Dot Com Boom

Anna Martinez

I pulled up to my parents' house after a short drive. I wiped the tears from my face before stepping out. I knew I messed up. I'd probably be kicked off the task force. Hell, I might even be kicked out of the FBI. At this very moment, I didn't care about any of that. I cried because I felt empty. I just wanted to see my niece. I needed to feel her warmth, to know it still existed in the world. My mother Maria answered the door. She looked young for her age, not a wrinkle on her face and not a strand of grey hair.
"I'm sorry to show up unannounced," I said.
"Anna!" She shouted as she wrapped me in her arms, a giant hug that I really needed.
My mother and father didn't speak English so we talked in Spanish.
"Fernando!" My mother yelled through the house. "It's Anna! Fernando!... Fernando!" She walked me to the living room where my abuela was sitting in a rocking chair. "It's Anna! She's come to see us." Then one more shout for my father, "Fernando!"
I couldn't blame my mother for her enthusiasm. It had been much too long since I visited. And now here I was because I was feeling rotten. I'm so selfish.
Abuela Mariana looked up at me, her face sagged on one side due to the stroke a few years back. She raised her one good hand to me and I gently took hold. I saw a half-smile, again, due to the stroke. She held onto my hand as tight as she could and looked up at me and smiled. She didn't say a word, that was difficult for her these days.
"Anna!" My father shouted. He burst in the room, arms outstretched ready to hold me tight. He had short black clean-cut hair and a trimmed salt and pepper goatee. There was a time all of this attention – all of this love – was embarrassing to me. God, I was a dumb girl. I remembered all of the times I screamed that my mother was ruining my life, or that my father should be easier on my boyfriends. I remembered the hate and resentment I felt for them as I laid on my bed and cried myself to sleep because I couldn't go out. I remembered getting a little older and sneaking out my window anyway. I was horrible to them. They must have been so worried. And all the attention was always on me, bad Anna, the rebel Anna, selfish Anna. And who suffered for it all? Vanessa. Mom and dad were too busy with my games to watch her like they should. She got pregnant in high school. She was a good girl, she just didn't have direction early on, and it was all because of me.
I broke down and cried.
"Anna, what's wrong?" My mother asked. "Is it what we saw on the news? Those reporters?"
"Fuck them," my father said. At least I know where I got my mouth from.
I shook my head. "It isn't that."
"What is it then, baby?"
I wiped the tears, once again. I had such a headache. I forced a smile. "Nothing. Really. Don't worry about it. I'm fine now that I'm here with all of you. I just want to see Victoria. Is she upstairs?"
My mother nodded.
I walked up the stairs and slowly opened the door to my niece's room. Vanessa's daughter's room. "Vivi?" I said as I walked in. She was laying on her stomach on the floor playing with dolls. Dora The Explorer was on the television.
"Anna!" She screamed as she jumped up and hugged me.
"Vivi," I whispered in her ear. I hugged her so tight.
"Ouch," she said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said as I loosened my grip. "I'm just so happy to see you."
"I'm happy to see you to! You haven't come for a long time."
"I know. I'm really sorry about that. I've been so busy." The television was distracting. "Mind if I turn this off?"
"Okay. I saw that one a lot already."
"What are you doing here," I said, pointing to the dolls on the floor.
"This is me!" She said, pointing at a light brown doll dressed in an elegant white gown. "And this is the prince!" She pointed at a doll dressed in a tuxedo.
"Why is there a gate in between you two?"
"This is the big bad dragon!" She pointed at a stuffed animal, it was actually a cat with long whiskers. Such an imagination.
"And..." I said.
"And the prince has to kill the dragon and save me so we can get married!"
"Vivi. Did you ever think that you can slay the dragon yourself?"
"No." She looked confused.
"Well you can! Just look," I said. I picked up the doll in the gown and hit the stuffed animal with it, then picked up the stuffed animal and made groaning sounds like it was dying and moved it back and forth on the ground as if it were spasming. I stopped and the stuffed animal laid on the floor motionless. "Dead dragon! You did it."
"That's not how you play!" Vivi exclaimed. She grabbed the doll from me and set up the dragon and gate again. "This is how it goes!" She went through an elaborate scene where the tuxedo doll had a conversation with the dragon that he loved Victoria, and that he was going to save her and they were going to get married. The dragon answered back saying he loved Victoria and they were going to get married. The prince slayed the dragon and the tuxedo and gown dolls kissed for a long time, then had a wedding. Vivi hummed the 'here comes the bride' song as she walked them over a rug which was actually just a hand towel. She even had vows prepared for the bride and groom. It was too cute. I stayed for a couple more hours and ate dinner with the family and played with Vivi some more. This is exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries. Now I just needed to find out if I still had a job to go back to.



The next day Donald called me to his office. He had been calling the entire night before actually, blowing up my phone. I ignored him and turned it off so I could concentrate on time with the family.
"What were you thinking?" Donald shouted. "Don't answer that! You weren't thinking is the answer."
"Sir..."
"The public depends on us to be strong. To be the ones that stand up to this guy. The way you acted makes it seem like he's winning."
"He is."
"We can't let the public know that."
"Sir. With respect, I must say, this case is unlike anything we've ever seen. They know we're losing. They know how dangerous he is. We can't feed them the information we want like we usually do. The killer is putting it all out there."
"I understand that. But your tantrums help nothing."
"I know. I had just got done with a long day of watching those damn videos. I should have taken the time to cool down before subjecting myself to the media. I should have known they would try to provoke me."
Donald got up and came around his desk and sat on it, in front of me. He talked a lot calmer now. "Look Anna. We're all stressed. The entire nation is stressed. I should take you off the case for what you did, and I would if it were any other case, but this is different. I believe that we need you working on it. I see how hard you work. I see you in your office watching those videos, looking for any tiny detail. So I'm not taking you off the case, but you need to try to dial your attitude back a bit, especially around the media. Got it?"
"Of course, sir."
As I left Donald's office, Jake stopped me in the hall. Where the fuck has he been?
"Anna. Come quick. There's been a break in the case."
We walked the hall to our offices. "What is it?"
"Last night in California Brice Bailey got in a car accident."
"Okay. And..."
"And when EMT's showed up to pull him from his Lambo, they found the body of a man in his trunk, a rubber suit, and a disc with a movie on it. It's victim #21. We've got the dot com killer."



It's over. It's all over. And just like that. A car accident did what no one else could. He must have just got done filming his video and he was on his way to dump the body. Now came the time we had to grill Brice 'The Fucking Devil' Bailey to find out just how many more victims there might be, and to find out where he dumped all the bodies. I wasn't here to try to get a confession. No. He's going to be prosecuted and he's going to get lethal injection. It's a shut case. Too good for him if you ask me, but someone this dangerous needs to be put down so he can never do anything to hurt anyone else again.
I was scheduled to meet with Brice today. Donald and the task force had chosen me for the initial interview. They said I was persuasive. They said, I could stand toe-to-toe with a psycho better than anyone, whatever that meant. It's not a compliment, really, but this is a big opportunity to try to delve deeper and get closure for the families, to try to recover their loved ones' remains, and to see if there are any murders we don't know about, so I'm happy to be the one to try to do it.
Brice was in California when he crashed. He didn't have any substantial injuries from the crash, so they transferred him to Pelican Bay Super-Max Prison. Here's the unfair thing. The day of his crash he ran a red light and side-swiped an SUV with a family in it. They're all dead. A boy, a girl, and their parents. And this motherfucker didn't have a scratch. I've said it before, I'll say it again, life isn't fair sometimes.
The correctional officers escorted me and Jake down the depressing gray halls, and through numerous security gates. Along the walls were hundreds of metal doors with a slit for food trays. I heard muffled moans and screams all around me. This is a super-max which means the prisoners here are a special risk, and because of that have very little privileges. They're confined for twenty-three hours a day and when let out have little contact with any other inmates. Brice has been kept completely away from everyone else. One of the other inmates would love to gut him. And I'd love to see them do it, but not until I get the information that I'm after.
Jake and I sat at a metal table that was bolted to the floor. It had an indentation in the middle to lock handcuffs to. We sat and waited for the correctional officers to bring Brice.
What walked in the room isn't what I expected. The air of confidence that he had in all of those twisted videos was gone. The air of confidence that he had in his Pineapple xPhoneX sales pitch videos was gone. This man is a shell of his former self, the regret must be hitting him hard, the regret that he got caught. The man was crying his eyes out. Had he stopped since he got here? No contacts in, but his eyes were a different kind of red, bloodshot. No sympathy for this sicko.
The correctional officers cuffed him to the table and stepped out of the room. He didn't look so dangerous. I'd fucking shit all over this skinny fuck in a fight. He wasn't quite as weak looking as Jake here, but what was the aversion to nerds and working out? He had a long nose, by nose standards, it was about as long as his pencil dick from the videos. Long clean-shaven face and brown hair.
I taunted the little cry baby. "You look good in orange. Bet you thought you'd never be here, huh? It was only a matter of time."
"I didn't do it," he said in between fits of crying.
"There's a reason that you can't even find a lawyer to represent you. And it isn't because you're innocent. You're as guilty as fuck." Jake looked over to me with a stare that said, 'not very professional'. I didn't care. This was the motherfucking dot com killer. The rapist of men, women, and children. The torturer of them. The fucking sadistic fuck that used human suffering to destroy some of the largest companies in the world. The fucker that's put fear in the hearts of the country, and made a laughing stock of all law enforcement for a month. 'Professional' can kiss my ass.
"I didn't fucking do it!" He screamed as he pulled at his cuffs hard.
"Okay. There we go. That's the man I know. The man I've been watching for months."
He calmed back down. He breathed, trying to compose himself. "You've got to believe me. I didn't do it. I'm framed, that's the only explanation."
"No. The only explanation is that you're a shitty driver that can't drive in the rain and you got yourself caught. And you fucking killed a family in the process."
"Oh my God. The car I hit... they're dead?"
"Yes, they're dead, and don't you fucking pretend like you care. Your sympathy act isn't going to work on me, so drop it. You were caught with a dead man in your trunk. The same rubber suit used in the videos, of which had your hair and other DNA all over it. And a newly recorded and burned video on a disc. There's no way out of this. You've got to know that. Just start cooperating."
"No! I didn't do anything!" Then he nodded, as if he just remembered something. "Yes. The night of the crash. That intersection had green lights for both directions. I remember, just as I was about to hit that SUV I glanced up at the traffic lights, theirs was green too. Can't you see. I'm being framed. He wanted me to get in that crash so you would find all the planted evidence! With all the computer stuff he's done, changing a few traffic lights wouldn't be a problem!"
"I'm not here to listen to your excuses. Tell me where you dumped all of the bodies. Now!"
"I'm not lying!"
"You're fucking lying and you know it!" I screamed. I punched the metal table and it hurt my knuckle, it's going to bruise. I was so fucking mad. This man wasn't going to confess. He wasn't going to help the victims' families find closure. No fucking way. He is a damn psycho. He loves hurting people. He'd go to the grave before telling us anything.
"I believe you," Jake said.
"What the fuck?" I responded. "Don't play that good cop, bad cop bullshit, it won't work on him. All he knows is bad."
"No. I really do. It isn't consistent with the killer for him to deny it like this. When the dot com killer is caught, I would expect him to take full responsibility so that everyone knows how smart he is. He needs validation. He needs people to admire or fear him. He would never let himself be seen in this pitiful state." Jake explained as he pointed to Brice. "Plus, he has already shown he hates big business, and who better represents big business other than Brice Bailey?"
"Yeah! Listen to your partner!"
"Shut the fuck up!" Then I turned to Jake. "He's playing you to get out so that he can do it all again. If he pulled that off, how smart would people think he is then?"
"Got a point there," Jake said.
"No! No, she doesn't!" Brice said. Then Brice sobbed uncontrollably and held up his hands like he was praying. "Please. You have to help me. I'm innocent!"
"I still believe him," Jake said.
Fuck. I can't believe I was about to do this, but I had an idea. I had watched those videos so much. Too much. I had seen that fucker's pencil dick more than I cared to admit. It was burned into my mind. He wore a black condom when raping the men and women, but the children he didn't. "Take your pants off," I said.
"What? No way!"
"Take your fucking pants off. Don't make this a big thing."
He stood and rubbed against the metal table until his pants fell to the ground. The correctional officer at the door barged in. "Sit down!" Then he turned to me. "I'm sorry ma'am. We'll take care of this weirdo. Get on out of here." Then the other correctional officer escorted us out as the first one beat Brice.
Before the correctional officer escorted us out, I saw it. That wasn't the prick of the prick that I was looking for. The fucker is innocent. If the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit. It doesn't mean he isn't involved, I mean c'mon look what he had in his trunk, so I'm not ready to say he's completely innocent. I'll hold off on bringing this to anyone as well. And even if I did bring it to someone, it's unlikely at this point anyone would listen. They caught their man for all they care. The nation is more at ease. People feel safe. The only one that can screw that up is the real killer by killing again while Brice is in custody. And if what Brice says is true about being framed, that isn't happening.