Chapter 32
Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.
—H
ONORÉ DE
B
ALZAC
T
he van, now sitting in the impound lot, was registered in the name of Barnard Wesley.
“Looks like we’re driving to Chattanooga,” Hanson said.
Griggs groaned. “Can we at least stop for coffee on the way?”
What they found at Barnard Wesley’s address in Chattanooga was a retired sixty-seven-year-old black man who had, until eight years ago, run his own HVAC service.
Barnard was a talker.
“Arthritis got so bad, I had to sell the business and retire,” Barnard told them. “Couldn’t hardly even hold a pair of pliers anymore.”
Barnard held out his hands to display joints that looked like walnuts.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Hanson said. “Did you sell the van, too?”
“Lord have mercy, no! What I mean is, I had two vans then—the other one was a pretty thing, only five years old with a real nice logo on the sides.
“I sold
that
one, even though the fella only offered me fifteen hundred for it. I shoulda held out for more, but he was buying the rest of the stuff so I figured—”
“The other van?” Griggs interrupted. “That’s the one we’re interested in.”
“That one wasn’t even running—it needed a new radiator—and I just couldn’t see any point in putting more money into it at the time, you see.”
The van in question sat in his driveway for three years until his seventeen-year-old grandson fixed it.
“That boy is good with anything mechanical.” Barnard beamed proudly. “He gets that from me, I guess. It just skipped a generation,’cause his daddy, Devon, my youngest boy, can’t even change a fuse without hurtin’ hisself.”
“The van, Mr. Wesley. Did you sell it then?”
“Oh, no. Not
then
. I told my grandson if he could get it running, he could drive it. You know how kids is, they gotta have wheels to get around in—”
“Mr. Wesley, we just need to know when the van left your possession,” Hanson said.
“Let me think.” Barnard scratched his ear. “Petey was still driving it until he left for college, that must have been three years ago.
“Dang thing sat in my driveway for another couple of years,” he continued. “I wanted to hang on to it, you know, for hauling stuff, but my wife just kept on about how it made the house look trashy, having that van rusting away out there.”
“So the wife finally made you get rid of it,” Griggs said. “Who’d you sell it to?”
“Shoot, I don’t remember his name,” Barnard said, waving a hand. “I just put an ad in the
Penny Saver
. Them classified ads in the regular paper, Lord have mercy, they sure are expensive! Highway robbery, if you ask me.”
“When was this?”
“It was a couple of months ago, back in May. I just planted my tomatoes, you see—”
“You don’t have the man’s name, maybe written down somewhere?”
“Now why would I write it down?” Barnard scowled at Hanson. “It ain’t like I was giving him no warranty or something.
“This fella gave me a hundred dollars in cash and I gave him the keys and the registration. I told him he was gonna have to transfer the title to get a new tag, ’cause the one on the van expired two years back. It ain’t my fault if he didn’t do right.”
“Do you remember anything about him?” Hanson fought the urge to bang his head against something.
“Cain’t rightly recall nothing. Average fella, I guess.”
“Mr. Average,” Griggs muttered. “That’s just great.”
“Age? Hair color? Anything at all? What was he wearing?”
“I couldn’t see his hair, ’cause he was wearing a ball cap. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t that old, either.”
“Christ,” Griggs breathed, getting up from the table.
“No need to take the Lord’s name in vain,” Barnard said, bristling. “I’d sure like to help you, if this fella is doing bad with my old van, but he just wasn’t nothing special to remember.”
They thanked him for his time and turned down the offer of his wife’s icebox lemon pie for the second time.
Back in the car, Griggs called in and had them run a search through tickets for expired tags. Twenty minutes later, his phone rang with the bad news.
“If I drove two days with expired tags, I’d get a freakin’ ticket,” Griggs muttered. “Mr. Average Psycho drives around two months with expired tags on a POS, nobody pulls him over. Christ!”
This time it was Hanson’s phone that vibrated. It was Fortner at CSU, and Hanson put her on speaker so Griggs could hear as well.
“Tell me you love me,” she said. “Tell me I’m the most amazing, beautiful, talented CSU you have ever known—”
Griggs hooted.
“You are all that and more,” Hanson said. “What have you got?”
“One big juicy fingerprint—”
“On the van?”
“No, the van is so clean it’s spooky. Your perp is being really careful about wearing gloves.”
“So where did you find—”
“At the cat house. On the laundry hamper in the bathroom.”
“Seriously?” Griggs asked.
“I thought he might be a panty-sniffer,” Fortner said. “He’d want to touch those with his own hands.”
“Bastard was too excited to be careful.”
“We’re running it through AFIS now,” Fortner said. “I’ll call you if we get a hit.”
“I owe you a drink for this.”
“Drink, hell! You owe me a bottle of nice wine. Something with a cork.”
Chapter 33
They also serve who only stand and wait.
—J
OHN
M
ILTON
I
t was three in the afternoon, and Griggs and Hanson were back in the office under the pretense of catching up on paperwork. In reality, they were waiting for a hit on that fingerprint.
It was stupid, and they knew it. It could take days for a print to run through all the channels, and a match in AFIS wasn’t guaranteed.
“Come on,” Griggs said. “You know a guy who’d kill a cat must have some kinda jacket. No way he’s kept it clean until now.”
Gina insisted on keeping a regular appointment—one that had been penciled in on her day-planner.
“I’m not letting you go alone,” Hanson insisted. “We’ll just tail you, whether you want us to or not.”
She agreed to let Griggs lurk in the hallway outside the front door, while Hanson sat in the tiny kitchenette, separated from the main space by a counter with shutters. The door to the fire escape, beside the refrigerator, had three deadbolts, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Gina’s dungeon was spacious, but the big windows along one wall were painted over, then covered in thick wine-colored drapes, until no natural light entered. There was little conventional furniture: a mostly empty bookcase with a few bits of erotic sculpture, including a crystal phallus; a chair; a large plush rug over the hardwood floor; and a table on which stood a row of candles.
The first thing that caught Hanson’s eye, though, was a huge painting, maybe six or seven feet tall and at least five feet wide.
“It’s beautiful,” he said.
The painting showed a woman hanging upside down from a tree in a complicated harness of rope. The sky behind her was nearly black but for swirling snowflakes, and snow was mounded on the ground beneath the tree and on its branches. The woman had the rapturous expression of an early saint.
He was just glad there were no photographs.
But the rest of it looked like the things he’d seen at the Inferno. A St. Andrew’s cross; a padded table hanging by chains from the exposed metal beams of the ceiling; a spanking bench. There was even a rolling, multi-drawer toolbox, like a mechanic would have in his garage, which he could only assume was filled with toys.
“Isn’t that . . . ?” He nodded to the far corner, suddenly feeling uneasy.
“A modified electric chair?” She smiled. “Yes, it is.”
There was also a small bed with a scrolled brass headboard, already draped in chains and cuffs.
“Maybe it’s better that you came,” Gina said. “I know you’re dying to know just what it is I do here, and we might as well get it over with.”
She allowed him to help her dress in clothes from a large armoire. He laced her into a black and red leather corset, and felt his dick twitch as her breasts were pushed up into that stunning cleavage.
“This looks really uncomfortable.” He tugged the laces tighter. “How can you do anything in this?”
He was trying to ignore that she wore nothing else except a tiny black thong, garters, black-seamed stockings, and four-inch stilettos.
“This is what a paying client expects. Stereotypical, I know, but part of what they are paying for is the fantasy. It’s not really submission, to me, when they’re paying for it.”
He suddenly noticed that her throat was bare.
“You’re not wearing your medallion.”
“No.” She leaned in and kissed him hard on the mouth. “Maybe you can buy me another one sometime.”
The recessed lights around the room were on a dimmer switch, and she turned it down until they barely glowed. She lit a row of candles, then went to a mini-stereo system in the bookcase and switched it on.
Deep throbbing music—instrumental, full of soft drumbeats and chimes—came from speakers around the room.
“You make a sound, or you stick so much as your nose out of those shutters, I swear to God, I’ll hurt you.”
“Promises, promises.” He grinned.
She glared.
He made a zipping motion over his mouth. At that moment, he meant to keep his promise.
But later, he did look. He couldn’t stop himself.
When she opened the door, it wasn’t some balding, paunchy old guy, but the same multi-pierced man-child who had approached her at the Inferno.
Jason: that was his name. Did he really want to see this?
Want to? No, he told himself. He didn’t want to. But he had to.
“Get undressed,” she said.
She turned her back to Jason and walked to the lone chair.
She turned again, sat down, and crossed those long, long legs. Wordlessly, without any expression, she watched him take his clothes off until he stood naked in front of her.
“On your knees, boy. Get on your knees and crawl to me.”
Her voice was low, firm, and oddly detached. From the moment Jason entered the room, some other woman had taken over Gina’s body. Similar, yes, but colder. Crueler, even, though she hadn’t touched him yet.
Jason crawled the ten feet without once looking up at her. When he reached her feet, he knelt there, motionless, his forehead pressed to the floor.
“My boots are dirty.”
He put his mouth to the toe of one boot and began to lick them. Not timidly, but enthusiastically, with long wet swipes of his tongue.
“Enough.” She stood up.
He remained crouched on all fours until she snapped her fingers. Then he shot bolt upright, still on his knees with his hands clasped behind him. He still did not look her in the face, but kept the unfocused gaze of a soldier at attention.
And he stayed that way as Gina slowly walked around him. Once. Then twice.
When she was behind him once more, she grabbed his hair and pulled him backward.
She smiled down at him, but it was not a kind expression.
“Do you think you deserve to serve me, boy? Do you think you have earned the right to call me Mistress?”
Hanson saw him struggle with the strained position, saw the pulse beating in his throat as he swallowed.
“No, ma’am,” he whispered. “This boy is worthy of nothing until my lady says it is so.”
“Damned right.” She gave his head a shake. “I am still considering whether an infant like you could ever be worthy to serve me.”
She let go of his hair, pushing him forward hard enough that only his quick hands kept him from hitting the floor face first.
“You were exceptionally rude and disobedient when you saw me last.” She placed one foot on his bare ass cheeks and pressed the stiletto heel into his flesh. “I should simply send you away now as punishment.”
At this, he raised his head and almost looked around at her, but she pushed harder.
“Down!”
He dropped his head to the floor, but his voice trembled.
“Please, my lady. Have mercy on this boy.”
“Stand up.”
He got to his feet and stood at attention, hands again clasped behind his back.
He was slender but athletically built. Hanson guessed early twenties. A college student, perhaps? One of the rich frat boys from the university? Maybe Dad’s credit card was paying for this session.
Hanson noticed, then, that his nipples were not the only things pierced. A stud of some kind glinted from his limp cock.
She reached both hands around him, found both nipple rings, and tugged upward.
He strained, rising up on his toes, as a strangled sound came from his lips.
She let go and stepped back, circling him again.
“You know where to go.”
He walked quickly to the cross and pressed himself, face first, against it. His hands reached up to grasp a rope woven around the upper arms of the X.
Gina ran a hand along his back, a long sensual trailing of fingertips, and Hanson saw him shiver.
She went to a rack on the wall and selected a small black instrument, the size and shape of a ruler, maybe a little longer.
“Spread your legs, boy. Wider.”
When she brought the instrument down on his ass, it made a loud slapping sound.
Jason inhaled quickly, but made no sound.
He remained still and silent, until about twenty licks in. Gina began to swing wider, harder, and faster, moving the impact around his butt cheeks until they glowed red from waist to thighs.
God, she was beautiful to watch. She moved smoothly and precisely, a look on her face that was impossible to read. Her hair bounced around her shoulders with each stroke.
Hanson knew she was hitting harder because Jason began to twist up on his toes again, his hands flexing convulsively on the rope. When Hanson got a glimpse of the boy’s face, his lips were pressed together in a tight line of pain.
She thrust the slapper between his thighs and brought it up against his exposed balls. Little more than taps at first, but faster and faster until he cried out.
She threw the slapper to the floor and leaned against him.
She bit him hard on the shoulder and he moaned.
“Get on the table, boy,” she whispered in his ear. “On your back.”
“Yes, Lady.”
He scrambled onto the table, breathing heavily. Knees bent, he let his thighs fall open, as his hands curled onto the sides of the table.
Gina reached between his legs and grabbed his cock in one hand, while the other reached up to the line of small metal clothespins clipped to the supporting chain.
One by one, she attached ten of them all over his cock and balls, until his crotch looked like a porcupine had nested there. With each addition, Jason sucked in his breath and pressed his lips together.
Damn.
Hanson fought the urge to clamp his own legs together. But then he had an image of Gina’s tits, bitten by tiny clothespin teeth, and felt his cock stiffen.
She surveyed her work with a pleased little smile and then flicked one of the clothespins, making it bob. Jason gasped again.
She laughed—a full, throaty sound. Some of her reserve seemed to fall away as she flicked again, nearly giggling like a child with a new toy.
She climbed onto the table and positioned her cunt directly above his face, holding on to the support chains.
Her cunt, separated from his mouth and nose by only the thinnest slip of satin, came down on him, letting her full weight rest over his face. It took a moment before Hanson realized she wasn’t inviting him to eat her pussy, she was
smothering
him.
She raised her crotch an inch or so, and Jason wheezed.
“Do you smell my cunt, boy?” she asked silkily. “My hot, wet pussy? I bet you’d like to taste it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes—” Jason began, but she pressed herself down on him again.
At the same time, she reached for one of the pins and yanked it away.
His scream was only a little muffled with Gina sitting on his face. His legs jerked and his body spasmed.
Her smile was gleeful, and Hanson found it both fascinating and a little frightening, how much she was enjoying this.
Again and again, she lowered herself and removed a pin. Again and again, Jason screamed into her cunt.
When only two pins remained, she ground her snatch into his face, dry-humping him. She was breathing heavily, and Hanson realized that she was about to cum.
“Do you like this?” she panted. “Do you like me humping your face?”
Jason began to thrash, his hands beating frantically on the table, but making no move to push her off.
He can’t breathe, Hanson thought, feeling a touch of panic. Gina seemed lost, intent on her own pleasure; had she lost track of how long he’d gone without air?
She ground wildly, hips jutting, and reached for the last two pins. As she ripped them both from his balls, she threw her head back and came.
“Oh, fuck
yes
!”
Jason made horrible strangling sounds, his body arching until only his heels and head were still touching the table.
Then she was grabbing the chains, lifting herself off of him.
He lay there coughing, gasping. His face was wet with her juices.
She leaned over the table, looking down into his face, and stroked his matted hair.
“That’s a good boy,” she whispered.
Incredibly, he smiled up at her, meeting her eyes for the first time.
“May I, Lady?”
“Yes, you may.”
He was a little unsteady on his feet, and she led him back toward the chair, picking up a large cushion along the way.