Chapter 8

Friday, June 18, 2010

“Why do you want me to come with you, Jake?” Shannon asked as she got into the backseat of Jake’s car.

Jake sat in the passenger seat. Leanne was the driver.

“We’re going to see something you will find interesting and educational. Instead of just telling you, I’ll wait until we get there and let you see for yourself. I think you’ll agree that it’s worth the wait. But, for now, I’m going to zone out here until we get to my father’s house. I’m sure that Leanne will be glad to chat with you.”

“Sure, Jake.”

Jake didn’t want to waste the nearly half an hour with Leanne. He could make a good start on enabling her mind-reading nerves. He focused on her occipital lobe, located the nerve, and began to energize neurons.

He had been immersed in his labor for some time when he came back to himself long enough to hear Shannon talking.

“ ... kind of early, about seven-thirty. Nina was still lying in her bed. I stuck my head in to say hi, and she had this stupid grin on her face. I helped her into her chair and wheeled her to the bathroom. She was really spacey. I asked her what was going on, and she laughed and said she had had this dream with the most incredible sex, except that it was like she was completely divorced from her body. There was no guy. She just had this tremendous session all by herself. Except for right at the end when, she said, Jake shows up for a few seconds. For the rest of breakfast, she was giddy and giggly and very relaxed.”

Jake sat up and looked around. They were only a couple minutes from Harris’s house.

“I guess I should be flattered,” Jake said. “I wonder how many other girls dream about me.”

“We all dream about you,” Leanne said. “But Nina’s seems to have been exceptionally vivid.

Jake decided it was best to change the subject.

“Is there anything I can do to help you at the house, Leanne?”

Leanne’s job was to inventory the contents of Harris’s house so the movers would know how much labor would be needed to move it all to the new house.

“No, Jake. I’m just going to go through the house making notes.”

“Okay. Shannon and I will be down in the basement looking at some things down there.”

Leanne pulled the car up to Harris’s house. The women followed Jake in through the back door. Annabelle was in the kitchen cleaning. Brenda was dusting in the study. Jake told Brenda to show him to the basement. Jake and Shannon followed her to a doorway in the kitchen and down a flight of stairs.

The basement was mostly just open space, the only furnishings being a universal weight machine, a couple of aerobic machines, several fans, a television, and a stereo.

There were two doors on the far wall. They were both locked.

“Open this one for me, Brenda,” Jake said, indicating the nearer of the two.

“I’ll get the key, sir,” she said and disappeared back up the stairs.

“You brought me to see a musty basement with a treadmill and a StairMaster?” Shannon asked.

“You’re pretty uppity for a slave,” Jake said. “I’ve been told that one of these locked rooms is for storage and the other is a torture room.”

That got Shannon’s attention.

“You mean torture? As in torture?”

“Just so.”

“Why do you want me to see it?”

“What is torture but domination without concern for the bottom’s needs? There is a lot of overlap between what a torturer does and what a dominant does. I wanted you to see this room to learn what you could.”

Brenda came back with keys. She unlocked the door. Jake pushed it open and felt for a light switch. He found it and turned the lights on. The overhead fluorescent lighting revealed a tile and stainless steel room full of horrific implements.

The torture room was lavishly furnished. By one wall, there were a dentist’s chair and a St. Andrews cross. There were racks on another wall stocked with whips, paddles, canes, quirts, and crops. There were several pulleys attached to beams in the ceiling. Jake opened a cabinet to find ropes, gags, blindfolds, hoods, and clamps. There was an examination table with restraints, and the far corner had a shower with a long hose and sprayer that would extend anywhere in the room. There was a big drain in the tile at the center of the floor.

“Have you ever been in here, Brenda?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To be tortured?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The other servants, too?”

“Only women are used here, sir. Sometimes the men help the master restrain the victims and strap them into the equipment.”

“Women other than the servants?”

“Yes, sir. Many other women.”

“Could you show Shannon here how to use the equipment?”

“Shall I use it on her?”

“Yes, but only to show her. Stop if she tells you to. But first, let me into the storage room.”

Jake followed Brenda who found the proper key and opened the door.

“What am I going to find in there?”

“I don’t know, sir. I never go in there. Sometimes the men add or remove things but they are the only ones.”

“Find one of the men and have him report to me. Then go show Shannon how to use the gear in the torture room.”

“Yes, sir.”

She hurried off.

Jake found a light switch and turned it on. The storage room was filled with shelves, most of which contained cardboard boxes, each centered precisely in its space. The boxes were labeled, most with a name. One section had business records. One box there was labeled “Rave, 2008.” There were a dozen more labeled like that.

Footsteps approached and one of the men appeared. He had short brown hair.

“What is your name?” Jake asked.

“Andy, sir.”

“Andy, why do these boxes have people’s names on them?”

“They are the personal effects of those people.”

“Why are they here?”

“The master kept their personal effects here after the women were buried.”

Jake flinched.

He looked at the boxes within view. All the names were women’s names, he realized.

“All of these boxes have stuff from dead women?”

“Only the ones with a person’s name on it, sir.”

Jake went to a box labeled Rachel Consella. He opened it. It contained clothing, a purse, a wallet, a pair of shoes, and an ancient cell phone.

“What happened to Rachel Consella?”

“She is dead, sir.”

“How did she die?”

“The master killed her.”

“How did he do that?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Then how do you know she’s dead?”

“He had us bury her.”

“When did you bury her?”

“I don’t remember exactly, sir. It was many years ago.”

In the wallet, Jake found a driver’s license that expired in 1988. She had been born in 1965. She had been a very good-looking woman.

“Where did you bury her?”

“There is a property out in the country where we do that.”

“Count the boxes for dead women and tell me how many.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jake looked through all the items in Rachel Consella’s box. There were a small phone book and a datebook for 1987. Her wallet had photos of her family and a boyfriend. There was a university ID card. Jake put everything back into the box.

“Sixty-eight, sir.”

Jake felt like he had been punched in the stomach. He fought to keep his focus.

“Do you know the address of the place where you bury the dead people?”

“No, sir. All I know is how to get there.”

“How long does it take?”

“About half an hour if traffic is light.”

Jake walked through the storeroom, looking at each box. There were only a few that weren’t labeled with a person’s name or a business name and year. Four were labeled “Gold.” He opened one and found it filled with gold ingots, each one stamped “10 oz. Troy 999.9 Fine Gold.”

Jake couldn’t guess how many ingots were in the box but it was heavy. He guessed 80 pounds. Gold was selling over $1200 per ounce. He multiplied the numbers in his head. It came out to around $1.5 million per box.

Why store it here? Wouldn’t it be safer to keep gold in a safe-deposit box? But then Jake didn’t know if they made safe-deposit boxes big enough for three hundred pounds of gold. Hell, maybe Harris had another 300 pounds in a safe-deposit box.

Jake looked over at the boxes containing the possessions of dead women. He couldn’t get excited about the fortune he had found.

Jake stuck his head into the torture room. Brenda was showing Shannon how to tighten a straitjacket. Jake went looking for Leanne. He found her sitting at the long table in the dining room making notes in a spiral-bound notebook.

He sat next to her and let her finish writing. How was he going to tell her what was down there? He couldn’t hide it from her. But he didn’t have words that suited the circumstances. His throat tightened up. Fucking great. He was going to start bawling. But the scorn he heaped on himself didn’t stop the inevitable. He felt his face screw up and he began to sob. Then he began to wail. Whenever he thought it would stop, he saw Rachel Consella’s face smiling from her driver’s license and the sobs came on him again.

He finally came to himself. His face was pressed against Leanne’s chest. The front of her blouse was wet.

Jake tried to talk. His throat was tight and painful, almost too painful to speak.

“I don’t feel good,” he finally whispered. “I want to go home.”

Leanne stroked his cheek.

“Tell me what’s going on, Jake.”

He tried to speak again but couldn’t get the words out of his throat.

It’s too horrible. I don’t think I can say it.

Is it something your father did?

I can’t stand that he’s my father. I would give anything not to be related to him. I would pull out every strand of my DNA if I could.

To his dismay, Jake began to cry again. He dropped his head to the table and sobbed. When it stopped this time, he felt numb.

Jake accepted a tissue from Leanne and blew his nose.

My father killed 68 women and had their bodies buried out in the country. The personal effects of those women are sitting in his storage room in the basement.

Leanne sat quietly for a minute.

“What are you going to do about it?”

I can’t call the police. If they look for him, they might find me. Even then the police won’t be able to bring him to justice. I’m the only person who can do that.

“But you can help the families of those girls by letting the police know where they are buried.”

Why does it matter? The girls are dead.

“Jake, you’ll be a father soon. Think about it. If you had a daughter and she disappeared. Would you be able to rest without knowing if she was alive or dead? Or if she was dead, how she died? There are 68 sets of parents out there who are desperate to know what happened to their little girls.”

I guess I never thought of it from a parent’s perspective. Let me think about what to do. I have to be careful. I don’t want to lead the police here. I’ll see if I can find the burial site and anonymously tell the police where to look. I can get the girls’ IDs out of the boxes downstairs so that the police will know who the girls are. Jake looked over at Leanne. But all the rest of their effects have to be destroyed. The risk is too high of a trail leading back to this house.

Leanne put her arm around his shoulder.

“That will work, my love. It will suffice.”

Oh, by the way, I found four-million dollars’ worth of gold in the storage room, too.

“What are you going to do with it?”

I suppose that I should find a secure place for it and turn it into cash and use it for the family. But if I do, I’m going to associate it with those dead girls.

“Do the sensible thing with the gold. You are going to do the best you can for the girls. You’ll give their families peace, and you’ll bring their murderer to justice. That will redeem the gold.”

Have you finished getting the information that you need here?

“Just let me look downstairs.”

Jake led her down. Leanne noted the exercise equipment.

Prepare yourself for another shock. Harris called this next room the torture room.

Jake pushed open the door and showed Leanne in. Shannon was hanging from a sling under the pulleys attached to the roof beams. Leanne just stared at all the equipment.

Harris used it for torture, but at our house, it will only be used on people who consent to its use. Jake looked in the direction of the storeroom. I don’t think I can make myself go back into the storeroom. There are about twenty banker’s boxes of business records in there that need to be moved.

“Brenda,” Jake said. His voice was hoarse, but he could make himself heard. “It’s time to take a break from your playing. Please, assemble the servants in the dining room.” He looked over at Shannon, swinging gently from the ceiling. “Uh, you can call the servants after you have freed Shannon. I’ll be in the study when they are ready.” He turned away and then paused. “Brenda, I also want you to get together a set of clothing for Harris. Everything he needs to go out into public — a suit, tie, shirt, socks, shoes, belt, and underwear. Bring them to the study.”

Jake and Leanne went to the study-library. Oak shelves going up almost to the ceiling were filled with books. The bookshelves took up one-third of the room. A large desk dominated the rest of the room. Behind the desk, a large window gave a view out the back to a tree line a hundred yards away. It should have been beautiful but Jake still felt numb.

Jake examined the books. There were lots of history books which surprised Jake until he realized that they all dealt with Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire, various Communist regimes, and other times when rulers wielded dictatorial powers.

There was a stack of mail and a stack of phone messages on the desk. The phone messages were invariably terse requests for Harris to return calls to people with names Jake did not recognize, except for one from Colin that Jake figured was probably from Colin Masters.

Leanne, would you help me? Let’s go through the mail and see what we can learn.

Leanne opened each piece. Junk mail went into the trash. Leanne put bills in one pile and statements of various accounts in another. There was a third stack for correspondence. Those dealt almost entirely with proposed or current business operations. There was one letter from Harris’s sister. She, her husband, and their two children were fine and thanked him for the money. Their mother’s diabetes was getting harder to manage and the doctors were starting to worry about complications. She, his mother, sometimes asked her how he was doing. The sister was sorry that they never got to visit, but she hoped that he would be able to see her eldest child graduate from high school at the end of the next school year.

Shannon came into the study, her face flushed and her libido high. Leanne gave her a slight shake of the head, and Shannon subsided before she said anything. Jake went through the desk drawers and the drawers of a credenza against the wall but saw nothing else of interest.

Brenda came in and announced that the staff had been assembled.

“Brenda, does Harris keep any more papers or business records around besides what’s here or in those files?” Jake said, indicating the desk and the credenza.

“No, sir, unless there are papers in the safe.”

“What safe?”

“The safe in the corner, there, sir,” she said, pointing to the corner closest to the window.

“Show me,” Jake said.

Brenda went to the corner and pulled back the carpet. A large safe had been installed flush with the floor.

“Can you open it?”

“No, sir. I don’t have the combination.”

“Have you ever seen it open?”

“Many times, sir.”

“What did you see in there?”

“The master never showed me the contents, sir.”

Jake put the carpet back into place.

“Shannon, I’ll explain later as best I can but I need you to wait here while Leanne and I talk to the staff.”

“Okay, Jake,” she said, though Jake could feel her curiosity spike.

Brenda led them to the dining room.

“Did anything happen since I was here last?”

There was nothing for a few moments. Then one of the men spoke. It wasn’t Andy. This one had short blond hair that was graying.

“A sprinkler head broke, sir, but I fixed it the next day.”

“What is your name?”

“Randy, sir.”

Randy and Andy? Jake thought. The handymen? What were the chances?