Final Cut

by Colin Campbell

“Northern X was a massage parlor chain. They branched out into bondage.”

  Kincaid held his cup up in thanks, then took a drink.

  “A bit like South Shore Hardcore branching out from porn movies.”

  McNulty stirred sugar into his tea. His hand was shaking as he thought about the events at the private sex club that Northern X had built on the edge of town. The blood and the torture instruments and the shackles.

  “The private club they opened used young girls. Very young.”

  Kincaid made a mental note.

  “Same as the flyers The Sun printed.”

  McNulty’s spoon rattled against the rim of his cup, so he took it out.

  “And they did some very bad things.”

  Kincaid softened his tone. “Torture things?”

  McNulty nodded. “Worse.”

  Kincaid spoke softly. “Same as the blood on the floor then.”

  McNulty back-pedaled, unsure how far to push this.

  “We don’t know how bad that is. But any blood is bad.”

  Kincaid nodded. Now he knew the real reason McNulty had come to him.

  “So you think we should go and take a look.”

  McNulty shrugged and smiled.

  “I thought you were out of your jurisdiction.”

  Kincaid twirled a finger in the air.

  “I can call in some favors.”

  McNulty raised his eyebrows.

  “SWAT team and helicopters?”

  It was Kincaid’s turn to smile.

  “Not that many favors.”

  McNulty looked out of the window. Furnace Brook was still a dried-up mudhole. The sun still baked down from a hard-blue sky. Somewhere across town there was a studio by the docks with a stained floor and a dirty mattress. Farther west The Quincy Sun had been printing posters about missing girls and somewhere south of that, Bridgewater Photo Lab had been processing footage of girls being beaten in a chair with shackles and handcuffs. All of that was conjecture. None of it was hard facts. There wasn’t enough for probable cause, but McNulty didn’t think Kincaid was thinking about probable cause.

  “You got enough favors to get a warrant?”

  Kincaid proved McNulty right.

  “We don’t need a warrant if we’re going in to protect life.”

  McNulty nodded.

  “Is that the Boston way?”

  Kincaid lowered his voice.

  “That’s the Yorkshire way. Jim Grant said that, too.”

  THIRTY

  It took three hours to persuade the Quincy PD. Kincaid called in some favors but that only got him so far, the rest was creative accounting and barefaced lies. The raid on South Shore Hardcore was the biggest operation the QPD had ever undertaken and the fallout would be massive. Missing girls. A bondage child sex ring. It was a story that could tear Quincy apart if it weren’t handled carefully. Handling it carefully meant getting all their ducks in a row and going in hard.

  “Okay. You’re going to have to hang back.”

  Kincaid was parked in the nest of streets opposite Bents Creek Dockyard. The persuading part might have taken three hours, but preparations took another two. It was getting dark by the time the Crown Vic pulled into the side street.

  “Your name is mud. So you’re out of it.”

  He turned to look at McNulty in the passenger seat.

  “I told them a confidential informant knows about the bondage and he saw a young girl being taken in this afternoon.”

  McNulty nodded. “Immediate entry to protect life and property.”

  Kincaid shifted in his seat. “Fuck property.”

  McNulty waved a hand.

  “It’s just the police power we’d use back home.”

  Kincaid watched the sky turn black.

  “Pretty much the same thing here.”

  McNulty turned sideways to look at Kincaid.

  “Immediate entry being the relevant point. If the girl’s in danger, how come it’s taken this long?”

  Kincaid bristled at the criticism.

  “There is no girl.”

  “They don’t know that. If there was a girl in danger she’d be toast by now.”

  Kincaid kept his tone even, but McNulty could tell he’d touched a nerve.

  “If this had been an officer in pursuit. Or a cop who’d seen the girl being dragged in by her hair. Then we’d have just cause to take immediate action. Hell, officer on scene would have kicked the door in and shot the fuckers. But we didn’t. So we haven’t. And we made all this shit up so I could bypass the warrant. So sit back and keep out of the way.”

  McNulty held his hands up in surrender.

  “Sorry. You’re right.”

  Kincaid pointed at McNulty’s door.

  “They should be here soon. Keep out of sight.”

  McNulty let out a sigh and looked at Kincaid.

  “Thanks.”

  He got out and watched the Jamaica Plain detective drive to the end of the street. Five minutes later a convoy of police vehicles pulled into the cul-de-sac and Kincaid got all his ducks in a row.

  McNulty found the hole in the fence and clambered through while Kincaid briefed the assault team and divvied out assignments. There was no light across the wasteland, so he had to be careful finding his way to the weighbridge. The derelict office was still there. McNulty was in place by the time the convoy swarmed through the gates. No red and blue lights. No sirens. Silent approach and fast deployment. There wasn’t even a screech of tires as the vehicles stopped in formation. Three to the front and one around the back.

  The Hook Worm & Bait Club was silent. It must only be open on certain nights. There were no disco lights flashing at the end of the wharf. There were no flashing lights at all. McNulty watched the heavy mob deploy the door ram, but nobody had turned their flashlights on yet. The biggest cop in the group held the metal ram in two hands, one on each handle along the top. He swayed it gently back and forth to get his rhythm then stepped up to South Shore Hardcore’s door. McNulty watched from the weighbridge office. Then the door ram swung into action.

  Police raids are all about noise and chaos being deployed to subdue anyone inside the target premises. The fact that the office lights were off didn’t bode well for there being anyone inside, but noise and chaos was deployed anyway. The door was big and solid. The frame was reinforced on both sides with strips of flatiron screwed into the wood. The three locks were heavy-duty and the alarm sensors snug along the doorjamb. The door should have taken five minutes to break down and the alarm should have awakened the dead.

  The door went in after one swing of the ram.

  The alarm didn’t go off.

  Noise and chaos ensued.

  The assault team went in hard and fast. Two men went left inside the door and two men went right. Flashlight beams flicked around the interior and voices shouted for anyone inside to stand up with their hands in the air. Each cop had an angle to cover, flashlight and gun pointed at the designated area. There was lots of shouting and kicking-in of internal doors. Kincaid brought up the rear and turned the lights on. The main office was bathed in antiseptic light.

  There were shouts of, “Clear,” from each room as the cops moved farther into the studio. Storage rooms and back rooms and restrooms. Upstairs and downstairs and all ends up. Everything was searched. The ground floor fire exit at the rear was opened from the inside so the officers covering the back knew it was safe. The fire escape was searched all the way to the top and the flat roof was checked as well. No stone was left unturned. Kincaid followed the team through every room. McNulty watched from the weighbridge office.

  No shots were fired. That was always a good sign on any police operation. No bodies were bagged and brought out on gurneys. That was good as well. There were no evidence bags and there was no seized property; that would be the crime-scene guys’ job. Once the noise of the incursion died down and the echoes stopped reverberating around the in
dustrial wasteland a quiet settled over Bents Creek Dockyard and the offices of South Shore Hardcore. Muttering voices and post-action chatter broke the silence. Somebody laughed. The assault team trooped back to their vehicles and headlights swept the yard as the convoy swung toward the exit.

  There was only one car left. A plain Crown Vic. Kincaid came to the office door and watched the convoy disappear along East Howard Street, then he looked at the derelict weighbridge office and waved McNulty over.

  Gravel and concrete crunched underfoot. It sounded loud in the quiet after the convoy left. Seagulls screeched overhead as if disturbed by the tugboat horn across the river. McNulty’s breath sounded loud in his ears. His heart was beating hard. Kincaid stepped aside to let him through the door.

  “We hit triple-shit-zero.”

  McNulty stepped into the office.

  “We knew there was no girl. That was just to get you inside.”

  Kincaid waved an arm to indicate the production office.

  “We didn’t know there’d be nothing at all.”

  McNulty looked around the office he’d only seen through barred windows in the dark. All he’d seen that night was bulky shadows and office furniture. What he saw now was nothing at all. The office was empty. The floor space was clean and the walls were blank and featureless. There was no desk and no filing cabinet and no wall calendar or telephone. The alarm panel had been stripped off the wall and only one of the door locks was bent from the impact. The other two hadn’t been locked. The floor was bare and uncarpeted.

  McNulty wasn’t bothered about the office. He went straight through the door and along a short corridor toward the studio space. Strip lights hung on chains from the high ceiling. The skylight reflected it back into the concrete square. The night sky was just so much black emptiness outside. The studio was even more emptiness inside.

  The mattress had gone. The shackled chair and the studio lights and the camera tripod were gone. The complicated pulley system for the backdrops was still there but the backgrounds and curtains had been removed. McNulty could see the wear pattern of the camera position but that was all. The main thing he was looking for wasn’t there either.

  The entire floor had been scrubbed clean. It was the cleanest piece of concrete McNulty had ever seen. There were a few dull stains and shadows, but it was impossible to tell what it had been. Could have been rust from industrial machinery. At a pinch it could have been blood. A full forensic examination might be able to prove it one way or the other but on the strength of the evidence, the Quincy PD wasn’t going to pay for that.

  McNulty stood in the middle of the floor.

  “Shit.”

  He went over to the pulleys and patted one of the chains aside. It clinked in the silence and swayed gently as if mocking the two cops who’d come looking. Larry Unger had been right. McNulty still looked at himself as a cop. He felt the frustration of a job gone sour and an opportunity missed. He hated letting bullies get away with assault. Whatever else had happened here somebody had been assaulted. Probably more than one. Young and vulnerable—and McNulty had let them down.

  “Shit,” he said again.

  Kincaid came and stood beside him.

  “Triple-shit-zero. And we’re right in it.”

  PART THREE

  “Well, you just fell in shit deeper than the mud guy.”

  —Neil Armstrong

  THIRTY-ONE

  It was almost ten p.m. by the time McNulty got back to Marina Bay. The Helen of Troy. Slip 10 on “C” Dock. Stars blinked in a clear black sky. Moonlight glinted off the waves lapping against the pilings. The boat swayed as McNulty stepped over the stern rail and Helen was already pouring iced tea when he entered the stateroom. The dog circled his legs yapping and wagging its tail. Helen put the drinks on the coffee table and sat down.

  “Next time put him in a boarding kennel.”

  She took a drink then indicated the dog.

  “That thing could make eating an Olympic sport.”

  McNulty stood in the doorway and didn’t speak. Helen tapped her watch.

  “What’d you do? Get lost?”

  She looked at him for the first time and her face dropped at the sight of his ragged clothes and drawn expression.

  “Jesus. What happened?”

  It didn’t take long in the telling. The dog went to sleep under the table. McNulty downed his iced tea in one long drink then launched into the story of his day. He explained about visiting the Quincy Sun and the missing girl posters. Five in the last six months. That had led to McNulty fronting Brad Semenoff at the motel and the hit-and-run that had almost killed McNulty as well. Then it was being questioned at QPD Headquarters and the police raid on South Shore Hardcore. A shitty end to a shitty day.

  Scrubbing the blood off the studio floor was the thing that kept sticking in his mind. If they were just shooting bondage and punishment films what did it matter if a little blood got spilled? People signed up for all sorts of things in the sex market. McNulty had never understood autoerotic asphyxia—or whatever they called it—either. Strangling yourself for a stronger sex thrill was as enticing as the G-spot up the backside. Helen nodded her agreement.

  “They were edging toward that when I left.”

  She let out a sigh.

  “It’s one of the reasons I gave it up.”

  McNulty reverted to sipping his second iced tea.

  “I can understand them clearing out. They don’t want the police getting involved after me being on the roof and what happened to their guy at the club. But cleaning the blood. That’s something else.”

  Helen didn’t say anything. The boat swayed gently. There were creaks and groans and the rhythmic lapping of water. Something thudded quietly against the side of the boat, a log in the water or some other piece of flotsam. The dog twitched and moaned as if it were having a bad dream. Helen stroked its neck and looked at McNulty. They were both coming to the same conclusion, but it was McNulty who finally came out and said it.

  “Do you think they’re making snuff movies?”

  The lapping water was very soothing. The rhythmic sway of the boat and gentle groans as it settled were background noises that emphasized the quiet that fell over the cabin. Even the dog stopped dreaming. Helen sat upright and took a deep breath. McNulty watched her face as he spoke.

  “Snuff movies, I guess. If they’re using thirty-five millimeter.”

  Helen let her breath out slowly. “Killing people on camera?”

  McNulty held his hands out. “It would explain the missing girls.”

  Helen played the devil’s advocate. “Girls run away all the time.”

  McNulty took another drink.

  “In such a tight circle? Over such a short time?”

  Helen shrugged.

  “All the time. Everywhere. Doesn’t mean they’ve been taken.”

  McNulty rested one arm across the back of his seat.

  “So close to a studio filming bondage and blood?”

  Helen leaned back too.

  “Somebody’s always going to be close.”

  McNulty drummed his fingers on the backrest. He was thinking about the massage parlors in Yorkshire that expanded into a private sex club. That had been about young girls and bondage but then Telfon Speed had upped the stakes, taking girls from the parlors for wealthy clients who wanted the ultimate thrill. Sex and death all wrapped up in one. Torture porn. Dismemberment. McNulty wouldn’t have believed it possible until he found himself shackled in the back room. The logical progression of that market was to film the deaths and sell the movies to wealthy clients who wanted to watch that kind of thing—the basest part of human nature but human nature nonetheless. Snuff films had been around for decades. Filming them on high-quality thirty-five millimeter was a step up.

  “You never heard anything? When you worked the business?”

  Helen drew her knees up on the couch and hugged them to her chest. She reste
d her chin on her knees and stared into space. She closed her eyes as if thinking, then looked down at her feet. She took another deep breath. She let it whistle out between pursed lips.

  “Not back then.”

  She stopped and moistened her lips. Her mouth was dry, but she didn’t take another drink. She swallowed, then looked at McNulty.

  “But I still see some of the girls. Mostly retired, like me.”

  McNulty didn’t press. She needed to do this in her own time.

  “I’ve heard a rumor.”

  She waved a hand in defense.

  “Not about snuff films.”

  She settled into knee-hugging again.

  “About hard core though. Bondage and whipping.” She avoided McNulty’s stare. “I heard that some high roller was distributing hard stuff around the world. Very expensive market. Dubai. The Gulf. Over that way. Like sheiks and sultans and stuff. Lawrence of Arabia types.”

  McNulty kept his tone gentle.

  “Life’s cheap over there. They can just kill people for real.”

  Helen was beginning to shiver. She hugged her knees tighter. Her bottom lip trembled and tears formed in her eyes.

  “But we’ve got Hollywood. Best filmmakers in the world.”

  McNulty crossed to Helen’s side and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “And Boston. With the hardest criminals in the world.”

  Helen turned to face him. Her eyes were pleading.

  “Two plus two.”

  McNulty nodded.

  “Four.”

  He could feel the tension vibrating through her body. She leaned into him and rested her head on his chest. The tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “I didn’t know. About the killing stuff.”

  McNulty hugged her and patted her shoulder.

  “We still don’t. It’s just a guess.”

  She looked up into his eyes.

  “When you were a cop. Back home. Were you a good guesser?”