Michael pulled up the database he'd been working on since high school.
The failure of the Law to do anything about the man who abused him made him all the more determined to get justice on his own. His prized movie poster of "Underworld" with Kate Beckingsale in her leather-clad glory hid a secret from his parents and sister. If he let the poster hang down, the backing held a dry-erase board, which showed the relationships his abuser had with everyone else he could identify.
Nate Stenman was every bit the family man and pillar of the community he purported to be, but this was the age of the Internet. Over two years, Michael spent hour upon hour learning everything he could about him from publicly-available sources. He collected data, turning it into a web of connections, always looking for something he could against him. Not much happened until Michael turned sixteen and got his driver's license. At that point, he started more intrusive methods, including active surveillance.
Michael staked out the Stenman's home whenever he could get free for a few hours. He would drive to North Milwaukee when he was supposed to be at a friend's house studying or working out or after leaving Angel at the mall with her friends. Michael took pictures and watched for young kids coming to the house. He didn't see much; Nate spent time working in his garage on warm summer nights, and the drapes were closed inside the house.
Michael needed a way in if he was going to find anything. He started jogging through the neighborhood and playing basketball at a local park. Michael eventually caught the eye of Nate's fifteen-year-old daughter, Natalie, a tall and thin redhead with braces and freckles on her nose. He had grown up into a good-looking young man, and his body was in top shape after all his running and martial arts training. Michael started to notice Natalie hanging around the basketball court, cheering for him as he played with his shirt off.
He walked her home after a game that went into the evening, and they hit it off. He asked her out, taking her to McDonald's and a movie. He turned that into a second date. The two talked on the phone every night. Michael didn't pick her up from her home because he didn't want her father to recognize him, and Natalie wasn't allowed to date until she was sixteen.
Instead, they met elsewhere over the summer. A few weeks later, she invited him into her home while her parents and younger sister were gone for the weekend.
Michael had ordered the spy cameras in the mail and had the equipment in his backpack when he arrived. Billed as "nanny-cams," one device looked like a book, and the other a small figurine. The lens was tiny and difficult to spot, while the recorders were motion and voice-activated. When Natalie was in the shower, he slipped out of her bedroom and went downstairs to Nate's office. He planted one of the cameras on the shelf behind his desk, pointing it at his computer, and put another in the garage shop. The cameras would record up to fifty hours of audio and video while he was gone, and all he had to do was go back there in a week and swap out the batteries and the memory cards. All of this was illegal, immoral, and inadmissible in court; it also had him taking advantage of an innocent girl who liked him a lot.
Michael didn't care once he started listening to the recordings.
Michael had read everything he could find in the library and on the Internet about what made pedophiles and child abusers tick. He knew that unless you were abusing a child in your house, you probably had a long time between actual times with one of your victims. From his talks with Natalie, he didn't think her father had abused her. No, her Daddy liked little boys. His perfect suburban family couldn't give him what he needed.
That's why he had a porn stash.
Michael almost skipped through the part where he removed a panel from the side of a bookcase, reaching in to retrieve a small box. Inside was a VHS tape that he put in the television in the corner of his office. Michael watched in horror as the television showed a dark basement and a bed. Nate opened his slacks and started whacking off to a home movie showing the coach raping a young boy.
Michael nearly broke his laptop, knocking it to the floor of his bedroom as he stood up in shock. All that rage he'd repressed came forward, and it needed an outlet. Michael wanted to beat the shit out of Coach Nate, but the two had a history. He'd be a suspect, and he might get caught. That would destroy Angel. After taking some deep breaths, he calmed down.
Instead, Michael rewatched the video closely to see where in the garage Nate stashed the porn. Then, he called the State Police tip line from a payphone. "Wisconsin State Police, Detective Adams," a man said after Michael's call was transferred to the right division.
"I discovered a friend's father has videos showing young boys getting raped," I told the man. "I don't know what to do!"
"It's all right; you're talking to the right person about this. What's your name?"
"I don't want to say," Michael told him. "I wasn't supposed to be in his office. His daughter thought he had vodka hidden in there, and I don't want her to get into trouble." He started crying to make it seem more realistic.
"All right; we'll call you John Doe for now, ok, kid? Why don't you start by telling me the name of her father."
"Nate Stenman, but Natalie can't know that I called the cops. She'd never forgive me." Michael told him where Natalie lived. The detective walked him through the discovery of the tapes in the office. "The sides of the bookcase are wide, and it looks like a big piece of solid wood. It sounded thin and hollow on the side, though. I played with it and found the side panel just lifted off. Inside were shelves filled with home movies."
"Were they labeled?"
"Only by day, or a person's name. Honest to God, I thought I'd found dirty movies. I put one in the VCR he has in his office and almost threw up when I saw what it was. The kid was maybe five, and he was crying the whole time."
"What did you do then, son?"
"I put the videotape back where I got it, closed it up, and got the fuck out of there. I told Natalie I didn't find anything, but I haven't been able to think of anything else." Michael waited for a few seconds. "Can you do anything?"
Detective Adams was quick to reassure him. "I have to write up the tip and take it to a judge to get a search warrant," he told him. "It might take a while before you hear anything. Here's my direct line." He gave Michael a phone number. "In the meantime, you tell no one what you saw or that you talked to me. If anything gets back to her father before we execute the search, he might destroy the evidence and get away with it."
"I won't say anything," Michael said. He hung up and waited.
The next night, the family had the local news on in the background while making dinner when a crime story came on. "Milwaukee Police executed a search warrant on a North Milwaukee home today, removing cartons of photographs and videotapes. Arrested at the scene was Nathaniel John Stenman, age 42. Prosecutors have charged Mr. Stenman with multiple counts of Possession of Child Pornography and one count of Resisting Arrest." The video showed Nate leaving his house in handcuffs, his head down, as his family watched in horror from inside the home.
