Read Red Online

Authors: Kate Kinsey

Red (17 page)

Marla hung on to her for a moment, then stepped back and wiped at her eyes.
“I need a tissue. And a drink.”
“Is anybody here with you?” Hanson asked.
“No, thank God.”
Marla plucked a tissue from a box on the coffee table and blew her nose into it. She dropped it into a little wicker basket already half full of wadded tissue.
“I have to carry a box around the house with me,” Marla said weakly. “I seem to cry at the drop of a hat these days.”
She moved to the sideboard and poured two fingers of Jack Daniel’s into a cut-crystal glass.
“My daughter is still in town, but I made her go shopping with some friends. I’m tired of her hovering. I don’t suppose I should offer you a drink?”
“No, thank you,” Hanson said before Griggs could say anything. It was barely noon, but he figured Marla had a right to drink herself into a stupor if she wanted.
“I was sorry to hear about Dragon,” Gina said. “How are you holding up?”
Marla took a sip, then another.
“Give me a minute,” she said, shaking her head. “This is too strange, having you here in my house—”
“I know,” Gina said. “And I’m sorry for that, too.”
“It’s like worlds colliding,” Marla said with a weak little chuckle. “But it doesn’t change anything, really.”
“We think it might,” Hanson said. “That’s why Ms. Larsen is working with us on this case.”
“Good Lord.” Marla took a deep breath, then offered Gina a hesitant smile. “It’s been a long time, Gina. I was always so sorry about what happened . . . you know.”
“I know. And I know that you wanted to protect Roger’s reputation, but now there’s no reason not to be completely honest.”
“But I have been! Except for that one little fib about our lunch, but that was our private business, and it had
nothing
to do with this.”
“Sometimes the smallest detail can help,” Hanson said. “Maybe there’s something else you haven’t told us?”
“If there was anything I thought would help catch the bastard who killed Roger, don’t you think I’d have already told you?”
“You don’t think it’s strange that four people in the community have died in the past three weeks?” Gina asked.
“What?” Marla looked confused. She clutched the glass to her chest and stared at Gina. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t been reading the papers?” Griggs asked. He sat on the arm of a Queen Anne chair. “Watching the news?”
“My daughter keeps hiding the newspapers from me,” Marla said shakily, sinking down onto the sofa. “She’s afraid the articles about Roger will upset me.”
“Robyn Macy—you may have known her as Kitty,” Hanson began. “She was found murdered in a motel room a week after Roger was killed—”
“Oh, no! No, no!” The glass slipped from Marla’s hands. “Kitty? That can’t be—”
Hanson moved to retrieve the glass. Gina disappeared and came back with a kitchen towel, which she offered to Marla.
When Marla simply sat there, her hands to her mouth, Gina knelt and dabbed at the wet spot in the carpet.
“Poor Kitty.” Marla began to cry softly. “Oh, poor, poor Kitty . . .
“You don’t think—” She looked up at Hanson with enormous eyes. “You don’t think it was the same person—Not the same way—Oh, my God!”
Marla was sobbing now, great hitching breaths between wails.
It took about ten minutes for her to calm down enough to talk. Gina pressed a cool washcloth on Marla’s forehead. Griggs got her another drink.
“There’s a bottle of Valium on the table,” Hanson whispered to Gina. “Should we give her one?”
“Not with the Jack Daniel’s,” Gina whispered back.
“Marla, did you know Robyn—Kitty, I mean—did you know her well?” Hanson asked.
Marla shook her head.
“Not well, really. Just to say hello to, when we saw her at the club. She was always so sweet. And she was so
young
.”
Marla blew her nose again.
“You think the same person killed her?” Marla closed her eyes and shuddered. “It’s just too horrible to think about.”
“It was the same person,” Griggs said. “We don’t think it was the guy she was at the motel with, though.”
“Who was she with?” Marla’s eyebrows rose.
“We think it was Paul,” Gina said. “But we haven’t been able to find him.”
“Paul?” She pursed her lips. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Do you happen to know Paul’s last name?”
Marla shook her head.
“I’m over fifty,” she said. “For men like Paul, I don’t even exist. I never liked him much anyway.”
“You have no idea where we might find him? Any idea where he lives, or where he works?”
“I have no idea.” Marla sniffled. “We really never had much to do with him. We’d just run into him at the club now and then.”
“So Roger wouldn’t have known him well, either?” Griggs asked.
“Roger?” Marla stiffened. “No! Roger thought he was pond scum, same as I did.
Paul cheats on his wife!
”
“And you both disapproved of that?” Hanson asked.
“Of course we did!” Marla bristled. “We may be into BDSM, but we’re very moral people! I teach Sunday school, for God’s sake!”
Gina, sitting beside her on the sofa, took Marla’s hand and squeezed it. Hanson thought, not for the first time, how easily Gina switched gears when it was called for. In general, she was not a touchy-feely kind of woman, but when comforting witnesses, she was golden.
How many faces, exactly, did Gina have?
“He didn’t mean to upset you,” Gina said. “We just have to ask these things if we are going to find out who did this to Roger and Kitty.”
“And Cassandra Lee and Randall Heeler,” Griggs added.
“Cassandra?” Marla looked dumbstruck. “Lady Cassandra?”
“Yes,” Hanson said. “Her body—and that of Randall Heeler—was found in her home yesterday morning.”
“Oh, my God,” Marla whispered. “Oh, God forgive me, I wished the woman dead so many times.”
“You ain’t the only one,” Griggs said. “Doesn’t sound like she was a very nice person.”
“She was horrible,” Marla said, taking another sip from her glass. “No, she was
evil
.”
“Can you think of anyone in particular who might have wanted her dead?” Hanson asked.
“Easier to ask who didn’t,” Marla mumbled into her glass. She looked over at Gina. “You know, she still hated you with a passion.”
“She hated everybody who wouldn’t let her have her own way,” Gina said. “But was there anybody specific she was arguing with in the last month or so?”
Marla sighed.
“She kept pestering everybody for money. She even had the nerve to come to the funeral home to ask for a loan.”
“To reopen her club?” Gina asked.
“What else? She completely ignored the fact that there’s a new club where everybody is deliriously happy to be rid of her.”
“Who owns the new club?” Hanson asked.
“Actually,” Marla said, “it’s owned and operated by the community itself. We elect a board of directors every two years. It was set up that way to keep Cassandra and Quinn out of it.”
“So Quinn’s not welcome there, either?” Griggs asked.
“Oh, Quinn’s a member. But one of the terms of his membership was that he would not run for the board.”
“The community blackmailed him, in other words,” Gina said.
Was she defending him, bristling on his behalf?
“That’s such a nasty word,” Marla said. “You know how it works, Gina. The club is no different from the Ladies Junior League, or my church board, come to think of it.”
“I know,” Gina said. “Get three people in a room, sooner or later, two of them will gang up on the third . . . But nothing else? No other gossip recently?”
“Oh, there’s always gossip. This couple broke up, somebody posted a snide comment on the discussion group, this person is now seeing that person . . . but nothing serious.”
“Are you sure?” Hanson asked. “You told us you didn’t know anyone named Cherry.”
Marla looked back at Hanson cautiously, shifted in her seat, and looked down at the Georgia O’Keeffe book on the coffee table.
“I remember a newbie named Cherry a couple of years ago,” Gina said. “Pretty, red-haired girl. The one who listed Quinn as her only limit.”
“She’s got nothing to do with this!” Marla said. “Honestly, you can’t think she’s involved in some way!”
“We don’t know anything at this point,” Hanson told her. “But we need to talk to her. Why was she leaving messages for your husband?”
Marla heaved a deep breath and looked at Gina.
“Roger and I had her under protection. She’s a very dear girl.”
“Protection?” Griggs asked. “From what?”
“It’s a BDSM status thing,” Gina explained. “A dominant will place someone under his or her ‘protection’—usually a newbie or an unattached submissive—just to help fend off unwanted attention.”
“Sort of like a big brother?” Hanson asked.
“Exactly. A sub will have ‘under the protection of so-and-so’ in his or her profile. That lets other dominants know they have to go through the protector if they want to talk to the sub.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Marla said. “Cherry was having a hard time with this dom she met online—”
“What exactly do you mean, ‘a hard time’?” Gina asked.
“They had been talking for a while,” Marla said. “Just online. She was crazy about him, said he sounded wonderful.”
“Until she met him face to face,” Gina said.
“You know how it is.” Marla sighed. “There are a lot of creeps out there, and unfortunately, this guy turned out to be one of them.”
“Was he married or something?” Griggs asked. “Or are we talking about a
serious
creep?”
“Serious creep.” Marla paused. “He violated her safeword.”
“She said stop and he didn’t, you mean?” Hanson asked.
Marla nodded. “He raped her.”
“I think you’d better tell us how to get in touch with her,” Gina said.
Chapter 21
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
—W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE
,
Sonnet 57
 
 
 
 
A
fter Cherry moved into the lake house, she left it only to go to work. She was glad it was summer, so that she could get back to the little house at the end of the long graveled road before darkness settled in.
The lake house was so quiet; it seemed like some other planet. There was no traffic noise, no stereos playing too loudly, no car doors slamming. She was used to living in apartments with walls so thin she could hear her neighbors’ phone ring, hear the kids next door screeching with laughter, and the Chihuahua over her head that barked and barked and barked.
She had hated the sound of that ugly little dog. Now she missed his noise.
Yap, yap, yap
meant everything was just as it should be.
But here at Marla’s lake house, there was nothing but the occasional click of the HVAC unit coming to life. Even that noise, so pathetically small, was loud enough in the silence to make her jump. She had tried leaving the radio or television on, but then she was afraid of not hearing the sounds she kept listening for: tires crunching the gravel drive, the rattle of a locked door, or the sound of breaking glass.
The first night she had taken a beer out onto the deck, thinking it would be comforting to hear the cicadas drone as she stared out at the water. But the lake was an enormous swath of black with a silver swizzle of reflected moon, and the lights on the more thickly inhabited opposite shore seemed a million miles away. She felt too lonely and too exposed; she went back into the house and checked all the doors one more time.
The very first night there had been a metallic banging on the roof that sent her diving into a closet. Her hands were shaking so badly that it took several tries before she managed to dial Marla’s number on her cell phone.
“It’s the fireplace damper,” Marla assured her. “It does that whenever the wind kicks up.”
“I can’t sleep,” Cherry said. “Either I can’t go to sleep, or I wake up from a bad dream and can’t get back to sleep.”
“Check the medicine cabinet in the master bath. I think there’s some of Roger’s Ambien. That should help.”
The Ambien was there, all right, but Cherry was afraid to take it. What if he broke in and she didn’t wake up?
That was the dream that drenched her in sweat every night. The dream of waking up in the dead black of night, unable to see anything. But hearing his breathing, feeling his weight pressing down on her . . . his hands squeezing tight around her throat . . .
Hard fists, hitting her again and again.
On the third night, she’d heard a heavy thud outside at the back of the house. She could see nothing moving outside the bedroom window. Then she heard it again, a rustling of dry leaves and another thud.
She ran on bare feet to the living room and grabbed the iron poker from the hearth. Holding it to her chest, she padded to the kitchen. She had to stand on tiptoe to peer through the blinds over the sink.
Later, she would wonder why she’d done that. That was what stupid people did in horror movies: they heard a noise and went to investigate. But she understood, now, why they did it.
People were accustomed to a lifetime of safety, of things that made sense. When something went bump in the night, threatening the usual order of things, they went not to find something, but to find nothing. They went to prove to themselves that there was no burglar, no peeping tom in the bushes, no psycho with a chainsaw. Because how else could you go on to the next moment, and the next, without knowing for certain? Not looking would leave you permanently paralyzed, afraid to take even one more breath.
Even now, afraid as she was, some part of her believed nothing was out there. There couldn’t be. Things like this just didn’t happen, and she
needed
to know it wasn’t happening now. If she didn’t prove to herself that nothing was out there, she would start screaming and never stop.
A shadow moved around the corner of the house. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, could only stare into the darkness.
Was he out there? How had he found her?
Then the automatic light came on, flooding the backyard with glaring brightness. A large possum raised his head, his eyes catching red in the light, then resumed his pillaging through the overturned garbage cans.
Gunther wasn’t helping. He didn’t like the new surroundings and prowled from room to room, yowling.
But after the third day, she couldn’t go back to work.
She had thought she was safe at the office. No one could get past the security desk on the first floor without a badge.
Then the switchboard had buzzed her desk.
“You have a delivery up front,” the receptionist said.
“Is it your birthday?” Al, the security guard, asked as she neared the front desk.
A dozen red blooms in a vase, tied with a large bow, sat waiting. Their scent was overwhelming, sickeningly sweet. She saw the red roses and could only think:
Red means stop . . . red means stop.
“No,” she said dully. “It’s not my birthday.”
She reached for the card.
“Mine”
was all it said.
“Wait, you don’t want these?” Al called after her.
“No, keep them. Throw them away. I don’t care!”
How had he found out where she worked? He hadn’t even known her real name, yet he’d found out where she lived and then where she had moved. Now he’d tracked her to work.
She made up a lie for her supervisor, a bad one about a forgotten dentist’s appointment.
She drove around for an hour, watching her rearview mirror rather than the road ahead of her until she narrowly missed rear-ending the Hyundai in front of her.
When a white car followed her through three traffic lights, she made a left. When the white car continued straight, she began to cry in sheer relief.
Finally she passed a police station. She pulled into the parking lot and sat there for half an hour.
What are you going to tell them
? a voice in her head asked.
That you found him online, told him you wanted to be his slave, that you wanted to be used for his pleasure . . . And then you met this stranger at a hotel and changed your mind?
You don’t even know his real name.
She started the car and drove back to the little house at the lake. She didn’t leave it again.
On Thursday, her supervisor had called and said that if she didn’t come back to work the next day, she would be fired.
She no longer cared. Even in broad daylight, she couldn’t bring herself to step farther than the welcome mat.
It was those damned bushes, she thought. The big ones on either side of the front porch. She couldn’t see beyond them. She could only imagine
him,
waiting there for her to come outside.
Then last night she’d fallen asleep in front of the television, a half-eaten Lean Cuisine on a tray in front of her.
She woke up to find Gunther licking the congealed chicken Parmesan while the ten o’clock news rolled.
“Police have identified the owner of the house as Cassandra Lee,” Cynthia Jenkins told the camera. “The other victim’s identity is being withheld pending notification of the next of kin.”
Cherry stared.
“Lee made local news in 2007, when the adult club she operated was closed down by Metro police,” the anchor continued. “Police will not confirm whether her death was related to the previous charges of prostitution.”
The scene switched to a balding man with a red-cheeked face. The caption underneath read “Chief Milton Daubs.”
“We do
not
believe her death had
anything
to do with her illegal activities,” the man said. “At this time, it
appears
that she is merely another
random
victim of the same person or persons responsible for two other
vicious
killings—”
Two photos flashed on the screen: Roger Banks and Robyn Macy.
Cherry began to sob.
Cherry’s real name was actually Cheryl Ann Gavin.
“But everybody calls me Cherry,” she said. “Even my parents.”
“When was the first time you communicated with him?” Gina asked.
The big leather chair seemed to swallow the girl. The circles under her eyes were so dark they looked bruised, and she twisted her hands as she spoke.
“He messaged me on Collarme.com. I guess it was about two months ago.”
“And the name he used was Kerberos?”
Hanson had decided to let Gina take the lead; Cherry was obviously more comfortable talking to her.
“Yes. He never told me his real name, and I never pushed him. I mean, I didn’t want to tell him my real name, either—”
Cherry broke off and shook her finger at the cat, who was climbing onto Griggs’s lap.
“Gunther, don’t bother him! Get down!”
Hanson watched with amusement as the cat settled comfortably in the crook of his partner’s arm.
“It’s okay,” Griggs said, rubbing the cat’s belly. He caught the look on Hanson’s face and scowled. “I happen to like . . . cats.”
Hanson knew he’d been about to say
pussy
.
“But you talked a lot after that?” Gina asked the girl.
“Every day. Sometimes two or three times a day. Real letters, not just little messages. That was what I liked so much about him. We really talked.”
“About what?”
She shrugged.
“Everything. What kinds of movies we liked, our favorite foods, what music we listened to . . .”
“And you talked about your fantasies.” Gina looked into Cherry’s face. “Right?”
“Yes. I feel so stupid.”
Cherry blushed. Hanson hadn’t actually seen a woman blush in years.
“Don’t,” Gina said softly. “We all need to share ourselves with someone.”
Again, Gina was the gentle friend, almost motherly. Not someone you could imagine shattering a coworker’s kneecap. Hanson had to remind himself to focus on Cherry’s reactions, not Gina’s.
“For so long, I thought something was wrong with me, you know?” She brushed her copper hair from her eyes. “I thought, How could I want these awful things? I’m not from a broken home, my dad didn’t molest me, and my mom didn’t beat me with coat hangers.”
“Me, either.” Gina smiled. “But we can’t control the things that turn us on. No one knows why some of us are aroused by bondage, or pain, or licking someone’s shoes. We’re just wired this way.”
Griggs shot a look at Hanson and rolled his eyes.
“I know that now. Or I thought I did. It really helped when I found the local community, you know? I went to the first munch scared to death, and then I met all these people who looked so . . . well, normal.”
“Have you had other doms? Even as casual play partners?” Gina asked.
“A few. I was never collared, though. I played mostly with people at the club. I thought it was safer that way, with other people around.”
“Did you ever meet anybody else the way you met Kerberos?”

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