Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
“No way. I know I’ve said it before, but you have no idea how grateful I am for you getting me this data. You didn't have to.” A criminal justice major, she interned at city hall last spring, and she's the main reason I’ve gotten as far as I have.
Meghan wrinkles her nose and leans back against the counter. “I don’t know if Mullerby’s guilty of anything besides being a creep, but he has a crappy reputation down there so it wouldn’t surprise me if he…”
“What?”
“Look, I was basically a gopher, so I don’t know anything, but the impression I got was that he pretty much phoned in at work. Anyone he was assigned to defend was basically screwed.”
Including my brother, Danny.
He was arrested as a teenager for dealing weed and ecstasy. Not big time, just selling a bit at local parties for more serious dealers. And as much as it pains me to admit it, he was guilty. If he’d been sentenced normally, I would’ve been devastated, but I wouldn’t be sitting here years later searching his attorney’s flash drive for clues.
But Danny didn’t get a normal sentence. He was in jail waiting on his court date when they suddenly found “proof” that he was the one responsible for a string of armed robberies, one of which had almost killed a man. It made no sense then, and it makes no sense now. Danny got in trouble a lot, and he struggled through high school. Our parents did everything they could, they even sent him to one of those bootcamp places for troubled teens. It never worked for long. It wasn’t the first time he’d been arrested, but it was never for anything violent. Never.
Overnight his sentence went from three to five years, to thirty-eight years in prison. He should be out by now, instead, he’s still in there, rotting away for something I’m convinced he didn’t do. I was too young to fight for him when it happened, but I’m not fifteen anymore.
With a dramatic sigh, I drag my laptop closer again and dive back in. Buried deep in the files, I find a folder labeled ‘Recipes’. That’s… odd. Nothing about him strikes me as the kind of guy who saves food tips from the internet. I click.
It's full of video files. There’s some kind of pattern to the file names, but it’s all numbers and I have no context to help decipher what’s in them. I hover my cursor over the first file. Random strangely labeled video file on some old guy’s drive? It could be the answer to everything, or I could be thirty seconds from needing bleach to scrub out of my brain. I give it about a fifty-fifty chance. But if I'm going to dig up what I need, I leave no stone overturned, right?
I click fast and squint at it sideways. What the heck? I don't even know what I'm looking at. A hand moving in some kind of pale, gooey liquid, and squishy sounds that make my brain tingle, and not in a good way. ASMR? It makes me want to peel off my headphones. Pudding? Do I even want to know?
The next file makes me regret so many of my life choices. This time it’s not just a hand, it’s a woman bathing in what I’m pretty sure is pudding. She’s naked, but the focus isn’t on her nudity. It’s on the squishy sounds of her moving around in it, capturing it in her hands and squeezing it through her fingers while it drips onto the top of her head, or how she gathers it up so she can squeeze it between her thighs. What the hell? Is this porn?
More videos yield more of the same. Different puddings, different women, different tubs, but the same basic kink, over and over. I slap my laptop closed, vowing to never open that folder again unless I run out of all other leads.
“Need any help?”
Meghan shakes her head. “All set.” She pulls a bowl out of the cabinet, fills it with rigatoni, then douses it in the meat sauce she’s been babysitting on the stove.
I have to force myself not to think about the videos when I hear it slosh over the pasta. “Looks great, thanks. I’ll cook tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, um, about that.” Her tone turns apologetic while I'm helping myself. “If it was just up to me, I’d be happy to let you stay for as long as you want, but now that everyone’s back, the others are starting to wonder how long it's going to be. I mean, they all like you and stuff, but you know, you can only crash here for so long.”
“I get it. I’d be annoyed too if some girl was crashing in my living room. I really am looking. I even talked with student housing yesterday, but they prioritize freshmen and sophomores. After how cheap our old place was, all the rents seem crazy high.”