Page 54 of Hoodoo House
He filtered his search by men in the Drumheller area and searched for the other file that had been on Tull’s computer—BurlyBiker27. Nothing. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Cody, after all, was from Calgary, not Drumheller, and Tull’s other visitors could have been from other places outside of Drumheller. Charlie expanded his search to all of Alberta. He skimmed through the profiles and eventually hit pay-dirt. There was the profile forBurlyBiker27but there was no image on his user icon. And in order to access more of his profile,BurlyBiker27required that you send him a full nude shot. Charlie wasn’t about to have a dick-pic of himself floating around on the web, so there’d be no images of the third blackmail victim this evening.
Charlie stared at the screen.
“Wait a minute. You idiot,” Charlie said to himself.
He already had a picture of the guy he knew asBurlyBiker27. Charlie had a whole video’s worth of just about every square centimetre of him. And if he had a picture…Charlie was struck with a new idea.
He called up the video forBurlyBiker27on his laptop. It showed two men involved in sex play. One of them had a dark bushy beard and was lying in the sling. The other, who was penetrating him, wore a leather mask which hid his identity. The two men had their hands around each other’s throat and were clearly choking one another. Charlie stopped the video and zoomed in on the masked man. There was a tattoo of a spider on his left forearm.
Charlie continued to scan through the video until he found the clearest possible shot of the face of the man who was in the sling. He took a screen-capture of it. Then, Charlie did an internet image search.
In a short period of time, images started to pop up, dozens of them. Then hundreds of images that the search engine’s algorithms determined looked similar to the one Charlie had hoped to match.
The image Charlie had asked the computer to find matched a lot of different men, as the man’s bushy beard hid a lot of facial features which would have been helpful in narrowing the search. Charlie played with the image, focusing more on the man’s eyes, nose and mouth then narrowed his search to images posted within the last five years.
This brought it down to a manageable one hundred and fifty-three images. Charlie began to scroll. After a few minutes, Charlie found what he was looking for.
“Oh shit.”
There was no doubt about it. This had to beBurlyBiker27. Charlie was staring at an image from an Edmonton Police Service post from 2020. It was a plea to the public looking for information on the whereabouts of “Adolph Moses. Age forty-two. Height one-hundred-and-ninety centimetres. Weight one-hundred-and-seven kilos. Warning—this man is armed and dangerous. Do not approach. Call…”
Charlie stared at the image of the man’s face. His eyes looked crazed. His hair was a tangled mess. He had the same beard as the guy in the video—a full biker beard.
Biker beard.
Biker.
“No way,” Charlie said as he grabbed his phone and called up the images in his photos folder. He scrolled through them quickly until he came to the one he’d taken of the biker they’d seen on the road near Hoodoo House. He zoomed in on the face. He couldn’t be absolutely sure. The helmet and goggles obscured the details, but there, on the biker’s left cheek, just below the eye, was a tattoo of some sort. Charlie looked back at the video and advanced through it until he could see the left side of the man’s face. There, on his cheek, was a tattoo below the left eye. A double teardrop. The same as the one on the face in the police bulletin.
This must beBurlyBiker27, the same guy who had threatened to kill Tull in the emails.
Charlie grabbed his phone and called Declan. The phone rang three times, then went to voicemail.
“Declan. It’s Charlie. I’ve found out whoBurlyBiker27is. This is big. Call me. Please!”
He disconnected. Where could Declan be?
Charlie looked at the cold coffee on his desk and decided to rinse out the mug and use the washroom. As he washed his hands, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He was a rumpled mess. He’d slept in his clothes the night before and hadn’t shaved. He couldn’t believe he’d interviewed Cody looking like this. He needed to get home. Declan could call him if he was interested in what Charlie had found out.
Home! Charlie realized he hadn’t even taken the time to let Carrie know he was back in town. He shot off a quick text.
Homeward bound! Have the wine ready. I’ve got stories.
Within a minute, she texted back.
At work until ten. See you when I get home. Can’t wait to hear what you and your Hot Dick have been up to.
Hot Dick. Charlie shook his head.
See you at ten.
Charlie locked the Cody White file away in a drawer, turned off the lights then set the alarm. He’d just started down the street towards the car when his phone rang.
He glanced at the caller ID.
“Declan! I’ve got news!”
“Yeah,” Declan replied. “I just saw that. Great work. Listen. Can you meet me at Bar-None? There’s something I need to talk to you about and it can’t wait.”
