by Blake Pierce
“Hello?” Gloria said.
“Ms. Benitez, this is Agent Mackenzie White with the FBI. I was hoping to have a word with you.”
There was a pause before Gloria responded. When she finally did reply, most of the cheer was gone from her voice. “Can I ask what this is in regards to?”
“There has been a string of murders over the course of the last week. Three couples, to be exact. We believe at least two of them are connected to a club known as DCM. One of the couples had a business card with your number on it. And do far, you’re the only link between the victims.”
“My God,” she said. “Who…can I ask who?”
Mackenzie considered it for a moment and decided to tell her. If nothing else, it would give her time to look through her records between now and whenever they met.
“The Kurtzes, the Sterlings, and the Carlsons.”
The silence from the other end of the line was thick. She could hear Gloria breathing and when she finally spoke again, her voice was thin and fragile. It was hard to tell over the phone but Mackenzie thought Gloria’s shock and sadness were genuine.
“What can I do for you, Agent White?”
“I’d like to meet with you as soon as possible to ask some questions about these couples. I have the address of DCM. Are you there now?”
“No, but I can be in ten minutes.”
Mackenzie was pleased with the rapid response and, as such, found herself parking the car in front of a very plain yet well-maintained building in Midtown less than an hour after leaving the Carlson residence. It was the sort of building that managed to hide itself in the size and glamour of most of the surrounding buildings. The building had no sign to promote a business, not even in vinyl letters on the door.
What Mackenzie did see in the door was a woman standing on the other side, waiting for them. She was quite svelte, wearing a pair of too-tight yoga pants and a shirt that stopped far above her navel. She had shining blonde hair and a look that Mackenzie was quite sure had ensnared more than a few men.
As soon as Mackenzie parked the car, Gloria stepped out of the building to meet them on the sidewalk. She looked up and down the street, as if making sure no one was spying on what was happening. While there was some foot traffic on the streets, no one that passed seemed to notice or care about what was occurring between the three people in front of the nondescript building.
A quick round of introductions were made before Gloria led them into the building. When Mackenzie and Ellington were inside, Gloria locked the door behind them. As she led them down a small corridor, Gloria turned her head so that she could speak to them. She seemed like a very reluctant tour guide.
“This building is more or less DCM headquarters,” she said with a little smirk. “If DCM were a country club, this building would be the clubhouse.”
The corridor came to an end, opening up into a small yet elegant room. A bar area sat to the left, all the glasses turned up and the space behind the bar empty. A few booths sat along the other wall with four bar-style tables between the booths and the bar.
“And what sort of club is DCM?” Mackenzie asked.
“We’re a club for swingers,” she said.
Mackenzie rarely found herself shocked but was taken aback at this comment. Whoa, she thought. Didn’t see that one coming. This opens up a ton of possibilities for the case.
“As in spouse-swapping?” Ellington asked, clearly as startled by the revelation as Mackenzie was.
“That’s a more crude way to put it,” Gloria said, “but yes.”
“And it’s by invitation only, correct?” Mackenzie asked.
“Yes,” Gloria confirmed. “More often than not, new couples are referred by existing members.”
“And this building is what, exactly?” Mackenzie asked.
“It’s mostly a meeting spot. If two or more couples get connected and want to learn more about one another before becoming intimate, they use this building. We also often have meet-and-greet type events here once a month or so.”
“And how many couples are currently members?” Mackenzie asked.
“Currently, I believe we have forty-one couples. Well…after what you told me on the phone, I suppose it’s thirty-eight now.”
“So you can confirm that all three couples were members?”
“Yes.”
“Gloria, do you allow singles to take part in what goes on here?” Mackenzie asked.
“We do, but the pool is selective. Again, it’s all by referrals. Sometimes a couple doesn’t want to swing with another couple…they just want one more individual in the mix. And if they don’t have willing friends, we’ll take care of that part for them.”
“Are you basically the owner?” Mackenzie asked.
“My husband and I started the club, yes. He passed away two years ago, though. And I know it may sound morbid, but I felt I needed to keep this place open. I know swinging has a sort of negative stereotype but when you see the results from my end of things, you know the real story.”
“What is the real story?” Mackenzie asked.
Gloria thought about it for a while and when she answered, she seemed to be genuine and sincere. “Some couples that come in just really enjoy sex. And they are comfortable enough with their marriage to experiment with things like this. Some find out quickly that it is not for them and leave. Others, however, find that it enhances their sex lives and stay with us.
“There are others that come here because marriage has killed their sex drive. We’re talking people that have been married for twenty years or more. They want a spark. Their marriages are dry and boring. Then they join DCM. I’ve seen marriages turned around from what we do here.”
Personally, Mackenzie found this hard to believe. She’d always viewed swinging or any of its offsets as a form of adultery. And no matter how cool or laid back a spouse was, there was always going to be an aspect of jealousy involved.
Jealousy is probably the driving motive behind these murders, Mackenzie thought. That, or some sort of rejection. And it gives us a motive—a reason for someone to target couples.
“Did you know any of the murdered couples well?” Mackenzie asked.
“Honestly, I only had an actual working relationship with the Sterlings,” Gloria said. “I’d hooked them up with other couples a few times. I knew the Carlsons only by name. Toni was a very beautiful woman so her name came up quite a lot in conversations. As for the Kurtzes, I met them once a few years ago. I’m pretty sure they hadn’t had any DCM activity in over a year. Maybe more.”
“And can you think of any links between them?” Ellington asked.
“Not right off the top of my head, no.”
“Did one of the couples perhaps refer the others to DCM?”
Gloria started to look very uncomfortable. She looked at the floor for a moment, clearly wrestling with something. “Look,” she finally said. “In an industry like this, I have to protect the privacy of my clients and members. Surely you can understand that. And if we get much deeper into this line of questioning, I’m going to be betraying that.”
“And what about a list of couples that these three murdered couples were involved with?”
“I don’t know…it just seems wrong. A betrayal of trust.”
Mackenzie knew that she was right but was hoping the fact that three of her member couples had recently died might make her lose sight of it.
“Have you ever had any members you had to kick out of DCM for any reason?” Mackenzie asked.
“Only two. One was simply a financial issue. The other…well, the couple was just too much trouble. The husband was violent and borderline abusive and the wife had this weird dominatrix thing going—and not in a sexy way, either. In a lewd and almost gratuitously horrific way.”
“Did any of the three murdered couples have relations with this couple?”
Again, Gloria looked to the floor. “Shit,” she said. “Fine…look, I’ll give you this much. But that’s it. And even
with this, I’d appreciate you not letting anyone know where you got the information. DCM is already scrutinized enough as it is.”
“I understand,” Mackenzie said. “Please. What can you tell me?”
“The couple we had to kick out was Jack and Vanessa Springs. They seemed perfect at first. Good-looking, moderately wealthy, and everyone seemed to get along with them. But when couples engaged with them, it was a different story. The incident we kicked them out for involved a couple that was not one of these poor murdered couples. They went back to that couple’s house and at some point, the wife of the other couple knew things were getting out of hand. It got bad. The husbands got into a fight that turned rather bloody. Vanessa Springs apparently abused the other wife with some sort of sex toy. And when word got out about it, I started to get whispers from other couples that had engaged with them reporting similar activity. One of those couples was the Kurtzes.”
“Do you know how often the Kurtzes and the Springs got together?”
“No. But I’m pretty sure it was at least three times.”
“Forgive me,” Ellington said, “but I have to ask. What other rooms are here in this building? Do people ever hook up here?”
“From time to time, yes they do. But there’s no money exchanging hands.”
“Then what’s the fee for the club for?” Mackenzie asked.
“People pay DCM a membership fee for my services only. And by services I mean keep them in the network of couples and play matchmaker.”
“And do you ever participate with any of your members?” Mackenzie asked.
Gloria gave her a hurt yet almost angry look. “I’m not answering that question,” she said. “That has nothing to do with your investigation.”
So that’s a yes.
“So what can you tell me about the investigation, then?” Mackenzie asked. “The one link we have between these three couples is DCM. And we didn’t even know the Kurtzes were members until you confirmed it on the phone.”
“Well, when couples apply for membership, we do check to see if there is any history of violence or any other red flags. That’s one of the reasons I was so shocked when the Springses ended up being a problem. Nothing came up in their background checks. So what I’m saying is that I find it very hard to believe that I have a member that is murdering people.”
“Well, you just said yourself that the Springs couple surprised you,” Ellington pointed out.
“Yes, they did. Still…there has to be some other option.”
“And there might be,” Mackenzie said. “One very possible option is that there is someone that may know about DCM and disapproves of it. Maybe someone jilted—like someone that applied but didn’t make the cut.”
“That would actually be a short list,” Gloria said.
“Then it wouldn’t be a problem getting it together for us?” Mackenzie asked.
This seemed like a good avenue to pursue. These could be strange revenge killings of a sort from an embarrassed or rejected member of the club, she thought.
Gloria again looked at odds with her situation but she eventually nodded. “Yes. I can get that together for you. I’ll also get you the list of couples that are linked to the three deceased couples. I can’t imagine it’s long, though.”
“And the contact information for the Springses, too, please,” Mackenzie added.
Gloria gave a nod and turned away from them. She headed to the back of the room and walked through a door, headed elsewhere within the building.
“So this took a weird turn, huh?” Ellington said.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Mackenzie said.
“Lots of weird turns in the last day or so,” Ellington added with a smile.
“If you’re referring to last night and calling it weird, I’m not quite sure how to respond to that.”
“Well, it was a good weird. A weird I’d like to revisit to maybe come up with a better term.”
While the back-and-forth was enjoyable, she knew that she could not let her mind get sidetracked. She swerved her mind back on track, fully aware that with a link between three dead couples and a solid lead, the case might be over faster than she had dared hope.
And then perhaps she and Ellington could be weird again sooner rather than later.
It was a lame source of motivation, but she was rather ashamed to find that it worked. As they waited for Gloria to return with the information, Mackenzie thought back to those three dead couples, particularly the butchered state the Carlsons had been in.
All that blood. That stench.
And just like that, her mind was nowhere near thoughts of another romp between the sheets with Ellington. Instead, they were focused on finding a killer that, if her hunch was right, had stood in the very room she was currently in at some point in the past.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A series of phone calls all led Mackenzie to the obvious conclusion that both Jack and Vanessa Springs worked rigorous jobs. Any attempt to get either of them on the phone was fruitless. It was so frustrating that Mackenzie nearly decided to visit their places of employment with no regard for their reputations. In the end, though, common sense prevailed. She and Ellington spent a few hours of the afternoon in the precinct, going over the finer details of DCM and Gloria Benitez with Rodriguez and his crew. A request was made to come up with a list of criminals with sexual deviancy of any kind on their records, which Dagney started on right away.
As the afternoon wound down, Mackenzie and Ellington headed back out near Midtown. As it turned out, the Springses lived only fifteen minutes away from DCM headquarters. They lived in a trendy subdivision where there was a pool in nearly every backyard—yards that looked like someone had copied and pasted images from travel brochures and plopped them down behind each residence.
When Mackenzie parked in the driveway, she saw no cars. That maybe meant nothing, though, as both doors to the massive garage were closed.
“If they still aren’t home,” Ellington said, “I say we go for a dip in the pool. Do you see the size of this thing?”
Mackenzie cast a look toward the pool, surrounded by an elaborate wooden fence, and shook her head. The pool itself probably cost more than any house she’d ever dreamed of owning. And while the Springses’ residence didn’t look massive from the outside, it had the look of a place that had tons of treasures and secrets inside.
They walked up a series of polished concrete stairs to the front door. Mackenzie rang the bell and thought it was a little peculiar that a club such as DCM could attract such a wide range of people—from the Springses with their home that was easily worth more than a million dollars, to the Kurtzes in their simple little townhouse. She wondered how much the fee was for membership with DCM.
After thirty seconds or so, the door was answered by a woman in a very revealing bikini. It was the second time of the day where Mackenzie found herself at a momentary loss for words. The woman standing in front of them, blocking the open door, was a clichéd big-breasted blonde. Mackenzie was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing any makeup, nor did she need to. She looked to be around thirty-five or so but had the complexion of a sixteen-year-old.
“Yes?” the woman said, grinning almost maliciously as she noticed how startled both Mackenzie and Ellington were.
“Hi,” Mackenzie got out. “Are you Vanessa Springs?”
“I am,” she said. “And you are?”
“We’re Agents White and Ellington with the FBI.”
“Oh?” The confidence she’d shown since coming to the door faltered a bit and Mackenzie took far too much joy from it. “FBI? What can I help with?”
“Is your husband, Jack, home?” she asked.
“Yes. We were just finishing up a swim. I think he’s changing right now, actually.”
“Can we come in?” Mackenzie asked. “We need to ask you some questions concerning a couple you may know—Josh and Julie Kurtz.”
Vanessa thought about the name for about two seconds before recognitio
n came over her face. And it was not a smile or beaming a-ha look.
Another voice came from the house behind them.
“Wait a damn minute…who is this?”
A man stepped into view. He was wearing a pair of short swimming trunks that weren’t quite Speedos. Like Vanessa, he had a toned and chiseled body.
“Jack Springs?” Mackenzie asked.
“Yeah. Who the hell are you?”
Before Mackenzie could answer, Vanessa cut in. “They’re with the FBI. They want to know about the Kurtzes.”
“Yeah, I heard that part,” Jack Springs said. “And that’s why I’m going to ask you to kindly get the hell off of our property.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Mackenzie said.
“Look,” Jack said. “I don’t know what those assholes have told you, but I’m getting sick of having my name dragged through the mud and I—”
“They’ve said nothing about you,” Mackenzie said, interrupting in a loud voice. “They’ve been murdered. Along with two other couples. And they were all members of DCM—a club I believe you two were once affiliated with.”
She clearly saw the shock on both their faces when she mentioned that the Kurtzes had been killed. What she did not see, though, was remorse. In fact, she was pretty sure she saw something very much like relief on the face of Jack Springs.
“Sorry to hear that,” Jack said. “But I’m done talking about them.”
With that, he tried to close the door. Ellington stepped up and held a hand out, preventing the door from closing.
“Here’s the thing,” Ellington said. “You either cooperate and give us a few minutes of your time, or you can force us to get a warrant to search your house.”
“For what, exactly?” Vanessa asked.
“Anything regarding the Kurtzes.”
“But we don’t have anything—”
“Oh, and let me add,” Mackenzie interrupted, “that if we are clumsy with the channels we go through in getting the warrant, the media won’t have much of a problem discovering that you’ve had FBI agents looking around in your home.”