Torquemada Killer

by John Warren

Genres: Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

The classic BDSM crime thriller.

Reader advisory: contains scenes of graphic violence

There's a killer stalking the BDSM community of New York, using the victims' own instruments of discipline and restraint to carry out his vicious crimes. Can rookie detective Eva Hernandez catch him before he strikes again - and what will she learn about her own attraction to the seductive world of domination and submission in her pursuit of the man the press have dubbed the Torquemada Killer?

Release date: March 8, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 210

Sample

Chapter One

It was a typical middle-class brownstone just off West 14th Street. Probably the area was pretty quiet much of the time. It wasn’t now. Two police cruisers and an ambulance were parked by the kerb. Their alert lights, flashing in a disconcerting syncopation, lit up the street, lending a note of artificial gaiety to the gray evening scene. Yellow “Police Line Do Not Cross” tapes blocked off the sidewalk.

People were standing in small groups, some talking, some silent, an audience as a bizarre street theatre. One fat woman, standing alone, gripped the yellow tape in both fists and leant over it, staring at the door as if waiting for a first act entrance. A dirty, brown and yellow cat lay on one of the stoops watching the activity with a disinterested gaze.

Eva flashed her brand new detective-second-class shield at the two uniformed officers guarding the doorway and went in. One was a rookie, his pistol belt still shiny and black. The other’s was so cracked and worn it looked mottled with the leather’s original brown showing through. As Eva climbed the stairs, she could feel his leer. It didn’t make her feel sexy; it made her feel dirty.

The narrow, badly lit hallway went all the way through the building to an open back door. Silhouetted in the doorway she could see a familiar figure. Evidently, assistant medical examiner Bob Lee had made it to the scene ahead of her.

As Eva walked toward the open door, Bob bent forward at the waist and his body shook. Although his head was hidden by the door jamb, it was clear what he was doing so enthusiastically.

Shit, she thought. What in the fuck could make an experienced medical examiner toss his cookies?

As she approached the door, Bob straightened up, wiping his mouth, a few specks of vomit stuck to his neatly trimmed Van Dyke. ‘Detective Hernandez, this your case?’ he said with a somewhat abashed air.

‘I guess it is,’ said Eva with a smile. ‘I was at the station when the call came in, and Captain Peterson told me to “get your ass down there and look around”. I was about to sign out for the day, but if all goes well, it’ll be my first case as detective in charge.’

Bob fingered his beard. Pride had warred with genetics. It was sparse and undernourished, but with wax and comb, he had made the most of it. ‘This one is a bloody bitch,’ he said. ‘And I mean that literally. I suppose you want to get a look at the victim.’

At that moment, a young patrolman burst from a hallway door, looked frantically left and right and then ran through into the backyard. He bent over a bush and vomited.

‘A new police diet,’ Bob quipped. ‘Eat lots of donuts and then go wading in gore.’ He pointed out the stains on the patrolman’s shoes and cuffs.’ He mused dramatically. ‘I wonder if I could copyright it. “Lose 20 pounds in a few weeks with Bob Lee’s Gore Diet”.’

Eva braced herself and walked toward the door from where the patrolman had emerged.

‘The apartment is rented to a Judith Henderson. We think that is who the victim is. However … well, I’ll just let you look.’

The apartment was a hive of activity. A team of quiet grey men were busy collecting evidence, dusting for fingerprints and taking photographs while the blue coveralled medical examiner’s team waited to take custody of the body. She could see an incredibly bloody bed through an open door and it took a moment for her to realise that what she had thought was a pile of bloody sheets was actually a body.

No wonder everyone’s losing their cookies.

She tore her eyes away from the thing on the bed and found herself facing Edward Burroughs. Burroughs had been the senior scene investigator in several cases she had worked on previously. The small man with the bald, egg-shaped head was a meticulous investigator, who loathed any diminutive of his given name. ‘Edward,’ he had said, ‘my name is Edward, not Ed, not Eddie. If you wish I could provide copies of my birth certificate.’ It was an amusing affectation but it clearly defined the man’s precision. When he and his team were on a case, you could be sure that they didn’t miss a thing.

‘Bloody mess, isn’t it, miss?’ he said in a diffident tone that sounded almost as if he expected her to disagree with his assessment. ‘There are several aspects of the present case which I feel should be brought to your immediate attention.

‘First, the young lady is not tied to the bed as you might think. The attachment devices are carefully crafted leather cuffs chained to screw bolts set into the bed frame.’

Eva glanced at the bed, her gaze skittering off the figure. She noticed the nickel-plated chains that held it in an exaggerated spreadeagle.

‘Second, this bedroom is provided with accessories not normally seen in most middle-class habitations.’ He opened a closet door revealing an impressive set of whips hanging just inside.

‘We will, of course, dust and bag them, but given the condition of the young lady and the condition of these  ’ he paused ‘  implements of discipline, I suspect they played a minor role, at least in today’s activities.

‘However, I have kept the best for last.’ He gestured toward a book lying on a shelf across from the bed. It was the type of leatherette album used to preserve family photographs and memorabilia. With a retracted ballpoint pen, he flipped it open.

The first page showed a pretty, blonde woman smiling at the camera. What was incongruous was that she was naked above the waist, her hands seemed to be somehow fastened behind her and her nipples were pinched by cruel clamps connected by chains. Behind her stood an unsmiling dark-haired man wearing a leather vest over a naked chest.

Eva felt a rush. It couldn’t be this easy, but she knew it often was. Most murders took place between people who knew each other and many were or had been lovers.

Now all I have to do is get an ID of this creep, she thought.

‘Edward, is that the woman on the bed?’

‘I can’t be sure. As you can see, identification is difficult. I suppose we will be able to get a confirmed ID after the morgue makes her a bit more presentable. However, the height and weight seem about the same. I think the victim is a blonde. Also, there are several pictures around this apartment of the same woman, and most of the pictures in the album have her in them.’

He flipped another page. On this one, several pictures depicted the progress of what evidently had been a spanking. By the fifth picture, the woman’s ass had become a dull red, and her face showed the effect of considerable pain.

Or was it just pain? Eva thought to herself, quickly brushing the thought away.

Eva was pissed, and she didn’t care who knew it as she slammed shut the door of her locker. For five years, she had been taking the departmental bullshit. First, she had to put up with the lewd comments and practical jokes as she did her time as a rookie in a cruiser and later taking all the crud jobs as a detective three in the 15th Precinct.

However, this wasn’t going to fly. She had no sooner come back to the station house than she had heard the rumour that Lieutenant Shaffer had put in a bid to take over her new case.

No way! This one had everything: a high profile with lots of media, a firm suspect and a chance to really shine.

Shaffer had been on her case since she had arrived. First, it was the leering, sexist jokes. Sometimes, Eva had wondered why men did it. Had there ever … ever been a woman who was turned on by this approach? She couldn’t even imagine it. “Oh, you wonderful man, you’ve insulted me and all the members of my sex. It just turns me on so much.” Not bloody likely.

When Shaffer hadn’t found her falling into his arms, he took a more direct, physical approach. This earned him a fall down a flight of stairs and a black eye he had some difficulty explaining.

Finally, he had settled on the tactic of telling anyone who would listen that Eva had slept her way to her present position and was presently banging every superior officer in the precinct. Eva had countered that final sally by informing him that if he kept it up she was going to tell people she had tried to sleep with him but he had been unable to get it up and had asked her to dress him in king-sized diapers. He had turned remarkably white and had been avoiding her ever since.

As she turned to leave the locker room, she found her way blocked by a brown, rumpled suit.

‘Hi, Eva,’ Lieutenant Shaffer said with a leer. Evidently, he either had a remarkably bad memory for threats or felt that this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

‘Too bad about that Henderson case; I guess that the powers-that-be came to their senses and decided it wasn’t the right case to give to a twofer who hasn’t had time to wear the oil off her brand new detective-two shield.’

‘Whatdaya mean by twofer?’ Eva said through clenched teeth.

‘Come on, babe,’ Shaffer said, not noticing or, perhaps, misinterpreting his target’s quick scan of the empty locker room. ‘You know as well as I do that if you weren’t a cunt and a wetback you probably wouldn’t even be on the force, let alone having been promoted faster than any guy. As far as I am concerned, you are just two checkmarks on an EEOC form.’

‘I got where I am by being smarter and tougher than any guy,’ Eva said coolly and levelly, her hand drifting behind her to grasp the cocked come-along she carried on the back of her belt.

‘Tough, you college-educated cunt, you don’t even know what tough is. Why I …’ Shaffer didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence as Eva’s right hand shot up; her thumb and forefinger flew into his nose, squeezing and pulling down. Her left hand shot forward, thrusting the come-along into the Lieutenant’s crotch and triggering the pincher claws.

His face went white, then purple as she dragged it down until his surprised eyes were within an inch of her blazing ones. The two spring-loaded claws, which had been designed to grasp a suspect’s wrist in a paralysing grip, had an even more effective grip on the Lieutenant’s balls.

Eva gave the handle of the come-along a bit of a twist to emphasise her words.

‘If you keep showing that kind of attitude toward me, you may be a police, but you will no longer be a policeman.

‘If,’ and a twist.

‘You,’ twist.

‘Get,’ twist.

‘My,’ his face was going grey, and his eyes were glazing.

‘Drift,’ and she pushed the release stud with her thumb and released his nose.

He fell back against the locker; one hand clamped to his nose, the other to his crotch.

I think I may have ruined a beautiful friendship, Eva thought to herself with a rueful smile as she walked out of the locker room.

Captain Peterson would take an entirely different approach, she thought, as she stamped through the day room. For one thing, he was probably tough enough to look her in the eye and smile with the come-along clamped on his balls. After all, the rumour was that, at one time, his nickname was “Iron Balls”. It had reportedly been dropped when the department tried to adopt a kindlier, more gentle image in the wake of the Knapp Commission. Although his waistline had expanded with the passing years, the shoulders inside their tailored jacket more than recalled the patrolman who had kept the peace on his beat in the toughest section of the Bronx with billyclub and fists. Still, here was a man who respected directness even from the newest of his staff, or at least that was what the oldtimers had told Eva when she reported in.

‘Well,’ she thought, ‘here’s where I find out if they were bullshitting me.’

Two quick knocks on the door elicited a grunted, ‘Enter.’

Eva walked into the office, took a quick breath and said, ‘If I may speak freely …’

Peterson looked up sharply. ‘The day one of my men …’ he stumbled for a moment and quickly recovered ‘ …people doesn’t speak freely, that is the day he can get his ass out of here, and that applies to her ass, too.’

‘Why in hell have you given the Henderson case to Shaffer?’ Eva said. ‘I was responding detective; I did the initial investigation, I wrote the report, and I …’ She smiled. ‘ …managed to keep the contents of my stomach inside while the deputy coroner … and half the investigators … were depositing the contents of theirs in the back yard.’

‘This puts a new light on the business,’ Peterson said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Shaffer was in here telling me that you wanted off the case because it was too messy for you.’

‘Why that lousy, two-timing ….’ Eva went on for the next two minutes, turning the air in the Captain’s office a bright blue and eliciting a wide smile of professional respect from the officer who had heard his share of imaginative condemnation.

As she ran down, he broke in and said, ‘You want the case; you’ve got the case. Anyone who can swear like that deserves a chance to make a complete and utter fool out of herself. Your first job is to go down to the press room and go wading with the sharks. Enjoy.’

‘Er, Captain,’ Eva said.

‘There’s more?’

‘Well, Shaffer braced me in the locker room, and we had words.’

‘Just words?’ The Captain cocked a curious eye at her.

‘Well, maybe it went a bit more than words.’

Peterson scanned her up and down as if she were a none-too-fresh fishmarket flounder. ‘You look OK; are you thinking of pressing departmental charges?’ His tone of voice brooked no doubt about his opinion of officers who washed their dirty linen in public.’

‘I’m not, but he might.’

‘Was there any blood spilled?’

Eva checked her fingernails. ‘Nope.’

‘Were there any witnesses?’

‘Nope.’

‘Was there justifiable provocation?’

‘I think so.’

‘Well, I’ll listen to Shaffer’s side of it   if he wants to tell me, and if he has a side, which I doubt   and I’ll handle it privately.

‘From me to you, just two things. One, we are a team here. I expect everyone to work with everyone else. Civilians can play their silly games. We’re cops, the blue brotherhood.’ Again, he looked a little ill-at-ease. ‘Anyway, what I mean is that we work together.

‘Second, the same goes with how anyone treats you. You’re going to take a little tail-twisting. That goes with the new kid on the block status. However, if it goes beyond that, you let me know. Don’t try to handle it on your own.’ He paused. ‘Shit rolling downhill hits a lot harder … and I am way, way up the hill.

‘Now, get out of here and play kissy-face with the press.’

On the short walk across the day room to her desk, Eva’s mind worked furiously. She was getting a break, but it could also come crashing down on her. She had seen more than one detective flayed in public for either running a PR campaign or for interfering with what the brass called “the rights and privileges of the press”. It was a tightrope walk that, in normal times, she would have a difficult time negotiating. With her adrenaline at its current level, it would be like playing catch with landmines.

One break was that there would have to be a formal conference with support from the department’s PR hired guns. That would take time to set up and would give her a chance to cool down. The flip side was that Peterson had made it pretty plain she was to put in an immediate appearance at the press room.

She made a quick stop at the phone on her desk to call the PR office and tell them that she needed to have them get together a press conference on the Henderson case. She wanted to schedule it at five, both to give her more time to cool down and get her shit together and to have time for a run-through. She had been a camera stand (“stand there and look at the camera”) for a few conferences while senior detectives fielded the questions, but this would be her first time in the front row, let alone behind the rostrum.

Unfortunately, the glorified clerk informed her that the conference would have to be scheduled for 11 o’clock. ‘After all,’ he explained, ‘the television people will want to be able to get it on the noon news. As it is, they’ll be complaining.’ Three hours. Eva groaned.

The press room at the station had probably been old and dirty from the first moment the stalwarts of the Fourth Estate moved in on the heels of the WPA workers who built the place. In a g. . .