"Please Sean. There's something wrong, can't you look into it?" She asked.
"Look into what? Lucas acting weird?"
LAPD Detective Sean Brady sighed. When his stepson's wife, Lauren, had called him at work and asked to meet for lunch, it was a surprise to say the least. He wasn't especially close with his stepson, Lucas, or his daughter-in-law. So, when she said she wanted to speak to him about plans for Brady's upcoming forty-third birthday, he knew it was really about something else.
"He's not just acting weird, there's more to it than that. He's cold, distant, sometimes he locks himself in his study. And at least once a month, he's out all night, always with some pathetic excuse." She glanced round at the surrounding tables, checking that no-one was listening. "And we haven't ... you know ... not for months."
The detective winced; it was far more information than he had asked for. "So, you think he's having an affair?" Only after hearing the question out loud, did it occur to Brady just how hurtful it could be.
"Lucas isn't like that. He wouldn't cheat, he's not a player."
Brady managed to keep his face implacable. He thought back to what it had been like, nine years ago, when he first married Lucas' mother. His stepson was eighteen and he wasn't happy about suddenly having a thirty-three-year-old stepfather. For the first couple of years, they seemed to fight all the time, and the number one argument was the constant stream of girls that Lucas kept bringing to the house.
He was a good-looking boy; a talented athlete and he had some money in his pocket. All the girls liked him, and he liked them. It was understandable that he wanted to have a little fun. All his new stepfather had asked was, that he take it to a hotel, or her place, in fact anywhere, just keep it out of his house.
But the little punk just ignored him, sometimes bringing two girls back at the same time. It didn't help that no matter how hard Brady tried to discipline him, his wife Beverley, would always take her son's side. Things were strained there for a while, but thankfully, Lucas decided to go to college and become an accountant. Once they weren't living together, the two men were able to come to an uneasy truce.
Hearing Lauren now extolling Lucas' virtue was severely testing the detective's poker face.
"I'm sorry, but I had to ask." His voice apologetic. "What do you want me to do?"
Deep down, Brady just didn't want to get involved.
"You're a cop, isn't there a number you can call or something?"
He rolled his eyes. "No, there isn't a number I can call, or a database somewhere that will tell me all his secrets. If you really want me to find out what's going on, then I'll have to start prying into your private business. That's how real policework is done."
Her eyes dropped down, staring at her coffee on the table. Brady could see from the look on her face that she hadn't even considered the reality of what she was asking him to do.
"Are you ready for me to go digging through your bank records, credit card statements, you name it." He said, confident this was going to put her off.
With a sudden burst of decision, she answered. "Yes, yes I am. I need to know."
"Are you absolutely sure? Because once you know something, there's no going back.
"I'm sure."
"You better be." Brady said resignedly. "Okay I'll help you. But on one condition. Regardless of what I find, whether it's everything or nothing, you don't tell my wife or Lucas that I was the one who found it."
"Thank you." She said hurriedly, worrying that he might change his mind.
***
Brady arranged a time to visit the house when his stepson wouldn't be home. If Lucas was locking himself in his study, then that seemed an obvious place to start. After reassuring Lauren that he would tell her if he found something that she needed to know, she finally agreed to let him search on his own. Everybody in a marriage has secrets, and Brady figured that even a pain in the ass like Lucas was entitled to keep some of his.
It was a typical guy's study. In the corner there was a small green filing cabinet. Along the back wall were bookshelves with office-related textbooks, trashy action and thriller novels and some DVDs. In the centre of the room, was a large wooden desk with framed photographs and ornaments (that were obviously gifts), and dominating the desktop was Lucas' computer, an iMac.
He sat down at the desk and started rummaging through the drawers. There was plenty of pieces of paper, old batteries, pens, and assorted clutter - but nothing of note. Brady turned on the computer and was surprised to see it didn't need a password. He placed his own laptop on the desk and plugged it into Lucas' machine. He clicked an icon and started the LAPD's own cyber-crime search program, and then began his own manual search of the computer's files and folders. To his suspicious amazement, his stepson's computer turned up completely clean. Not even a questionable browser history.
The detective turned his attention to the small green filing cabinet. He tried the drawers, they were locked. He scanned his eyes around the room, wondering where Lucas might have hidden the key. After a few moments, he returned to the desk and ran his hand along the smooth underside. Brady grinned when he felt the cold metal against his fingertips. The taped-on key peeled away without difficulty, and he returned to the filing cabinet, smiling when the key turned easily in the lock.
There was the usual stuff, marriage paperwork, birth certificates, medical insurance, all neatly filed. Sean flicked through the folders until he found the bank statements and then he lifted the entire folder out of the drawer. He sat down at the desk and started leafing through the statements. One thing jumped out at the detective straightaway, around a year ago, the month-on-month final balance had begun dropping fast.
Flicking from one statement to the next he noticed that there was a substantial transfer each month directly to a numbered bank account. For nine months, his stepson had made a transfer of $2500 to the account and in the last four months the monthly transfer had increased to $5000.
At this rate there was probably six months of cash in the account. Brady sat back and sighed, was Lucas squirreling his money away into a secret account, getting ready to divorce his wife? He noted the bank details, snapped a photo of the most recent statement, and returned the folder back to the cabinet.
As he did, he noticed a small black rectangle at the bottom of the cabinet drawer. Lifting it out, he realised it was a smartphone in a leather sleeve. When he tried to access it, the password pin-screen lit up, he could see the phone was almost at full charge.
He looked at the numbered keypad and then tried Lucas' date of birth, without success. Then he tried Lauren's birthday, his wife's, his own, none of them worked. The detective was eager to get into the phone, it was kept fully charged and locked up in a filing cabinet, it was obviously important. But if he couldn't crack the pin number, he would never know why. Then, Brady had an idea, he tried Lucas' biological father's birthday, and the lock screen melted away.
The detective had a quick scroll through the message apps, there was only one stored contact on the phone, but no messages. He checked for pictures, there were none, but there were nine randomly named video files. The curious detective clicked on the oldest video which was about a year old.
The first few minutes had nothing on them at all; just a high-definition static shot of a rather fancy looking apartment with a burned in date and time in the bottom-right hand corner, 4th April, 8:24 PM. Brady dragged his finger along the screen until the video showed two men walking into the room.
He viewed the video with a policemen's eye; one man was black, powerfully built, a little over six foot tall. He was wearing white sneakers, red running shorts and nothing else. The other man was white, roughly the same height as his friend, and rather incongruously wearing an expensive business suit. The quality of the recording meant that even on the palm sized screen of the phone it was easy to see the suited man was his stepson, Lucas. The two men were laughing, exchanging barely audible small talk. While the detective brought the phone closer, straining to hear what was being said, the two men started kissing.
Brady stopped breathing for a moment. He knew to expect the unexpected when you went digging into people's private affairs, but he wasn't expecting this.
He sat in the desk chair staring wide-eyed at the phone as he watched his stepson being led to a white leather couch in the middle of the room. The black man in running shorts broke their kiss by playfully pushing Lucas back onto the seat. Then slowly he sank to his knees in front of Lucas and lowered his head into his lap.
"Is Lucas secretly gay? If he is then it might explain his strange behaviour."
He asked himself.
The camera was capturing the action side-on, and it was plain that Lucas wasn't being coerced. Brady could clearly hear his stepson muttering with approval as the kneeling man eagerly went to work on his cock. The man in red running shorts undoubtedly knew what he was doing, because it wasn't long until Lucas was groaning with pleasure. His head was tipped back, resting against the back of the couch, his mouth open, moaning in appreciation.
"Even if he's gay, why the bank payments? Is he planning to divorce Lauren?"
Sean's thoughts were interrupted, by another loud throaty groan from the phone. His eyes darted to the study door, worried that someone might walk in wondering what the noise was.
Suddenly, the detective was struck with the uncomfortable realisation that he was watching his stepson, having his cock sucked by another man. Like every other man in the world, the detective watched online porn from time to time. But he had never watched two men together before, he'd never even been curious to watch it. But this wasn't just two random guys, one of them was his stepson. His finger hung over the screen ready to stop it, but for some reason he didn't.
"Strange payments, hidden phones, pornographic videos. What is all this about?"
