Chapters (68)
- Dedication
- Title Page
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Copyright
“I take your point,” Duckworth said. “But just the same, I want to find out who did this. Although what was done to him was different than what was done to you, the setup strikes me as similar.”
“Who’s Sean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Surely your victim does, though.”
“He says he doesn’t.”
Craig’s damaged mouth grinned again. “Yeah, right, and I didn’t feel up that little girl, either.”
Duckworth felt any sympathy he’d had for this man slowly slipping away.
“Yes, he could be lying,” he conceded.
Craig pointed to the laptop still resting on his knees. “Well, if it was the same person—or persons, as they say—who did it, they must be bragging about it online. Are they?”
Duckworth felt caught off guard. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? And what are you again? A detective?”
“I hadn’t gotten to that point.”
Craig shook his head and made a “tsk, tsk” sound. He started tapping away on the keyboard. “If it was the same people, then they might be doing something like this.”
He spun the computer around so Duckworth could view the screen. It was a website called Just Deserts. The name was plastered, newspaper-banner-style, across the top of the page. Below that, a headline that read: KID DIDDLER GETS HIS.
And a photo.
It was a picture of Craig Pierce staked to the ground, minus pants. His midsection was obscured by a dog, which was, as everyone knew by now, feasting on him.
“I’ve seen all this,” Duckworth said. “I know about Just Deserts.”
“You know they encourage this kind of thing. You know there are nutjobs out there who can’t wait to be honored on their website.”
“No one even knows who’s behind it,” Duckworth said.
“Yeah. It’s like Anonymous, but with a big difference,” Craig said, adopting an almost professorial tone. “Anonymous is all about exposing government hypocrisy and making public the shit that’s been kept secret. They’ll even go so far as to sabotage websites and disrupt commerce and that kind of thing. And when they say they’re going to expose people who belong to ISIS and fuck up their Twitter accounts or whatever, a lot of people think, hey, what the hell. We don’t know who they are, but if that’s what they want to do, it’s okay by us. And there was that other case, the one where the hackers said they’d release all the private info on that website for people who want to have affairs. And the fuckers did it! Bam. Marriages broke up, man, it was something. But still, it’s all about exposing data and secrets. Just Deserts, well, they’re different. They push the envelope.”
He gave Duckworth a grisly smile.