Chapter 9
Betty was sitting on the couch watching the television when he walked into the apartment. Ed held up the computer Cd and smiled at her. Ed looked at the dining room table and saw that Betty had setup the laptop and the screen saver was moving over the screen. Ed walked to the table and sat in front of the laptop. Betty came and stood behind him as he inserted the CD into the drive. The CD drive started humming and the CD directory came up on the laptop. He minimized the directory and opened the photo software. Ed then started to open the pictures on the CD. Betty put her hands in front of her face and started to walk into the living room.
"Come back here," he said softly, "I know this is painful, but we have to go through this."
Betty walked back to him and pulled a chair behind him so that she could see the screen clearly. He pulled each picture up and studied it, looking at everything in the picture. The room in the picture was Bynum's office and Betty was lying on Bynum's desk. Ed started questioning her about each picture. The first picture showed Betty having sex with one man and 3 others watching and smiling. There was a bottle of whiskey on a shelf behind the desk and each man had a glass of whiskey in his hand.
"Who are the men in this picture?" he asked.
Betty told him who the 3 men were. All 3 were Horizon executives. One man worked in the local office and the other 2 men were from the headquarters office. Bynum had forced Betty to have sex with 2 of the men in the picture on another occasion. The second picture showed Betty having sex with a different man and 4 others watching and drinking whiskey. Betty identified the 2 new faces as Horizon people that worked in Bynum's office. Ed wrote down the names of the men and where each man worked. He studied the picture looking at every item in the picture.
"Wait a minute," he said, "Betty, look at this. See the fingers of someone standing just out of the picture? Bynum is apparently taking the pictures, I see 5 men and the fingers of another man."
Ed got up and went into his office. After several minutes he found his magnifying glass and came back into the dining room and sat down in front of the laptop. He studied the partial hand in the picture and every item in the picture. Ed started enlarging the picture. With each click of the mouse to enlarge the picture, the resolution got fuzzier. He clicked on the "sharpen" command of the photo software and studied the picture again. The hand was only slightly clearer.
"Look at this," he told Betty, "The hand has a gold nugget style ring. It looks like it also has an initial in a black stone. That's a custom ring. I can't make out the initial, though. Do you know who wears a ring like that?"
Betty shook her head. Ed continued through the pictures, asking many questions about the pictures even though all were similar. All of the pictures showed Betty having sex with the men, sometimes more than 1 man having sex with her at the same time. There were 25 pictures on the disk. Ed opened the last picture. This showed a woman having intercourse with 1 man and having oral sex with another.
"That's not me," Betty exclaimed.
Ed turned and looked at her. He saw that she had been quietly crying as he went through the pictures.
"See the tattoo?" she said, "I don't have a tattoo. I don't know who that is."
Ed took his magnifying glass and looked at the tattoo. It was a butterfly, a little to the left and slightly above the woman's pubic hair. The tattoo was apparently a professional tattoo and Ed saw that the colors of the tattoo were vivid, indicating that the tattoo was not an old one. Ed studied everything in the picture trying to determine when the picture was made. He saw that the men in the picture were the same ones as the men in the pictures with Betty. He could not see any evidence of a 6th man. The identity of the 6th man was still unknown to him.
Ed pushed himself away from the laptop, "It seems that our Mr. Bynum did this on more than one occasion. I wonder who the other woman is? We have to find out who this is."
Ed checked and saw that the laptop had a CD-RW function. He went into the office and got a blank disk. The computer in his brother's office had a CD-RW that Ed used to record his surveillance photos for his clients. He came back to the laptop and saved the pictures to the hard drive of the laptop. Ed took out the CD with the pictures on it and opened the picture file on the laptop. Using the photo software, he blanked out Betty's face on every photo that showed her face. He made sure that he didn't erased the faces of any of the men. He then saved the file to the blank CD. Ed closed the file and made sure that the file was safely saved to the new CD. He then erased the file from the hard drive.
"Now we have a copy without your face on any of the pictures," he told her.
Ed got up and walked to the trashcan in the kitchen and broke the disk that he had found in Bynum's office and threw it in the trashcan. Betty watched him as he twisted the disk so that it was unusable.
"Thank you," she said with tears streaming down her face.
Ed walked over to her and she got up and walked into his arms. Ed held her as she sobbed and held him. She cried for several minutes before she calmed down enough for him to release her. Ed led her into the living room and she dropped onto the couch.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to try to find out who that other woman is," Ed, told her as he stood over her. "The police are probably still looking for you. They know Bynum had a girl friend and they will want to question you. Let's get some sleep and I'll see what I can find out tomorrow>"
Betty looked up at him, "I can't take your bed, I'll sleep on the couch."
Ed shook his head, "Half of the time I sleep on the couch anyway. Just go on in and try to get some sleep."
Betty smiled weakly and went into he bedroom. Ed woke up several times during the night and heard her sobbing. Around 3 o'clock he went to the bedroom door and listened. Hearing nothing he pushed the door open a little and looked in on her. She had cried herself to sleep.