Free The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir Page B

laptop that could retrieve deleted pictures and Web site info. It had come in handy more than once on homicide investigations. Just when I thought this David character might be the real deal, I discovered he had a couple of predilections that bordered on the very disturbed.
    The all-too-quick knock came at my apartment door. Pam was early… again. I printed the list of porn sites, then turned it facedown on the table before I opened the door.
    Refreshed and in a much better place than I'd ever seen her before, Pam looked almost giddy. Her hair wasn't tied up in the usual ponytail, and her blond locks bounced around her shoulders. It was a good look for her. She'd wanted an update, and I promised I'd tell her about my visit with Ashley earlier today. I just wished I had more time between my discovery of his Internet viewing habits and her visit to formulate how and what to tell her.
    “Ray”—she extended her hand—“how'd it go?”
    I shrugged. “Learned a little.”
    “Is everything all right? You seem down.”
    “I'm fine,” I lied. If I didn't plan to visit Club Venus later tonight, I'd have already been talking with Jim. He'd help me wash down the bitter taste of this finding. But I needed to be somewhat sober for my upcoming visit.
    I told Pam about my talk with Ashley, how she'd told me things she didn't reveal to Pampas. I told her about the Lion's Den, but not about the types of people they served—especially the cop angle, which turned my stomach. No use going there until I had something more concrete.
    “This is fantastic,” she said. “I knew you'd come up with something.”
    “Well, I've come up with a little bit more.” I didn't know quite what to say, which was really unusual for me. So I limped over to the table, grabbed the sheet, and handed it to her. “I found these sites on your brother's Internet history. They'd been deleted in an attempt to hide them. There could be more. I haven't been able to check everything yet.”
    She read a few lines, then glanced back at me like someone had just given her a death notice. “This can't be.”
    “I'm sorry, Pam. I've checked out a couple of the sites and would recommend that you do not. The names will tell you everything you need to know. It seems there were things in your brother's life nobody knew about, not even you.”
    Her eyes scrolled down the list, and the room was eerie quiet for a while.
    Just because Hendricks surfed porn sites didn't mean he was a killer. But it did chip away at the facade of his being a super Christian and practically perfect in every way. He had issues and definitely dabbled with a double life, if only in his head. But that's where murder starts—as a thought, a passing rumination of the possible that morphs into something monstrous and ugly. Maybe Pampas had this whole thing right to begin with, which irked me to consider.
    “This isn't right,” she said, more asking than telling. “David… There's got to be some other explanation.”
    “It's pretty clear. He had stuff going on in his life—weird stuff.”
    “But even if that were true, it doesn't mean he killed anyone. He could have been struggling with this and still not murdered that girl.”
    “I know that,” I said. “But it doesn't help his case either. He's at least hanging out with strippers and looking up porn on his computer. And, Pam, haven't you asked yourself why your brother was carrying on a relationship with Jamie and neither you nor Mario, the closest people in his life, knew anything about it? Doesn't that strike you as odd, especially for a pastor?”
    She poured herself down onto the couch, her shoulders rolling forward, the incriminating writ still clutched in her hand. “Of course I've thought about that—every single day since this happened. I can't explain any of this. But the David I knew couldn't have done what we saw that night. That wasn't my brother.”
    “We don't know what other things he could have been into, so I can't