The Final Veil: Who had kidnapped America's favorite belly dancer?

by Pat Powers

  "Exactly," I said. It was such a pleasure to deal with a pro.

  My next stop was Atlanta police headquarters. Al was glad to see me and soon we were drinking coffee and discussing the case just like it was old times. Except it wasn't. I wasn't on the force, and I was holding information back from Al.

  Still, if Al suspected that I was holding back, he didn't call me on it -- not that it would have done any good.

  "Y'know, listening to what you've said, the person I most want to talk to is the dancer at that lesbian club," said Al. "Those people sounded way too protective of her."

  "Yeah, but we can't overlook the fact that I am a guy," I said. "I wonder if you might not get a very different response if you sent a female officer in."

  "Come to think of it, we've got several on the force right now who probably have bar tabs there," said Al, grinning. "Maybe I should start by grilling them."

  "Might not be a totally bad idea," I said, secretly pleased that Al was heading down what I thought was probably a blind alley. Bobbie Culpepper the dancer had obviously been a healthy young woman with not a lot of brains, and the others were protecting her out of fear that she might unwittingly say something that would let an evil guy like me pull her into his web. I could have been wrong about it, but if I was running a criminal conspiracy, Culpepper was one of the last people I'd choose as a co-conspirator. She had an open, honest face, one of those nakedly open faces that people trusted because it revealed little or no capacity to conceal.

  Al hadn't seen or talked to Culpepper yet, so he couldn't know it the way I knew it. But if Al wanted to go haring down that road I wasn't about to stop him. Might keep the investigation's heat off Furnsome and Wrathbottom.

  "So, how's the investigation going on the Sisters of the Sands otherwise?" I asked.

  "Not too good," said Al. "We've been able to talk to some of them, but three of them have gone down to Florida on vacation and the closest thing we can get to their whereabouts is somewhere between the panhandle and Miami. Sounds like they're planning to slut the place up, lesbian dancer style."

  "That's a lot of ground to cover, and of course, slutting the place up is what you DO when you go to the beach," I observed. "Who are the ones in Florida? Are you sure they're in Florida?"

  "Harkleroad, Clischer and Prather are the ones supposedly in Florida," said Al. "We've got no reason to suppose they're not in Florida, and no real reason other than their announcing to their friends and family to assume they're in Florida," said Al. "They got in a car, they drove off, that's all we know for sure. You got any reason to suppose otherwise?"

  "None," I lied. "I just figure that you guys are going to handle that end better than me. I'm not going to be able to put out an APB on them or anything. Lets me focus on other things."

  "Gotcha," said Al.

  "So, did any of the Mothers of Propriety take a powder?" I asked.

  "Hard to tell, there are an awful lot of MoPs to check out," said Al. "Thousands in the Atlanta area alone. I have no idea. Anyway, we got a couple hundred that we can't find right away, but I don't think that necessarily means anything."

  "Probably doesn't," I agreed. I briefly considered giving Al what I had on Mopus Deim, and I would have, had I been sure it would stay with Al. But there wouldn't be much Al could do with the information if he kept it to himself, so he would feel compelled to spill it to the other officers so they could check it out. And that would very likely lead to some doofus detective looking to get some shine by breaking a lead on a hot case to ask the wrong people the wrong questions, endangering April's life and maybe the lives of some Sisters of the Sand as well.

  There were also very capable detectives who had been on the force long enough, and grown jaded enough as a result, that though they preferred to find kidnap victims alive where possible, generally considered doing so to be the icing on the cake -- they saw their real job as catching the perps, whatever the effect that might have on whether or not the victim survived.

  So I hung on to the Mopus Deim info. And I wasn't able to dig much else that was useful out of Al about how the investigation was going, mainly because there wasn't much else useful that Al knew at the moment. As I left police headquarters, I found himself envying Al. To Al, this was just another case, he could let it go when his shift ended. Whereas I had a nagging sense that April's life depended on me. It didn't of course, I wasn't the one who had kidnapped her, but knowing that didn't change things.

  As soon as I was in my van again, I called Andrew, after thinking a bit.

  "Andrew," said I. "I've got some information for you."

  "All right," said Andrew, his tone guarded.

  "I talked with my buddy at the Atlanta PD, and he said they've covered most of the legwork on the Sisters of the Sand and the Mothers of Propriety," I told him. "I asked him who had gone AWOL. Turns out there are thousands of Mothers of Propriety in the Atlanta area, and there are hundreds that they're having trouble tracking down, so we'll let the cops handle that end of it. But there are many fewer Sisters of the Sand, and they only have three AWOL members -- Harkleroad, Clischer and Prather. They're supposed to be vacationing in Florida, and that's probably where they are. I'm gonna let the Atlanta cops do the legwork on them, because I just don't have the resources. I want you to continue to see what you can do on all of them, but don't put any special emphasis on it -- they may be who we're looking for, but it's starting to look like a long shot. We'll focus on other things and hope the Atlanta PD get anything there is to get from them."

  "Right, I get the message," Andrew said, and I knew he had figured out what I meant -- that Harkleroad and company were the ones I wanted him to focus on. Given what we knew of the Sisters of the Sands' involvement through Wrathbottom, it was very possible the three of them were the ones who had April.

  I hoped Thomson had the message, anyway. I had never been in the position of being the one spied upon before -- I had always been the one doing the spying, albeit for perfectly legitimate reasons. Certainly, I had never before faced an adversary who might have technology and expertise to match or better what I had. Dealing with it was a real pain in the ass.

  Chapter 28

  The box and its occupant was unseen, unheard, unknown

  Sandy Wrathbottom had no plans for the evening. Laying low seemed like a good idea at the current time.

  Her girlfriend Melissa would be back from her tai chi classes later. Sandy was looking forward to that because she always came back from tai chi classes kinda relaxed and pliable, and Sandy figured that, so long as she was having to lay low, might as well lay someone you love.

  She went to her bedroom and pulled her T-shirt over her head. As she did so, her vision was suddenly blacked out by a sack of some kind that enclosed her from head to waist. She screamed but it was muffled by the thick material of the sack. She felt the sack cinched tight at her waist and she was pushed violently forward, pitching her onto her bed.

  It took Sandy a moment to realize what was happening to her, but she had been trained for just such an eventuality several times at various lesbian womyn's workshops.

  She began screaming at the top of her lungs. The effect of her screaming was greatly reduced by being encased in a canvas bag. She also began kicking her legs and tried to gather her legs under her for a sprint for the door. Although she could not see, Sandy knew her room well enough to guess where she should run.

  Unfortunately, Sandy's captors were having none of it. They grabbed her at the ankles and the knees and very simply held her legs still.

  Another captor seized her by the neck and as she continued screaming, suddenly shoved a hard thing into her mouth. Because it was outside the canvas bag and she was inside it, the bag was shoved into her mouth along with the hard thing. Her captor held the hard thing in her mouth while another captor did something behind her head.

  In a moment it became obvious that what he was doing was securing the hard thing -- it felt like a ball -- in place with a strap behind he
r neck. Then other straps were fastened under her chin and at the top of her head, then behind it again.

  When they were through, there was no way she could remove the thing in her mouth, for her hands, though free, were inside the canvas bag. She continued to scream but her screams were greatly muffled by the gag, and one of the invaders had turned on her radio -- she could tell it was hers because it was tuned to her favorite station -- and now her muffled screams had to compete with its music.

  The strange thing was, none of her captors ever spoke. The only reason she had for supposing they were men was the strength and violence with which they handled her. Sandy had always supposed she was pretty good at smelling the pig odor of men, but the canvas over her head was all she could smell at the moment.

  As they bagged and gagged her, they also secured her legs, wrapping what felt like leather straps around her ankles and tying them together.

  Sandy knew what this meant. Rape, the thing all men wanted to do to women, especially lesbian women who had escaped their sexual power. Her suspicion was confirmed when she felt her jeans being cut from her legs. A moment later she felt her cotton panties being cut away from her, and she was naked from the waist down before these hateful men and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Sandy's torment did not stop there, however. There were zippers at the back of the canvas bag that enclosed the upper half of her body. A captor pulled one down and then she felt a gloved hand reach inside, feel around for her forearm and then slide down to her wrist.

  Sandy tried to scratch the hand with her nails, but she kept them short and there was no way she could get past the thick leather glove.

  (Which, she later realized, was why she was wearing the gloves -- no painful scratches, no DNA evidence under her fingernails.)

  Another gloved hand reached down and pulled her other hand out of the sack, despite her struggles to prevent it. Whoever was doing this was a LOT stronger than Sandy, and not at all concerned with whether he hurt her in the process or not, because the pressure of his fingers on her arms was bruisingly strong.

  When both her hands were pulled through the zippered opening in the back of the sack, Sandy felt cuffs being secured to her wrists. When they ratcheted down tight on her remaining free wrist, she felt an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. She was bound, gagged, hooded and shackled, how much more helpless can you get?

  She found out. She felt and heard other zippers being unzipped. In a moment she felt the canvas bag that had so securely held her being removed from her. The final zipper encircles her heck, a few inches below her chin. The canvas that covered her head remained in place after the canvas that covered her body was removed.

  Apparently, the cuffs were not enough to restrain her, and that's when she knew, though she had really had no doubts on the matter, that she had been captured by Goreans.

  The Goreans ran some rope around her upper arms and behind her back, then freed her wrists, only to refasten them with more rope, so that they were parallel behind her back, her right wrist tied to her left forearm, her left wrist tied to her right forearm. Each arm was held by two strong hands as the binding was done -- she was not permitted any freedom of movement at any time.

  When they finished, she was naked, her hands were tied together behind her back, and her legs were tied together.

  She waited for the blows, the groping, the cruel taunting.

  She waited for the weight of a male body atop her, the thrusting inside her, the greasy, disgusting invasiveness of the male genitals.

  Didn't happen.

  First she felt a leather belt being fastened around her waist. The belt was positioned just above her hips and cinched down tight enough that it cut into the soft pad of flesh around her hips that she just couldn't seem to get rid of no matter how hard she danced. There were rings dependent from the belt. Clearly, her captors were affixing the straps and cuffs to her to make her into their puppet, a thing that they controlled for their own sick male purposes.

  Sandy felt hands pressing her upper body into the mattress. More hands pressing down on her lower thighs. She felt her ankles pulled up to her butt and fastened to her wrists. There was a couple of feet of rope between her wrists and her feet so that she was not arched backward by her bonds, in fact, there was plenty of play in the rope, she just could not straighten out her legs beyond a 90 degree angle at her knees.

  Bound and gagged and hooded and hogtied, Sandy thought she was about as helpless as she could be.

  Then her captors picked her up and stuffed her in the box. It felt like it was about the size of a shoebox. Undoubtedly, it was bigger, because they were able to fit her into it easily, though she had her knees folded up against her chest and her head pushed forward. Her knees were not pressed so far into her chest that they made it hard for her to breathe, but she was terribly cramped. Fortunately, her very bendy dancer's body adapted to it easily.

  The interior of the box was very, very soft, like the thickest, plushest carpet she had ever walked on. Her shoulders and hips literally sank into it.

  Then she heard a hissing and felt the air stirring around her. Then suddenly that sound was all that she could hear.

  She didn't have much time to experience this, however, because she soon felt the box she was in being lifted off the ground and then placed in something that rocked back and forth slightly.

  Then for a long time there was nothing. Nothing but the hissing sound, the beating of her own heart and the sound of air moving in and out of her nostrils.

  All of this amounted to a terrible silence that served only to amplify her anxiety and fear. At first. Then it became strangely calming. So calming that she dozed off.

  Lying in the bottom of a laundry basket with dirty towels and such heaped atop it, the box and its occupant was unseen, unheard, unknown.

  Chapter 29

  Sometimes I think people lie to me just for practice

  I sat in my van and thought. My every nerve screamed at me to take action, some sort of action, to find April, but I knew from past experience that thinking was the smartest thing I could do at times like this. The right action was much more likely to be successful than one that was simply desperate.

  I was beginning to get a pretty good feel for what had gone down. The voice on the other end of Furnsome' phone had conspired with Furnsome to set up the kidnapping, and Furnsome had conspired with Wrathbottom and her sandy sisters to do the actual snatch. The mysterious voice would be equivalent to a CIA handler. Furnsome would be equivalent to a local operative and the sandy sisters would be the network she was running. It was a classic espionage operation, except that espionage wasn't the goal. More like cultural sabotage.

  But how had Furnsome hooked up with Wrathbottom and the voice? The Mopus Deim connection could explain the voice, but why would the Sisters of the Sand hook up with a group that was their ideological opposite in many respects?

  It was a question that might well be worth answering.

  I thought further. WHY had these people kidnapped April? The insight I'd had last night about the subversiveness of dance and culture war didn't seem so convincing in the cold light of day. Most of the time, people had to have very specific goals and rewards in mind when they did something as desperate as kidnapping. The notion that April had been kidnapped because her dance was deeply subversive, so subversive that it had led some moral conservatives to conclude that she had to be stopped seemed very ... abstract. Farfetched might be another word.

  I needed to sound out someone who had a clearer idea about these things. The animal woman might know, but I wasn't sure I should be getting advice from people who were on vacation from being human.

  Besides, I WANTED to call Astra, and I had an excuse to call Astra, so even if it was a good idea to talk to the animal woman, I was going to call Astra.

  "Hello, master," Astra said with little notes of gladness curling out of her voice when she answered my call.

  "Hello, slavegirl," I said, a gri
n in my voice as well. "It is good to hear your voice."

  "Yes, master, it's good to hear yours," said Astra. "How may I please you?"

  "Well, I'm trying to get a handle on why April was kidnapped," I said. "I have a theory or two about that. But I need to know if they make any sense. I was hoping you could help me."

  "I will do whatever I can to help you, master," Astra said. There was something subtly different about the way Astra used the word "master" when addressing me than when other slavegirls did. The deeper level of intimacy we had shared added depth to the term that had not existed before.

  "One theory I'm working on is the idea that April has pissed off enough cultural conservatives with her success and popularity that they see her as a threat to society in general. It sounds a little farfetched to me, and it could be wrong, but it kinda fits with the facts that are developing. Is there anything like that going on that you know of?"

  "Not that I know of, master," said Astra, "but I would not be the best one to ask. I don't really pay much attention to what the mainstream of society thinks of our dance. Paying attention to the mainstream of society is a depressing experience at best, but especially so in respect to dance. But you know, I know someone here in town who does just that, come to think of it."

  "Who?" I asked.

  "Professor Linda Bulloch," said Astra. "She teaches at Emory University. She studies dance as an element of culture -- just the sort of thing you are thinking about. She has interviewed me several times. Would you like her number, master?"

  "I would be very pleased to get her number, slavegirl," I said, "but I would also be pleased to learn what you think of her. I'm sure she's learned, but is she sharp?"

  "She's very sharp, master," said Astra. "The reason I thought of her, is that she has surprised me with some of her insights into dance. She told me things I did not realize I knew. She dances herself, but her real skill seems to be understanding the dance and putting that understanding into words. She would be much better to talk to than me."