"OK, you can take him down now."
The police techs went to work in releasing the body of the young man from the restraints on his wrists that had held him suspended from the ceiling. The ball gag in his mouth and the lash marks on his back, chest, and thighs—and the fact that he was naked and a well-formed pretty boy—made clear to Cassidy what he was being subjected to when he died. He'd been entertaining one or more people who were into BDSM.
What he'd died from wasn't clear yet. From Cassidy's experienced eye, the marks on his body indicated there had been a certain amount of pain involved, but he was young and his body was in good shape. What Cassidy could see wasn't enough to show cause of death.
Such a pity. He'd been quite a good-looking young man. Hispanic, dark, sultry looks. Maybe no more than twenty years old.
Cassidy's partner, Jack, was busy at the door into the room interviewing the custodian who had called in the death. He could see that Jack wasn't getting very far with the man, but that probably was because there wasn't much the janitor could help with. He wouldn't know much about who hired him to clean this place up, if Cassidy knew anything about operations like this—a couple of dungeon rooms tucked away in otherwise abandoned buildings in warehouse districts by the river, like this one was. Playrooms for guys who got off on bondage and S&M on other guys. The janitor would be paid through a series of cutouts and wasn't the chatty type, or he wouldn't be willing to clean up the messes he found after these rooms were used—not that the mess had included a dead body before. That was pretty sure, at least where the custodian was concerned.
The custodian had called the death in, so there was a certain level of honesty about him. The river was nearby. His nightly cleanup could just as easily have entailed a short body carry across a deserted parking lot to the river. He'd probably even have found his paycheck a little heftier the next Friday, if, indeed, the owners of the building had any idea what had happened here. They probably didn't.
Cassidy made a mental note, though, to do the detailed tracing of who owned what around here.
While Jack talked with the custodian, Cassidy moved around the room, taking it all in and salting what he saw away in his brain. You never knew when some little observation at a crime scene would match something else that started the why and who unraveling.
The room—two rooms really—was about thirty feet square—the other one the same. The rooms were pretty much identical. The doors to both were out to a corridor rather than between the rooms. A large window visually connected them. Drapes could be pulled across the window on this side. Cassidy presumed such a curtain existed on the other side, too. The window was fully exposed now, though. The walls were cinderblock, painted a light gray-green color. The floor was concrete, slopping slightly from all directions to a central drain. There were hooks everywhere—in the walls, ceiling, and floor—and piles of restraint cording in the corners. The rooms probably had once been used to hang animal carcasses for curing. Mostly recently they were being used to hang an entirely different kind of meat. The cords were all a sickly green color. Cassidy had never seen them in that color before. He made a mental note to check where that could be bought.
Various S&M apparatuses were scattered about equally in the two rooms. Cube platforms, stocks, mats, X-bars, slings. Everything, in Cassidy's view, to entertain for hours. Or to make movies. There was every indication these rooms functioned as movie studios. There were no cameras or light poles—the users obviously would need to bring their own along with the smaller, more intimate toys—but there were frames around on the walls for mounting video cameras.
"OK, I've seen enough for now," he said as he breezed by Jack and the custodian and headed for the stairs. The street level was one flight down. These two studio playrooms were the only rooms in the building that appeared to be in use—in use up to now. These rooms would be stripped now when the investigation was complete.
The first order of business was to identify the victim. Cassidy had been around enough, though, to have some ideas about that. If the victim hadn't been a club pole dancer, Cassidy would be very much surprised. The gay red-light district was nearby.
"I'll wait for you in the car, Jack," he said as he moved down the stairs. Jack wouldn't be pissed or even feel pressured to curtail his interview. This was Cassidy's style—observing the scene and then isolating himself to get it all cataloged in his mind.
"If you'll work on tracing who's managing that operation, checking back through who owns the building to who they rented that space to," Cassidy told Jack as they entered the bull pen at police headquarters, "I'll work on who the victim is."
"Deal," Jack said as he moved to the homicide section. There weren't separate squad rooms in this station. It was just one big area they called the bull pen, where the detectives had to work their various specialties.
Cassidy's movement was arrested in the major crimes section as Jack continued on toward the back of the bull pen where their desks were wedged together.
"What are you watching there, Leo?" he asked, leaning down behind a seated detective and staring into a computer screen.
"Proof of snatch film from a kidnapping," Leo answered. "Pretty gruesome stuff. The family paid right up after receiving this. Kid sent back home. Now all we have to do is find out who's spending the money."
"Hey, could you run it again, please?"
Leo did so.
It was a BDSM hook-hanging scene, much like what Cassidy had just seen, which is probably what had caught his attention. It was an active session scene, though. A young guy was suspended from the ceiling, restraints binding his wrists together and dropped from a ceiling hook. His legs didn't reach all the way to the floor, though. They were pulled straight out at the hips from his sides, with ankle restraints on leads that ran to the walls on either side. The victim was facing the camera. A ball gag was in place, but otherwise the expression on the young man's face could be seen and was followed closely for short periods by the camera honing in on his face while he was being tortured.
He was a good-looking kid. Blond, on the smallish side but with a great build. He looked a little spoiled—groomed—which was in keeping with being a worthy subject of a ransom demand.
Cassidy looked away from the camera briefly to ask Leo, "How old is the kid?"
"Nineteen. He's OK, but is in the hospital for observation. His father is that automotive sales king, Franklin Dorsey. Several franchises. A regular King Midas, which is probably why they snatched his kid."
Cassidy looked back at the video, which ran for some fifteen minutes in all. Pretty grim stuff for anyone not used to seeing S&M. The dominator was a naked black guy. Powerful body, big dick, in erection throughout. He obviously was enjoying himself. He was wearing a black balaclava hood, and he must have had distinguishing tattoos, because various parts of his body were taped over to hide whatever was underneath. He held a flogging whip in one hand and an electric wand in the other.
The video started off slow and pretty tame, with the black guy dancing around the bound one and taunting him in a voice that was altered and slowed down to sound like he was talking underwater. But the action picked up, with the black guy flogging the victim and zapping him on the legs and chest, back and balls, with the zapper. The victim's nipples were clamped, with a chain running between them, which the black buy pulled on occasionally, producing whatever writhing the young victim could do within the limits of his restraints. Weights hung down from the young man's balls. The tormentor sent these swinging from time to time, which had the victim writhing again.
As the video was coming to a conclusion, the black guy was behind the victim, gripping the victim's waist, and pulling the victim's ass on and off his cock. The expression on the victim's face was in keeping with an experienced, but taxed, bottom being fucked in the ass by a big black cock—right up to near the end, when the expression changed to an intense look into the camera that Cassidy could only describe as a look of horror. Then the video abruptly cut out. It was probably this last expression on the young man's face, Cassidy thought, that had immediately opened his family's bank account.
"Can you send a copy of this to my computer?" Cassidy asked when the coverage had stopped.
"You've seen it twice," Leo said. "You starting some sort of personal faggot porn collection?"
If that stung, Cassidy didn't show it. "Just send me the fuckin' film, Leo. I have some ideas about it. Might close your case for you."
Leo clammed up and just worked the keypad for a few seconds. Cassidy had a reputation for closing cases, so he wasn't about to turn away the help. "There you go. Sent."
