Denning looked off to the side, too humiliated by his actions to hold Ballard’s eyes.
“Look at me,” Ballard said. “Is that what they called it? ‘Evening the score’？”
Denning turned his face back toward Ballard but kept his eyes down.
“No, they … I think the heading was ‘Teach a Bitch a Lesson,’ ” he said. “Yeah, and I … made a post about my situation and then they gave me a site and password to check out and things sort of went from there.”
“What was the site called?”
“It didn’t have a name. A lot of stuff doesn’t have names. It was a number.”
“Do you have a laptop in that bag?”
“Um, yeah.”
“I want you to show us. Take us to that site.”
“Uh, no, we’re not going to do that. It’s really bad stuff and I — ”
He stopped when Bosch stood up and came toward the couch. Ballard could see that something about Bosch’s demeanor unnerved Denning. Harry’s hands were balled into fists, the scars on his knuckles white. Denning leaned back into the couch while Bosch roughly grabbed his backpack and started unzipping compartments until he found the laptop. He stepped over to the desk, put the computer down, and brought the desk chair back over.
“Show us the fucking site,” Bosch said.
“All right,” Denning said. “Take it easy.”
He moved to the desk and sat down. He opened the laptop. Ballard got up and stood behind him so she could see the screen. She watched while Denning signed into the hotel’s Internet.
“Some places have blocks on the Dark Web,” he said. “They don’t let you use Tor.”
“We’ll see,” Ballard said. “Keep going.”
There were no blocks, and Denning was able to go into his private network and use the Tor browser to access the site put together by the Midnight Men. The number he typed in was 2-0-8-1-1-2 and Ballard committed it to memory. He then added a numeric password which Ballard memorized as well.
“What’s the significance of the numbers?” she asked.
“Numbers assigned to letters,” Denning said. “A-1, B-2, and so on. Translates to T-H-A-L — ‘Teach Her a Lesson.’ But I didn’t find that out till later.”
He said it in a tone that suggested he would never have ventured onto the site if he’d known that’s what the numbers meant. He might have been able to convince himself of that but Ballard doubted anybody else would believe it.
“And I think the password is — ”
“ ‘Bitch.’ Yeah, I figured that one out.”
The site was a horror show. It contained dozens of photos and videos of women being raped and humiliated. The men committing the atrocities were never seen, though it was apparent it was the Midnight Men, because the actions matched the reports of the victims in the cases known to Ballard. But there were more than three victims on the site. Cases had apparently not been connected or victims had not reported them, probably out of fear of their attackers or the system they would be sucked into.
Each of the digital files was labeled with a name. When Ballard spotted a file named Cindy1, she told Denning to open it. She immediately recognized Cindy Carpenter, though blindfolded with tape, in a horrific still shot from her assault.
“All right, enough,” she said.
When Denning was slow to kill the screen, Bosch reached over and slammed the computer shut, Denning yanking his fingers away at the last moment.
“Jesus Christ!” he shrieked.
“Get back on the couch,” Bosch ordered.
Denning complied, holding his hands up like he wanted no trouble.
Ballard had to compose herself for a moment. She wanted to get away from this room and this man, but she managed to get her last questions out.
“What did they want?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Denning asked.
“Did they want money to do this? Did you pay them?”
“No, they didn’t want anything. They liked doing it, I guess. You know, they hated all women. There are people like that.”
He said it in a way designed to convey that he was different from them. He hated a woman to the point that he would sic two rapists on her. But he didn’t hate all women, like they did.
It made Ballard feel all the more repulsed. She needed to go. She looked at Bosch and nodded. They now knew all they needed to know.
“Let’s go,” Bosch said.
He and Ballard stood up. Denning looked up at them from the couch.