The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) (16 page)

Chapter 18

Ryan and I stood there a
long while before anyone answered the door at Alpha Phi Sigma around nine that
morning. Finally, the door opened and a guy told us Martin Hunt was at the Rec
Center.

“I’m impressed,” Ryan said as we got back in the
Charger.

“
Gotta
look buff to get
your time in the mattress room.”

“How hard do you want to push him?”

“Hard as we can. He’s a bad guy. He exploits
women—prostitutes and the girls on campus. I imagine that’s the way he lives:
by taking advantage of others. I wouldn’t be surprised if he lies, steals, and
cheats his way through life.”

“You think that dollars-per-fuck idea is his?”

“I don’t think it; I know it. I can just see him
hitting up four other shitheads for a hundred each and promising them they’ll
get laid. Then he comes up with the idea of roping in five more. So he gets
them all laid, gives them back half their money, and he’s a big hero.”

“Or he was the guy who goes free because he set it
up.”

I turned to him. “You did that in college, didn’t
you?”

He laughed. “My mother used to organize tours to
Europe for the Church. If she signed up fifteen people, she’d go free.” He put
on his innocent expression. “Ask my dad.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do now. Get him on
the phone, will
ya
?”

We approached the new Rec Building on University.
It had a glass front so you could see the people on the equipment. There were
only half-a-dozen students on the treadmills on the second floor. I didn’t see
anyone on the weight machines on three.

I parked in a metered spot, and we walked into the
big lobby. A bright-eyed young girl at the reception desk gave us a smile as
she saw us enter through the glass doors.

Ryan said, “I bet you’re right. I can see Martin
Hunt thinking that way. One question, though: How’d he get the prostitute to go
along with it?”

I stopped walking. “
Roofies
.”

“If he did, he could go away for some years.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Which is how we’re gonna
get him. Everything’s a transaction to him. So if he sees that obstructing us
is more expensive than cooperating with us, he’ll give us what we want.”

“What is it we want, exactly?”

“Couple things. I want to know who killed Virginia
Rinaldi—and how and why. And if I can send Martin Hunt someplace where you
don’t want to spend any time in the mattress room, I’m good with that, too.”

The girl at the reception desk asked if she could
help us. I showed her my shield and told her we were looking for a student
named Martin Hunt. She checked her screen and gave me another smile. “He’s
here.”

“Where’s the elevator?”

Ryan pointed to the left, where a small neon sign
read “STAIRS.” “This is a gym, Karen, a three-story gym.” He started walking to
the stairs.

We climbed to the second floor and did a quick
circle, past the treadmills, stationary bikes, rowers, step climbers, and other
kinds of torture equipment I’d never seen before, lined up neat and clean, each
with a computer screen on the front. Large-screen TVs hung from the ceiling.
Club music thumped from big speakers on the ceiling. It was good to see my tax dollars
financing higher ed.

But we didn’t see Martin Hunt. We climbed up to
the third floor, which was full of all the shiny chrome strength contraptions
and rack after rack of black dumbbells. We began our own brand of circuit.
Finally, we spotted Martin Hunt doing bench presses on a machine. He was
pushing those handles hard, grunting and breathing heavily.

“Mr. Hunt,” I said.

He lowered the handles and looked up at me and
Ryan. It took him a second to place us. He sat up and wiped his face with a
towel. “Detectives.”

“That’s right.” I reminded him of our names. “We
need to talk to you at police headquarters.”

“I got a class in forty-five minutes.”

“No, not today, you don’t.” I turned to Ryan.
“Escort Mr. Hunt to the locker room, get him showered.” Much as I wanted to
make him miss the shower, I decided against it. Unlike the black-and-white
Chargers, our unmarked model had cloth seats. “You can shower and get dressed
in five, can’t you, Mr. Hunt?”

“Absolutely,” he said. He flashed me an obnoxious
smile to show me how, being younger, smarter, and better looking than me, he
wasn’t worried.

I walked around for a few minutes, looking at all
the cool toys. When I went to college, the gym had a few sets of barbells and
free weights and two Universal gyms. There was a narrow pool in the basement
that smelled like bleach. No climbing wall, no indoor running track, no yoga
studios, no squash or racquetball courts. No sauna. No smoothie bar.

About six minutes later, Ryan and Martin Hunt
emerged from the men’s locker room. Martin’s medium-length brown hair, full and
wavy, was uncombed. He had a day’s growth of beard. His brown T-shirt with the
Alpha Phi Sigma logo showed off his pretty good torso. His gait had a bit of a
swagger, as if he wanted people to see that, yeah, a couple cops stopped by to
talk to him.

I looked forward to seeing if he still had that
swagger in an hour.

We put him in the Charger and drove him toward
headquarters. A minute into the trip, he said, “So, you making any progress on
the case? Professor Rinaldi?” He said it with forced casualness, like he was my
neighbor faking some interest in my job. I decided to exercise my right to
remain silent. I checked him out a few times in the rear-view mirror to see how
he was doing. He looked a little preoccupied. I chose a slow route to
headquarters to give him a little time to marinate.

I parked in back, but we led him around the side
of the building and in through the main entrance. The floor tiles, the flags,
and the portraits of the president, the governor, and the police chiefs set the
tone: You’re in our house now, and we don’t fuck around. We walked over to the
sergeant in reception, who hit a button that made a nasty growling noise as it
unlocked the steel door that led inside.

Ryan understood that I was interested in the
atmospherics. We headed for Interview 2, the room we used for our more aerobic
interrogations. The steel bar with handcuffs on the table set the tone. I
directed Martin Hunt to sit in the plastic chair that had the best camera angle,
and Ryan turned on the system. I announced the date, time, and people in the
room.

“Mr. Hunt, we took a look at the computer from
your fraternity. Very nice.”

“I want to go on record that you had no right to
take that computer. You didn’t have a search warrant.”

“We asked your permission. You said okay.”

“You threatened me.”

“You know we didn’t threaten you. We simply told
you who we were going to contact if you refused to let us see it.” I then put
on a worried expression and turned to Ryan. “Gee, Detective, maybe Mr. Hunt is
right. Did we violate his rights?”

Ryan put on a solemn expression. “There’s quite a
bit of case law on that. It was perfectly legitimate. Especially when it’s
electronic records that are easy to alter. You know, files on computers.”

I turned back to Martin Hunt. “Like I said, very
nice, what you have on the computer, I mean. You know, we’re shipping a mirror
of your hard drive to the FBI.” I put on a smile. “You know about computers;
you’ll appreciate this: Did you know the FBI has all sorts of cool software for
doing video analysis—and it’s free for local law enforcement? Which is a real
service to us. Anyway, they’re gonna take a look at those videos in the
mattress room, see if they can match up any of the guys and girls in there with
their photo IDs from DMV and their school IDs.”

“You don’t have any right to do—”

“If any of those girls are under eighteen, that’s
statutory rape, which is a felony. You’re a sex offender, for life.” I put up
my hand to signal that I had misspoken. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hunt. I didn’t mean to
say
you’re
a sex offender. I meant
any guy screwing any girl under eighteen.”

“How the hell is a guy supposed to know a girl is
under eighteen?”

“That’s a tough one, Mr. Hunt. Especially since
some girls lie—you know, they say they’re eighteen when they’re not, just to
get into the party. Unfortunately, that’s not relevant, legally speaking.
You’re supposed to not screw a girl if you don’t know she’s eighteen.” I shook
my head. “I’m sorry, I did it again. I didn’t mean to suggest that you did
that.”

I gave him another smile. “Anyway, let’s move on.
I just wanted you to know where we are with the computer. We’ll return it just
as soon as we can. You should have it hooked up to your widescreen by the
weekend. But let’s turn to the Virginia Rinaldi case. That’s what we want to
talk with you about. You told us yesterday how you showed some porn at the
‘Bye, Bye Virginia’ party. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” It was starting to dawn on him that it was
probably smarter to say as little as possible.

“We noticed that recently you visited this
site—what’s the name of that site, Detective?”

Ryan looked down at his notebook. “
CollegeGirlsXXX
.”

“And there was this video showing two girls going
at it. I can’t remember the name of the video. Do you remember the name, Mr.
Hunt?”

He shook his head.

“I need you to answer my question. You know, in
case this goes to court.”

He squirmed. “No, I don’t know the name of the
video.”

“Detective?”

Ryan looked down at his notebook. “‘Two Hot Lesbos
Find Their Secret Spots.’”

“That title ring a bell, Mr. Hunt?”

“Don’t pay much attention to the titles.”

“Sure, I understand. Anyway, ‘Two Hot Lesbos’
stars a couple of people you know.” I raised my eyebrows. “Were you aware of
that?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Well, that’s really interesting. Because one of
them is a student in a course you’re taking. Virginia Rinaldi’s course. Her
name is Abby Demarest. You didn’t know that? Remember that meeting in the
sociology department Tuesday morning? When my partner and I told you and the
others that Professor Rinaldi was dead? Abby was sitting there, about ten feet
from you. Remember? Blond hair?”

“I didn’t realize that.” He paused. “When you see
people you know from one context in another context, you don’t necessarily make
the connection.”

“I never thought of that, but it makes sense. Now,
the other woman in the video. Her name is Elena Moranu. Professional name is
Krista. That name ring any bells?”

He shifted in his plastic chair. “No.”

“I know you’ve seen her. But she had her clothes
on, so maybe it’s one of those context things. She came to your class.
Professor Rinaldi’s class, about a month ago. She’s a prostitute, right here in
Rawlings. The professor invited her to talk about being a sex worker. And
Monday night, at Professor Rinaldi’s house, Krista and Virginia Rinaldi got in
this fight upstairs and she stormed out of the house? And the other day, when
we asked all of you what Krista was doing upstairs, you made that clever remark
about how that was where the bedrooms are? Remember any of that?”

I paused for him to respond, but he didn’t.

“So that’s how we know you know her, too. Isn’t
that interesting, Mr. Hunt?”

“It’s legal to view adult entertainment on the
Internet.”

“Indeed it is,” I said. “I haven’t accused you of
doing anything illegal by watching the video with Abby and Krista. I’m just
trying to determine whether any of this is related to the murder of Virginia
Rinaldi—by the way, it was murder. We’re gonna announce that later today. This
is officially a murder investigation. And just so you understand what’s going
on: You’re officially a suspect.”

“I didn’t kill her. Why would I kill her?” His
voice was high and a little wobbly.

“Motive is a tricky thing. At this point, we’re
not sure why she was killed. And, listen to me carefully, I said you’re a
suspect. We haven’t charged you with anything yet. Not with statutory rape. Not
with murder. You hear what I’m saying? We’re just interviewing you.” I leaned
toward him. “Just interviewing you at this point. No reason to be concerned.
Everybody knows guys like porn. It’s a little embarrassing, but certainly not
illegal. Once we catch the killer, it’ll blow over pretty fast. You’ll go on
with your life. You’ll graduate, get a good job. Don’t worry about it. All
right? Just answer my questions honestly and you’ll be fine. Are we good?”

An oily sheen was forming on Martin Hunt’s
forehead and his nose. He nodded.

“Oh, there’s one other thing I forgot to mention,
Mr. Hunt. Before we bring you back to campus, I mean.” I stopped.

“What’s that?”

“There’s one other reason we know you know Elena
Moranu. You know, Krista?”

Martin Hunt sat there, a twitch starting in his
right shoulder. Little dots of perspiration were forming on his forehead.

“Detective,” I said to Ryan. “Pass me that poster,
will
ya
?”

Ryan slid me the “$/Fuck” paper. I had put it in a
plastic evidence sleeve for theatrical effect, although it was probably useless
as forensic evidence because it had been contaminated in the dumpster.

“Do you recognize this, Mr. Hunt?”

He looked at it and frowned, then shook his head.
“No.”

“When I first saw this, I was a little
intimidated—I mean, all the numbers. But when I figured it out, I thought of
two other numbers: ten and fifty-thousand. Ten years is the maximum sentence
for promoting prostitution here in Montana. And fifty-thousand dollars is the
maximum fine for that offense.”

“You can’t prove any of that. We were just play
acting. Probably one of the brothers saw it in a movie or something.” He tried
to smile. There was some spit bubbling in the corner of his mouth.