by Jack Kerley
We walked into the path of three men in expensive business suits, the center man fiftyish, bald as a bullet, with badger-mean eyes under bushy black eyebrows. He was built like a guy who knew his way around a weight room. I felt an intensity coming from him, much like I’d feel heat. Or maybe it was the musk-heavy cologne that telegraphed his presence from a half-dozen feet away.
He held up his hand like a North Korean border guard. “What did you do in there?” he demanded, dark eyes flashing. “What did she tell you?”
“Who’s asking?” Harry said.
The guy snapped a card from the jacket of his pinstriped suit, jabbing it between Harry and me. “I’m the Scaler’s attorney, James Carleton, III. Anything Mrs Scaler told you is –”
“Anything she told us is part of an investigation into her husband’s death,” I said, looking at lawyer-boy’s card like it had diphtheria.
“Mrs Scaler is an ill and injured woman,” Carleton snapped. “Anything she might have told you is subject to interpretation.”
“Here’s what she told us, sport,” I said, taking the guy’s card, tearing it in half and pushing it down into his outer pocket. “She said she was being followed by a lawyer who lacked the hormones to grow hair and wore cologne that smelled like the underparts of a rutting hog.”
Harry stepped between us, always better at diplomacy. “Mrs Scaler told us she accidentally fell down some steps. We informed her that her husband was dead. She started crying. Anything else you need…sir?”
The guy’s lips pursed so tight I thought they’d invert.
“Well…we’ll just see about that.”
He pushed past, the two other legal types sucked along in his perfumed slipstream. I heard him rush to the woman’s bedside, his growls muted to murmurs of consolation. The door closed.
“Jeez,” Harry said, shaking his head as we continued down the hall. “What was that all about?”
“Damage control, I reckon. Let’s beat feet out of here.”
On the way back to the department I got a call from Dr Clair Peltier, director of pathology for the Alabama Forensics Bureau, southwest region, wanting to see me and Harry. We were minutes away and Harry shortened them by nudging a few lights from red to pastel green.
Harry and I sat across from Clair in an office of bookcases and bound files. A vase of flowers from Clair’s garden topped her impressive oaken desk, the scent of roses and lilacs masking the harsher scents of the morgue.
There was a time not long ago when Clair and I explored a physical relationship that had, after a blazing start, arrived at a quieter station. We were more than trusted friends, less than constant lovers. Contemporary culture hadn’t found a term for our relationship, which was probably good.
“So what killed the good reverend?” I asked. “Off the record.”
“Best guess? A cardiac event. The man was fifty-seven, overweight, and his muscle tone tells me he wasn’t into regular exercise. This was a sado-maso event, right? That in itself can be stressful.”
“You don’t suspect foul play?”
“The welts on his back and buttocks were superficial. There were no scrapes or contusions like you’d find in a scuffle. Outside of the nipples and back area, his body was unmarred. You find who the other party or parties were?”
I shook my head. “We’re waiting for word on latent prints. He was found in a church camp, so all sorts of campers and counselors have been through. It was closed for the season for renovation.”
“So Reverend Scaler had a whole camp for his playhouse?”
“Swim, hike, make a leather wallet, get your butt whipped. Scaler must have been a happy camper.”
Harry’s phone rang. He excused himself and slipped into the hall. I studied Clair. Her eyes were as blue as the Caribbean and I wanted to dive into them and backstroke somewhere far away from the present. She stood and moved close. The familiarity of her perfume made me dizzy. Hearing no one outside the door, our lips touched.
“I haven’t seen you in weeks, Carson. You look strained, tired. I know you’ve got to be running on stress and adrenalin. Are you OK?”
I smiled, did a super-hero pose. “I’m immune to stress.”
“No one is.”
“I’m no more tired than you, Clair.” I nodded toward the room where the autopsies took place. “You get the victims after I do, right?”
“It’s different for me. I don’t have to look into their lives or hear their stories. I never find who they really were. That’s what you do.”
A recent memory moved me to the window, like my eyes needed real light. I let out a long breath and turned back to Clair.
“A couple weeks ago I went to a drive-by in south Mobile. The deceased was a nineteen-year-old kid named Alphonse Terrell. When we found the body his thumb was in his mouth, his last instinct before dying.”
“I recall seeing the paperwork on the body. What about it?”
“My first case after I made detective was a woman named Twyla Terrell.”
“Oh Lord, Carson…was she the mother? Sister?”
“The mom. Mama had been shot by a boyfriend in the kitchen. I remember the kid, Alphonse, standing in the corner, a skinny twelve-year-old. Alphonse was sucking his thumb, Clair. Staring at his mother’s body, tears pouring down his face, sucking his thumb like a baby. I walked him outside, trying to say things with meaning and comfort, failing miserably.”
“That’s terrible, Carson. I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “Mama gets shot, sonny gets shot a few years later. It’s just the way things have become, Clair. Like leaving a legacy.”
Clair moved closer and took my hand. “It’ll get better, dear. We’ve had spikes in the homicide rate before. They always pass.”
“Of course,” I said, pressing a smile to my face. “Like bad weather.”
Harry appeared at the door and I turned to leave. As we stepped from Clair’s office she called my name. I turned to see her thumb and pinkie beside her head in that funny mimic of phoning. There was no humor in her eyes, only concern.
“Call me, Carson. Let’s get together soon, right? Talk?”
I nodded and turned away.
When we got to the car, Harry took driver’s position.
“Where to from here?” he asked.
“We find who Scaler paid to work him over. Given the money he had in his wallet, he could afford the best.”
“How come she left the money?”
“Either she freaked when her client’s heart popped, or took her money and a big tip. Scaler could have started the night with twenty grand in his pocket.”
We didn’t keep a list of dominatrix types, since they tended to avoid interaction with the legal system, particularly the high-money babes who kept a lower-than-low profile as they went about their business.
However, they generally set up shop in a part of town where clients could come and go without attracting attention from the neighbors, so we skirted the inner-city, looking for informants past and present. We passed by a half-dozen hookers lounging in the midday heat, trading tales and gossip in front of a payday loan store.
“Hey, Harry – looking goooood,” one of the hookers crowed, a tall transsexual-in-progress named Shanelle who resembled an Oriental Whitney Houston. We’d dealt with her a few times as an informant, and Shanelle had taken an immediate shine to my partner.
Harry flicked a wave and a wink as we pulled over, causing Shanelle to shriek and fake an attack of the vapors, one hand palm-forward over her forehead, fanning with the other as she faux-fainted into the arms of her colleagues.
“Talk to you a minute, Miss Shanelle?” Harry asked.
Shanelle recovered, giggled, and strutted over like she was working a Paris runway. She was wearing a brief white top to display heavy silicone orbs, a black leather miniskirt high above the knobby knees, and plastic shoes like those Croc things, only with four-inch platforms. They were spray-painted metalflake gold.
I leaned out the w
indow. “Hi, Shanelle. Love the shoes.”
Her false eyelashes fluttered like excited butter-flies. She tapped her toes together, looking down.
“You don’t think they’re too conservative, Carson?”
I shot a thumbs-up and a wink. “They’re sexy and sassy.”
Shanelle beamed and put a shoe on the window frame while bending to look at my partner. “What do you think, Harry? They pretty, ain’t they?”
“They’re lovely, Miss Shanelle,” Harry said. “But I’ve got a question even more important than shoes.”
“Anything for you, Harry Nautilus.”
“We’re looking for a dominatrix. Any around?”
Shanelle grinned and batted the lashes. “Harry, if you need a spanking…”
My partner sighed. “The person we’re looking for is probably one of the highest priced ladies in the market. A pro’s pro.”
“She ain’t in no trouble is she, Harry?”
“Not a bit. Just questions.”
“The girl you looking for. Is she black or white?” Shanelle asked.
Harry looked at me. I rolled the question over in my head. “Almost certainly white.”
“And real expensive, you said?”
“That’s what we’re thinking.”
Shanelle thought a minute, gave us an address not overly distant.
“Is that all you need, Harry?” Shanelle purred through the window.
“For now, Shanelle. But remember, Carson and I always appreciate you keeping your pretty eyes and ears open for any weirdness or –”
“Whoooo-eee,” Shanelle whooped like a crane, turning to screech at her cadre a couple dozen paces away. “Harry Nautilus says I got pretty eyes and ears.”
The girls called back taunts and howls. Shanelle said, “Bitches. They don’t understand what we got going, right, Harry?” She did kissy-mouth, complete with sound effects.
Harry sighed a final time and waved goodbye. Fifteen minutes later we were in a warehouse district between the city and the bay. A small apartment held a few mailboxes by the front door, one of them assigned to M.L. We headed up the stairs, found a single apartment occupied the entire floor, the door built of cleated metal. Harry banged the metal, making a booming sound like a hammer on a ship’s superstructure.
“Police. Open up.”
We heard a rustle of motion, a door slam inside. We’d checked for a back exit, found none. “Police,” Harry repeated.
The door opened to reveal a powerful-looking woman in her mid thirties, a silky robe from her shoulders to the floor. I saw black boots sticking out, expected they laced up to her knees, standard fare. She was smoking a cigar and emitting smoke through chrysanthemum lips as red as blood. Her puffy explosion of jet-black hair was striped red down the center. The cat-bright eyes were large to begin with, further widened by make-up dusted with flecks of gold. Even with the robe it was apparent the lady had a splendid exercise regimen.
“Mistress Layla?”
She blew a plume of smoke to the side. “Who’s asking?”
We showed ID. She looked close, a careful type.
“May we come in?” I asked. “We won’t need much of your time.”
“May you come in?” she said. “How polite. Gentlemen are always welcome here.”
She moved like rhythmic water and led us down a short dark hall to a small sitting area with a loveseat and a chair, passing a side door on the way; a closet, I assumed, by its proximity to the front door. The walls were flocked red wallpaper, the trim was burnished brass. Along with the cigar odor, the air smelled of incense and sweat. A velvet curtain hung behind the couch, covering the door to the arena, I supposed.
“Who else is here?” Harry asked, looking at the curtain.
“No one’s back there,” she said, sitting on the couch.
“May I take a look?” I asked. “Specialized décor has always fascinated me.”
“I’d be delighted if you would.”
I pushed through the curtain to the windowless room behind. Twenty by twenty, high beamed ceiling, three walls black, the fourth raw brick. Steel hooks and rings and loops were situated at intervals along the walls as chain-holds. One hook held leather straps, still damp with sweat. A small table held an assortment of whips and flails. Smaller tables around the room held candles. There was an antique four-poster bed in a shadowed corner, beneath it I saw a gleaming steel bedpan.
I returned to the sitting area and smiled at Mistress Layla. “The rings look very solidly anchored. The exposed brickwork is a nice touch.”
“Thank you. My dungeon always gets compliments.”
A fair amount of cops might have made snide comments or tried to be funny, but Harry and I always tried to treat folks with respect. One, it was the right thing to do. And two, over the years it had given us a solve rate that was the envy of our peers.
“You say you’re working, ma’am?” I asked.
I saw a glance flick to the closet down the hall. She didn’t try to hide the look.
“Yes.”
“This won’t take long. We’re checking into a for-hire situation. A man hired a dom to ball-gag him, suspend him by his ankles, give him a plugging and a whip job on the back and buttocks.”
Mistress Layla stubbed out the cigar in a crystal bowl. “Your presence tells me the man must have been robbed. Or hurt.”
“He was…injured,” I said, realizing how little we could say without revealing the victim was Richard Scaler.
“We’re trying to find out how it all went down, ma’am,” Harry said. “There’s no indication that anyone is in trouble. I want to stress that. This is purely a gathering of loose ends.”
“Good to know,” she said. “Where did this, uh, event happen?”
“I can’t tell you,” Harry said.
A small smile. “When, then?”
“In the past week.”
“You want to see my appointment book, gentlemen? No names, but times. If someone was hurt, it wasn’t me. My clients don’t get anything but what they need, which is a little time out of themselves. I’ve made my reputation on creating imaginary situations where humiliation and fear prevail, but safety is a word away.”
“I believe you,” I said. “You ever work anywhere but here?”
“Not often. All of my materials are here.”
“Have you worked off-site in the past two weeks?”
“Not in months.”
I felt she was telling the truth, further strengthened when Mistress Layla consented to giving us her fingerprints. We wiped down a Coke can, she gripped it, dropped it in an evidence bag. We’d compare them to the hundreds of prints and partials found inside the cabin, but I didn’t expect a match.
She frowned in thought as I zippered the bag.
“Did you say the client was upside-down, Detective?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Gagged?”
I nodded. “With hands bound tight behind his back, a double knot.”
She leaned back in the loveseat, tapping her chin like an engineer presented with a structural anomaly.
“That’s not too common, being upended. It drains blood from the sexual organs and diminishes pleasure. Add the gag and bindings and it’s a position almost too helpless for most people. Tied to a bed or wall or using a harness suspension is one thing, but everything is disoriented when you’re upside-down. There must always be the knowledge that the…event can be turned off in an instant. That’s the difference between pleasure and terror.”
I said, “Tell us about your competition, Mistress. I don’t expect you have many peers.”
She nodded at the compliment. “You’re very kind. My colleagues are few in number, ranging from Pensacola to Biloxi. More in New Orleans, of course.”
“We need names, ma’am. If you’d be so kind.” She raised a penciled eyebrow. “You’ll not mention my name in your travels?”
“It would be intolerably poor manners.”
She smiled a
nd nodded, found a pen, wrote for a minute and passed us the names, a half-dozen. We walked the hallway to the door. I paused at the closed door along the side, pulled it open. Inside, on the floor, crouched a naked man in his forties, one hand in his lap. I know a two-hundred-dollar haircut when I see one, and I was seeing one.
“Hello,” I said. “You’re under arrest.”
The man looked up, breathless with fear and excitement.
“This is part of the act, right?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t Mistress Layla something?”
He moaned the word incredible. I closed the door and we walked outside to the car. In the next two hours we visited three local names on Mistress Layla’s list. All claimed alibis, which we’d check, and gave us fingerprint samples to clear through forensics.
It was getting late in the day. Harry sighed and pointed the car back downtown. We went a few blocks and he brightened at the thought of something.
“Hey, Carson. We go by the hospital on the way back. How’s about we stop in and see the kid, then grab a beer. She’ll cheer us up.”
The beer sounded decent, but I’d had my fill of hospitals. I figured I’d end up sitting on a plastic couch for twenty minutes while Harry pulled faces and made goofy noises at the kid, which, being in a plastic box behind a glass window, it never even heard.
I said, “Drop me off at my truck.”
“You don’t want to check the kid, Carson? How about grabbing a beer? You’ve been looking a bit stressed out lately, so maybe some downtime would –”
“I’m not stressed, Harry. I’m simply overworked. I want to go home.”
“It’ll kind of take me out of my way to drop you at your truck then circle around to –”
I held up my hands in defeat. Harry pointed the grille toward the hospital. We found Doc Norlin at the nurse’s station conferring with an orderly. When she saw us, she brightened. Or maybe it was Harry that sparked the smile.
“I’ve got good news,” Norlin said, her hand sliding behind my partner’s elbow as she walked him to the unit, me following, not shooting glances at Norlin’s trim backside. When we turned the corner toward the viewing window, I stopped.
