Page 43 of Hoodoo House
Charlie fast-forwarded through the video, stopping every few minutes to see if there was a clear shot of the person other than Sinclair in the room. Never once did Sinclair give the impression that he knew he was performing for the camera. He followed the instructions of an off-camera voice. It was a deep voice, sensual and controlling, often correcting Sinclair, having him repeat sexual acts like he was a teacher and Sinclair was his eager pupil. Some scenes were done zoomed in and included actions involving the other man. The quality of the image led Charlie to believe that the close-up shots were done digitally after the film was recorded, possibly to allow the identity of the person who filmed the scenes to be cropped out.
“I think we can assume that the other man is Tull, given the fact it was shot in his playroom,” Charlie said.
“I gotta give Sinclair credit—for such an uptight guy he seems really into it.”
“Yes,” Charlie agreed, “but you can see why he wouldn’t want this out in the open.”
Charlie opened one of the other videos labelledSmoothStud123. The man in the video was leaner. He also acted as if he didn’t know he was being filmed. Each video showed only one of the men fully while all that could be seen of the other participant was a hand or body part. Sometimes the man was penetrating the lead performer with fingers, hands or toys. In the second video, he was choking the man, a bit of erotic asphyxiation.
Declan said, “Before we go any further, can you copy all of this to your cloud server, just in case something happens to the computer? Not for our own kicks…I have a hunch these videos might be important and I don’t want to risk losing them if we turn over the computer to Sinclair.”
Charlie said, “So we’re going to give Yamada the computer?”
“That’s what he hired us for,” Declan replied.
“But don’t you think there’s a lot more going on here? What’s on this computer might impact other people. I mean, look at those videos.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Declan said, “before we turn everything over, I’m going to ask Sinclair some hard questions and we’ll see what my gut says.”
Charlie nodded. He spent the next ten minutes uploading the files to a safe place where only he could access them.
“Other than these files, do we have anything else to work with?” Declan asked.
“Oh, it keeps getting better. Do you remember the password list we found in the book?”
“Yeah.”
“One of the passwords was for a Proton account.”
“I have no idea what that is,” Declan confessed.
“It’s a security-encoded email system. Luckily Tull didn’t use his internet incognito browsing window, so his username,BakuBondageBoy, was saved by the computer. And it looks like he had been sending out some interesting emails.”
“Oh?”
“BakuBondageBoyhad demanded money fromBurlyBiker27—I assume the sameBurlyBiker27of the video-filename we haven’t watched yet. The email indicated that ifBurlyBiker27didn’t pay up,BakuBondageBoywould release the videos to ‘you know who’. As you can see,BurlyBiker27replied with a threat to kill him if he didn’t give him the files.”
“Kill him?” Declan said, his eyes widening. “The guy actually threatened to kill Tull?”
“Well, he threatened to killBakuBondageBoy, who I am assuming was Tull.”
“Was Tull blackmailing anyone else?”
“SmoothStud123. Same threats. Money or he would give the video to a prominent judge. No idea who that would be.SmoothStud123was almost in hysterics in his responses.”
“DidSmoothStud123threaten to kill the blackmailer?” Declan asked.
Charlie shook his head. “No threats of violence. And then there’sWordsmith105, who we know from the video label is Sinclair. He was also in an email war with Tull.”
“Tull wanted money?”
“No. It’s just like Sinclair said. Tull wanted a book published, untouched. He demanded it be printed just as he wrote it, no changes. And if that wasn’t done, he threatened to…what did he say? Oh, yeah ‘I’ll bring down the mountain on all of your heads’. I wonder what that means?”
The security alarm beeped from the street-level door, and Charlie checked his watch. It was one o’clock.
Declan smiled. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
Chapter Seventeen
