Bon Temps

Loretta told me she'd finally found someone to assist her now that Sebastian was gone, and because I was preoccupied, I took that in without really processing it. She'd been through a lot of temps and I knew it was frustrating so the news she'd found someone was good, but not the foremost thing on my mind when I came in to check on our latest case. I was a lot more concerned about the cause of death for Petty Officer O'Malley, so when I stopped in, I was kinda focused on that.

"Loretta, what have you got?" I called, only to find myself looking at someone who was clearly not my coroner. Instead of a fancy hair bonnet topping a round confident woman, I was looking at someone taller, paler, and just as startled as I was.

The mysterious woman in hospital scrubs blinked at me, and pointed with a bloody scalpel to the office door. I glanced over just as it opened and Loretta came out, a file in her hands. "Dwayne. I see you've met our new assistant coroner, Doctor Simone Hiver."

"Doctor," I nodded. Would have offered a handshake but seeing as she had bloody gloves and a scalpel I shut that idea down. She smiled and nodded though.

"Special Agent," she responded in a contralto. When Loretta handed me the file I divided my time between the words on the page and the woman weighing organs, looking for an impression from both of 'em.

Doctor Hiver: five seven, curvy as the china milkmaid figurine on my grandmother's mantle and about as pale, with dark hair and freckles. Boorishly I let myself wonder how far those freckles went for a moment before getting back to the details about Petty Officer Oliver O'Malley. What I saw was confusing to say the least.

"Auto-erotic asphyxiation?" I looked at Loretta, who was clearly amused at my reaction.

"That was the initial hypothesis, but since the autopsy, I doubt it. While the young man was definitely asphyxiated, Simone here found other marks on the body that indicate he was bound by someone else."

She moved to the table and pointed to the kid's thumb; I could see the dark ring of a deep bruise around it but that didn't make any sense.

Then Doctor Hiver spoke up. "Thumb cuffs. He's got marks on both hands. I believe he and another party were engaged in breath-play that got out of hand. Once this young man died, the other person panicked, un-cuffed him and dumped the body."

"Breath play?" I had an idea but I wanted specifics.

"A form of erotic activity involving strangling as a means to intensify orgasmic response," Doctor Hiver replied, smooth as cream. "If he'd been doing it to himself the thumb cuffs and scarf would have been at the scene and they weren't. As it is, it would be damned difficult to do to oneself in thumbcuffs."

Loretta nodded. "We've found some older marks as well, so he's been involved in this . . . activity for a while. The other participant is probably hoping we'll call it self-induced manslaughter and leave it at that, but that's not the case."

I sighed. "No it is not. All right, we'll have to look up his associates and see what we can find about his last twenty-four hours. Ladies, thank you."

As I left it dawned on me that china milkmaid seemed to know a lot about bondage. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

-oo00oo-

It might have been a simple case of a kink gone too far, but the fact that O'Malley had been assigned to the Naval Intelligence relay station brought the hair up on the back of my neck. LaSalle was of a mind that someone might have tortured the man, which seemed a possibility, but a run of his credit cards showed that he'd spend a lot of time at a spot in the Warehouse district called Lys Noir.

"Club," Sonja offered, looking a little embarrassed as she played with a pencil. "I hear they're kind of goth."

"Goth," I repeated, looking from her to LaSalle, who was grinning.

"Like the Addams family, but serious about it. 'Member that brunette scientist that works for Gibbs? Her sorta place—all spiders and coffins."

"I'm sure they're big on Marie Laveau too," Sonja added, "Given this city."

"Well, someone's gonna have to go down there and ask questions, and since both of you are a lot more informed on the place than I am . . . I'll go see if anyone at the station knows anything."

Gregorio was currently on vacation so I was on my own. The drive to the relay station didn't take long, and the folks there needed more than the usual number of ID checks, but once I was in, I spoke to Lieutenant Thuc about the petty officer.

"Yes we got word about Oliver early this morning," she told me as we walked down a hallway to her office. "Strangled . . . that's just so weird."

"Did he have any enemies?" I asked. "Anyone who might have had a grudge against him?"

Lieutenant Thuc hesitated long enough for me to sense an opening, so I added, "anything would help."

"Well . . . he and Korvech didn't get along much," she admitted "Ensign Korvech. Mostly a conflict of personalities and I told both of them to get it straightened out. I thought they'd worked it through, but . . ." she shrugged

"I'd like to talk to the ensign," I told her, and she provided me with an address. Once I had it l looked around again. "Pretty small operation you've got."

"Not much radio traffic in this age of digital communication and satellites," Lieutenant Thuc sighed. "They're shutting us down in the next two years; probably going to turn the facility over to FEMA."

I gave a little murmur of commiseration and headed out again, heading to the address that I'd gotten.

As I drove I considered what I knew so far, and it didn't seem to add up to much: a young man who was indulging in a dangerous proclivity working for an office that was closing down soon . . . on a whim I sent a text to Plame asking him to check on the closure date for the relay station as I pulled up to Ensign Korveck's apartment.

The ensign was looking like something the cat dragged in and the dog wouldn't touch, frankly. The bright daylight made him squint, and by the smell of things he'd spent the night drinking something cheap.

"Is this about my speeding ticket?" he wanted to know, licking dry lips.

"No, it's about Oliver O'Malley," I watched him carefully and he flinched.

"What about him?"

"He's dead. Strangled," I added. Ensign Korveck blinked and I knew he wasn't faking his surprise.

"No sh-, I mean really, sir?"

"No shit," I agreed. "Lieutenant Thuc mentioned that you'd had a disagreement with O'Malley."

"No! At least, not the sort of thing to kill about," Korveck yelped. "He kept wanting me to go to some club with him. Creepy place."

"Lys Noir?" Now I was onto something, I thought.

"Yeah. Not my scene," the ensign made a face. "I'm not into it. But Oliver was, I guess. I turned his invites down and after that I found him snooping through my workstation! So I complained to the lieutenant and she told us to work it out."

"Did you?" I wanted to know.

"Mostly," Korveck shrugged. "He didn't do it again as far as I know. Strangled, damn. I knew that place was bad news."

"How so?" Given the responses I'd already gotten from my team I was curious to add to the collection.

"Just . . . not healthy," Korveck shook his head. "Oliver talked about the girls there being dark angels. Weird as all get-out."

That comment stuck with me on the drive back. Weird as all get-out.

-oo00oo-

After a lot of fruitless digging through the afternoon, I finally went back to the morgue.

Nobody was in the autopsy bay, but I spotted Doctor Simone at one of the computer desks, so I cleared my throat to let her know I was there and she turned to look and nod. "Special Agent Pride?"

"Just call me Dwayne," I returned. "I'm hoping you can tell me a little more about . . . thumb cuffs."

Simple request, but an easy opening so I could find out more about O'Malley's particular preference and maybe suss out exactly how it could end up in a murder. I'm no stranger to sex-related deaths, and this city has a reputation for some pretty exotic offerings but this was territory I hadn't considered much before to be sure.

And I had a feeling this woman knew more about them than she was letting on.

She raised an eyebrow, and looked like she might smile, but didn't. Instead, she fished in her desk drawer for a wide beige rubber band and then rose up and waved me over to the door of Loretta's office.

"Please call me Simone then. Very well. Thumb cuffs are a simple way to restrain a person without being too uncomfortable or threatening," she murmured. "I can create a facsimile with this. Hold out your hands, please."

I did, watching as she looped the band around my thumbs in multiple figure eights. Snug, but not cutting off circulation as it were. I looked from my hands back to her and snorted. "Okay, this is more silly than facsimile."

She did smile then, a sultry look that thumped me low in the belly, which should have been my first warning. "Possibly. There's a coat hook on the door behind you, Dwayne. Raise your hands, back yourself up, and hook your thumbs on it."

I hesitated. Her voice was softer, more coaxing now. Simone kept eye contact with me and I realized her eyes were the color of Spanish Moss, ringed with dark lashes. Slowly I followed her directions and fumbled a bit, managing to bump the hook and then lift my hands so that I could slide them down on either side of it behind me.

The middle of the rubber band caught, and I realized that although the hook was a bit low I was definitely at a disadvantage now, with my flanks exposed and no quick way to either defend myself or take action. Just as I realized it, Simone smiled, cocking her head to one side.

"There you go. With a single rubber band I have you at my leisure, mon bel homme. I could do alllll sorts of acts on your person now without too much resistance on your part," she cooed.

I'd started to sweat a bit. "I can get out of this," I pointed out, not real pleased with the hint of shakiness in my voice. This particular shirt was on the short side and I knew I was exposing some skin nobody needed to see.

"Of course you can," Simone agreed. "However, as your play partner, it would be up to me to make sure you didn't want to, and likewise free you if there was any danger or misunderstanding."

I latched onto this surprising concept. "So when doing something like this you—the other party- have responsibility as well as control?" This idea was kind of bizarre, as was the way my body was acting. I knew it had been a long time since Rita's last visit, with last being the operative word now that she was engaged. We'd had good times but between her moving on and everything else I'd been celibate a tad longer than I'd realized. Or wanted to admit.

And my libido was letting me know I wasn't off the hook, as the pun goes.

"Of course," Simone replied, stepping closer. "This is a medium level of bondage, and if these were real thumb cuffs I would be checking your circulation between whatever else we, ah, would be doing."

The minute she said that, all sorts of . . . extremely vivid images rushed in to fill those blanks and I gritted my teeth, willing myself not to moan. Why in God's name did I have to have such an active imagination right at this moment?

Before I could reply though, the autopsy bay door opened and Loretta lumbered in. She stared at us and God knows what it must have looked like what with me hooked up like a tournament bass at a weighing station and Simone smiling like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Finally—

"Dwayne when I suggested you get a hobby," she began, grinning as I fumbled to free myself. Simone was no help. "This wasn't quite what I had in mind."

"Damn it Loretta, it's not what it looks like!" I protested but in my heart I knew I'd be hearing about this for the next couple of years.

"Laissez les bon temps roulez?" she shot back, snickering. "You do realize I now have prime blackmail material, Pride. Prime."

"No, this really isn't his fault," Simone broke in firmly. "He was asking about thumb cuffs and I got a little too literal. One of the other points I wanted to make, though, is that your crime scene will have either hooks on the walls, or a more likely, a wire-frame bed."

I managed to free myself from the door and worked the rubber band off my thumbs but there was nothing I could do about my red face or the tension all through my chest. "That's more than we knew this morning anyway."

Simone tried to apologize but I shook my head gruffly. "Forget it. I plan to." With what little dignity I had left, I took off, wanting to leave the whole incident behind and get this case over with as soon as possible.