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Authors: Kate Kinsey

BOOK: Red
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Bad went to worse when two new—and obviously professional—photos of the “Dominatrix Detective” appeared in national magazines.
The first photo, in a supermarket tabloid, was a portrait: a tasteful black-and-white of Gina in a black leather corset and a long velvet skirt. She just happened to be holding a riding crop, looking like every naughty boy’s wet dream. She stood in front of a weathered stone wall, staring straight into the camera with the slightest twist of her lips.
The second photo showed up in
Playboy
. It, too, was black-and-white, photographed from the side. It showed Gina on her knees with her hands wrapped in chains. She was nude, but only the side swell of one breast was visible, along with the line of her back curving into a lovely ass, the graceful profile with eyes closed and long curls spilling over her shoulders and back.
When those photos hit the stands, a church group began protesting outside the station, demanding that Jezebel be thrown to the dogs.
Hanson bought copies of both magazines, tearing out the photos and taping them up on his living room wall. Then he got the bottle of Jack Daniel’s out from under the sink and drank until he began to talk to her images, then to shout, and finally to cry.
He woke the next morning, hung-over and eyes raw, and found the photos torn into pieces, strewn over the carpet like confetti.
When he reported for duty, the lieutenant called him into his office.
“You look like shit, Hanson.”
“I think I’ve got a touch of the flu,” Hanson mumbled.
“Sure you do.” The lieu sighed. “You should know, she’s gone.”
“Gone?” Hanson blinked at him.
“She turned in her gun and her badge yesterday. She’s gone and I still need you. So pull your shit together.”
Hanson nodded, numbly, his head pounding.
“Don’t do anything stupid.” The lieu put a fatherly hand on his shoulder as he opened the door for him. “You’re gonna have a rough time distancing yourself from this mess as it is.”
Hanson thought that the lieutenant needn’t have bothered with the warning. For nearly a year, the thought of Gina made him sick to his stomach, so he pushed those thoughts into a small dark corner.
For the next year, he couldn’t stop thinking about her, or what a shit he’d been. She had been his partner, and he hadn’t had her back.
Hanson wasn’t looking forward to staring into those eyes again. He had no idea what she would say to him, if she would even talk to him.
But he had to see her now. She was the only person he knew who could answer the questions bouncing around in his brain. Gina Larsen could be the difference between stopping a killer or seeing another body in the morgue.
Or was all that just an excuse to see her again?
Chapter 15
There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.
—M
ARQUIS DE
S
ADE
 
 
 
 
G
ina still lived in the little bungalow over on the East Side. The neighborhood had become trendy, full of vegans and artists who recycled. Hanson had driven by dozens of times, telling himself he was only curious about the renovations. They had never moved in together—that had been impossible because of the job, even if they’d wanted to—but he had enjoyed helping her transform the old house.
He was spared having to knock on the door. She was on her knees in the front yard, planting orange flowers along the stone path they’d laid one hot summer Sunday. For a moment, he could only stare at her back, wondering what in the hell he should say.
“Hey, Gee.”
She twisted to look up at him, squinting in the sun.
Her lips tightened, their fullness pulled taut. She turned back to the flowers.
“Place is looking good.” He felt like the biggest idiot in the world. “I like the yellow molding. It’s nice.”
“It’s not yellow.” She shoved the trowel into the dirt again. “It’s ochre.”
Hanson hunkered down, elbows on his knees, and picked up one of the waiting flowers and offered it to her.
“Don’t touch my fucking zinnias.” There was no anger in her voice, just a dead flatness that made his chest ache.
He set the little pot back on the ground.
“I know you aren’t exactly happy to see me.”
She snorted, grabbing up the plant he’d just offered her.
“Why are you here?” She yanked the flower out of its pot.
“To apologize, for starters—”
“Sorry. Two years too late. Try again.”
“Okay.” Christ, he thought; she wasn’t going to make this easy. “I’ve got a case I need to ask you about.”
She slammed the plant into the hole and began scooping dirt over the roots.
“They crucified me,” Gina said flatly. “And you just stood by and watched.”
He considered a dozen lies, all pathetic, and shoved his hands into his pockets. He watched as she began digging another hole, stabbing the rich black dirt.
“You said you didn’t want an apology.”
“I said it was too late for one. Not the same thing.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t handle it well.”
“You didn’t handle it at all. You turned tail and ran.”
She shoved the trowel into the dirt and stood up, meeting his gaze for the first time. The morning light fell across her incredible eyes and made the wisps of hair escaping from her ponytail glow red.
Looking at her made it hard to think, hard to breathe. The desire to draw her close and bury his face in her hair rushed over him.
“I didn’t know what else to do—”
“You were afraid they’d think you were some kind of freak. Just like me.”
She turned her back to him and walked toward the house.
He had spent much of the last two years wondering why her arrest had surprised—and hurt and disgusted—him so.
Their partnership had quickly developed into a genuine friendship. Eventually they talked about the people they dated, and even the occasional one-night stands, though their jobs left little time or energy for a personal life.
There had been nothing coy or flirtatious in her conversation when they spoke about sex; he had been cautious at first—the department had regular in-services about sexual harassment—but she talked about sex like a man, with a matter-of-fact nonchalance, though without the embellishment and posturing a man would feel compelled to add.
Shots had been fired during the takedown of a meth dealer who’d killed a couple of rivals. Afterward, they had gone out for drinks, to celebrate being alive and unscathed, and the adrenaline rush had made them both horny and a little stupid.
They had ended up in her bed, and the flicker of attraction he’d always felt for her flamed into a conflagration that threatened to devour him.
She liked it rough; she liked him to call her names while he held her down. She bit and scratched, urging him on with the kind of dirty talk he’d only dreamed of hearing from a woman’s mouth.
They spent the next couple of years fucking like wildfire. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Passionate, adventurous, she was the most uninhibited woman he’d ever known, the kind of woman men wrote letters to
Penthouse
about. She was always pushing him further down paths he’d never dared before.
On a trip to Macy’s, she pulled him into the dressing room to watch her masturbate in the triple mirrors. Afterward, she had gotten on her knees and sucked his cock until he had to bite his hand not to cry out.
She took him to a swing club, where he watched her eat the pussy of a sexy blond trophy wife while Hanson and the woman’s husband beat off, shooting cum all over their asses and tits.
She had shown him how to tie her up, and then convinced him to switch places. He had liked it. He had liked it a lot.
But then one night, when his cock was deep inside her, her hips grinding and her nails raking down his back, he’d looked down at her. Her eyes had gone emerald green, slightly glazed with that lost look of someone gone so deep she couldn’t say—even remember—her own name.
“Hit me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, desperate. “Please, please . . . Hit me.”
His cock had gone soft, shriveling until it fell out of her.
Hanson had known three things at that moment: that he loved her beyond reason; that he could never give her what she really wanted; and that their relationship was over. There had to be something wrong with her for wanting. . . well, what she wanted.
She had seen it in his eyes, just as he saw the flicker of disappointment in hers. And there was something else there, a hint of pain and shame, even as she tried to explain it to him.
“Erotic pain turns me on,” she had said, shrugging. “I don’t think anything is wrong with that, if I’m asking for it from a consensual partner.”
But he was already putting on his clothes.
“I don’t think I’m that consensual,” he’d said. “I just . . . can’t.”
“You know me, Hanson.” She gave a laugh that sounded forced. “You know damned well I’m not a doormat looking for abuse. I know who and what I am, and I don’t take shit off anybody. I’m not crazy. This is just the way I’m wired.”
Hanson didn’t think he was a prude. He liked it when she pretended to resist, liked the rush of testosterone that flooded his cock when he held her down and felt her body writhing under his. He could deal with the rope and the spanking, even a timid slap or two.
But she wanted more, and he couldn’t give it to her. He felt dirty and confused by the fact that she asked for it, and that some part of him hated himself for not being able to give it to her.
And now she was walking away from him, across the newly mown grass, without so much as a backward glance.
“I know I fucked up,” he said, following her up the front steps. “Scream at me, hell, take a swing at me if you want. But I need to talk to you.”
“I can’t think of one damned thing I could possibly need to talk to you about.” She stopped on the top step and faced him. “Get off my porch and go home to whatever little ’nilla wafer you’re screwing these days—”
“Gee, we got a serial killer.”
“Lucky you. I’m not a cop anymore, remember?”
“Do you still wear that little silver medallion? The one with that symbol on it?”
She stopped and stared at him.
“Yeah. So?” Her eyes were dark with suspicion.
“Can I see it?”
She frowned, but reached into her T-shirt and pulled out a shiny chain. The silver medallion swung back and forth.
“We’ve got two victims. Both had that symbol on them.”
She stood there a moment, her eyes drifting past him to the street beyond before closing as she sighed deeply.
“Ah, shit.”
Chapter 16
The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
—K
ARL
M
ARX
 
 
 
 
S
he handed him a beer and sat down on the sofa, leaning over to get a better look at the photos on the coffee table.
“Jesus. I heard about these on the news, but
fuck
.”
“Yeah, I know. Worst I’ve ever seen. In person, at least.”
Hanson pulled the photos of Roger’s key chain and Robyn’s tattoo from the pile.
“We’ve got nothing, no leads going anywhere at all. The vics didn’t seem to have any common ground, it was looking totally random—”
“Until you put these together.” She nodded. “It’s the BDSM emblem. Just like the one I wear.”
Gina had worn that medallion for years. He’d asked her once what it was. She just said the necklace had been a gift from a friend.
“BDSM?”
“We perverts call it BDSM,” she said wryly. “What you vanillas call S&M.”
“I get the S and M part. What’s the B and D stand for?”
“Christ.” She sighed, taking a long pull of her own beer. “You should have let me teach you all this stuff years ago, and I wouldn’t have to go through Kink one-oh-one now.”
He took a gulp of beer to hide his discomfort at the dig.
“So tell me now.”
“BDSM. Bondage. Discipline. Some say the D and the S stand for dominance and submission. The S and M, that’s sadomasochism. It’s a blanket acronym that covers a whole range of kink. Perversions to you.”
Another dig, Hanson thought. But at least she was talking to him.
“And you—the people who do this stuff?—call it BDSM?”
“Yep.” She was studying the photos of Roger Banks. “Some people call it the Lifestyle, or the Leather Lifestyle, just to differentiate it from the swingers who also call what
they
do ‘the Lifestyle.’ Some people just call it kink, or fetish, or WIITWD.”
“WI—What the hell does that stand for?”
“What It Is That We Do.” Gina laughed, then sobered. “Jesus, I can’t get over these pictures. So much blood. CSU must have shit themselves.”
“So the symbol—”
“The emblem,” she corrected, now studying the photo of Robyn Macy. “Some people wear American flags, ribbons, peace signs . . . We wear this.”
She waved a photo of Robyn Macy’s tattoo in the air.
“Nice tat. New, too. Still a little inflamed.”
“She got it two days before she was killed.”
“You find the shop?”
They had fallen back into the old routine, almost as if no time had passed. Hanson was sure it was a cop thing, being able to drop personal baggage and focus on the case.
“Yeah, little place called Ace’s Ink. The artist’s name, a girl—shit, I got it written down somewhere—”
“April something?”
“Yeah,” he said, surprised. “You know her?”
“I know her work. She does a lot of the local community’s ink.”
“So she would know exactly what this symbol means, right? I thought she knew more than she was telling.”
“Like she’s gonna tell you,” Gee snorted.
“So it’s some big secret? This emblem?”
Gina shrugged.
“Not secret so much as . . . discreet. Like an inside joke. I’m sure Roger Banks didn’t want his wife to know about his kinky proclivities.”
“I think the wife knows. The day he was killed, she and her husband had a quickie down at the Purple Onion.”
“Glory-holing?” Gina smiled a little. “Go, Roger, you perverted bastard . . .”
“But you don’t know either of them?”
Gina glared at him over the top of her bottle, taking a swig before she answered.
“We don’t all know each other. It’s not like we register for a license or something. Some people never come out to the clubs or parties—”
“But the ones who come out to play, most of them know each other? Right?”
“Most of them. Some people lose interest, drop out for a while, maybe they come back. New people come in. But basically, it’s a small population.”
“So, if you didn’t know Roger or Robyn, they were probably not into the local community, right?”
Gina shrugged again.
“I’m not exactly in with the cool kids anymore. They could be new, I wouldn’t know.”
“You mean, you’re not—into it—anymore?”
He was afraid she’d see the hope reach his eyes.
“You and the department weren’t the only ones who abandoned me.” Her face tightened once more. “After I was busted, I was not made to feel particularly welcome there.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re in the buckle of the fuckin’ Bible Belt, Hanson! In New York, California—not so much of a big deal. But around here? Most people are scared shitless that their family or their neighbors or their bosses will find out what they’re into. Some of them are professionals who could lose their licenses over something like that coming out. Some could lose custody of their kids. And some are just plain assholes who think they’re a lot more important than they are.”
She took another sip of beer.
“So here I am, with my name and face all over the place as the Disgraced Dominatrix Detective, reporters all over me, people recognizing me—friends in the lifestyle didn’t want me anywhere
near
them.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at the photos so he didn’t have to look at her. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course not. You never bothered to find out. This case is the only reason I even let you in my house.”
They sipped their beers in silence.
“You want to know about the case, then?” Hanson said finally.
Hanson talked, and she asked a few questions. He realized then that the real injustice was that Gina was and always would be a cop at heart. He could see just how much she’d missed the job.
She paused over one photo in particular.
“You gotta be kidding me.”
She turned the photo around toward Hanson. It was the shot of the dresser in Robyn Macy’s motel room, showing the empty Coke cans and the cookie wrappers.
Then she picked up another photo—this one of the rope—and held it up alongside the first.
“I think I know who Robyn Macy was with.”
“You said you didn’t know her.”
“I don’t. But I know the Oreos and the rope.”
“I’m not following.”
“Don’t pout. You didn’t miss anything. But I know—used to know—a guy who always gave his good little girls Oreo cookies after playtime. And he had this thing about storing his rope braided this way. Separately, could be coincidence. But together, I’d bet it’s the same guy.”
“Don’t tell me. Did he give you cookies, too?”
Gina looked at him, as if trying to decide whether he was being an asshole. She shrugged.
“Paul likes to score all the newbies, the fresh meat. I’d be willing to bet that he’s done half of the women in the local community, at least when they first started out and didn’t know any better.”
“What’s his last name?”
“Don’t know. Paul may not even be his real name.”
“Where can I find him?”
“No idea.”
“Shit!” Hanson had thought finding a link in the murders was going to help, but it was looking more like he was stepping into quicksand.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Gina said. “Look, most people use scene names, or their screen names from the Internet.”
“But you fucked him.”
“Yes, I fucked him,” she shot back. “You know the last name of everybody you ever fucked?”
Hanson frowned and shoved his hands into his pockets. The phone on her belt erupted into a familiar ringtone, a song he knew but for a moment could not place. Then it came to him. Rick James. “Superfreak.” He almost smiled. Gina always liked irony.
She held the phone up, looking at the screen. Her lips tightened, but she said nothing as she returned the phone to her hip.
“You need to answer that?” Hanson asked.
“Later.”
“So how do I find this Paul?”
“The kinky community—the ones that socialize—is pretty small. People that hang around long enough come to know most of the same people, even though they might not ever know their real names. But there is one place you can find them all.”
She stood up, and Hanson followed her down the hall to the tiny room she used as an office. She sat down at the desk, touched the mouse, and the screen sprang to life.
“What’s this?” he asked, watching over her shoulder as she typed rapidly.
“It’s a computer.”
The screen came up black and gray—
“I know that,” he said. “Smart ass. What’s this site?”
“It’s FetLife. It’s like Facebook or MySpace for perverts.”
She was navigating so fast it was hard for Hanson to keep up.
“There’s also Alt.com, Collarme.com—those are the biggest. Those sites have memberships in the hundreds of thousands.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not,” she said. “In the olden days, people had to use personal ads in adult magazines. Now we’ve got the Internet, and you’re never more than a few clicks away from talking to other perverts.”
“So, Paul has a profile here?”
“Under his screen name, yes. If he hasn’t deleted it yet. If he’s heard about Robyn’s death, he may have panicked and trashed everything—”
“Then just give me his screen name, I’ll call the site and get his—”
She hit a key and the screen went dark. She spun around in her chair and looked up at him.
“If I do this for you, you have to promise not to go Big Brother on these people.”
“He could be a murderer, for Christ’s sake!”
“Paul’s not a killer.” She waved a hand dismissively. “He’s an oversexed little shit who lives in fear of his wife—”
“Then he’s a party of interest, possibly a witness.”
“And he’s more likely to cooperate if you don’t go charging in with both barrels blazing.”
He said nothing for a long minute, considering.
“I’m serious, Hanson. I wanna help you catch this guy, but I also want to protect my own people—”
“
Your
people?”
She sighed.
“Well . . . Yes. My people. Promise me.”
“All right, I promise to try it your way first. Is that good enough?”
She shrugged and turned back to the computer.
“It may take a day for him to read this and e-mail me back.”
“Superfreak” rang out again. This time she didn’t even look at her phone, just ignored it completely.
“You’re still connected to . . . them?”
“I mostly lurk these days. I haven’t gone to the club in over a year.”
“But you’re still doing pro work? Is that why your phone keeps ringing?”
“Yes.” She stared at him. “You want to bust me for it?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
What
did
he mean? He wasn’t sure. Looking at her confused him and he wondered if coming here was a massive mistake.
“I don’t fuck my clients.” She looked at him steadily, her chin jutting forward as her left eyebrow arched ever so slightly. “I dominate them. For money, yes. I provide a valuable service. And since I don’t particularly want to wait tables or do data processing for minimum wage, I do it for a living now.”
“It’s still illegal.”
Actually, sexual domination’s legal status was a little fuzzy, but Hanson was suddenly feeling pissy.
“Fuck you. So is anal sex in some states, but you didn’t have any problem with breaking that law.”
He knew he couldn’t find Paul without her, and he probably wasn’t going to get anybody else in that community to talk to him, even if he could find them.
“If you work this case with me,” Hanson said, “it’s got to be totally as an informant—”
“Informant? No way. Consultant, maybe—”
“And I gotta let my partner in on this. You know that, right?”
“Shit.” She made a face. “It would have to be Griggs.”
The problem of how to bring Gina into the investigation became entirely academic when the phone rang; not Rick James this time, but the familiar beeps of Hanson’s T-Mobile.
They had another body.

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