"Leave it to me," Billy said again, and Brad could tell by the look in his eyes that the.lawyer didn't know how they were going to find the men responsible for Lisa's kidnapping and near murder.
Brad drank his coffee, at a loss for words. He felt helpless. He supposed that the best thing to do was to place his and Lisa's lives in the hands of his friend, William Grecko.
When they were finished with their coffee, Billy stood up. "I've got to go. I'll call you in about an hour."
Brad refilled his mug. "I've got to get somebody over here to look after Lisa. I should probably dash out and run a few errands before Detective Orr comes in. Maybe I'll call Lisa's assistant at the office and see if she'll come in."
"Fine," William said. Brad walked him to the front door. "Try not to be too long. If you want, I could have somebody come over."
"I'll be fine," Brad said.
"Okay." William shook Brad's hand. "We'll get through this, buddy. Leave it to me."
When William Grecko left, Brad turned and headed to the bedroom to check on Lisa.
Lisa was still in a sound sleep when Brad checked on her. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. The red digital numerals read five minutes after seven. She had only been asleep for nine hours. She might sleep at least another hour, hopefully. Brad left the door to the bedroom open and went to the second bedroom, which they had converted to a study, sat down at the desk, and turned on the computer.
He sipped his coffee as the computer booted up, thinking. He hadn't been able to sleep at all last night. All he could think about was the story Lisa told him, and'the men who worked in the snuff-film business. And the question that kept popping into his head was Hour could people do this kind of thing?
He found it hard to believe that money would be the primary factor. He knew of some greedy people, but it was hard to believe that people would actually pay to watch somebody being tortured to death for sexual gratification. But then I've heard of equally weird things, he thought. Pedophiles exist. That's a fact. Some people like to fuck dogs and sheep. That's sick as all hell. I guess if that kind of sickness exists, others do, too.
When the PC was up, Brad connected to his Internet service provider, then launched his Web browser. When the browser came up, he typed "snuff films" in the search engine and hit the EWTER key.
The search engine spit out two hundred and fifty-six Web pages dealing with snuff films. The first entry was an article called "Snuff Films: Urban Myths or Grim Reality?" Brad clicked on the hyperlink and brought the page up.
The article in question was on a Web site called APB- news.com, which looked like a news service about crime and law enforcement. Brad read through the article slowly, reading each word as he digested the information. What he read was disturbing and frustrating.
According to the article, the FBI had been looking for snuff films for twenty-five years and hadn't found evi dence of a single one. It also revealed documents the FBI had been maintaining about their search, reporting that despite widespread tales of rape, torture, and murder being committed in front of the camera for monetary gain, the leads all eventually fizzled to nothing.
Brad found the article riveting. According to the story, rumors of snuff films began circulating as early as 1969 when it was suggested that the Manson Family had filmed a murder. A few years later, snuff films were mentioned by a group called "Citizens for Decency Through Law," who claimed that young women were being raped and killed for the pornography industry. The Bureau's Special Crimes Unit, which investigated violations of interstate trafficking of obscene material laws, investigated and found no truth to the story. The rumors of snuff films continued. An FBI memo from February of 1975 showed that an unnamed source tipped the Bureau to the existence of twelve or so snuff films shot on 8-millimeter film. The informant's story fell apart when he later admitted to the Bureau that he had never seen the films himself.
Rumors continued from Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Cleveland. The stories were similar. The films were usually rumored to originate from California or Mexico. The victims were always described as being runaways, drifters, or smuggled immigrants.
Then, in 1976, one of the greatest hoaxes ever to be perpetrated in the film industry capitalized on the snufffilm rumors. A low-budget film that had been shelved three years previously was resurrected by its producer with ten minutes tagged on at the end of the original print. Dubbed "Snuff," its tag line on promotional posters read "Made in South America… where life is cheap!" The poster depicted a screaming woman cowering from a knife. The film premiered first in Indianapolis, then in New York. "Snuff" purported to tell the story about a sinister satanic cult roaming the country slaughtering people. The producers also claimed that it was the "bloodiest thing to ever happen in front of a camera'
In the last segment of the film, separate from the movie's plot, the supposed real murder takes place. On the screen, a male member of the film crew tells a previously un-introduced woman, "You know, that last gory scene really turned me on! Other members of the crew then restrain her while the man proceeds to slash the woman with a knife, amputate two of her fingers with bolt cutters, and, finally, reach into her body and pull out her heart. The film runs out and voice-over says: "Did you get all that?" The response is: "Yeah, let's get the hell out of here."
End of credits.
Feminists protested the original theatrical release of the film, and the media hoopla over it caught the attention of law enforcement. Pathologists viewed the film and concluded that the staged murder was a theatrical production and not real. The FBI got interested, and the actress who was killed in the last scene revealed herself to be alive and well. So much for the great snuff-film conspiracy.
Brad shook his head as he read the article. Weird, he thought, as he scrolled down. What he read next chilled him. He read it to himself aloud. -There is legislation currently pending in the California Assembly that would outlaw snuff films along with crush videos, which graphically depict small animals being crushed to death. What the fuck?"
Then he remembered something from a news item a few months before that he and Lisa had seen on television one evening after work. A woman had been tried and convicted of cruelty to animals after videos depict ing her stomping mice to death were discovered. The video had been shot by another party, a male, for a thriv- ing" crush film" industry, which were S&M porn films that depicted actresses in spiked high heels crushing small animals to death. Brad remembered watching that segment with Lisa, making a comment to her along the lines of, "Guess there's not much a pervert will find taboo, huh?" If only he could have foreseen what was to come.
Brad clicked on the back arrow button of the search engine and scrolled down the list of Web pages. He saw another link that grabbed his interest. This was a definition of the term snuff-films, from a site called "'Ihe Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices." It defined a snuff film as one that portrays the actual murder and mutilation of one of the actors. Brad hit the back arrow button again and continued his search. The next item that caught his eye froze him. Cops: Snuff films found among child porn. He clicked on it.
It was a Reuters story about a recent raid in Italy. As he read the article, he quickly realized that the APBnews piece had been published a year previously, and that this piece was only a month old. As he read the article in shock and disgust, the words of an FBI agent quoted in the APBnews article kept coming back to him: "Despite 25 years of searching, I have yet to find hard evidence that snuff films exist." Wonder what this guy thinks now? Brad thought, feeling a pit of dread in his stomach.