Chapter 36 #2
Contrary to the other videos we saw, there’s someone handling the camera this time.
It isn’t on a tripod or handled by Becker.
Another random guy just made it onto our shit list, it seems. Becker makes some kind of ceremonious speech while they all listen, then he calls for the butterfly to be brought in.
The man who does is Horvat, but I don’t recognize him right away since he doesn’t have his snake tattoo yet and has a head full of receding hair.
Horvat brings the “butterfly,” an alarmingly young Black woman who wears a small, silky white dress.
She seems frightened and uneasy as he walks her to the chair and makes her sit on it.
Two more men follow him, pushing carts that are draped with white cloths.
Once everything is in place, Becker pulls a cloth away, revealing an arsenal of accessories meant to inflict pain.
Floggers, paddles, crops, whips, and even what looks like a fucking taser.
On the other cart, all sorts of restraints and penetrative accessories, some of them even wider than my forearm.
I’m about to say something when someone off-screen does it for me. “What is this?” the man asks.
I know that voice, even though it has changed in the past decade.
“This, my friend,” Becker answers, “is how we pay homage to our pretty butterfly.”
“I don’t understand,” Richard Coleman insists.
Becker walks to the middle of the circle and rests his hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Do you want this, child?” he asks, his tone sickeningly concupiscent.
“Yes,” the girl answers.
Now that the camera is close enough, I notice how emaciated her face is, as well as marks on the inside of her arms. Substance abuse.
She seems to suffer from it, and it might explain why she accepted this deal.
If she’s gone far enough, she’d do anything to get the money that’ll allow her to get more of her drug of choice.
“This is sick, Norman!” Lex’s father intervenes, ripping away his mask.
“She wants this!” Becker retorts.
“She doesn’t! Look at her! She’s scared out of her mind!”
“We’re helping her. She’s a lost soul, a caterpillar. And through pain and suffering, we will reinforce her will and redirect her life. We are the chrysalis that will turn her into a butterfly, Richard.”
“What the fuck,” I mutter. “Does he mean all that?”
“Seems like he does.”
Lex and I watch the two men argue for a little longer until his father storms out of the place after cursing out every single man in there. We stop the footage when Becker suggests they move on from the incident and get started with “the ritual,” as he calls it.
We both stare at the still image, unsure what to make of all that. Was all that bullshit Becker’s way of justifying his fucked-up needs and desires? Does he really tell himself and the men who indulge along with him they’re helping those women?
“Well, your father might be an asshole, but at least he isn’t a monster.”
“He walked out on what was happening, but he didn’t denounce Becker and his accomplices either.”
I press my lips together, aware that this is indeed not great. “Can you look for a folder named Catasticta?” I ask Lex before I reach over to grab my laptop. I pull out the page from Becker’s notebook that matches and check the date of the folder Lex found. They’re the same.
“This one has a star,” I explain. “We need to figure out what that means.”
When Lex opens the video file, it starts in the same manner as earlier. Except this time, no one steps up like Richard Coleman did. On the contrary, the four men and one woman seem eager to get started.
The girl is a young and gorgeous Latina, and her body language is alarming.
She’s sluggish and unsteady, barely capable of sitting on that chair without falling off it.
This one isn’t a drug addict like the previous one.
She’s drugged. When she tries to speak, I can barely make out what she’s saying.
Her Spanish is not only accented but also hard to follow.
I get some nuances in her speech, though. She sounds … Colombian.
Something clicks in my head.
“Is that … Amalia … Amalia Camacho? The young maid Paola told us about?”
“She mentioned it happened about a year ago, right?”
“Yes. The date matches.”
Something felt wrong in the previous video, but this is even creepier. She doesn’t even seem to know where she is, barely conscious. Is that what the star means? Those are “nonconsensual” women? Not that the consent from the other girl was anywhere near acceptable or valid.
“Alright, you need to get out,” Lex says, pausing the video just as Becker and his clan start picking up tools from the carts.
“What?! No, I want to stay with you and see!”
“Andrea, you were terrified the whole time we watched that horror movie you insisted on. This is real life. I won’t let it haunt you.”
I frown, ready to offer my rebuttal, but he lays a hand on my thigh and says, “I’ll let you know the broad strokes of what happens. But please let me do this one alone. Please. I haven’t been able to spare you once during this entire mess. This is my one and only chance to do it.”
Fuck … He’s right. Watching those people hurt, abuse, and rape that poor girl will scar me.
The images will stay with me for a while, a constant reminder of how depraved and cruel people can be.
Between that and the fact that Lex needs this chance to protect me when I’ve protected him so many times already, I don’t argue.
I rise from my chair, bend over to give him a soft kiss, and say, “If it becomes too much, please, stop. I don’t want you scarred either, okay?”
He nods and welcomes my lips for another tender kiss.
Once I’m at the door, I turn around for one last look and then step out.
I close the door and go to the couch, taking my phone out.
Time for some dumb, mindless scrolling to take my mind away from this messed-up discovery.
Alas, my Instagram feed offers next to no comfort, my brain too scattered for it.
This goes so much deeper than we imagine. It’s organized crime, at this point, with Becker as a ringleader and Horvat as his supplier. Sex trafficking, drugs, abuse, forced prostitution … And on top of everything, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those girls were minors.
What if we took a bite that is too big for us to chew? What then? We focus our efforts on Becker and let those other people run free? Do we dismantle the entire thing? What would we even start with?
We stumbled on a big fish, a bunch of them, and we don’t know what to do with them. We need a bigger fish on our side. A shark. But we don’t have one. It’s just the two of us. No one can help us. Unless we’re willing to trust an outsider.
When Lex comes out of the office about an hour later, he looks livid, his face pale and aghast. I swiftly rise from the couch and walk up to him. “Are you okay?!” I ask, concerned. “What did you see?”
“The things they did to those women … I don’t understand how anyone could get off from that.
Most of the victims seem to retract their consent at some point, but it’s never respected.
Becker reminds them they signed up for this.
Some of those women, Andrea … They were girls.
Children. Barely over sixteen, if not even younger, I—”
“My God … I’m so sorry you had to watch all that, baby.”
“That … girl. Amalia?” he continues, still aghast.
“Yeah?”
“I think he killed her.”
“What?!”
“I saw Becker strangle her, and I don’t think she made it.”
“Jesus fucking Christ … Murder, too?!”
“That’s not all.”
“What is it, baby?”
“I went back and checked some of the other entries that had stars in them. I think the star means the victim dies.”
“Oh my God … There were like fifteen of them in the notebook.”
“Sixteen. They all died, from what I could see.”
“Holy fucking shit … Lex, this is too big for us to handle. If we publish it online, all those people will be in the wind before the feds can arrest them.”
“I thought the same, yes.”
“We need to find a solution.”
“I know.”
I think about it, wondering how we could make sure the odds stay with us. Among those names in the notebook, we found two judges and a high-ranking official of the DOJ. We don’t know who we can trust with this, and if this case falls into the wrong hands, we’re screwed.
We need someone highly competent and morally sound. Someone we can trust, someone who would do what’s right and use the proper channels to bring justice to all those women.
There might be one person who fits the profile. I’ve only met her twice, but she always struck me as someone who knew her shit and worked hard to do her job well. We’ll need to triple-check and make sure she’s the right person for this, but at least we have a starting point.
“I think I have an idea,” I tell Lex.
Time to get ourselves a shark.
It’s been a week since Andrea and I accessed Becker’s sickening tapes, and we’ve been busy classifying everything.
We found a few of the women in the videos.
A lot of them died within a few years of what happened to them.
Despite Becker’s belief, no, their brutality didn’t fix those women’s drug addictions.
On the contrary, it seems to have gotten worse for most of them.
We found a handful who went to detox and got their lives together.
Of the two we contacted, both refused to talk, arguing they wanted to move on from that part of their lives.
We didn’t press, but we hope that if the case moves along, they will come forward and share their stories. It will help put Becker and his clique behind bars.
But for that to happen, we need to get this information into competent hands. Which is why we’re standing in front of this white and blue house in the Portland suburbs, about to ring the doorbell.