09
6:20 AM, January 14, 2010
Home of Detective Mac Taylor
Mac rolled over in bed and fumbled for his phone. He did not even look at the contact information, he already knew that it would be Danny Messer. Following their conversation yesterday, Danny had been trying to worm his way back into Mac's home and life. Mac had always found Danny's perseverance charming, but he was beginning to think he was too old to put up with it anymore.
"Danny, I swear to God, if you're calling me at this hour just to-"
"Whoa, Mac, take it easy!" Danny's voice came through the phone. "Believe me, I wouldn't be callin' at this hour for nothing."
Mac sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. "Why are you calling, then, Danny?"
A pause. "Mac, we've got another body. Like Fraser."
Mac shut his eyes, grimacing as if he had been struck in the gut. "Where?"
Danny gave him the address. Then, he said, "And Mac, this is … I don't know how to tell you this. It's one of ours."
"Another cop?"
"A CSI."
Mac's hand tightened on the phone. "Who?"
"One of our lab techs. John Lazaro."
"I know him," Mac said bleakly. "I also know that he was happily seeing another man. This is a hate crime."
"The Feds are gonna want in, you think?"
"Once we can prove the motive, yes, they're going to take it over," Mac said. "Which means that we have a limited amount of time to find this guy ourselves."
"I'll meet you there with the rest of the team."
"Yeah. See you, Danny."
Mac had been out of bed since Danny had broken the news, and he already had his clothing laid out. He hung up, went about his morning toilet quickly, and came out to dress. He gathered the files he had been going through on the kitchen table, and then left his apartment.
A blast of wintry air hit his face outside the building, and Mac buttoned his coat up. He hailed a taxi and gave the address of the crime scene. During the ride, he looked out at the gray winter city, and studiously filed away the boiling rage that was burning in his blood.
The CSI team was already on site with their equipment and the SUV. To Mac's surprise, Flack was not at the scene, but his Captain was. The Captain took Mac aside and explained to him that he could not get a hold of Flack. Mac assured him that Flack was probably only sleeping in, but the news both aggravated and concerned him. For the moment, though, there was nothing to be done about it.
The team had little to say to one another. They were briefed by the Captain, and then went up to the crime scene. The procession had the feel of a funeral march. In the apartment, the team set to work analyzing the scene.
Entry had been made into the kitchen via the window that led onto the fire escape. The killer had used a glass cutter to open a circle in the glass to unlock the window, then he had lifted it open enough to gain entry. From here, he had made his way to the bedroom.
The bedroom door had a latch lock on the inside, which had been damaged when the killer had kicked open the door. There was a large, dirt-choked boot print on the white bedroom door. The bedsheets were thrown off the bed, indicating that Lazaro had been startled out of sleep and jumped out of bed. The bedroom was completely trashed as a result of the ensuing struggle.
Lazaro was also bound to his bed with a set of the Eden of Desires's custom bondage restraints. The knife damage was more extensive than Fraser's had been: his neck was slit from ear to ear. His head lolled at an unnatural angle, tousled brown hair fallen over his eyes, blood trailing from his chin like a beard. He was entirely naked, leaving the castration damage plainly visible. Danny turned his back on the entire scene for a moment, and Lindsay put her hand on his shoulder.
"TOD is around four this morning," Hawkes said after checking the liver temperature. "He's so messed up that we'll have to rely on Sid's autopsy for Cause of Death, but given the blood spray from the neck wound, I would put my money on that being it."
"Jesus," Stella murmured. She walked around a pool of blood that had soaked through the carpet beside the bed, tagging various objects strewn across the floor and then photographing them.
"No hesitation in any of these wounds that I'm seeing," Hawkes said. "Fraser was overkill, and this … this is just … "
"Total annihilation," Danny said. His hands curled into fists. "Sick son-of-a-bitch."
Mac squeezed Danny's shoulder. "Are you going to be all right, Danny?"
"Yeah," Danny said. He removed his glasses, squeezed the bridge of his nose, and replaced them. "Yeah. I'm gonna do my job, Mac."
"You're sure?"
Lindsay paused in her work to look over at them. Mac was standing very close to Danny, and he touched his shoulder with the same amount of tenderness she just had. She shook her head, chiding herself for being paranoid. This case was making everyone emotional, and Mac always paid special attention to all of his friends.
"Guys, will you listen to me for a minute?"
Everyone looked over at Mac. It took a special kind of man to command attention so quickly and completely, Danny thought.
"I know that this case has thrown everyone," Mac said. "It came at an inopportune personal time for some of us, and it involves the force that we are all a part of. We have also had a difficult time finding and processing any evidence of value. This has led us to speculate and try to otherwise figure this thing out, out of desperation and out of fear."
Mac met each one of them in the eyes, before going on.
"But we are CSI. Today, when the press is going to explode into a full-out frenzy, and the public is going to panic- Today, more than ever, we have to be CSI. No more speculation, no more theorizing, no more talk. We find the evidence, we process it, we piece it together, and we go from there. No matter how clever this killer thinks that he is, he is still a human, and humans are imperfect beings. The evidence is there. We will find it, and it will find the killer."
Danny and Stella nodded in agreement.
"Now let's get to it," Mac said. "Let's make this crime scene the killer's last."
Mac lasted all of two hours before his concern for Flack finally got the better of him. Cursing the errant detective, he called his number several times. Upon receiving no answer, he took time out of the investigation to drive to his apartment. Fortunately, it was not far from Lazaro's home. Unfortunately, Flack did not answer the door. Mac tried the door. It was locked- not that that was ever a problem for a CSI.
I told the team not to make speculations, and here I am being paranoid, Mac thought bitterly. He unlocked the door and went inside. Damn Flack. Did he have to go missing during this case?
"Don? Don!" Mac called. "Are you here? Flack! Wake up!"
Flack was nowhere in the apartment. There was evidence that he had attempted to sleep (the bed covers were undone), but his coat and a pair of shoes were gone. Mac took a moment to vividly picture what he would do when he found Flack, and then he left the apartment. In a fouler mood than ever, he headed to McCullen's.
McCullen was not at the bar. Mac asked around, and one of the serving girls informed him that Flack had not been in since yesterday evening. According to her, he had only had a drink, maybe two, and left.
Mac tried to call Flack again, but it went straight to voicemail. With his trail gone cold, Mac had no choice but to wait for more information to surface- or Flack himself to appear.
Mac's phone rang and he answered it. "Taylor."
"Hey, Mac, this is Adam."
"Adam, tell me you've got something."
"Yeah, I ran the code on the dog tag Stella and Danny found at Fraser's apartment yesterday," Adam said. "D3-ATS? At first, I got nothing. It isn't any official organization, and it doesn't represent any group of federal enforcement. But I kept digging, and I finally found something. This website was buried, man, completely off the grid. Hidden from search engines, not tagged in any database, nothing. Nada."
"And what is this website, Adam?"
"It's a forum for members of this movement group called 'D3-ATS', and get this: they're anti-gay advocates that specifically target the military and law enforcement. The name of the group is a take on DADT. Their motto is 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Serve'. Get it? Three 'D's and the first initial of 'Ask', 'Tell', and 'Serve'? Pretty lame, if you ask me, but-"
"Send me the link, Adam," Mac said. "Send it to my phone. Now. I need to see this page."
"Done. Hey, I'm working on getting information on the registered users on the site and the people who maintain it. I'll call you once I've got some names."
"Right. Thanks a lot, Adam."
"No problem, boss."
Mac hung up and clicked onto the webpage. He browsed through the vitriolic nonsense with the same expression of disgust on his face as Flack had had the previous day. He saw that there was a meeting of these D3-ATS characters coming up that evening.
This might just be the first lead we've gotten on this case, Mac thought. Damn it! Where is Flack? This meeting is exactly the kind of thing he should go into undercover. If I can't find him by tonight, I'll have to send one of the CSI team. How can he be so irresponsible?
Mac glanced down the street morosely. I hope you are just being irresponsible, Don. If anything happens to you, I'll never forgive myself.
9:04 AM, January 14, 2010
Eden of Desires Club
Edmund Ragno was a man of fine but sensible tastes. He wore only designer clothing, but half of his wardrobe consisted of vintage finds. All of his furniture was secondhand, though he had it remixed with modern aesthetic touches and new finishes and fabrics. He only drank fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, but he ate a variety of take-out egg sandwiches from the small local diners with it. This morning, he was sitting down to such a meal in his office at the club, when his secretary buzzed his phone.
"Mr. Ragno? There are police here?"
Ragno rolled his eyes skyward, praying to any one of the myriad deities that most likely did not exist. He set down his sandwich slowly and pressed the phone button with the corner of a finger. "Send them up."
Ragno could not return to his breakfast. He drummed his fingers on his desk. He hoped that this did not have to do with Flack's shockingly sudden interest in S&M. He had never fully trusted Victor Brant, who had a reputation with the clients for playing rough and even claiming not to have heard a safe word the first time. When Victor had left the club with a half-asleep Flack, claiming he was taking him home, Ragno had had a sinking feeling.
This ominous mood darkened when the police came into his office- sans Flack. He knew Flack would never pass up an opportunity to rib him. His absence did not bode well.
"Mr. Ragno? I'm Detective Mac Taylor, this is Detective Bonasera. We're here to talk to you about one of your freelance employees? A Mr. Victor Brant?"
Ragno rubbed at his bottom lip furiously, mentally swearing for the millionth time that he would shave his mustache once and for all. He stood and shook their hands in turn. He did not sit back down.
"I told him not to use him!"
Stella and Mac shared a bewildered look.
"Excuse me?" Mac inquired.
"Your Detective Flack!" Ragno blurted out. "I swear, I warned him against using Brant! But that-that randomly perverse detective of yours insisted!"
Mac walked up to the desk. "What about Flack?"
"He didn't listen to me!"
"Sit down!" Mac snapped sharply. "Shut up. Think for a moment. Then tell me exactly what happened with Detective Flack."
Ragno blinked, and sank into his chair.
"You didn't come here about Flack?"
"No, we didn't," Stella said. "We came here because one of the men your club signed a check to a few years ago is a person of interest in a murder investigation."
"Victor Brant?" Ragno asked. "Why?"
"For starters, he's involved with an anti-gay organization we believe to be a hate group," Mac replied. "D3-ATS?"
"I've never heard of it," Ragno said in dismay. "Anti-gay? But Brant is gay. At least, he led me to believe that he was. But why would he …?"
"Tell me what you know about Brant," Mac said. "Then tell me what he has to do with Don Flack."
"Victor Brant has worked freelance for us on and off since we opened our doors," Ragno explained. "That is why we paid him in the form of a check, that was back before we switched over to paying our freelancers in cash. He's a very private man, although not as paranoid about being affiliated with the club as some of our other freelancers. But he doesn't socialize with the other entertainers, or the clients. He has been known to be rough, almost excessively so. I only let him take clients that want a little extra pain, and are … forgiving."
"Forgiving?"
"I've had a few complaints about Victor," Ragno said. "He'll get in a few extra whacks, or a little extra bondage time, and then claim he didn't hear the safe word. That sort of thing."
"He's sadistic?"
"Completely," Ragno affirmed. "That is why I told Detective Flack to use another entertainer."
"When?" Mac asked. "Flack has been here? Used this club's … services?"
"Last night, Flack came in here-"
"When?" Mac interrupted.
"It was almost midnight," Ragno said. "He was behaving strangely, Flack. He seemed nervous and depressed, wired and inebriated, all at the same time. I thought he was here to give us more legal trouble- he shut us down when we first opened up, and he had been there earlier talking about a murder- but he said that he was here as a customer, not a cop. He said he wanted an appointment! Can you believe it?"
Stella raised an eyebrow at Mac. Mac knew what she was thinking, and avoided her gaze.
"Anyway," Ragno went on, "your Flack came in here demanding an appointment. What was I going to do, refuse him? So he could shut us down again? So, I told him fine. He seemed to know what he wanted: a male dominant. Heh. You think you know a guy, right?"
"If you didn't want him to use Brant, why did you-"
"I didn't set it up," Ragno said defensively. "It just so happened that Victor Brant was leaving the club. He passed by the reception desk where I was attempting to set up an appointment for your kinky detective, and he must have overheard Flack's demands. He came back and offered to fit Flack in last night before he left. He said that he needed the extra cash, and that he likes the cute ones. Which he does. Me, personally, I think the detective is a bit plain, and those eyebrows! But Victor liked him. Of all the luck, right? Flack happening to be Brant's type … "
"Brant has a type?" Mac asked, his blood chilling. He thought of Alan Fraser, and how similar his coloring and build were to Flack's. Lazaro was also tall, dark-haired, and handsome. "What type is that?"
"Well, Brant is very tall, six-foot-four, so he likes men that are nearly his height, but not taller," Ragno said. He typed something into his computer and put his round glasses on to read the screen. "Let's see. Males five-foot-nine to six-foot-one, hair brown or black, slender and fit, no preference as to eye color, no racial preference. He likes bold personalities- well, that certainly describes Flack, doesn't it? We record all our entertainers and clients preferences, so we can pair them up with as much chemistry as possible."
"I'm going to need this Brant's home address," Mac said tightly. "Now."
"I don't have it," Ragno said. "When he was paid with a check, it was exchanged from hand to hand, not mailed."
Mac told Stella to call Adam and try to trace Brant's address. He turned back to Ragno.
"What happened after Brant made his offer?"
"I tried to warn Flack about him," Ragno said. "Flack got all defiant. He agreed to take the appointment with Brant, like he had something to prove. Like I said, I wasn't exactly up for getting on Flack's bad side. So, I wrote the appointment into our records, and Flack paid. I even gave him a discount. Then, they went upstairs."
"Where?"
"To one of the playrooms," Ragno said. "We have over a dozen suites, all designed around whatever thematic fantasy a client can imagine. We leave the choice of room up to the client, and if they have no preference, the entertainer usually chooses. There are no cameras in the playrooms, though there are in the hallways."
"We'll need the footage from last night."
"Of course," Ragno said. "They weren't up there for very long, about half an hour, maybe? When they came back down, Flack was exhausted. He looked like he had been crying, although that's common for these kinds of things. Some people like a little misery with their pleasure. Victor had an arm around him, he was supporting him. He told me that he was off the clock, that he was taking Flack home."
"To his own home?"
"I'm assuming so," Ragno said. "Although, I've never seen Brant get personal with a client before. But it was obvious that he was pretty hot for Flack. If they wanted to take their appointment farther than play, they would have had to leave the club. As I've told Flack a thousand times, we do not sell sex here."
"Maybe not," Mac said, "but you might have just sold Flack something far, far worse."
