The Guilty: (P.I. Jack Marconi No. 3) Read online

  Standing in the vestibule, I took one more look around. I noticed a door that looked as though it might lead to another room. I opened it. The door led to a staircase that went down into the basement. I knew that I had to check it out. Setting the computer on the counter in the kitchen, I came back out into the vestibule and started down the stairs, careful to hit the switch on the wall to my right that lit the space up in electric light.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I looked upon a spacious room that was outfitted with free weights, a treadmill, and a stair climber. The walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and I nearly jumped out of my skin when I turned to see myself standing there. I walked across the room to an area that contained a couple of solid wood doors. I opened the first one. The interior was a dressing room. I opened the second one. Another dressing room. I opened the third one. A half bath. I closed the door, inhaled and exhaled.

  “There’s got to be more to this place than meets the naked eye,” I said aloud.

  That’s when I leaned my shoulder against the white wood wall paneling and that’s when I felt it move. Turning toward the panel, I reached out with both hands and pushed it. It moved again. Not a lot, but enough to tell me that there was something unusual about the paneling. Running my fingertips along the left side of the panel, I came upon a kind of secret, invisible opener that had been designed to be flush with the wood paneling. My heart pumping in my throat, I twisted the opener counter-clockwise and felt a mechanical release. I pushed on the panel once more and the very narrow door opened onto a hidden room.

  A room that sucked the breath from my lungs.

  Fifty Shades of Robert David Jr.

  By Ted Bolous, Albany Times Union Senior Food Blogger

  I’ve known of the man and enigma that is Robert David Jr. for nearly ten years. Ever since he got into the food business and I got into the writing business. He was going to be the next Wolfgang Puck and I was going to be Truman Capote. Turns out, he’s a bartender and I’m a blogger. But through the years, I’d always assumed I knew Robert Jr. as well as anyone who keeps a sort of friendship at arm’s length can. But then the problem emerged with his fiancée, Sarah, which landed her in Valley View Rehabilitation and Junior’s reputation on the legal chopping block. The rumor mill churns, of course, and as of late, this blog has mostly been dedicated not to food, but to someone who is living a secret life.

  What do I mean by secret?

  Sources are telling me that Robert Jr. isn’t obsessed only with food. That he is also obsessed with something else. That something involves men and women and lots of them. All in one playroom, doing nasty things without their clothing on. Sounds as if there are fifty shades to Robert David Jr. after all.

  It’s funny because I always thought I knew the man, and perhaps the rumor mill is all wrong. But then, what if it’s right?

  Appetizing comments anyone?

  Comment by Bobbie

  Honestly, Ted, I’ve really loved reading this blog for years now, but opening the forum up to comments about Robert David Jr. and his poor, injured ex-fiancée and some rumors about their bizarre sex games is nothing short of a disgrace.

  Comment by HiImBi

  Eat, Pray, Love, F$#%, Kill . . .

  33

  THE ROOM WAS NARROW, but deep.

  The walls were painted black and red and they seemed to pulse or radiate from the red and yellow lights that went on automatically as soon as I opened the door. There were a few of the same floor-to-ceiling length mirrors mounted to the three walls before me and I could see my own reflection in the far one. It made me shiver.

  Set in the center of the room was a large wooden wheel-like device. It was angled in order to accommodate a live human being who would simply lean back against it before being strapped to the hard device with four, thick leather belts. Judging from the position of the belts, the victim’s arms and legs would be spread out wide.

  Hanging down from the walls, by means of metal hooks, were all sorts and varieties of whips and chains. There was a metal shelf set beside the open door that housed leather masks fitted over head-manikins, some small stainless steel knives, scalpels, a harness, more chains, a muzzle, and a large round cueball-like device that was probably used as a gag. I stepped into this torture/sex chamber and looked down at the floor. The floor was finished with black paint and in the center, under the wheel, was a drain. I took a closer look at the wheel and could see that it bore the many stains of human fluids including waste and blood. Looking at it from behind, I could see that it was mounted on a heavy-duty hinge device which meant that it was capable of spinning the victim at all sorts of odd angles, just to further enhance the torture experience. Or so I assumed.

  When I looked up at the ceiling, my eyes filled with a rendering of a satanic symbol which consisted of a large red star with a pyramid superimposed over it. Painted in the center of the pyramid was the face of the devil. A traditional devil that was something a Renaissance artist might have devised. A red, evil, smiling face, razor-sharp fang-like incisors, horns protruding from the head, long hooked nose, long pointy chin, sharp triangular ears . . . My hands were shaking when I pulled out my smartphone and started taking pictures. I shot the torture wheel, plus close-ups of the floor, the drain and the fluid stains that surrounded it, and finally the ceiling. I took shots the whips and chains against the wall. I got enough on digital film to prove that Robert David Jr. was no altar boy when it came to his particular brand of sex and religion. If what happened in that room could be called sex. But certainly there was a kind of worship going on. There was enough visual evidence on my phone to at least give Miller and his boys the fuel they needed to secure a search warrant for the David home. Once that happened, they could bring in forensics and allow them to search the area of Sarah’s accident with a fine tooth comb.

  My heart solidly lodged in my throat, I closed the door on that evil room of torture and made my way back upstairs, that much closer to heaven.

  34

  I GRABBED THE COMPUTER from the kitchen counter and made my way to the back sliding glass door. But then it dawned on me that it wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of difference at this point if I simply exited the place by means of the front door. It would also allow me to take a closer look at the front staircase. Maybe some evidence, no matter how small, still existed despite an entirely contaminated crime scene. Rather, potential crime scene. Evidence that might lead the police to the conclusion that something bad and something violent happened here on a frigid night in February.

  Crossing back through the kitchen and the vestibule, I unlatched the deadbolt and made my way out onto the concrete landing. A landscape of shrubs and gravel flower beds hugged both sides of the wrap-around brick paver staircase. Reaching down, I pushed back the shrubs, hoping to find something that might connect me with Sarah Levy. Problem was, it was now six months after the fact and the weather, not to mention some meticulous landscaping and home maintenance, had pretty much white-washed the crime scene of anything significant.

  It took me a good five minutes to make my way all the way down the steps. Call it dumb luck or serendipity, but it was while searching the vegetation on both sides of the last stair tread that I found the little red bead. Just a plain little red bead that might have been a part of a string of beads, like those that might come together to form a bracelet. Costume jewelry, Val called it. Cheap, but colorful jewelry that was usually made up of beads and other trinkets that made for a fun, carefree look. Knowing it was entirely possible that Sarah’s fingerprints could still be found on the bead, I pulled my cotton handkerchief from my back pocket and picked it up. I wrapped the bead in the cloth and stuffed it into my back pocket. That’s when I peeled off the Latex gloves and shoved them back into my blazer pocket. Turning, I began the trek back to my 4Runner, knowing that I would be pressing my luck by hanging out at Junior’s house even for one minute more.

  35

  I DROVE BACK IN the direction of downtown and my Sherman
Street warehouse. It was going on seven o’clock, and I was hoping that Blood might be back from his little research mission to find out precisely what kind of drugs Junior was doing and where he got them from. When I made the turn from Lark onto Sherman, he was standing outside the door to my building, a wide smile plastered on his round face.

  I parked along the curb, grabbed Junior’s computer, and got out.

  “You must have something for me, Blood,” I said. “That smile doesn’t come from drinking or drugging.”

  “Damn straight,” he said. “I pretty much get high on life these days. That little ten-year stint in Green Haven will do that to a man he pay enough attention to the concept of right versus wrong. Can’t say the same for your Robert David Jr. though.”

  I didn’t bring up the fact that, at present, Blood was more or less a silent partner in several recreational drug sale operations on Sherman Street alone. But for the former inmate, it would be as close as he would ever come to being entirely legit while being his own boss. And somehow his business didn’t seem any less legal than most of the trading going on down on Wall Street.

  “Got some news for me?” I said, unlocking the deadbolt.

  “Let you know soon as you make me some coffee.”

  “Deal,” I said, opening the door.

  A few minutes later we were standing at my kitchen counter. I was drinking a beer and Blood was sipping hot coffee with milk. He was busy reprising his early evening mission, which included a clandestine meeting with a drug dealing kingpin who resided in Albany’s South end and who, for the purposes of my agenda, would go nameless. I would also have to go without the video or photos I’d been hoping for. Take it or leave it.

  “Your boy Junior got himself quite the rep,” Blood said, his hands wrapped around the white coffee mug as if he needed the warmth coming off it in the middle of a hotter than hell summer.

  “What makes him so special from your garden variety dope hound?” I said.

  “He don’t like just any kind of drug,” Blood said. “He is one of those special-order-type of white breads. And he got the money to pay for it too.”

  “So he’s not doing coke?” I asked while retrieving the little white powder-filled packet that fell out of his wallet onto the floor of Manny’s bar.

  I handed it to Blood.

  He looked down at it, nodded, and handed it back to me.

  “Coke,” he said. “Can tell by the way it’s packaged. Maybe save this for your police buddy.”

  I set the coke packet onto the kitchen counter and, for now, forgot about it.

  “So we know Junior’s doing his share of coke anyway,” I said. “But then I’ve known that for almost a couple of days now.”

  Blood nodded emphatically.

  “Oh shit, yeah, he doing that junk. And some crank. And some LSD. Basic college kid stuff. But his special order is something else altogether, Keep.” Taking another sip of the coffee. “You ever hear of Molly?”

  Molly. I thought about it for a minute. I’d been exposed to a lot of drugs in my time. In the prison system, even a stolen canister of Ajax could be cut up and reconstituted into some kind of hallucinogenic. It could even be mainlined if you knew precisely what you were doing. On occasion, a desperate inmate might be rushed to the infirmary for OD’ing on 409 All Purpose Disinfectant. Or some generic state-issued toilet bowl cleaner. Life inside prison was lonely. It also came cheap.

  But the truth is, I wasn’t as up on the street trade as I probably should have been, considering my new line of work. And Molly, whatever the hell that might be other than a kind of innocent, if not pretty name, eluded the hell out of me.

  “I give up,” I said, drinking some beer. “What it is?”

  “You know what it is already,” he said. “You know what X is?”

  “X or ecstasy. We had it listed as a Schedule 1 narcotic in the joint. A hallucinogenic and a stimulant. Popular with the college kids who like to party and sex it up all night. Quite a few variations of it around, including a new form of mescaline.”

  “Very good,” Blood said. “And yet another variation called ‘Molly.’ A very different variation.”

  “How so?”

  “Molly isn’t a variation of ecstasy so much as an extraction. A purer form that accentuates the sex part of X.”

  I drank some more beer. It felt good and cold and sudsy going down my parched throat.

  “The sex part,” I said. “The chemical that causes heightened sexual arousal.”

  “Precisely,” Blood agreed. “Add to that some stimulants in the form of coke or crank and you got yourself one very horny, very energetic individual.”

  “Someone capable of attacking another person if suddenly enraged?”

  Blood drank the rest of his coffee, set the empty mug back down. I went to refill it, but he put up his hand.

  “Too much caffeine makes my heart race,” he said. “And I gotta be my best out there on the mean streets, you know what I mean.” And then, “Does a man taking Molly and a soup of other narcotics have to be enraged to kill someone? Are you kidding, Keeper? Somebody ingesting even half of what Robert David Jr. is doing has to experience only a slight annoyance in order to enter into a full-blown rage.”

  I thought about Sarah and her head. I thought about how Junior called his father onto the scene instead of 911. Because, not only would he risk being nailed for having done something bad to Sarah, he would have been identified as being under the influence of alcohol and some pretty heavy-duty drugs. I also thought about the little red bead lying at the bottom of the steps in the gravel bed.

  I drank the rest of my beer, went to the fridge, opened it, and popped the cap on another.

  “You know what I think, Blood?” I said, taking the beer with me back to the counter. “I think what we have here is a psycho killer who just didn’t get it right the first time.”

  “Or maybe he never intended to get anything right at all. Maybe the drugs just make him a crazy man. Maybe he’s sorry for what he did to Sarah. Maybe he couldn’t help himself. Or shit, maybe she really did just fall down the steps on her own, like he said.”

  Blood was right. From the beginning, I set my sights on Junior being guilty and never did give a whole lot of thought to the possibility that he might be innocent. But then, I wasn’t hired to prove him innocent. I’d been hired to look into the possibility that he assaulted his fiancée with the intent to kill her, or at the very least, that he was liable for her injuries and the brain damage she suffered. Thus far, I hadn’t uncovered anything disproving my theory that he was a silver-spoon-fed vampire-loving psycho who attacked his fiancée in a drunken and drugged up rage. But then, I hadn’t uncovered anything that didn’t disprove his innocence either.

  There was the man who tailed me and took a shot at me, but that didn’t prove anything other than his being—one, a lousy tail and, two, a real reckless jerk for taking a shot at me. A real pro assassin would not have missed, nor been stupid enough to try and air me out with a handgun that he held out the open window of a speeding car. That kind of shooting works only in Hollywood.

  “You through with me, Keep?” Blood asked after a time.

  I nodded and padded my pants pockets. They felt a bit light.

  “You good with adding this to my tab?” I smiled.

  “Guess I gotta be good with it.”

  “Got one more project for you if you got the time, Blood.”

  I cocked my head in the direction of the computer sitting on the kitchen table.

  “You lift that from Junior’s house?”

  “Yup.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Technically.”

  “You ain’t scared about being arrested?”

  “Cops know I broke in. They helped me break in. Sort of.”

  Blood shook his head. Laughed.

  “Fucking white cops. And they call us darkies crazy.”

  “’Darkies’ went out with segregated public bathrooms.”<
br />
  “I’m a walking encyclopedia of black history,” he smiled. “And it’s not even Black History Month. So what’s it you want me to do with that thing?”

  “Got somebody who can figure out the password so that I can access his files?”

  “What you plan on finding out?”

  “Not sure. Maybe some condemning emails. Maybe some pictures or videos. Who knows?”

  “Could be a gold mine of information,” Blood admitted.

  “Yup.”

  “Hate it when you say ‘Yup’ all the time. White people says ‘Yup’ and ‘Nope.’ You gonna keep on doing that?”

  “Nope.”

  “I got somebody who might be able to crack the password. Might take a day or so. I’ll add his fee to your tab.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  He went to the table to pick the laptop up. But he hesitated before touching it. I reached into my blazer pocket, tossed him a pair of clean Latex gloves.

  “You reading my mind, Keeper,” he said, smiling.

  “We’re more alike than you think, Blood,” I said.

  “Yes, we is,” he said, slipping on the gloves then snatching up the computer. “We two bad apples from very different trees, we is.”

  “Martin Luther King Jr. would be so very proud,” I said.

  36

  SOON AS BLOOD WAS gone I once again contacted Detective Miller and arranged to meet him at the Lark Tavern to show him the pics I’d taken at Junior’s residence over a beer and possibly a burger. I also thought that now would be a good time to hand over both the coke and the tape I recorded of my conversation with Ted Bolous outside the Albany Times Union building. He agreed to meet up in half an hour. Since the Lark Tavern was located on Lark Street, less than a mile west of my place, I decided to hoof it.