i 9fb2c9db4068b52a (28 page)

A string of famous faces figured among the cast of Lindsey Alexander’s personal video collection. Each client addressed her as “Mistress Alexander” and meekly complied with her orders.

Bend over the spanking table and receive your punishment.

On your knees.

Lick my boots. The soles, lackey, the soles!

“Hey, do you recognize that guy?” Jovanic was staring at the television screen, his eyes narrowed in concentration and focused on the man who crawled on screen on all fours, a wickedly spiked dog collar encircling his scrawny neck. “I know I’ve seen him before.”

The man wore only a wide leather belt cinched tightly around his midsection. Lindsey, in blonde pageboy wig and a skimpy blue vinyl dress with long matching gloves, rode him like a pony, her fingers laced in his white hair. When he cried out in pain, she jerked the old man’s head up so that the camera caught his features.

Claudia drew a sharp breath. “Holy shit, it’s Bishop Flannery! He’s the guy who gave the funeral Mass. Jesus, that’s more of him than I ever wanted to see.”

Jovanic leaned forward, elbows on knees. “What the hell next?”

They watched Lindsey climb off the elderly cleric’s back and point him toward a wooden cross attached to a frame—sturdy two-by-tens that formed an X. Ordering him to spread his arms and legs, she handcuffed his wrists and ankles to the device, then reached between his legs and began stroking him, teasing him until he cried out.

When she’d had enough of that, Lindsey made a dramatic display of selecting a leather cat o’nine tails from a wooden rack. Applied it to Flannery’s back and buttocks while he begged her to stop and then begged her for more.

Claudia shook her head, scarcely able to believe what she was witnessing. Then it dawned on her. “Isn’t his name Patrick Flannery? Lindsey’s Journal...
PF!
”

Jovanic glanced over at her, chewed on it, then nodded. “I think you’re right. The “big shots” she mentioned in the journal could be the Church.”

Claudia made a face as if she’d smelled a bad odor. “The Church who didn’t want to bury her in consecrated ground because she supposedly killed herself, but here’s this nasty old pervert getting his naked ass whipped.”

Jovanic removed the tape and slid in the next one. It opened with the camera panning to Senator Bryce Heidt strapped to a doctor’s examining table, an IV pole beside him, his feet in the stirrups. No mask covered his head this time.

He doesn’t look so commanding now,
Claudia thought, measuring the mixture of dread and anticipation that distorted his features.

“Don’t worry, babe,” Jovanic said, misconstruing her smirk of satisfaction for something else. “If she
really
hurts him it’s because he wants her to.”

She snorted. “That probably costs extra.”

Destiny came into the scene wearing a nurse’s uniform a couple of sizes too small, and hung an enema bag on the IV pole.

“I think we can pass that up,” said Jovanic as he grabbed the remote and fast-forwarded the tape.

The scenes rolled on. A series of clients, some famous, others unknown to Claudia, submitting to whatever torture satisfied their fantasies.

The final video featured Charles Bostwick bound to a chair with a short seat and high back. Big black plastic clamps hung from his nipples. When Brandi approached him with a lit red candle and began to pour hot wax on the doctor’s genitals, Claudia sprang up, palms outstretched in protest. “Enough! This is making me want to puke.”

Jovanic grinned. “Ah, come on, you know it turns you on.”

“Turn it
off!
” Nothing could stem her growing revulsion. “Just because I understand the psychology behind this kind of behavior doesn’t mean I want to watch it.”

Jovanic gave her a sly look. “But I bet I know what you’re thinking right now.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“You’re wishing you could get hold of those sicko bastards’ handwritings.”

She couldn’t help laughing; he was right about that.

He slipped the last tape back into its protective clamshell box and gathered up the evidence they had discovered in the bathroom cache. “I think that about does it. Have we missed anything besides the garage?”

“We haven’t checked the linen closet yet.”

Back in the hallway, Claudia twisted the handle of the louvered door, surprised when it resisted.

Who locks their linen closet?

Jovanic fetched his crowbar and wedged the blade in the space between the doors, applying pressure until the lock began to yield. The wood gave with a cracking sound and the doors popped open.

Inside was no linen closet; just black emptiness leering back at them.

Jovanic reached inside and found the switch for a low-burning light bulb mounted in a wall sconce. Just enough illumination to reveal a spiral staircase that plunged into the darkness below. He glanced at Claudia with raised brows. “I think we just found the dungeon.”

“We’re not really going down there are we?”

Their eyes met and he grinned. “It’s like one of those movies where the kids go into the house and everyone knows there’s a killer waiting for them.”

“Yeah, and you’re yelling at the TV,
don’t go down in the basement, you idiots.
”

“You can stay here and wait for me.”

Claudia shook her head. “No way, Columbo. I’m sticking with you.”

Jovanic patted his weapon in its shoulder holster, as if to reassure himself. “Okay, just stay close, it’s dark down there.”

As if she needed telling.

He moved in front of her and they descended into the soundless basement. Thirteen steps, Claudia counted as the light from the dim bulb receded behind them. Thirteen steps on wrought iron risers, taking them into—what?

Sensory deprivation,
she thought. Poor visibility; the cold brass handrail under their hands; the only sounds, their breathing.

“It smells musty,” said Claudia, wrinkling her nose in distaste as she descended.

Jovanic shrugged. “Dead rat.”

At the foot of the stairs, a small table held a butane lighter and a ceramic candle holder fashioned in the form of a human hand. A fat black candle sat in its palm.

The flame flickered eerily when Jovanic lit it, sending ghostly shadows skittering across the room. He swept the candle slowly from one side to the other, his eyes glowing like gunmetal above the flame. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit,” Claudia echoed, still on the last stair.
“The Little Shop of Horrors.”

“Depends on your tastes, babe.

Lindsey’s private dungeon had no electricity, but when Jovanic lit a few more wall sconces, they found themselves in a large room that ran the length and width of the house—about two thousand square feet, including a bathroom with Jacuzzi tub. The dungeon had been sectioned off. The red area, where Lindsey had whipped Bishop Flannery on the cross. The medical examination area where Bryce Heidt’s enema fantasies had been acted out. The green-painted area, dominated by a large wooden wheel with leather cuffs attached; a spanking bench, a twenty-seven-inch-high cage.

Claudia had researched paraphilias for a case she’d once been involved in, but reading about it on X-rated web sites and even viewing Lindsey’s videos hadn’t prepared her for a firsthand experience. The fantastical implements of torture took on an even more sinister cast in this place of shadows.

Still, as she wandered from one strange contraption to another, she found herself fascinated by the sort of person who would get a sexual thrill out of being restrained and physically tormented. The air in the basement was dry, but the temperature felt much lower than upstairs in the main house. Shivering a little, she wished she’d brought a jacket.

“Come look at this,” Jovanic called to her. He showed her a small metal box in the medical examination area. On top were dials and switches.

“What the hell is it?”

“It’s for electrical fun. The dial controls the intensity of the charge.” He shifted the candle to show her a glass wand. “Gotta be careful with this one. It’s UV; gives off static electricity. You hold it on the same spot for too long, you get burnt.”

“And people get turned on by that?”

“Takes all kinds, right?”

They toured the dungeon together, checking it out as if they were visiting a museum. Wooden shelves loaded with sex toys, flavored lotions, bottles of scented oils. Economy-sized bottle of Viagra. Bragging label:
makes you last for hours.
Drawers containing leather hoods and bridles, bits and red rubber balls.

“Gags,” Jovanic informed Claudia, who promptly gagged at the concept. She eyed him with suspicion. “You know an awful lot about all this.”

“I worked Hollywood vice, remember?”

“And it’s all legal?”

“As long as no one’s paying for actual sex. Then it’s prostitution.”

“Seems like splitting hairs to me.”

“That’s the law. Your tax dollars at work.”

“Do you think anything we’ve found here will help make a case?”

Jovanic held the candle aloft and looked around at the paraphernalia of sexual submission and humiliation. “First we need proof that Lindsey was murdered.” Frustration filled his face. “No doubt about Ivan Novak, though.” Claudia turned away, not wanting to think about that. A drape of red silk in a corner of the room caught her attention and she drifted over to the shadowy niche, trying to distract herself from visions of Ivan in the last moments of his life.

A black tassel dangled from the valance above the drape and she turned to see Jovanic watching her from across the room.

“Go ahead and pull it,” he said. “Let’s see what’s behind Door Number One.”

Claudia forced a laugh. “I hope there’s not an iron maiden back there.”

With a swish of silk, the curtain swept aside to reveal a door. Half-expecting it to be locked, as the stairway to the dungeon had been, she was surprised when it opened easily.

A nauseating odor hit her and she staggered backward, gagging.

Watching from across the room, Jovanic saw her reel. He sprinted over and threw a protective arm around her, drawing her away from the closet. She turned her face against him, breathing into his shirt, trying to rid her nasal passages of the smell of feces and vomit that now permeated the dungeon.

In the wavering flutter of the candle flame that Jovanic directed at the closet, a tall, narrow cage took shape. There was no doubt as to the condition of its occupant.

Claudia told herself that she needed to be strong, forced herself to turn and look. But she couldn’t control the trembling that shook her whole body. “It’s a tomb,” she whispered hoarsely.

Jovanic let go of her and moved closer to the corpse, all police business now.

The candlelight illuminated a black form-fitting leather hood that entirely covered the head. The mouth was zippered shut.
“Jesus,”
he muttered. “He probably suffocated.”

“Oh my God, I wonder how long he’s been here.”

“Not too long.” Jovanic swept the candle slowly downward. “He’s still in rigor.”

“What does that mean in terms of timing?”

“Rigor is at full stiffness somewhere around twelve hours after death, releases after about seventy-two, depending on the conditions.”

The fine hairs on the back of Claudia’s neck rose. “You’re saying he was killed in the last
few hours
?”

Jovanic nodded grimly. “I’m no medical examiner, but that’d be my guess.”

“I wonder who he is.”

Aside from the hood, the body was nude, arms stretched and handcuffed to the top of the cage, which was suspended from the ceiling. All over the flat, bony chest were the bloody abrasions of a flagellum. Electrical wires were clipped to the purple-mottled genitals.

“They hit the poor bastard with some ball-shock,” Jovanic said, directing the candle flame higher, to the corpse’s manacled wrists.

Claudia felt the blood drain from her face. “That tattoo.” On the dead man’s forearm, the faded turquoise scales of a cobra slithered among the scabs and old needle scars. Malevolent red eyes stared back at her.

The Chinese food they’d had for lunch curdled in her stomach; rose into her throat. Turning, she ran blindly for the staircase.

“Claudia, what the...?”

She heard Jovanic’s voice, his running feet as if from a long distance. Shadows danced all around her as she collapsed on the bottom step, gasping.

“Earl Nelson! Omigod, it’s Earl Nelson.”

The afternoon sun finally warmed her as she sat in the Jeep, waiting for Jovanic to finish giving his statement to the Palm Springs police. He had called the local department from his cellular phone to report the discovery of Earl Nelson’s body. Lindsey’s desert house was now a crime scene and outside his jurisdiction. He would fill in the local cops and turn over the fruits of their search. Then he and Claudia would return to LA empty-handed.

“But they’ll cooperate,” he said, climbing into the driver side. “Their department is small enough to appreciate the help we can give them.”

“When is it going to end?” Claudia asked bleakly. “Lindsey’s dead, Ivan’s dead, Lindsey’s brother is dead.
Nobody
should have to die like that. Even a creep like Earl Nelson.”

Jovanic reached over and squeezed her hand. “You’re really getting a snootful, aren’t you? But you know what? You’re...”

“Don’t tell me I’m a real trooper, or I
will
throw up.”

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Okay, no clichés. Let’s just get the hell outta here.”

On Friday afternoon, three days after the grim discovery in the desert, the offices of Grainger & Grainger, Inc. were as hushed as a library at closing time.

“Where is everyone?” Claudia asked Yolande Palomino as she accompanied her through the deserted hallways.

“Staff retreat. Every few months, Mr. and Mrs. Grainger give everyone a day to rest up and relax while they work on the schedule for the next period.”

“But she’s here at the office, and you are, too?” Yolande smiled, which smoothed the anxiety lines around her eyes and made her look younger. “Don’t worry, I’ll be leaving in a little while.” Lillian Grainger was seated at her desk, dwarfed behind a large stack of papers. She pointed at the stack, shaking her head at Claudia as if in amazement. “Honest to Pete, since our advertisement came out in the
Times
, the résumés just keep on proliferating like... like bunnies!”