by Sean Slater
Striker made his way into the room. When he closed in on the table, he noticed that there were heavy iron pins and handcuffs attached to each side. And chains. On the top right handcuff, brownish-red liquid coloured the steel. The floor below it was also stained.
‘We got blood all over here,’ Striker said.
Felicia looked under the table and her face tightened. ‘We got torture stuff under here, too. Rods. Knives. Holy shit, a pair of pliers. Man, this guy was one sick puppy.’
Striker said nothing. He looked at the table with the bindings, then at the torture tools underneath it. A thought crossed his mind, and he made his way over to the redwood cabinet. Once there, he slowly opened the doors and looked inside.
Staring back at him was a black leather mask – the exact same type as the one he had seen on the suspect, back at the Mandy Gill crime scene. There were also two rows of DVDs. An external hard drive. And cameras – high-def tape, mini-disc and digital. The sight of it made his stomach tighten.
Felicia saw all this, too. ‘The mother lode.’
Striker didn’t reply. He was too busy taking it all in. He reached up to the top shelf and plucked up one of the Blu-ray discs. He took it over to the wall-mounted TV, turned on the Blu-ray player, stuck in the disc and hit Play.
The TV came to life.
On the screen was a man imprisoned in a cage. He was facing away from the camera, curled up on his side. His back and legs were bleeding and he was quivering.
‘Please,’ he whimpered. ‘Please.’
But his voice was weak, lost.
Barely a whisper.
Behind him, half in the shadows, was a figure. Dressed in a long dark cloak. The face was hidden, but in the person’s hand was a long, thin rod. Sharp steel. The end of it glistened with wetness.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Felicia said. ‘What a sick fuck.’
Striker took another look at the DVDs in the cabinet. One of the discs had no title but it displayed today’s date on the label. Thoughts of Mandy and Sarah filtered through his mind and were replaced by the image of Larisa.
It left him sick inside.
He stuck the disc in the player, but the machine couldn’t read it. Swearing, he took the disc out, cleaned it off, and tried again. But the machine displayed the same message:
Unreadable format.
‘Shit.’
‘You need a computer,’ Felicia said. ‘There was one in Ostermann’s main office.’
Striker didn’t hesitate. He took the disc with him down the two flights of stairs. When they reached the main-floor foyer, Striker could hear the sound of police sirens in the faraway distance, their sad wails slicing through the night. The sound felt good to his ears, and he continued down the hall.
They made their way into Dr Ostermann’s office. As Felicia booted up the computer, Striker took note of the throw carpet on the floor. It was a small rug, less than four feet wide and eight feet long, and it sat unevenly in the room, covering more of the right side than the left.
Why would the doctor leave it that way?
Curious, he walked across the room and stepped on it. As he did, he felt a little give in the centre. Some springiness. He stepped back, grabbed hold of the corner of the rug, and pulled it across the room.
Beneath it was a hatch in the floor.
‘Look at this,’ he said to Felicia.
She stopped fidgeting with the computer and came up beside him. ‘Wine cellar?’ she asked.
‘We’re about to find out.’
Striker slid his fingers through the iron handle and pulled; the hatch lifted with a metallic groan and Striker let it fall to the floor on the other side. He stared down the ladder, into what looked more like a concrete bunker than an old wine cellar.
The lighting down there was dim and appeared to be fluorescent. Weak, but it did the job. As Striker stared into it, something caught his eye. Stacked on the floor, near the bottom of the ladder, were some pertinent items.
A battery pack for a cordless drill.
A box of latex gloves.
And a half-dozen packages of relay cameras.
Striker drew his pistol and gave Felicia a hard look.
‘The Adder,’ Felicia gasped.
‘Keep your gun ready and cover me,’ Striker said. ‘I’m going down.’
Seventy-Six
Striker aimed his SIG Sauer and scanned the area below as he prepared to descend. There was no movement down there, just a still, murky dimness. The room appeared medium in size. Maybe twenty feet by thirty. Lots of grey concrete. A bed that was messed up. A dresser next to it with a small widescreen TV and a Blu-ray player. And a cabinet, holding a computer.
It all seemed rather ordinary.
Striker stepped on the first rung of the ladder and looked below. It was a surprising drop. Over fifteen feet down to hard concrete. He kept his gun pointed below, ready for anything unexpected, as he made his way down.
From above, Felicia covered him.
When Striker’s feet touched bottom, he turned around and stared at the room before him. From this vantage point he could see that the bed was actually an old futon, and the space beneath it was empty, save for a pair of old runners.
The room smelled strongly of disinfectant. Something like bleach. And as Striker made his way around the perimeter, he found the source of the smell. Sitting in the far corner, tucked behind one of the boxes of latex gloves, was an old can of varnish.
Steinman’s.
The sight made him tighten his grip on the gun.
‘What you got down there?’ Felicia called.
‘It’s a friggin’ lair,’ he called back. ‘The Adder’s. No doubt about it.’
‘I’m coming down.’
Thoughts of getting trapped back at Sarah Rose’s place flashed through Striker’s mind. ‘No!’ he called. ‘Stay up there. We need you up there covering our backs.’
‘Patrol’s with me.’
Striker looked up and spotted a blue uniform behind her. ‘Okay, fine. But get someone to guard the top there. I don’t need us getting trapped in another burning building.’
Felicia got the patrol unit to cover them, then came down the ladder and joined Striker. The moment she looked around, her claustrophobia kicked in. Striker knew it; he’d seen it in her a million times.
‘You can wait upstairs,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be down here.’
‘Just get looking.’
He did. He started with the shoes under the bed. The label inside said size ten and a half. Same as the suspect’s shoe imprints they’d found back at Mandy Gill’s place, in the secondary crime scene.
Striker turned the runners over and analysed the tread. Checkered. And the wear pattern on the right toe was far greater than on the left shoe, suggesting an awkward gait. Maybe from a previous knee or hip injury. Maybe something congenital. Regardless, the pattern of wear matched the sole imprints from the crime scene.
‘There’s no doubt,’ Striker said.
‘I’m getting the creeps,’ Felicia said.
‘Just keep your guard up. There could be traps.’
Felicia turned away and started carefully searching through the bedding on the futon; Striker left her there and approached the cabinet. On the desktop sat a new computer case, three external back-up drives, and a mouse with keyboard. Lining the top shelf was a row of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. All of them were brand-new, unused, still covered with cellophane wrap.
Striker moved the mouse, and the monitor turned from black to blue. Across the screen was the Windows password request. A hundred different possibilities ran through Striker’s head, but he opted to leave the computer untouched. One wrong attempt might be enough to lock them out or start a pre-programmed formatting application.
The Forensic guys could handle this one.
‘We need Ich here,’ Striker said. ‘To unlock the computer and back everything up.’ He pulled out his iPhone and tried to make the call, but from this deep in the bunker, s
urrounded by walls of concrete, he couldn’t get a signal. He headed back for the ladder, put his foot on the first rung, and stopped.
To his left was a picture on the wall. A lithograph of some kind. It was a famous work. Striker couldn’t recall the artist, but he knew the title.
Relativity.
It was a picture of people walking up and down different flights of stairs that defied all laws of gravity. Twisted, abnormal, unnerving.
Fitting for this place.
The print was huge, blown up, easily four feet by four feet. In a room that offered nothing else – no family photos, no posters, no knick-knacks of any kind – it seemed odd and out of place. But it was not just the picture that stole Striker’s attention, it was the frame. The frame hung slightly out of kilter, the left side higher than the right.
Striker stepped towards it, pulled out his flashlight, shone it all around the wall. On the concrete, there were faint scuff marks, ones that matched the gold-black paint of the frame.
He reached out and took hold of the painting. With one heave, he lifted it from the wall and put it down on the ground. Behind it was a strange door, half the size of a regular one. Maybe two feet wide and three feet high.
After staring at it for a half-minute, Striker realized what it was.
An old dumbwaiter.
The perfect hiding spot or escape route.
He gestured urgently for Felicia to join him. She saw what he had found and drew her pistol. She aimed it at the door and waited for Striker to open it. When he did, then aimed his flashlight inside at the gaping darkness, all they found was an empty space.
Felicia deflated and holstered her SIG; Striker leaned down and shone his flashlight up into the hole. There was a passageway there, leading up. It was large enough for a man to stand in.
Striker angled the beam towards the upper floors and saw that the dumbwaiter went all the way to the top. Right to Dr Ostermann’s locked study.
Interesting.
‘Why have a built-in dumbwaiter all the way down here?’ Felicia said, half to herself.
‘They probably used this room as an old food or wine cellar way back when,’ Striker replied. ‘God knows it’s cool enough down here.’
He studied the dumbwaiter.
On the left side, on the inside of the post, was a pulley system. Striker grabbed the rope and slowly lowered the dumbwaiter down to his level. On the tray was a video camera, a model he had never seen before, one with an LED screen. Instead of a disc or tape, the camera had a built-in hard drive. The camera also had a built-in motion sensor. So when Striker moved the camera, it began recording again.
He found the settings and turned off the motion sensor.
Felicia came up beside him. ‘What’s on it?’ she asked.
‘We’re about to find out.’
Striker hit Play and the video began. On the screen were Dr Ostermann and Lexa, but dressed like Striker had never seen them. Dr Ostermann was naked, except for the leather collar and chain that hung around his neck; Lexa was tightly wrapped in a red leather corset, her breasts pushed up and outwards, almost falling out of the cups. Below, she wore a pair of red silk panties and stockings to match.
She tied Dr Ostermann down, face first, on the table, shackling his hands and feet to each post. Then, when he was all splayed out, she began caressing his body with a long strap of black leather.
Ostermann groaned in delight with every teasing lash. But within minutes, the lashings grew more strenuous. Fierce, even. The tail-end of the strap left huge raw red marks on the doctor’s back and neck and buttocks and legs.
‘Red,’ he cried out. ‘Red, Lexa. RED! ’
But she acted as if she never heard their safety word and continued lashing the man. The expression on her face was one that Striker had not seen on her before – smug, controlled, dark.
The feed went on for another four minutes. Until Ostermann stopped moaning and groaning, and just lay there whimpering on the table like a tenderized piece of meat.
Lexa slowly approached the table, the smile on her lips stretching across her entire face. She moved slowly from corner to corner, unfastening each handcuff and setting her husband free. When they were all off, Dr Ostermann did not move. He remained on the table, his breathing laboured and his whimpers audible.
Lexa leaned over him. Kissed him gently on his neck. Reached down and squeezed his balls.
Dr Ostermann let out a frantic cry, and Lexa smiled once more.
‘You disgust me,’ she said.
Then she dropped the leather lash across his back, stripped out of her dominatrix lingerie, and dressed once more in her green silk kimono. Without so much as a glance back, she left the room.
Dr Ostermann lay in the centre of the feed, quivering but still, with only the sounds of his whimpers and cries filling the room.
Then the video stopped.
Striker looked away from the video camera display, back at Felicia, and couldn’t hide the surprise from his expression. ‘The office upstairs . . . it isn’t a torture room at all – the Ostermanns are into S&M sex.’
‘What a couple of sick fucks,’ Felicia said.
Striker thought it over, pieced it together. ‘The marks we saw on Dr Ostermann’s back and neck make sense now. They weren’t shingles, or an injury from a fall – they were friggin’ whip marks.’
Felicia nodded. ‘It would also explain his feeble movements.’
‘And why he was so embarrassed about the videos. Jesus, when I was threatening him about the murder films – he thought I was talking about his S&M videos. His home videos.’
Felicia thought it over. ‘Dr Ostermann, a masochist.’
‘And Lexa, a sadist,’ Striker finished.
The word seemed wrong as he spoke it, but he couldn’t help thinking that. Lexa was the one constant here. And the image of her coming downstairs in her kimono, her skin dappled with sweat, her eyes wide and doe-like, came back to him.
‘Lexa,’ he said. ‘Where the hell is she now?’
Felicia said nothing.
Striker placed the camera back on the dumbwaiter tray for Forensic Video to process. As he did this, thoughts of the Adder taping them returned. Striker turned from the dumbwaiter, took out his flashlight, and began going round the room, inspecting everything. There were no other cameras or microphones visible, or any other surveillance equipment, but that didn’t mean none were there.
A sweep of the room would be necessary.
He shone the light under the bed and saw nothing of importance. He then shone it under the dresser and the computer cabinet. There, he stopped. On the concrete below the cabinet there were faint but visible brownish marks.
Scuff marks, just like with the painting.
‘This cabinet’s been moved,’ he said.
He wrapped his fingers around the base of the cabinet and slowly swung it out from the wall. When he looked behind it, he saw a small hollow in the wall. About as long and high and deep as a small microwave. In it sat two rows of DVD and Blu-ray cases. Marked on all of them was the word Back-up, followed by different dates. Striker read through them.
One of them had been made just this morning.
He took it out and dropped it into the Blu-ray player across the room. When he turned on the TV and hit Play, the video started. What Striker saw made his blood turn cold; the video was of him and Felicia. Inside Sarah Rose’s apartment. Right before the fire had started.
Felicia stepped forward. ‘Jesus Christ, is that us?’
Striker said nothing. He just looked from the TV to the row of DVD and Blu-ray discs in the nook behind the cabinet. All of them would have to be watched. Reviewed for any shred of evidence.
It would take hours.
He watched the feed continue until the moment when he and Felicia had managed to break out of the front door through the burning blaze. Then the video stopped—
And started once more.
The camera angle spun about, as if the camera was b
eing picked up. And then, for one fleeting moment, the feed caught the image of a young man with wild, jet-black hair and eyes such a light green they looked transparent.
Felicia turned to look at Striker. Her face was ashen.
‘The Adder isn’t Dr Ostermann,’ she said softly. ‘It’s—’
‘Gabriel,’ Striker said, and he could hardly believe his own word.
Gabriel Ostermann.
The boy.
The son.
And he was gone.
Seventy-Seven
The Adder walked slowly down Sasamat Trail, one of the barkmulch pathways that snaked all through the Pacific Spirit Regional Park. When he reached the end of it, he stopped on a bluff overlooking the strait. Far below, the turbulent waters were black and deep and cold.
Like the well.
Memories of the front window of the house smashing apart after he’d thrown the lamp through it returned to him. In bits and pieces. In intermittent waves. Like a TV signal fading in and out. His actions would have attracted much attention, no doubt.
Another one of the Doctor’s rules, broken.
As if sensing his thoughts, his cell phone rang and the Doctor’s name flashed across the screen. The Adder looked at it for a long moment, listening to the rings, not wanting to pick it up.
One. Two. Three . . .
He finally picked up. ‘I am here.’
‘Have you managed to calm yourself down?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what has happened since you left?’
‘No.’
‘Your father is dead, Gabriel. He committed suicide.’
The Adder said nothing.
‘Come to the lake house. We will meet you there. We need to . . . re-plan.’
The line went dead and the Adder stood there motionlessly.
Father dead. It was a strange notion. And it made him feel somehow hollow and light. He could not understand it.
He walked to the edge of the bluff and sat down on a rotting log. As he stared out over the black waters, he took out a DVD and cradled it in his hands. This was the one. The one that had started it all. And the thought of it made his heart beat faster, made his throat turn dry.
