Slim Bohls Gets His Due
(Excerpt from The Entrepreneurs: Joe Robbins Book One)
Chapter 36
Arriving at the complex at eleven thirty, I parked next to the soccer field, as on my earlier trip. The Smith & Wesson was still under the passenger seat of the Jeep, and I left it there. I had certain things to accomplish with Slim, but they didn’t include murder.
I grabbed the stuff from home and hiked to Slim’s building, then around to the spot where I had watched Webb and Rose from the riverbank. Across the lake, Webb’s house was dark. Clouds had rolled in and covered all the stars.
Lights shone from the windows of half the apartments. Jazz music played from an open balcony door. A ground-floor tenant let his cat out for a walk. The apartment buildings lined the riverbank, and the bank made a sharp turn, so that the building to the left was nearly perpendicular to Slim’s.
The lights were off in Slim’s apartment. It was Friday, and I guessed that he was out; if not, I’d wake him abruptly. I went around to the front, climbed one flight of stairs, and pulled on latex gloves—the kind home repair stores sell for painting projects. Within a minute, I had picked the lock.
The door opened into a space about fifteen by twenty feet. A countertop separated the kitchenette from the living room. To the left of the entrance, a hallway led to the bedroom. I searched the rooms, but found no Slim.
The living room was divided roughly into a workspace and an entertainment zone. The work area included a large desk with eight small monitors mounted on a rack to the right and a large monitor on the left. In the entertainment area, a regular-size couch and coffee table faced a large television and sound system. The balcony sliding door was to the left of the entertainment zone. Outside, the balcony provided a clear view down the path to the boat dock and across the lake to Webb’s house.
On top of the desk were a high-end MacBook Pro, a standalone keyboard, a large fluorescent lamp, two thumb drives, an ashtray, and three empty beer bottles. With a small flashlight, I checked under the desk and found an upright powered-on computer.
I opened the MacBook, which had no password, and examined the file directory. It didn’t take long. A folder labeled Bohls Productions contained ten subfolders identified by women’s first names, among them: Zola, Rose, and Amanda. Each subfolder held a dozen or so video files, with one clearly noted as final. I pressed play on Zola’s final video and turned the volume low, so I could hear Slim’s keys in the door if he returned.
The video began with a few minutes of small talk and then jumped into the sex. I played a minute of the first scene, fast-forwarded a bit, and played another minute. I stopped to listen whenever Webb and Zola talked, but the dialogue was no more than meaningless banter that led into the next sex scene.
Slim deftly managed the remote cameras, and he clearly knew how to edit. The scene cuts were smooth, and he used different angles and zoom perspectives to maximize the sensationalism.
I finished Zola’s video and played the one of Sheri O’Shea, Jack’s wife. I watched the second video more quickly and learned nothing new. I fast-forwarded through most of the third video. I wanted to verify the identity of all the actors; the presence of a second male would complicate my problem.
Each video marched through a similar pattern. First the woman stood like so while Webb did this, and then she stretched across a bed while Webb did that. The women appeared to enjoy the sex. They were acting but not forced, consistent with Zola’s story. After the third video, I scanned them all at high speed.
With Rose’s turn, I had to breathe slowly to calm the pounding in my ears. I listened to their conversations, all the same nonsense. Amanda Sorenson’s video depressed me, a young woman in her early twenties trying to act mature.
I copied Amanda’s video to a thumb drive and put it in my pocket. Then I dragged the master video folder to the trash and emptied it. After that, I reviewed the rest of the file directory and deleted every user document I could find. The remote keyboard got me into the computer under the desk, and I followed the same procedure.
While I worked a question nagged at me: Did Slim upload the videos to the cloud? If he had submitted any of the videos to one of the free porn sites, I would have heard about it through the Connection network. That kind of news travelled fast. Even so, he could have backed up his work on one of the many cloud storage services.
But that would have been a risky step for Slim to take. If one single video got into the wrong hands and made its way to a porn site, Webb Elliott would soon find out. And when he did, Webb would find a way to exact revenge on Slim.
Assuming Slim had avoided the cloud, he’d probably made hardcopy backups, perhaps hidden in the apartment. I checked the living area, kitchen, and then his bedroom. There was a crawl space opening in the ceiling of his closet. Using a chair, I scrambled up and found his stash: two external hard drives, another laptop, and a couple ounces of marijuana. I wiped the hard drives clean and flushed the pot down the toilet. The laptop was password protected.
Using a few simple tools I’d brought, I disassembled the computer and the primary laptop enough to remove the hard drives. Then I loaded all the hardware, save the secondary laptop, into two trash bags. After a thorough second check of the apartment, I carted the bags to the Jeep.
Back in his apartment, I turned out the lights and waited for Slim. What should I do with him? I wanted to beat him up, drag him to the lake, and hold his head underwater until no more bubbles surfaced. Growing impatient, I stepped onto the balcony for a smoke.
Slim came home a little after two, alone.
He let the door close, flipped the light switch, and turned toward me, surprised.
“What are—”
I punched him, hard, a straight right to the side of his nose. He collapsed.
His hands covered his face, blood trickling through his fingers. I kicked him in the ribs, and he scrunched into a ball of pain, eyes closed. He coughed.
I pictured Zola crying and wanted to kick him harder, to keep kicking until his ribs crunched, but instead, I pulled his desk chair over and sat. I needed to stay focused. Slim bled some more, caught his breath, and peeped at me. I gave him some time. After a few minutes he got to his knees and then stood.
“I’ve deleted your files, disassembled your computer and laptop, and carted that shit away. Now I want the other backups.”
He’d been drinking and looked shaky, like he might throw up, but he tried his luck anyway by saying, “I don’t have any.”
I stood and threw a right hook to his body, a lot of power in the punch. He doubled over and sank to the floor again, writhing. I stretched my right fingers and made a fist. Everything felt fine. I could do this all night.
When he could breathe, he stammered, “In the closet… crawl space.”
“I already found those. I want the off-site stash.”
“I don’t have anything else.”
He faced away from me, doing the fetus position. Grabbing his shoulder, I dragged him up and slapped him hard across both cheeks. Blood from his nose got on my hand.
“What about the cloud?!”
His body shook, and he started crying, a high-pitched sob that let out slow, followed by a gulp of air through his mouth.
“Don’t hit me again,” he pleaded. “There’s nothing more. No cloud.”
I believed him. He didn’t have the strength to lie. I continued to hold him by his shirtfront.
“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t raped those women.”
His eyes turned skittish, registering a different kind of fear.
“I know all about it,” I said. “Tell me who you raped.”
He thought about it too long, so I pulled my hand back to slap him.
“Not your wife!” he said.
“Good boy, but I already knew that. And I know some of the others also. Now tell me the truth.”
“Four in all.”
“Which four?”
“Brittany… Ashley… Zola… and Taylor.”
“Okay. Should I hit you? Are you lying again?”
“No. No. I’m not lying.”
“I want everyone’s complete name, first and last.”
It took him a while, but he remembered all the names, both the women he’d raped and the others. I wrote the names on a slip of paper, except for Rose, who I left off the list.
As a reward, I offered him the chair, and he fell into it.
“Tell me about Amanda Sorenson.” I moved behind him and massaged his shoulders, the fingers of my hands inches from his neck.
He shivered. Did I frighten him more than the police?
“There’s nothing to tell.”
My fingers closed around his throat. He swallowed and gasped. I tightened my grip.
“Wait.”
I loosened my hands so he could speak.
“I asked her,” he confessed, “but she said no. She was so unreasonable.”
He was complaining about a woman who refused his demands for sex. Why should such a man be allowed to breathe?
Would they catch me if I took his life?
My senses grew fuzzy. In my mind, Amanda moved from the first ballet position to a plié and then stepped off the railing. My vision went black, and my hearing faded. My fingers constricted, making a smaller and smaller circle.
You’d be doing the world a favor. Just a little tighter, and all will be well.
From within the darkness, something scratched my hands—Slim, desperately clawing for survival. I relaxed my grip.
He filled his lungs again and again until the spasms subsided.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell me the rest.”
“She knew she was in a difficult position,” he said. “She was one of the ‘good girls.’ I think taping sex with Webb was the worst thing she’d ever done. I sensed her struggle with the decision and pressed her on it. That’s when she cracked. I had no idea she would do that.”
For the first time Slim exhibited something like remorse.
“I don’t know whether to give you to the police or kill you.” I let the question linger. “I’ll have to think about it.”
This was my dilemma. To spare the women embarrassment, I didn’t want anyone to know about the sex videos. And I wanted all evidence of Rose’s involvement to vaporize. Even though I had deleted the videos, I knew that experts, including some who worked for the police, could recover those files. I was also skeptical about turning the evidence over to the police, because I didn’t trust their custody processes. Videos of a rich businessman fornicating with attractive women would be a huge draw for someone in the evidence room. How many people had access? Would they all resist the temptation to take a peek?
At the same time, Slim Bohls belonged in jail, no doubt about that.
I decided to mull the question for a few minutes. He gave me the password to the other laptop and I cleaned that while he rested.
Slim’s face was a mess. Blood had run down the side of his mouth to below his chin. The pompadour hung badly to one side. But his mind was still working, and the beginnings of a tiny smile formed on his lips.
“I could help you,” he said.
No trusting the Slimeball. If he had something to tell me, it was more for his benefit than mine, but he dangled the bait and I took it.
“Don't be ridiculous. How can you help me?”
“I know something… about your girlfriend… that you should know too.”
Slim’s smile grew, and his nearly black eyes turned sly. That expression, together with his square-jawed face and wild hair, gave me an idea of how Zola felt when he held leverage over her.
“What do you know about Gwen?”
“Let me clean my face,” he said, “and I’ll tell you.”
I let Slim go to the bathroom without concern. From my search, I knew he had no weapons, and if he tried to leave, it would give me an excuse to pummel him again.
I stepped out to the balcony for another smoke, exhausted. The Slim Bohlses of the world sucked joy from the air. They moved as a pestilence and left behind them a trail of misery.
When I pulled the pack from my pocket, one of the cigarettes fell on the wooden deck. I bent to pick it up and heard a hard thwap sound, followed closely by a thunk over my head. I stood and looked to the other side of the sliding door. At first I didn’t comprehend what it was and had to step closer. There, stuck firmly in the exterior wood paneling, was an arrow. I searched the direction from which it had come. A shape moved on a dark balcony of the next building, about forty yards away.
I crouched and then crawled under a round table on the balcony.
Slim walked out and noticed the arrow immediately.
“What’s that?”
“Get down!”
He eyed me cowering on the floor and laughed. He opened his mouth to speak, and I heard the hard thwap again.
The next instant, Slim Bohls had eight inches of arrow sticking out of his chest. He took a small step backward, but remained standing. He looked down at the arrow and made a fish motion with his mouth, but no noise came. Slim turned toward the door. The arrow point and two inches of shaft, covered in blood, extended from his back. A tiny red geyser erupted from the wound, propelled by the beating of his heart. He made it three steps and struggled with the fourth.
To escape the archer, I crawled into the apartment behind Slim. He sank to one knee, and the other leg tried to take a step on its own. He put a hand out to steady himself, and slowly settled on the carpet. With the next few heartbeats, the flow of blood slowed to a trickle.
His mouth kept working.
“What is it?” I asked. I wriggled to his side, my head close to his. “What is it, Slim?”
He never got any words out, and slowly all the air leaked from his lungs. His eyes remained open, devoid of emotion.
My jaw clenched tight, and I stared at his black eyes. The archer could not hit me from that angle, but still I froze. I sank flat on the floor, imagining the horror in the night beyond the balcony. After a minute I crab-walked to the front door and turned out the lights. I sat in darkness, my back against the door, until I could think again.
Nothing would fix Slim Bohls now. I was certain of that. With great caution, I stepped to the balcony and studied the neighboring building, but saw no movement. The murderer had fled the scene.
Making a quick decision, I grabbed the remaining laptop and left the apartment, nervously searching the shadows on the way to the Jeep. I drove back down Lake Austin Boulevard, across the low-water bridge, and into the forests of West Lake Hills. At a wide spot in the road, I pulled over and hid all the stuff behind a boulder. Then I drove back to Slim’s complex and parked next to his building. Once in his apartment, I called 911 and waited for Lieutenant Carrillo.
END OF EXCERPT.
OPTIONS TO READ THE FULL NOVEL