Double Entendre: (City of Steel 2) (The Vault) Read online

  Will sighed. “Brigyd, you know all this shit started up after that damn Fifty Grades of Red came out.”

  “Fifty. Shades. Of. Grey. William. For God’s sake. You’re not helping this any more than the other children.” She took an angry sip off her coffee. “You’re part of the reason I asked about the AE in Pittsburgh.”

  Will shook his head. “Everyone got into that shit after that book. Nothing good was going to come of that.”

  I cleared my throat. “So, BDSM has been around for centuries. There was a popular book in the fifties called The Story of O, by Anais Nin. Anne Rice wrote the Beauty Trilogy in the seventies and Exit to Eden in the eighties. The lifestyle, as those who are in the community call it, has been underground until Fifty Shades of Grey caught fire. Now, while still mostly underground, there is a greater measure of acceptance in the mainstream than there has been before.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still…deviant.” Will turned a lip up.

  Great. “You may not find it appealing, but they don’t care. Most of the truly hardcore stuff is kept out of the public light. But the tenant of the entire movement, the entire lifestyle, is safe, sane, and consensual, and that’s all you need to know about some of the outlier proclivities.”

  “Perverts.”

  His language was getting stronger. I smirked—the sure sign of someone who enjoy Brazilian Fart Porn on his downtime and didn’t want anyone to know. “Perverts are people who do not conform to the rules of the lifestyle. Someone who flashes women, fantasizes about little girls or boys and acts on it. People who don’t know how to stay in their own lane when it comes to consent and law.”

  He was nearly as red as the Sheetz cup he was holding. “There’s nothing normal about pissing on each other.”

  “Why do you care? They aren’t pissing on you.”

  “Because that’s gross.”

  I patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, man. No one is going to know that you like to watch watersports from me. Just remember to delete your browser history.”

  The cup wasn’t empty when he crushed it in his fist and walked away. Brigyd stared at me, shocked, and then amazed. “How did you know I found that in his browser history?”

  With a smirk, I shrugged. “Once I got involved with helping the community, I learned a lot of psychology about sex and kink. I work with a great psychiatrist named Doctor Peter Billings who gave me a lot of insight. Usually the first action that a person mentions is what they are into and don’t want people to know about.”

  “Are you…into this?”

  I shook my head. “Nah. Most of this isn’t my scene. I just observe and assist when people get out of line.”

  “Which is what we have here. Someone got really out of line.” Brigyd motioned to the front door. “So, what we know from the video provided, the sound was cut. All that was left was the video.” She stopped at the door, not letting me in yet. “Have you ever been in here?”

  “Brigyd, I just said I’m not a participant. I’m just the person who managed to earn the trust of the community.”

  She nodded and stepped through the door. “This place is like nothing I’ve seen before. Nothing. There’s a damn arena down there.”

  “We call it the Stadium,” came a voice from the side of the entrance.

  My eyebrows went up when I saw who walked out of the shadows. “Gordon Stilton?”

  “Afternoon, Detective,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’d say good, but it’s anything but, today.”

  “This is your home territory, Donny?”

  “Mistress Dee was called away before all this happened. I’m your contact for now. But…Detective…I thought you worked in Pittsburgh.”

  Offering a nod, I explained, “I do. But I’m happy to consult with anyone who needs some assistance on what goes on within the lifestyle.”

  “Thank God Detective Polanski has a head on her shoulders. What happened upstairs is an assault, and it seems she was the only one who believed that.” Donny let out a sigh. “I have the footage, per Mistress Dee’s instructions. It’s disturbing. It’s so clear that he crossed the lines.”

  I heard what he wasn’t saying. “But what?”

  “He also knew exactly what he was doing,” Donny said.

  That did not bode well. “How exactly do you mean that?”

  “In the worst way possible.” Donny twisted his lip. “He never shows his face, he cut the sound so no one would hear the victim, and he knew how to use the cane. I suspect he knows how to use all the implements.”

  “That’s…actually worse than I thought, isn’t it?” Brigyd sipped her coffee, looking at me.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “Way worse.”

  “Explain?”

  Donny motioned us to follow him into an office just off to the right. “He can hide in the community. There are plenty sadists and masochists around, and some of them really like violence. There are still rules. There are always rules. One of the things basic to playing hard is a safe word. Where no works just fine in the vanilla world, it’s not enough in the lifestyle. People are pushed to their limits and we yell ‘no’ when we don’t really mean it. So safe words—and hand movements for the times when gags are part of the play—are employed.”

  “By cutting off the sounds and binding her arms,” Brigyd continued, “he essentially cut off any chance of rescue.”

  “Correct.” He nodded. “Sylvie likes hard torture. She’s a very submissive, pain-centered masochist. She occasionally plays at a kidnapping-torture fantasy. And we’re very careful with her. She plays only with people who really know her, and whom she trusts. She will also absolutely tell us when and where and what she’s planning.”

  “Well, I don’t have to get it to understand what’s going on here,” Brigyd mused as Donny closed the door. “She was either taken in there against her will, by someone who knew she was planning one of her kidnap-torture fantasies, or the person she planned it with is the culprit.”

  Donny nodded. “Which are the correct assumptions. However, we can rule out the person she was scheduled to play with.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Because it was with Roger.”

  Oh.

  “Who’s Roger?”

  “My partner. He’s gotten into the lifestyle since he came out. He’s very good with the tools, and he’s very good with reading people. I can get him here if you like, but he did send me a screenshot of her text last night cancelling the session.”

  Donny pulled out his phone. He scrolled through and offered it to me. The screenshot was there as promised, and Brigyd nodded. “That’s her phone number. But we found the phone on her.”

  “We did,” Donny said. “Which means he swiped it and put it back.”

  “Fingerprints?” Brigyd seemed to ask no one. “We can hope. I’ll have Watersports check on that.”

  Donny and I snorted. “Did you just call your partner ‘Watersports’?” I asked.

  “Yep. He lost that one. New nickname.” She smirked and I got the feeling she didn’t really like him even though she dealt with him every day. “Anyway. Forward that screenshot to me. Don’t let Roger delete it. Can we see the tape and the room? Do we have a copy of this already?”

  “I sent it with your CS technician.” Donny sat behind the desk and hit a few buttons on the computer and motioned us around to stand behind him. “Brace yourselves, this is bad.”

  Bad was probably an understatement. Emmy Walsh had been brutally beaten two years before and left for dead. This…this was a whole new level of sadistic for so many reasons.

  The most disturbing aspect of the video was the lack of sound, followed quickly by how easily the perp avoided the cameras. Whoever they were, they knew the cameras were there.

  They had been in the club before.

  The beating they gave the poor woman was beyond words. I could almost imagine the sounds the cane made as it ripped through the air and into her back. He was merciless. The girl’s face was covered in te
ars and eventually blood. She was screaming the same thing over and over and over. At first I could make out ‘no’ and then it changed three hits into his more brutal tactic.

  “Do you know what she’s screaming?” Brigyd asked.

  Donny nodded. “Her safe word. Pineapples.”

  There was something heartbreaking about such an endearing safe word being screamed as a mercy plea.

  “What is she signing?” Brigyd pointed to the screen. “Her fingers are going wild.”

  “I didn’t even see that,” Donny whispered. He enlarged the image and rolled back the footage to where she started signing. “Well, at first it’s pineapple. Then it switches to help me, he’s hurting me. Several times in a row.” We concentrated on her hands so that we didn’t have to just look at his horrifying actions. “Several more times, with help, stop, no, pineapples, this is hurting. Then finger spelling. G-r-a-n-t and I can’t make that out…”

  Spinning in the chair, Donny grabbed a ledge book from the shelf next to him and slammed it open on the desk, flipping through it. A moment later. “We don’t have a Grant. None at all. Not anything close.”

  “That’s also not good.” Brigyd sighed.

  I was fixed on the screen again and the attack continued for another three minutes. The cane was just about the worst thing you could do to the skin of the back. I saw the last hit and cringed. There was exposed bone on her lower back.

  “Shit. She’s going to have permanent nerve damage,” I breathed. “I thought Emmy was bad.”

  “They had neurologists in as soon as they could,” Brigyd said.

  “Let’s hope that was enough.”

  Donny led us through the club, which was probably a marvelous glittering affair when the sun went down and lights went up. The room where this had happened in was at the top level of the Stadium.

  It had to be one of the most unique rooms I’d ever been in. The layout of the building had taken us underground, probably five levels or so, and the Stadium stretched upward four of those. There were rooms with glass walls, each higher tier set back just a little more from the last. There were probably twenty rooms all the way across on each level, and they were…outfitted. Low beds with hooks and eyelets, walls of toys, paddling benches, crosses, a few had cages as well.

  On the other side of the room were the viewing platforms. One for each level on the other side, they had a table in the front, an aisle to pass, and a row of tables in the back. All the lights were up and lit, but I imagined it dark, with just candles on the tables for the audiences.

  This was a voyeur and exhibitionist paradise.

  Donny pointed all the way up to the left. “There were a few people in the seats across when the beating happened, and it was one of them who alerted the security in the building. It was going too long, and something clued them in on her body language. It was a good call—they were one of our more loyal, long-standing members.”

  We wound our way up the stairs to the top floor and to the doors to the rooms. They were made of thick wood, with a long, narrow frosted glass window. The first room had do not cross tape on it, and the three of us ducked in.

  The first thing I saw was all the blood. It was all over the room in streaks of droplets striping the wall, the ceiling, the floor, the bed, the benches. Just everywhere. I knew the human body held a lot, but I was convinced it was splattered all over the walls.

  “The man who reported the abuse said that after her body language, the spray of blood on the window was his biggest hint,” Donny explained, pointing to the splatter there. “We do not allow blood play at all. People will get cut, that’s normal. There’s emergency kits all over so that minor cuts and scrapes, all accidental, can be cleaned and covered. If there is more than just a simple cut or wound, the room is shut and sterilized.”

  “These rooms are cleaned?”

  “Every morning. We have a special trained cleaning staff, also used by Club Imperial and the Vault, to clean the rooms. Everything you think you see is leather is not. It’s all soft polyvinyl and it’s all disinfected every day. We close four rooms every day and sterilize, so everything starts fresh once every twenty days. The mattresses are sealed, the seals are changed during the sterilization, and the whole thing is replaced once every year, in rotation. We use a hospital service to bleach and clean the sheets. The covers on the benches and such are changed once a year, then replaced.” He folded his arms and looked out through the window. “We take great pride in how clean we keep this place. You could eat off the floor before the doors open for the day.”

  “This is good news,” Brigyd said, studying one of the blood splatters. “Did crime scene come through here already?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Took the sheets, samples from the walls and floor. Dusted for fingerprints.”

  Brigyd grunted in approval.

  “We’re shutting this one down for a week, so we can turn the whole room over. It wasn’t due, but we have to paint and sterilize in here. I just don’t want to do it until you are all happy with what you have.”

  “Can you hang a sheet over the window for a few days?” I asked. “Just so we can come back for more evidence if we need to?”

  Donny raised his brow. “That’s a good idea, Detective. Thank you. We will do that.”

  “Give us a minute, Gordon?” Brigyd asked, looking around.

  “Sure thing. I’ll be right at the stairs.”

  She waited a moment until he was gone. “What are you thinking?”

  “Gordon is nervous as hell that we are going to implicated Roger in this, first,” I answered.

  “We’re not. We can trace that text message.”

  “Yeah, but he’s still worried. I don’t blame him.” Turning and checking the room one more time, I shook my head. “They knew her. Whoever did this knew her and knows the club. This wasn’t random.”

  “Wasn’t it targeted at her, or at the lifestyle?”

  “Her, or someone like her. She might have been cased for this. But it was someone who knows the ins and outs. You don’t get that kind of blood splatter if you don’t know how to wield that cane.”

  “You wield a lot of canes?” She cocked an eyebrow.

  “No, but I’m pretty damn good with a flogger.” I gave her a sarcastic, toothy grin.

  “Wait…I thought you said…”

  “I’m the area expert for the bondage, dominance, submission, and masochist lifestyle. Do you think I didn’t have one of those kinky friends teach me how to use some of the instruments?”

  “Well, damn,” she said and toasted me with her now-cold coffee. “What can you use?”

  “Flogger, paddle, whip, crop, cane, and basic shibari rope design. I wound up being really good at the flogger, no idea why.” It wasn’t something I’d normally admit, but Brigyd and I had been good friends in high school.

  “Now I know why they sent you.”

  “So, how are you going to handle this?”

  “I guess I need to put someone in here.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not? Someone was nearly caned to death in here. I need to get someone in to keep an eye. I know I have some nice discreet mature undercovers on the force.”

  “It’s not about discreet.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “They don’t care what you do for a living. It’s about knowing the people in the scene. Club Imperial has guest passes. You can pay enough and get in. But that’s a commercial enterprise. It’s true to the lifestyle, but the public sees a club with a kinky edge. You don’t get to see even the upstairs goings on there. It’s locked down. You’re vetted. You pay a lot more to get up there.

  “This place?” I pointed over to the seats across from us. “No way. This is invite only. You need to know someone who is trusted to get in and they aren’t going to make an exception for the police.”

  “Well, then how the hell do I keep an eye on this place?” Brigyd’s face was a mask of consternation.

  I
could not believe I was about to do this.

  “Let me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I got to be an area expert by being trusted. You need someone who can get in here and keep an eye on the place at least once in a while. Maybe get some people to open up and help us, give us details.”

  “This is my investigation, Garabaldi. It should be my men in here.”

  “And do you think that any of those children out there are going to admit being into kink? Or even knowing anything about it?” I quirked an eyebrow.

  She grunted, “Good point. Since they can’t even handle the word ‘anal’ without bursting into fits of giggling.” The room got another look around from her. “You can get in here?”

  Here went nothing. “I already have an invite.”

  Vanity

  The tears were cleansing, I reminded myself.

  I still didn’t fully understand why I loved this. It was humiliating and viciously painful. My back was still on fire, and even the endorphins from the orgasm weren’t masking it.

  But I sought this mess out. I loved the pain. I loved the orgasm. I loved feeling the cold chains across my back.

  A cool, soft sensation spread across the most fierce of the welts, the real source of the pain. It spread a peppermint and arnica scent in the air as the careful hand covered each welt in the balm.

  This was also part of why I loved this.

  A gentle terrycloth rag wiped away the tears, and a moment later, a warm, wet towel covered my back. The fire of my skin started to calm, and I opened my eyes.

  Master Darien was there, as usual. He gave me a small satisfied smile and passed a cool cloth over my cheeks. “There you are, sweetling. What’s your color?”

  “Green, sir.” I sighed.

  “Good girl,” he praised. “Are you floating?”

  “Yes, sir.” I was, too. Subspace took a long time to release me. I was cozy here, comfortable. Even with the pain in my body, my mind was pleased and foggy.

  “Excellent. Rest. You took your flogging well, my dear. We will leave the clamps on for a while yet. Your back needs time.”