He went into the kitchen and rummaged in the refrigerator, finding several takeout containers and microwave dishes.
“Don’t you ever cook?” he muttered.
He inspected half of a leftover chicken burrito with refried beans and Mexican rice, then found a microwave plate and heated it. It turned out to be surprisingly good, and it was the most he’d eaten all day. He ate it in front of the TV, watching the ten o’clock news. News was as depressing in Oklahoma City as it was in Tucson, he decided, despite the anchors’ attempts to be happy-go-lucky. He turned it off after a few minutes.
After eating, he washed his plate and put it carefully back in the cabinet where he’d found it. Then Sean returned to the living room and powered up his laptop on the coffee table. He turned off the lamp so that the only light in the room came from the glow of the computer screen.
He logged onto the Internet, waited a moment, and typed in www.katpurrs.com.
An image in soft pastel colors settled onto the screen. Sean adjusted the computer so he could see the screen better. He leaned forward.
There were several shadowy pictures of a young woman, mostly in profile, the photographs having been taken in subdued lighting. None of the photos showed a full shot of her face-they all were cropped just above her mouth.
In one photo, the woman straddled a chair, wearing a white bra, matching panties, garter belt, and stockings. In another she wore a black version of the same outfit.
Still, Sean couldn’t be sure. This young woman, though she looked to be Daryn McDermott’s size and build, had honey-blond, shoulder-length hair. All of Daryn’s photos had shown a young woman with much longer, braided, dark hair.
But then, Sean thought, if she wanted to become someone else-some thing else, as Britt had said-she could cut and dye her hair, couldn’t she? It even made a sort of sense.
He entered the website. Another shadowy image, this one in black lingerie, was on the left side of the page. He began to read the text that ran beside it:
Hello, and welcome to my personal website. I am Kat Hall, and I am a professionl, independent escort serving gentlemen in the Oklahoma City area. I am very exclusive and selective about my companions, but I am well worth it for those who do spend time with me. I am educated and intelligent, thoughtful and passionate. I can fulfill any fantasies you may entertain. Role playing is welcomed. I will provide the ultimate GFE (Girl Friend Experience) to those who spend time with me.
I appreciate getting to know my companions, so I strongly suggest that you book at least a two-hour appointment. Yes, my rates are higher than most. But I repeat-I am worth it. I am available for incall at my location, or outcall at select downtown Oklahoma City hotels. For those who desire the best and who are willing and able to pay, I await your call.
“Jesus,” Sean muttered.
He clicked over to a page marked “donations.”
My gift is $600 for one hour, $1000 for two hours, $2000 for a four-hour dinner date, $3500 for overnights. My rates are all inclusive, cash only. Please keep in mind that any contribution is for my time and personal services only. Anything else that may transpire is a matter of personal choice between two consenting adults of legal age, and is not contracted for, or compensated for, in any other manner.
A disclaimer, Sean thought. This is how escorts can openly advertise on the Internet and not get busted.
He went to the contact page. A phone number and e-mail link were listed. The photo on this page, still shrouded in subdued lighting and still not showing the woman’s face, did feature a close-up of her cleavage inside a pink bra.
The word justice was tattooed across the woman’s left breast.
“Daryn,” Sean whispered. “It is you. I’ll be damned.”
He sat back. Senator McDermott’s radical activist daughter, living a secret life away from the prying eyes of Washington, as an escort, a high-priced call girl.
He thought for a moment. Daryn had only been missing for a little over a month, according to Tobias Owens. But this website was well done and very elaborate, not something hurriedly thrown together. Plus the domain name was her own, not some free web hosting service. It had taken time, effort, and money to develop this.
How long had Daryn McDermott been planning her new life as Kat Hall? Sean wondered.
Sean realized his heart was beating wildly, and he gradually became aware that he was sexually aroused as well.
“My God,” he whispered.
He slowly pulled out his cell phone and punched in the numbers on the screen.
“Hello, this is Kat,” said the voice a moment later.
Sean was silent a moment, his heart pounding. He felt sweat ringing his forehead. “Hello, Kat,” he finally said. “This is Michael. I’d like to make a date with you.”
9
FAITH LEFT SEAN SLEEPING ON THE COUCH AND was in her office in Oklahoma City’s U.S. Courthouse downtown by seven thirty in the morning. There wasn’t much to the office. It was small, the door unmarked. Official occupancy records for the building showed that the small second-floor room was vacant and being used as storage for the U.S. Marshals Service, whose main office suite was down the hall.
The desk was standard issue, metal with a faux wood top. There was a single filing cabinet, one phone line, a computer. There were two “guest” chairs that Faith had scavenged from a used office furniture store, paying for them herself so she didn’t have to go through the General Services Administration paperwork. Director Yorkton had appreciated her initiative on that purchase.
She’d added a couple of plants in the last year. Faith was generally no good with plants, but one was an ivy, which was notoriously hard to kill. The other commanding feature of the office continued to be a wooden plaque with a stuffed fish on it. It had belonged to her mentor, the previous occupant of the office, Art Dorian. There was a dent in the fish’s body now, though, since she’d ripped the plaque off the wall and flung it across the room in a fit of frustration last summer.
And that, really, was all. Faith didn’t keep any photographs on her desk, nothing that said anything personal about her. This office is not my life, she reminded herself constantly, so it shouldn’t look like my life. Still, in unguarded moments-sometimes alone, sometimes with Scott Hendler-she wondered if it wasn’t becoming her life after all, her own protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
She raised the blinds behind the desk, which looked out on the Oklahoma City National Memorial, across Northwest Fourth Street. She only looked for a moment, though-she had mixed feelings about the place. Even though she hadn’t lived in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when the Murrah Building was destroyed, she’d felt the sadness and outrage of the rest of the country when watching the news reports. Then she’d wound up living here, assigned to Oklahoma when she joined the Marshals Service. She understood what the memorial meant, but for her, it also stirred up personal feelings. It was there, standing under the Survivor Tree, that she’d been recruited-forced, she often thought-to join Department Thirty by now-director Yorkton.
Faith turned to her computer and booted it up, then waited a moment. She took a few minutes, as she did every day, to mentally review the cases under her jurisdiction as a regional Department Thirty case officer. She now had seven in her region, which encompassed New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. She currently had two cases living in Texas, one in Oklahoma, one in Kansas, three in Missouri, and none in Arkansas. She’d inherited all but two from her predecessor. She’d processed two new ones in the past year, one of them going to St. Charles, Missouri, one to Enid, Oklahoma. Leon Bankston would make eight, which was a pretty good case load. Case officers weren’t privy to the cases of other regional officers-Yorkton often trumpeted the virtues of compartmentalization-but she thought one of the other regions had a dozen cases, and one of the others had only three. It was a strange and surreal program, and some aspect confounded her nearly every day.