you think he saw you?’ Cassie asked.
‘Nah, I was gone before he was even in the house.’
‘You get a look at him?’ I said.
‘Mate, all I saw was this set of wheels in the f*ckin’ driveway and I was outta there.’
I considered all this as the dog came bounding back over, the stick covered in slobber. He dropped it at our feet and barked. Sparks picked it up, hurled it away and wiped his hands on his shorts.
‘The laptop wasn’t enough for you though, was it?’ I said. ‘You took the car as well.’
‘I got the keys, all right. It was like the lottery, man. All I had to do was go back there and take it. Mate, I just pressed the button and she opened up. Just like that, a f*ckin’ gift.’
Cassie and I exchanged glances. The story was a familiar one. Whenever a burglary or break-in occurred, home owners always checked the obvious items like televisions, cash and jewellery. They rarely noticed the spare set of car keys missing. Not until it was too late. A home burglary with the lot.
‘Drove it all the way down to Frankston and back, even went to the beach and pretended I was rich,’ Sparks said. He shot a nervous glance at Cassie. ‘Wouldn’t believe how many chicks actually looked at me when I was in that car.’
‘So where is it now?’
‘Left it on the Esplanade.’
Cassie scoffed.
‘I did! Shit, what am I gonna do with a Beamer, man?’ he cried. ‘I’m just a f*ckin’ junkie. Give me a video camera and I’ll turn it into cash the same day, but a hundred-thousand-dollar set of wheels – I wouldn’t know where to begin. Shit, check your records. Rich prick probably found it the next day and took it home without even reportin’ it.’
Neither of us were convinced but I decided to push things along. ‘Look, forget the car. Tell me about Thursday night. You were supposed to meet Dallas but he never showed, right?’
‘Too right he never showed. He told me to meet him at midnight outside Luna Park. He was gonna give me the other grand for this bloody thing.’ He nodded at the laptop. ‘I got there on time, waited a whole hour. Even rang his phone about five times but got no answer. First I thought he might’ve just forgotten about it, but Dall wasn’t like that. He was reliable and he wanted the laptop, so I knew something was up. The next morning I left a message on his voicemail, then went to CARS and found out he was dead. After that, I wanted to see what I was holdin’ on to for him, so I tried to turn the bastard on but it’s got a password. I was about to chuck it when I found this disk in the carry case. When I watched it, that’s when I realised I was in trouble.’
He let out a deep breath and seemed to deflate.
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘If Dallas wanted this laptop so bad, why would he get you to do the burg? Why wouldn’t he do it himself?’
‘All day I’ve been askin’ myself the same question,’ Sparks said. ‘First I figured he was too cool for it, like he wouldn’t wanna get his own hands dirty for a shitty little burg. Ya know, just get old Sparks to do it, the f*ckin’ junkie ring-in, like he did with the armed rob. But now when I think about it, I reckon he knew the prick and didn’t wanna risk gettin’ seen. So he asked me to do it.’
It sounded plausible, though I suspected there was more to it. But we were getting to a critical point and I didn’t want to lose him.
‘Who are we talking about? This rich prick you robbed, what’s his name?’
‘Peter Parker.’
I went to write it down, then realised he was bullshitting me. ‘As in Spider-Man?’
‘Or in this case, rock spider man.’
‘Come on, Sparks. We can’t take him down if we don’t know who he is. Give us a name.’
‘Look, I don’t know who he is, all right? Even if I did, I said I wasn’t no dog. No names, remember?’
‘Fair enough,’ Cassie said. ‘But you never wanted to know who you were robbing? Surely you asked.’
‘Well, actually I did ask, but Dall said I didn’t need to know. Said the money and the job was all I should worry about. F*ckin’ typical, always keepin’ the details to himself. Tell ya what though, now I’m glad he didn’t tell me.’
Cassie’s nose and forehead were beaded with sweat. I was the same and it wasn’t just the heat. I swiped the sweat away and told Sparks to show us the DVD.
‘Uh-uh, not me,’ he said, standing up and whistling for the dog. ‘This is as far as I’m gonna go. There’s some filthy shit on there. I’ve seen a lot of crud in my time, but nothin’ like that. You wanna look at it, be my guest, but I’m not watchin’ it again. I’ll be over here with Hooch. Call me when ya done.’
He led the dog across the park to a drinking fountain. Cassie moved around and sat next to me. I could feel her shoulder pressed against me and the scent of her perfume reminded me that I needed to call Ella and cancel dinner. It was the last thing I wanted to do but we were barrelling on the wave and we had to keep riding.
‘Sure you want to do this?’ Cassie asked. ‘Maybe we should log it with the techs and get them to do it right. What if we lose a file or something?’
I shook my mind clear and focused on the case.
‘I don’t think so. Not yet. Dallas Boyd was killed because of this laptop. Whatever’s on this disk has something to do with that.’ I turned on Cassie’s laptop. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
When the computer finished booting I slid in the disk but nothing happened.
‘You’re hopeless,’ Cassie teased, nudging me with her shoulder and turning the laptop towards her. ‘Shove over.’
I watched her hands dance over the keyboard. ‘Bingo!’ she said within a minute. ‘I’ve got pictures and movie files.’
I leant over her shoulder as she ran her finger across a list of files on the screen that appeared to be sorted by date.
‘They’re all recent,’ she said. ‘Created mid last week, all except one.’
She clicked the first file and a photo appeared, filling the screen. The picture wasn’t pornographic but it still turned my stomach. Two naked toddlers – a boy and a girl – playing on a beach somewhere, neither more than about two years old. The picture had obviously been taken by a camera with a powerful zoom lens; the genitalia filled the centre of the shot. I wondered where the parents had been and how they hadn’t noticed their children being photographed.
‘Sick,’ Cassie said.
The next three shots were of the same two children taken from different angles. In one shot I made out the blurred image of a man’s leg next to the children. The father, I guessed. Behind his leg were a row of coloured beach boxes. I felt a charge of recognition and pointed at the screen.
‘Those beach boxes. I know them.’
‘Brighton Beach,’ Cassie said.
‘Right.’
The fourth photo nearly knocked me off the bench seat. It was of poorer quality than the others and depicted a teenage boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen, performing oral sex on an adult male. I forced myself to study the picture. The camera had been placed in such a way as to capture the image of the boy but not the older man, whose head and shoulders were outside the frame.
Cassie explained that the image was actually a movie file. She clicked the keypad and the boy’s mouth began to move up and down the man’s penis. The camera zoomed in on the boy; all we could see of the man was his hands and penis. It was repulsive.
‘Holy shit,’ Cassie said. ‘That’s Justin Quinn, the kid killed in Talbot Reserve last night.’
‘You serious?’
‘Serious as a heart attack. I was bloody well there today. I saw his face.’ She put a hand to her mouth. ‘That’s f*cking him. Jesus.’
She slid off the bench and walked away. For a second I thought she was going to vomit, but she just stood under a tree, facing the sky, hands laced around her head. I wanted to offer her something but there was nothing I could say. Instead I tried to absorb this new information. Justin Quinn being the kid in the movie changed things significantly. It meant Sparks had probably been right to assume his murder was connected to Dallas Boyd.
The movie was short, less than a minute in total. When Cassie came back she suggested it was probably a sample clip, like an advertisement or trailer to promote a full-length version.
‘This looks like a hotel room,’ I said, tapping the screen. ‘There’s a notepad or something on the bedside table. Can we enhance it, blow it up?’
She shook her head. ‘Not without high-end software. Let’s open the next one.’
The images that followed were still shots of the boy performing the same act, this time with the male offender on a bed. Despite my repulsion, I noticed something about the camera work. Like most men, I’d seen my fair share of pornography and to me this was an amateur job, but not in the ‘mockumentary’ sense. This was genuine amateur, as though a camera had been set up in the cupboard.
‘It’s like a hidden camera,’ I said. ‘But it zoomed in before so someone must be operating it. The kid must’ve known he was being filmed. Maybe they’re trying to make it look like he didn’t know?’
‘There’s another possibility,’ said Cassie, grimacing. ‘Somebody was operating the camera from another room. You know, via remote control.’
I considered the scenario. Some like-minded men hire two hotel rooms, side by side. The camera is set up in one room, hidden in a cupboard and linked to the recording equipment in the other. They test it out, check that it works. Then they hire someone like Dallas Boyd to find them a desperate street kid in need of fast cash. The kid gets paid, probably given drugs, and together they make themselves a little kiddie porn.
‘Makes sense,’ I said. ‘Part of the appeal, I suppose. Give it an underground feel and you create demand.’
Cassie clicked the next file: another movie clip. It opened with a shot of the interior of a house. Polished boards, large white door, stained-glass entranceway. The front door opened and two high school kids in uniform rambled in, holding hands and giggling. They shut the door and began to kiss against the wall, school bags sliding to the floor. This time the lighting was better and it was more choreographed, but it still had the feel of an amateur production. The camera moved in as the kids fondled each other, tearing at each other’s uniform.
‘Dallas Boyd,’ I said, recognising the boy.
I focused on the girl and recognised her as Tammy York, but her hair was styled in pigtails to make her look younger.
‘That’s his girlfriend,’ I said, wondering why she’d not mentioned this.
‘Didn’t she say Dallas never did skin work?’ Cassie asked. ‘No, she said he never did kiddie porn. Said he just scouted for them and sold it on the side.’
‘What the hell is this then?’
‘I don’t know.’
The two of them moved up the hall, past the camera and into an open-plan living area, where the curtains had conveniently been drawn and all the lights turned on. They proceeded to have sex on the sofa, the camera zooming in to capture the girl’s shaved genitals. The film ended after a minute or so and I had to agree with Cassie: these were sample clips. I looked at the laptop Sparks had stolen and realised he was right to be scared. If this was an illegal porn racket, with paedophiles running the show, losing the laptop and disk would’ve caused a major panic. If they fell into the wrong hands, they could bring them all undone. But why kill Dallas? The only likely explanation was that they knew he was behind it. How they knew was another question. So too was the murder of Justin Quinn. Had he been involved in the theft as well, or was it to keep him from talking? Sparks hadn’t mentioned anything about him.
Cassie clicked ahead and opened another series of photos. They were less offensive but the intent was just the same. In the first shot a group of children frolicked in a public swimming pool. The second depicted a young girl, perhaps five or six, standing on a diving board.
‘That’s the Albert Park Aquatic Centre,’ said Cassie, clicking some buttons and leaning into the screen. ‘It’s less than a month ago. The oldest file was created January fifteen, the most recent last week. Even the movie clips are new.’
I thought about the sequence. It was all recent. Maybe the person who owned the disk had been in the throes of having the sample clips professionally edited, or added to a mailing list or website?
‘Whoever made this disk knows their way around a camera,’ Cassie said, scrolling back to the first few pictures of the children on Brighton Beach. In the background the sun was setting over the water, and I was suddenly reminded of the photo of Dallas and Tammy that I’d seen in the apartment. Had it been taken by the same man?
‘I’ve tried to take sunset photos before,’ Cassie was saying. ‘It’s not easy getting the lighting right. Maybe we’re looking for a professional photographer?’
‘A local photographer, Cass. First Brighton. Then Albert Park.’ I pointed at the screen. ‘That house with Dallas in it is Edwardian, and I bet it’s somewhere close by. So we’re looking for someone who’s part of the community. Someone who blends in.’
Cassie turned away from the screen and stared at the park. In the distance, Sparks was wrestling with his dog.
‘You know what I don’t get,’ she said. ‘There’s no password for any of this.’
‘But Sparks said there was, said he couldn’t get it started.’
‘I don’t mean the laptop. Even basic laptops have passwords. I mean this disk and these files. Why no password? If I had this disk, I sure as shit wouldn’t keep it without some form of protection.’
I thought about the possibilities, then said, ‘These files are all recent, right?’
‘Right, some created last week. That means the files were loaded onto the disk then, not necessarily filmed. We don’t know when the pictures were taken or the clips filmed.’
‘Well, let’s assume they’re all recent. And let’s also assume you’re right about these files being promotional adverts for full-length productions. I think the disk is just a temporary storage device.’
She frowned and stared at the laptop.
‘Think about it,’ I said. ‘You’ve just received a new collection that you need to disseminate safely or upload onto a website. But you have to store it temporarily somewhere, at least until the files can be encrypted or hidden.’ I tapped the screen where the list of files was shown. ‘The most recent of these was created last Tuesday. Sparks said he boosted the laptop on the Wednesday. What if they were just about to upload them, or in the process of doing so?’
Cassie’s eyes widened as she sensed where I was going. ‘Right, well that explains the disk, but what about this laptop? Dallas paid two grand for Sparks to boost it, and everything we’ve learnt so far tells us he was planning something, but we don’t know what. To me, that’s the real question. Why did he want this laptop?’
I rubbed my hands together as I thought about Cassie’s question. I stood up and called out to Sparks. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t playing us.
‘F*ckin’ gross, hey?’ the kid said as he walked over, dog following. ‘Didn’t mind seeing Dall get it on with that school bitch though. That was pretty cool. But the other shit . . . can’t believe he was into it.’
I ejected the disk, closed Cassie’s laptop and stared at Sparks for a moment.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You sure you don’t know why Dallas wanted this laptop?’
‘No, man. Like I said, he wouldn’t tell me. But after seeing what’s on that disk, isn’t it obvious?’
‘Enlighten me,’ I said.
‘Well, the dude was a player, a scammer. Maybe he was lookin’ to do a number on them.’
Cassie and I exchanged a glance. She was thinking the same thing: blackmail.
‘And you’re not in on that?’ I asked. ‘Sure you and Dallas didn’t scheme up some plot to make these perverts pay you off?’
Sparks stared at me with contempt. ‘Hey, I’ve been straight up with ya both all along. If I was into any of that shit, why would I bring ya into it and risk me life talkin’? Why wouldn’t I just ditch the laptop and bail out?’
Fear and anger glinted in his eyes and I knew he was telling the truth.
‘All right, we believe you,’ Cassie said, giving me a frustrated look. ‘We’re sorry, but we have to cover all bases. What about Justin Quinn, you think he was into it?’
‘Well, that’s another story. You ask me, I wouldn’t put it past Dall to recruit someone like Jussie for a skin flick, just so they could put the pinch on ’em later.’
I nodded. It made sense. We now had a workable motive. And we also had a suspect.
‘Okay, one last thing,’ I said. ‘You say you knocked off the car keys and the laptop from a house not far from here, right?’
‘What I said.’
‘Remember the house?’
He frowned in suspicion. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re going to show us. Let’s go.’