The Carma Klown 3

Chapter 3

© 2013 by the author

Monday, ca. 6:00 pm, June 6, 2010

Several hours and enough cups of coffee later to leave his mouth sour with the taste of it and his stomach protesting, Michael pushed his chair back and massaged his eyes. He had been watching the six Carma Klown videos for most of the day, examining them for possible clues. He had viewed them at normal speed; he had viewed them at slow speed. He had even run them so that they played for only a second at a time in a stop-frame format. He had examined pixel counts in various segments of the images to see if they had been composed from different sources. He had subjected them to voice analyses and scanned them for traces of extraneous noises. And he had found nothing. He would have to double-check his efforts again and again, and he would arrange for his colleagues to view the tapes in the hope that they might see something he had missed, but he was beginning to suspect that the tapes would be of little help in identifying The Carma Klown. About the only definitive statement he could make at this time was the Klown was careful not to leave any obvious clues to his identity or the location of the taping in the videos.

That would disappoint his colleagues. They were quick to dismiss TV cop shows and cop movies as unrealistic—at least when it came to police procedures—but they still expected him to produce quick results like those of the computer geniuses on television. He was supposed to find the tiny reflection in the victim’s front teeth of a gap in a curtain that gave a microscopic glimpse of the cityscape outside the window and then within a few seconds enlarge the few blurred pixels into a sharp picture, find the exact location through image-recognition software, and identify the one room in the one building that would result in that image. He was supposed to discover a tiny hint of an external noise and proclaim, “It’s the sound made by a faulty compressor on a rooftop Koolbreeze air conditioning unit, model G17. Here’s a list of the forty-seven buildings in Manhattan that use that model.”

But that wasn’t going to happen. The videos had been made in either an enclosed room or one whose windows had been carefully blocked. They certainly had been made in a sound-proofed room. Within the city and its suburbs, there were easily at least a hundred such rooms—video and music-recording studios, radio broadcasting stations, scientific labs, AV rooms in many schools, even the company Jeff worked for had several such rooms for its computer games business. He could supply the investigators a list of such facilities, but it wouldn’t be complete. No one had to register the existence of an enclosed room that could be sealed against outside light and noise. Anyone with enough money could build one himself in his basement or a spare room. No, unless they got very lucky, they would have to find The Carma Klown first before they could find his recording studio.

So what could he conclude from the six videos? He opened a new file and began compiling a list of possible avenues to investigate. Well, the Klown definitely had access to taping and sound-recording equipment beyond the cell phone level. So—

1. Trace CK through equipment? He had to have purchased it somewhere. 

2. Check out possible recording sites? Difficult but we might get lucky.

3. Trace the other actors? Each video shows the victim interacting with another man. A different person appears each time. So at least six other people besides CK and the victim had participated in the videos. Did the CK videotape the videos himself, or was there a separate cameraman? Note to myself—check to see if CK’s voice always comes from behind the camera or whether the camera is moving around separately from CK. Is there some way of identifying the other actors from the small portions of their anatomies shown? Does each individual have a unique asshole? There is no asshole data base, but if they could find candidates for the other actors, would it be possible to ID them from their asshole? Note to myself—search online for information on this or ask Coroner’s Office.

4. Was it possible to get a warrant to force Star in Your Own Porn Video to divulge CK’s identity or his IP address? Note: SIYOPV located in Florida. Would/could DA get a warrant for an out-of-state company? Ask FBI or local police for help with this? Possible to appeal to SIYOPV’s sense of civic duty now that a death is involved and persuade them to divulge the information? (Michael made a mental note to himself: given the slim chances of finding this information legally, could he find it illegally, using Jeff’s and his computers at home or calling on his friends to help?)

5. According to the date and time stamps on SIYOPV, each of the six videos had been uploaded at precisely 9:18 am EST. Significance? Possible to tell how long after the making of the videos they were posted (might give clues to CK’s schedule or skill levels, available equipment, etc.)? Did videos posted on SIYOPV appear immediately after being uploaded by the individual responsible or were they posted in batches at set times?

6. What about the victims? Shared qualities? Did the victims know they were making the videos? If so, did they know where and when? Were they under compulsion or were the videos a fetish of theirs that CK had used for his own purposes by tacking on his anti-corporate message? If compulsion, Rohypnol? hypnotized? brainwashed? Were the victims gay? Were the videos their only contact with CK or had they known CK for some time? Search for common associates and links. The money the victims were showing paying for the privilege of rimming the other actors was more than anyone would carry normally (true? or did men that rich carry that much money?). Check the victims’ bank accounts for large withdrawals—would reveal if they had planned ahead for the taping sessions and perhaps participated in them willingly. Had any of the later victims been mentioned in the comments on the earlier videos? Check to see if certain people were suggesting more than one victim or making comments that implied some personal knowledge of CK.

7. Try to reverse the impact of the voice-distortion software CK had used. Process CK’s voice to change it from a whisper to a normal speaking voice and play tape for victims to see if they recognize the speaker. (Note to myself: create a non-threatening passage by editing words and recombining them into innocuous sentences.)

8. What sort of person was CK? He certainly was careful and meticulous. The tapes were unedited. Everyone involved had been carefully rehearsed or trained, and the tapes had been produced in one take, with only one camera. The level of technical knowledge needed to make the videos wasn’t a clue. Whatever skills and knowledge CK had needed were easily acquired. No special training was involved. There was probably ample information on the Internet. And the expense involved, though not cheap, was not prohibitive, particularly if CK had access to an existing sound-proofed room and equipment. Even if he didn’t, the costs would not be great. $10–15K at most; probably much less. Check lists of known anti-corporate protesters? Necessary but probably useless—I don’t think we’re going to find CK among them. He’s too careful—I suspect we’ll find out that no one knows he’s a protester.

9. Ask for a psychological profile of CK? I agree with Phil. I don’t think he’s gay. He’s someone who feels that rimming another man and being exposed as gay are humiliating. Of course, there are gays who think like that, but my impression is that CK is straight. If he’s gay, I’m willing to bet that he’s deeply closeted. Which means this won’t be much of an avenue for investigation.

Michael thought about the last point. Phil had a chip on his shoulder about being slighted or singled out because he was gay. He was in his early fifties now, and he had been a cop when being gay had meant he was exposed to a lot of harassment within the department. He didn’t want the Klown to be gay, and he would see everything they found as proof that CK was straight. Confirmation bias in action. I’ll have to watch for that in myself, thought Michael. So should I leave this in or not? Might as well. These are just notes for the guys.

10. Finally, in the cartoon at the end, where CK drives off in the small car—the logo on the side of the car is a horse. The Chinese word for “horse” is ma. So we have car + ma. Cute. But this probably isn’t much of a clue. The horse is one of the animals in the Chinese zodiac. Practically every cheap Chinese restaurant and takeout hands out those paper placemats with the animals of the Chinese zodiac around Chinese New Year’s. Many of them give the Chinese names of the animals and the pronunciation. So this doesn’t mean that CK is necessarily Chinese or knows Chinese—it just means that he is one of several million people in the metro area who’s run across the signs of the Chinese zodiac.

I hope he isn’t Chinese, thought Michael. The last thing the world needs is a deranged Chinese clown who can’t spell.

He re-read the list. It would do for a start. He copied it to a new file, prefaced it with a summary of his thoughts on the videos, including the lack of visual and audio clues, and then emailed it to Altmann, Baker, and Redding. It was past 6:00 already and his shift had officially ended an hour earlier. He emailed the files of the six videos he had processed to his personal account so that he could watch them later at home. Time to go home to Jeff. Maybe Jeff would see something he had missed or have an idea about tracing the sources of the videos.