by Adira August
"Okay," he said. "Ad left at nine. I'll check K-girl and LittleBit."
"Wait," I said. "Ad and Becks left right after we did?"
Cam checked through his images. "No, I think it was just … hang on, I have to look at the video … yeah, Ad at eight-fifty seven. Becks left at ten-forty-three."
I fished out my notebook and flipped back.
Fuck. My. Life.
Cam was focused on the laptop, looking up the times the two subs left.
"The thing about Spanko," he said, "is trans women lose a lot of the male strength advantage after surgery, but that takes a while. She’d still be strong enough to inflict the damage you told me about. And, she's the right height."
I looked at my cell. Almost seven. Night court would be in session in a half-hour.
"But she left with Ink at nine-thirty," he said, sounding disappointed.
A loud knocking reached us from the front and a minute later, Sherrilynne brought the lab tech back. I stood up.
"Nugent," I said. Rich Nugent was the senior lab technician and rarely went into the field. He'd gotten pretty shirty with me on the phone when I asked for the gender of the mosquito blood.
"Dane," he nodded. "Your blood sample is human female, by the way," he said. That eliminated Spanko; she'd be XY, male.
Nugent's eyes landed on Cam and widened for a second. But the experienced tech had met many celebrities and power players in his fifteen years working crime scenes. He inclined his head briefly to Cam in a gesture of respect and recognition. Then he was done. Nugent was never a fanboy. Of anyone's.
Gazing around the club, he said, "I'm on my third hour of overtime, so, where's the scene?"
I reached for the door handle of The Church. "Inside."
"Why are you outside?"
Crime scene techs were notoriously critical of evidence handling by the police.
"Because this is the only door," I said, opening it. I led him inside with Cam and Sherrilynne trailing us at a discreet distance.
Nugent looked around like we'd walked into a circus tent between shows. He blinked at the gleaming testament to technology that was the Angle Angel, frowned at the Sanctuary and altar.
"All of this"-- I swept across the room with my hand --"is open to the membership." I was letting him know any fingerprints found there would have little to no evidentiary value.
Opening the door to the Sacristy, I stepped aside. "This is the scene, the room should have been cleaned since last night." I looked the question to Sherrilynne who shook her head.
"It wasn't. I looked in before we opened this morning. But no one had used the bed, so I just closed the door. Last time it was used and I cleaned it was Saturday morning."
After Cam and I left.
Nugent took out a notepad. "What cleaners did you use on which surfaces?" he asked her.
"I changed the linens. I use a commercial spray with bleach on the hard surfaces. Pretty much anything I can reach."
"Is this door usually locked?" He examined the single-cylinder deadbolt. Twist knob on the inside. The outside keyholed.
"No, anyone can use it when they want to. They can lock it from the inside for privacy," she told him. "You can't lock it from the outside without a key. We have those."
Nugent and I exchanged a look. This could be something. "Did you clean the lock knob Saturday morning?" he asked.
"Of course. My routine is very thorough. Anything people touch, doorknobs, light switches, all that. Bleach spray,” she said firmly.
"And not since then?" I asked.
Please say no, I thought, hoping there were clean surfaces with only the killer's prints.
"No. I check every day, of course, to see if the bed is mussed. Nobody's used it since Saturday."
Because the bed wasn't touched, Sherrilynne assumed no one had been inside. It was reasonable. What other use could a room have that was barely big enough to hold a queen-sized mattress?
But the killer would want privacy while putting the murder weapon back. The very strong likelihood was, they'd flipped the deadbolt.
"Thanks, that's really helpful," I told her.
I turned to Nugent. "You'll find the club owner's prints on that drawer"-- I indicated the one with the suspension bar --"and the evidence inside."
He stopped in the doorway. "And this is the only way in or out?"
"Right ..."
He got to work.
Years of training kept my face still as my heart dropped into my stomach and memory flooded back.
Cam took the proffered Starbucks cup, sleepily confused and sat up. I perched at the end of the bed and turfed the contents of the bag out onto the cover. Bagels and packets of things to put on them.
Cam sipped his coffee. "Did she order-in the sunshine, too?"
I swung the box window back and forth on it's hinges. "It’s a firecode deal."
From outside, they looked like views into separate apartments. Inside, the backs of the shadow boxes blended with the walls. They unhooked if you knew where the latch was. Drop three feet to the deck floor. Come and go as you please.
The image of Bryant as she left the club flashed into my mind. Looking to her right. Toward the staircase. Which was out of camera range. Anyone could have left or come back and the camera wouldn't catch them. Duck around the side of the building to a car parked on the street in the front.
Everything we'd done up to now was worthless. The speculations. The lists. The images.
Anyone who was here last night could have done it.
You don't devise theories to support assumptions. You follow facts. How many rookies had I said that to?
I had really fucked up this case.
"You never made a mistake before?" Cam leaned back against the bathroom sink with his arms crossed over his chest, eying me with a distinct lack of sympathy.
"Stop beating yourself up," he said. "It's boring, useless, and you're pissing all over my territory. You already owe me, you know. And I'm keeping score."
He'd been listening to me exorciate myself for the last five minutes. Even I was bored.
"Okay, so-"
"Shut up." Cam stood up, and leaned toward me, so close I could see the silver threads in his ice blue irises. "You aren't in charge now, I am."
I foolishly opened my mouth to tell him this wasn't playtime and I was a cop and everything he already knew. I didn't get the chance to speak.
"Pretend I'm not serious, Hunter," he snarled at me. Dominance poured off him like smoke down the side of a volcano about to blow. It engulfed me. I could hardly breathe.
I dropped my eyes.
"You watch me; you know that," he snapped.
Right. Eyes back up.
"You and I have had coffee, danish, cookies and hot chocolate for dinner. Of course you can't think," he said. "We're going to eat actual food while that lab guy does his thing and then we're going back to my mom's office and you're going to figure this out. One full hour. Fuck with me and you'll be back on the Angel. There are plenty of towels in here."
He stalked out of the bathroom without waiting for an acknowledgement. I took a breath. The last time we'd been in this bathroom, he'd taken a bucket of cold water out to the Angel and flogged me with wet towels. My back, ass and thighs were still color-coded to the intensity of the blows.
Get your head in the game, Dane.
I checked my watch. It was almost seven. Twenty-four hours ago, Louise "EllBee" Bryant had been threatening to peg me for the crowd.
And twelve hours from now, the forces of the judicial system would start working through the members who'd been here.
Press leaks were inevitable. People would suffer public humiliation, careers would die, employees lose jobs. All that because some people expressed their sexuality in ways others didn’t like. And because the media was more money machine than news source.
The monumental stupidity of it all threatened to drown me. But I had an hour of respite. Cam would be holding me up.
The better downtown restaurants didn't deign to offer delivery. But when Camden Caulfield Snow calls and says --I don't suppose you could help me out?-- owners shoulder busboys aside to drive dinner to him in their personal cars.
We sat around the bar and Sherrilynne opened all the containers and spread them out, handing us plates and silverware. We ate from all the dishes, the grouper and the prime rib and the chicken a la some kind of wine sauce and piles of asparagus and salads and spinach and squash, pasta and potatoes and rice.
I ate and watched and listened. Chez emerged from Subville and was charming and funny and seemed to gain a few IQ points. Sherrilynne shot him adoring looks, and regaled us with tales of house-showing disasters. Cam laughed and smiled and looked out from under his lashes and made them feel like they were the most interesting people in the world.
I put a pleasant look on my face and wondered about their capacity to kill. Bryant had offered to sue Chez. She was a lawyer. She knew everyone. She was vindictive. She felt cheated. It all made her a likely candidate for giving Scene and Not Heard to the online media. She wouldn't just expose me, she'd expose every Dom, everyone who'd degraded her at the matchstick game.
I estimated Chez at about average for an American male, a little over 5'8." With his legs spread for power, he'd meet Gordi's 5'7" maximum height. And Sherrilynne would be there to provide her XX chromosomes to a hungry mosquito and help Chez carry out the plan.
SANH was Chez' whole world. The club and Sherrilynne. Here, he was important to important people. If he believed Bryant threatened that -- we'll celebrate the departed! -- Freudian slip?
Who knew better how to get in and out of the club unseen? Chez loved his music, narrow though his tastes were. The sound system was state-of-the-art. He burned his own CDs. Mixed them from albums he owned.
A loud knocking from the front door interrupted my thoughts. Sherrilynne held up her hands for quiet and looked at something under the bar. I imagined there was a screen she could see the camera feed on.
"It's a member," she whispered. "Apparently, can't read." She looked up. "Or open a text."
We sat in silence for a few moments, like kids hiding under their parents' bed, waiting for Mom to put the laundry away and leave so they could go back to reading Dad's nudie magazines. It made everyone want to giggle. The person finally gave up, leaving us in silence.
Silence.
"Chez, where's the music?" I asked him. "Hardly seems like home without one of your 'P' guys playing. Like a movie with the sound off."
Chez gave me a stricken look and Sherrilynne squeezed his arm in a gesture of comfort.
"Somebody thought they were funny and messed with the player, again," she said. "But this time they put a CD in and super-glued the port shut. So we can't play anything else. With everything going on since last night, we're just doing without until we can get it fixed or get a new player."
"The members need it!" Chez cried. "It keeps people calm and cuts down on episodes."
'Episodes' was the Chez' word for the occasional shouting match or fight. I'd heard his theory before and thought the rarity of episodes in SANH was less about the music than the prominence of the clientele who didn't want to attract undue attention. But, as was recently made painfully obvious, I could be wrong.
"This happened last night? After you closed?" I asked.
"Must have," she said. “It was like that when we turned it on this morning.”
I felt Cam staring at me. I avoided returning his look. Sherrilynne was too sharp to miss the weight of the exchange, if I did.
"Let me hear it," I said to her. "Might be something I'd associate with a member. Maybe at least get you reimbursed." I smiled.
Chez mumbled something about the bathroom and left. Sherrilynne pushed play.
I picture you with matchstick men
I look for you, I see you when
You rush to lie in bed with him
Now through with you and through with them
Repeated. Over and over.
Rich Nugent slid the whole CD player into a large evidence bag and tagged it.
He put the player into a black carry-all with DPD EVIDENCE stencilled on the sides, snapped a padlock on and had me initial several sheets listing what he'd taken from the club.
After he was gone, I told Chez he could reopen, but he had to keep the Church locked up. Nugent had put a seal on the big doors. It was almost at the end of the main corridor, so I told him to block off the whole section.
Cam told Chez is was time to enter the twenty-first century and offered to rig up the laptop to feed his music through the sound system.
I grabbed the briefcase and said I was walking Nugent to his car. Chez accompanied us and stopped me at the front door. He looked around his club and his eyes filled.
"What's going to happen to us?" he asked me in a voice so forlorn of hope he seemed already defeated.
"You won't believe this, Chez, but it's not time to worry, yet." I smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. "I'll let you know when it's time, okay?"
He blinked slowly up at me and the trust in his eyes shredded me. "Okay."
I hurried down the stairs to meet Nugent at his car, parked next to my Bronco. "You coming?” he asked. “I was told you're handling all the evidence but it won’t be ready for a while."
"Nope, just leaving at the same time. Let me know when you’re ready."
I got into the Bronco and drove away.
I texted Cam at a light and said I'd be back to get him. He was going to be pissed. I could easily make the case that I hadn't agreed to any kind of scene or twenty-four seven D/s situation. But then, when this was all over, I might really want whatever he planned for me.
But I couldn't think about that thing, now. I had to think about this thing, that I'd rather not think about at all.
I left the car in police parking and headed for the courthouse records room. It would be staffed until ten when night court closed. "Staffed" meaning a sleepy security guard would be inside so the clerks could access whatever their judge required.
I needed to find out if District Court judge Addington Symonds and attorney Louise Bryant had any history.
She never made sense as a victim. She was who she was and she tried to goad me into taking her on. It was about like having an annoying fly hang around your front door. A momentary irritation.
The security guard wasn't sleepy. He was young and immersed in whatever game he was playing on his phone. He stood behind the counter, his body taut, jerking from side to side slightly like all the energy from his drive to win raced down his arms and into his thumbs. I flashed my badge but he never really looked up, just mumbled "Yeh."
It took five minutes. I found Bryant's cases in the computer and sent myself a copy of the file.
I passed the guard on the way out, chuntering yeh-yeh-yeh under his breath. A fanatic in striking distance of his of his goal.
I could get to the lab and sign the evidence in and take a look at Bryant’s court files. I pushed open the door to the hall and froze. I faded back slowly. J. Addington Symonds had just entered the elevator. Ad was way too high in the pecking order to have to preside over night court.
I took the stairs up to the District Court floor. Ad's chambers were around the corner from the stairwell entrance.
I didn't hurry. I wanted to give him plenty of time to get inside and start doing whatever he came here to do. I did wish I had a secure spot to leave the damned briefcase. But again, it seemed unlikely I'd have to fight Ad. Or shoot him.
I waited ten minutes and approached his door. The knob turned easily. I slipped inside Archie's empty office. The door to Ad's interior office, was slightly ajar.
"No," I heard Ad say. "I told you this is not the time!"
Silence … I locked the hall door behind myself and put the briefcase in the kneehole of Archie's desk for safekeeping. I heard a muted response from inside Ad's office. It sounded like a woman, but I couldn't make out the words.
I moved to the hinge side of the door and listened.
"You know why," Ad said. "Because this is the only place we can be together where it doesn't look suspicious. Stop whining before I give you something to whine about!"
That was his Dom voice. The answering voice seemed familiar, I just made out the words.
"Maybe he won't figure it out."
"It's Hunter fucking Dane, he probably already has." Ad gasped. "I said no, we have to figure out a story … I said … ah … no … ah … you goddamned slut…"
I slid the Colt from the holster and flicked off the safety. Still not expecting to shoot, but, there were two people in that room who did not want to see me. Panicked people did incredibly stupid things.
I slid through the gap in the door, keeping the Colt pointed down.
Ad Symonds was leaning against his desk with his red, wet dick sliding rapidly in and out between Archie Mcdonald's rose-colored lips. Ad hadn't noticed me. But Archie had. On his knees, both slender hands wrapped around Ad's erection, he looked at me from the corners of his eyes with a kind of sly triumph.
One hand reached for Ad's sac. The judge groaned, thrust hard a few times, saying, "Eat it! Eat it, bitch!" And he came.
And as Archie ate it without spilling a drop, swallowing without a hint of Adam's apple, I knew. I knew needing no question answered or test to confirm, that I was looking at a trans male. The transition completed long ago. A man's strength in a body with XX chromosomes.
It was the judge who called the lab and ordered Nugent to show up ASAP to take a blood sample.
I interviewed Archie in Ad’s empty courtroom. He swore he'd been with the judge from around nine until ten-thirty or so. Like every Wednesday night.
When Nugent showed up and protested he had no way to take take samples from living persons, Ad whipped out a pocket knife and handed it to Archie who cut his own skin. Nugent shut up and caught the fresh blood in a sample bottle.
Ad did the same. While Nugent collected and labelled, Arch got a first aid kit from his desk to disinfect and band-aid the small cuts.
Nugent didn’t have print cards, or ink or a scanner, either. He would never take a print from a finger. But he did have alcohol. He cleaned a strip at the edge of Arch’s desk and had them press their fingers on the surface. Then he used print powder to lift them.