A Legal Trap Ch. 02

"It was last Friday, why do you ask?"

"I was just trying to figure out the reason for her getting the laptop - guess that answered that question."

"Yeah, she just turned eighteen."

Eighteen, 'Legal age of Majority' or when you're considered an adult legally in all states except Alabama and Nebraska (which is nineteen).

"Did her parents say anything about her wanting anything, I don't know, like a tattoo or something, but they were against it?"

"I didn't think to ask, but I'm pretty sure she already has a couple tattoos."

Paul clicked and a new window appeared on the TV, replacing the computer language gibberish window, "Got these..." The screen showed his file explorer and six images in 'Extra large icons' mode. He highlighted them and clicked 'Preview'.

The first was of Amber's hand, dark ink in intricate line patterns - a Henna tattoo. She had perfectly manicured nails. STOP! Fuck the nails! It wasn't something permanent, a Henna tattoo. There were four other pictures of Henna tattoos - on her feet and the side of her chest - that picture was of an orchid and included her Henna tattooed hand covering her left breast so you could see the orchid.

Tattoo aside, she had breasts! Small, but none the less breasts, and that meant HRT. "Did her parents say anything about HRT?"

"I didn't ask, but assumed so - it's kind of obvious from the pictures of

her..."

"What's the date on this photo?"

Paul checked, "A year ago. Is that significant?"

"No, I'm trying to put what I know into a time line. She comes out to her parents sometime when she's fifteen. This picture a year ago makes her

about seventeen - give or take. I was told her coming out was 'difficult' for the family. She obviously started HRT not that long after getting over whatever was 'difficult' for the family at fifteen and change - with their full support."

"Well, this picture is going to muck things up for your time line I think."

I looked back at the TV to see a picture of Amber shooting a selfie over

her shoulder in a mirror. The picture showed her backside, beautifully

shaped naked ass, smiling a knowing grin, and centered at the base of her

hips at the center of her back was a colorful tramp stamp tattoo consisting of tribal inked wings in black, blue, and lime green for accent - with a small pink crown centered on top of the wings.

The tattoo looked cute, nothing I would ever do, but it appeared to be well done. It wasn't huge, so later in life she probably wasn't going to regret it. It also appeared to have been done recently as the skin around it was red and some of the lines of the tattoo appeared raised, "Did her parents mention her

having a tattoo?"

"No, this is the first time I've seen it and trust me I've seen more of her than I care to admit."

I wasn't sure what that meant, but pressed, "When was it taken?"

"This past Thursday, day before her birthday..."

"Look at the clock. It says 3:41 and the edge of the curtains here," I was standing at the TV pointing, "It's dark outside the window, so she got

someone to do this after midnight on her birthday - Friday morning..."

"Oh, shit. Good catch."

"She went missing Friday," I was thinking aloud.

"Her school reported her missing from class Friday mid-morning."

Okay, she gets a tattoo the morning of her disappearance - that's an avenue

to pursue - tattoo parlors. Question is: Why take a picture of it and not share it? Why take it and then delete it? Paul had been over her phone and online presence - this picture was not there I assumed or he would have mentioned it.

"I don't understand why she would take the picture and then delete it," he

said offhandedly.

"I was just thinking that," and I wondered if his skills went beyond computers and into the paranormal - like mind reading. "Have you been able to crack into her email account, assuming she has one." That was stupid - what teenager didn't have at least one email account?

"I got access into one of her accounts, but there wasn't anything of interest there. I don't think she used it much."

"How did you get in?"

"She had a Post-It note in her room with user ID's and passwords to various accounts - no computer magic involved with that. The police actually found it during their search." He smiled and began concentrating on the laptop screen.

I looked at him thinking he had a nice smile. "Various accounts?"

"Yeah, it's dark stuff. Let's concentrate on what we've got mined here from the deleted files - then I'll take you to the dark side that is Amber."

"Okay, that's a little cryptic, but whatever," I replied with a bit of snarky in my voice.

Paul clicked on the first directory of recovered files from Amber's laptop

and sorted them in order of file type, "She left a Post-It note - maybe

there's a file here that will get us into some of her accounts or accounts

we don't know about."

He highlighted twenty or so .PDF files and opened them all at once. They

were in the '_Care' directory and I watched the files overlay quickly on

the TV. He closed the split-screen view and the screen showed more of the

opened files. It was evident they were all SRS related, were a mix of

technical medical information, and blog entries from various websites.

Pictures in some of the .PDF's contained actual surgical procedures results -

documented in living color and presented some new techniques regarding

nerve preservation during surgery. Heavy stuff for a teenager - even if this was the means to the end you sensed inside of yourself from early on in childhood. I would be curious to review these privately to see if there was a thread or if it related to anything else we were bound to find.

Paul copied links from each of the files where available and pasted them in a document he pulled up involving his research to date, "We can go back over these sites later. Let's say she was looking to - as an adult - run off to get GCS, maybe these sites are a place to start?"

Nice thought, but you don't just walk-in and order up GCS like you would a

Big Mac at McDonald's - it's way more complicated than that... Paul getting up from the couch and walking to the bathroom interrupted my second snarky train of thought in as many minutes. I watched him walk to the door and close it behind him. He had a nice ass, not that I cared or anything, but I could at least give him that.

Paul returned a few minutes later, which gave me a chance to check my

phone - no messages; personal email - nothing worth reading. I thought

about grabbing my Android tablet to log into my work email, but he didn't

spend as much time in the bathroom as I had hoped.

"These GCS files are likely a dead end, doubt you can just get that kind of surgery without a lot of work leading up to something that big. That and the cost factor is probably pretty high."

Fucking shit! Is this guy in my mind?!! "I agree," was all I could muster. I was going to lose my shit if he said anything about him having

a nice ass. I thought of another question - did Amber have a passport?

The next several directories had mostly pictures and video downloads. Paul's comment about Amber's dark side became a little clearer. Much of the stuff we looked at had no value or benefit to her struggle to be who she was on the inside. When there were no more pictures of shemale like porn to view Paul queued up the first video.

He paused and looked a little uncomfortable, "I'm... I'm not really a fan of this kind of stuff, but we need to see if Amber appears in any of this stuff. I highly doubt it. I can fast forward through them quickly - so keep an eye out for her, though most of these are probably staged professional releases. If any are of the 'amateur' variety, that's our best chance of catching her."

Shit! Are you kidding me? This wasn't healthy and I could speak to that from firsthand knowledge. Which there was no way in hell I was going to say -

ever! "I understand."

For over thirty minutes, we fast-forwarded too many video clips to count.

The saving grace - fast-forward and the videos were void of sound. That cut down on the awkwardness of this exercise - not completely the arousal factor. I wondered if Paul felt the same. No, he said as much.

Near the halfway mark of video clips, Paul stated what I already had figured out, that Amber had been involved in making videos and posting them. He

mentioned she was also live streaming from her room. My heart sank a little; this wasn't a good sign. I sensed there was more, but we weren't really talking much as the video images zipped across the TV screen.

I asked if her parents knew. He looked away from the TV, "Yes, the police found evidence of her being online pretty early on. Jacob said it was a heartbreaking blow to the family."

I shook my head and continued to watching as a familiar sadness crept into

my thoughts. We sat in silence until all the videos had been viewed.

"Was there undeleted content on her laptop, like this stuff," I meekly

asked.

"Yes, but nothing useful. Between this bunch of deleted stuff and the undeleted stuff - we're looking at any number of sites she either downloaded / surfed and just as many for the stuff she was featured in," he paused as if measuring what he was about to say, "Any idea of why she would be involved in this kind of thing?"

I felt my throat tighten a little and jokingly blurted, "How much time do you have?" My joke was lost on him and I stammered to recover, "A lot of it is a need for attention - even if it's not the good kind. You're alone a lot of the time, depressed, sad, numb, adrift - because people don't know what you're going through or understand how you can find your way going the way you're going. Something as simple as a smile from another human being can carry you over the distance of the largest desert."

I was reaching clumsily to explain the trap, and it really was a trap, "Some of the attraction is a feeling of being wanted - you feel validated, gratified. Then again some people are all about the kink, the fetish. The trap is this shit takes you away from where you really wanted to go in the first place. Who you want to really be." I stopped, slowly exhaling; did I answer the question?

I must have because Paul brought up another directory and began opening

documents. It contained what looked like stories, fictional stories pulled from a site called Big Closet and others. Yet another avenue I would have to check out as I'd never heard of it some of those listed.

He was clicking through Word documents now, some containing medical

information regarding transformation, some that looked like diary entries

- which on closer inspection appeared to be from a MTF woman describing

her life after SRS. Paul was organizing the documents, which were too

many to count, into categories and saving them off for later review. He

was about to close a Word document that had only the following in it 'parola d'ordine' in it.

"What's that?"

"No idea," he said closing it and moving the file to a documents directory.

"Can we Google that?"

"I guess," he opened the file again, copied the words and pasted them

into a browser window, hit enter. When the results of the search appeared he said, "Oh shit."

Google results listed on the TV screen and I couldn't help but speak it aloud, "A Password..."

"No, don't you see?" The TV screen flipped back to the document and he

clicked some keys, highlighting everything in the page and there were user

ID's and passwords for email accounts and sites, "She used white text on a white page background to hide this stuff from view..."

Paul was energized by the find and tried the credentials to Amber's Tumblr

account. They worked! "This changes everything," he said with a big smile.

While it was awesome we had access, what was showing on the screen was

anything but. Amber, in an animated GIF, was being taken from behind by

an overweight older man. The scene wasn't more than a couple seconds long

and repeated itself in a loop. This investigation was about to get much darker...

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