The guards obey, and Becker locks the door behind us, isolating himself in his office. Andrea and I exchange a silent look, both knowing he’s checking his safe and making sure everything is still there.
Being out in the hallway attracts the attention of a few guests passing at the other end of it. By the time Becker comes out, there’s a small group of them watching us from afar. He notices and lets a displeased breath out of his nose.
“Escort them out of the building,” he tells his goons. “Do not let them out of your sight until they are out. And don’t let them in again. Not tonight, not ever. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Still holding our arms, they tug us forward, toward the curious guests. Andrea pulls her arm out of the man’s hold and grumbles, “I can fucking walk on my own.”
That gets the guard on my side to release me as well, and we end up walking side by side. I take her hand once we reach the guests, and she looks up at me with a pleased twinkle in her eyes.
This is it. We’re getting the fuck out of here with what we came for. And it barely took us an hour.
This woman has to be my lucky charm.
Chapter 36
Unlocking the cloned drive was both harder and simpler than we thought. As we suspected, everything was encrypted, which meant we needed the password to access the files. After making several backups, we mounted the clone into the laptop we already had, the same one as Becker’s, and got to work.
It took several trials and errors for Lex to fine-tune a password-searching program that wouldn’t trigger the drive’s security measures. Otherwise, three failed attempts and the encryption keys were wiped, which turned the data into useless noise.
Once we had that safeguard in place, we let it work through potential passwords. It could have taken fucking weeks, but I suggested we try something more subtle than brute force and focus on Becker himself. We tested combinations tied to his family, birthdays, and anything remotely sentimental. When that led nowhere, we fed Lex’s algorithm an entire encyclopedia of butterfly names.
And while that was going on, Lex and I worked on the pictures and the video of the notebook. It contains what seems to be an extensive account of all his “intimate parties,” which are all named after a specific butterfly. About fifteen of them, out of nearly two hundred, have a star drawn next to them. Another mystery we might solve once the computer gives way. The upper-right corner of each entry has a date, which will be extremely helpful for us. Then there’s a list of names that range from three to twelve. It’s pretty clear to us that these are the attendants, since the last entry, which is dated last Friday, has ten names on it. And at the bottom, Becker always writes a few notes, as if he wants to remember who did what.
When we saw the men arrive at his penthouse on Friday, they all wore masks. Are they aware their “friend” is keeping close tabs on them? Is Becker doing it to have some kind of leverage over them?
Seventeen years. That notebook spans over seventeen years of those vile evenings. And we catalog everything in a spreadsheet, which allows us to find out who took part and how many times. Some of these people are high-ranking politicians, which is insane. The senator who visited, the one I brought the tray to, is in that notebook a lot. Twenty-three times. This is so much bigger than us. It’s a full-blown national scandal, and I’m not sure how we’ll handle it.
Lex has a small panic attack when we find his father’s name in one of the entries, and I do everything I can to help him regulate and come down from it.
It looks like ten years ago, Richard Coleman was a participant. His name is, however, crossed out. It’s the only time Lex’s father is mentioned, and I maintain that he either didn’t show up or didn’t like what he saw and left that day. That would explain why Becker removed him. We might know more when Lex cracks the computer’s key.
Sixteen hours. That’s how long it takes the software to find it once it has the butterfly names. Sixteen hours instead of weeks. And the password wasCatasticta Lycurgus,in one word with capitals, all along—that tiny yellow butterfly Becker told me was his favorite. Go fucking figure.
As elated as I am to have found an in, Lex grabs my face and gives me one of his bone-melting kisses. “You genius woman,” he groans as he pulls away.
“I have my moments.”
He gives me an enthusiastic peck and then focuses back on the double screens. For an entire minute, we stare at it. The moment is so fucking surreal, neither of us grasps what’s happening. We’re in. This is it. Depending on what we find in there, eight months of living on the edge and fearing for our lives are coming to an end.
The computer is very organized, almost in an obsessive-compulsive way. A few folders are perfectly aligned in the middle of the screen, and I bring my finger to one of them, thinking it’s a great place to start.
“This one,Chrysalides. Open this one.”
He does so, and within it, more folders, also cleanly organized. They’re each labeled with a feminine name and a date. Lex selects them all, and we see there are two hundred and seventy-three folders. The oldest one dates back over twenty years. Norman Becker has been a sick fuck for a long time, hasn’t he? Though he might have started earlier, and only began documenting it two decades ago.
The most recent folder is titledJasmineand is from five days ago. The second one is namedLola, and from that night he brought her to his place.
Lex thinks the same as I do, and he opens theLolafolder. We find a video file and several screen grabs that seemingly came from it. Probably Becker’s favorite moments from that fucked-up session? I wince at the sight the thumbnails offer, with Lola’s bare behind striped with red marks, bleeding in parts. There are also close-ups of her face, and the agony on it is hard to bear.
That fucking psycho enjoys hurting women a little too much. We absolutely have to stop him. He’s a menace to society and to my gender.
Lex opens the video file, and we watch the first ten minutes, where Becker gives her a false sense of security and flirts with her as he lays out his conditions. It’s sickening to see how he coerced her into accepting, his tone dismissive and light, as if he isn’t a twisted fuck, as if he isn’t about to hurt her so badly, she won’t be able to sit straight for a full week.
Lex skips the undressing part and fast-forwards to the moment she’s tied up and helpless. Before it can begin, Lex has the great idea of turning the sound off. We don’t need to hear Lorelei’s screams. He jumps through the video as we both watch with disgusted expressions on our faces. How can someone enjoy abusing a woman like this? She’s screaming and bucking, pulling at her restraints, and with each scream, Becker goes harder. She eventually breaks, and we listen as Becker makes her a new deal. She gets the money if he can fuck her.
Both of us agree to close the video as Becker fumbles with the opening of his pants. We don’t need to see that to know what goes on next.That poor woman…
