CHAPTER

32

WHILE GINO RAN the computer to Tommy, Magozzi stopped in the break room to grab a sludgy cup of coffee he hoped wasn’t decaf. There wasn’t much left on the snack table, so he took a pass, even though he was starving. He had fleeting thoughts of his conversation with Gino about the Donner party and decided to order pizza, double cheese, sausage and pepperoni. Plenty of fat: no way he was going to die from protein poisoning tonight.

McLaren and Freedman were at their desks when he walked into Homicide. McLaren looked tired or hung-over or both; Freedman was sorting Skittles by color and arranging them on the edge of his desk. Magozzi didn’t ask—they all had their foibles and nervous habits when they were deep into a case.

“What’s the latest on Blanca?”

Freedman looked very unhappy. “She was a hermit, by all accounts, and none of her clients are good for the murder—we went through her appointment book and talked to every damn one of them. No notes about any walk-ins and the woman didn’t own a computer.”

Magozzi stripped off his coat and gloves and sagged into his chair, rubbing his frozen hands together in the hope he’d get some circulation back. “Blanca said the woman in her vision almost drowned once. We just found out Kelly Ramage almost drowned when she was younger. There could be a connection there.”

McLaren rolled his bloodshot eyes away from his computer screen. “Kelly wasn’t in her list of clients, and there was no other personal connection that we could find, but where the hell would we find it? She only had one contact on her phone, and it wasn’t Kelly.”

Freedman folded his big arms across his bigger chest. “Minnesota is the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. I almost drowned once, and so has half the population. Don’t tell me you’re starting to buy into the psychic stuff.”

“For God’s sake, I’m just looking for links. So, no skeletons in Blanca’s closet?”

Freedman popped all the carefully aligned yellow Skittles into his mouth. “No, but something was on her radar. She sent a text to her one contact the night before she was killed, asked for a callback ASAP, but the friend never got the text until this afternoon, and by then Blanca was dead. McLaren thinks something’s screwy with the friend, too.”

“How so?”

“I think she was holding something back. Freedman doesn’t think so, but I got a weird vibe from her. We told her about the duct tape, which pricked up her ears.”

“Well, that might be something,” Magozzi said, wondering why he was sounding so optimistic. Probably because a pizza was on the way. “While you’re digging deeper, keep an eye out for any connections to a Delia Sellman. She was killed in Los Angeles last year and her crime scene was a dead ringer for Kelly’s, right down to the bondage. Just because Blanca’s scene didn’t have sexual overtones doesn’t mean there isn’t something in her past that attracted the same killer.”

“Sounds like you’ve got some footing.”

“We’ve got some ingredients for pot luck, so let’s throw everything into the stew and see what happens.”

*   *   *

While Gino scoured Kelly Ramage’s notebook, Magozzi pulled up the BaDSaM website. The opening page had a very slick, professional photo of a model wearing a blindfold, her glossy red lips parted provocatively. Given the tacky appearance of the rest of the page, it was probably unlicensed. BaDSaM was never going to win a Webby.

Magozzi read the accompanying script aloud: “‘Find your perfect match, someone who can fulfill your deepest, darkest desires, your every fantasy. There are hundreds of people and possibly a few killers waiting to meet you on our private, discreet site. Enter here.’”

Gino jerked his head up, then rolled his eyes. “You had me for a millisecond.”

“You haven’t had enough coffee. What’s Kelly’s user name?”

“Naughtykitten32.”

Magozzi typed it in and got another prompt. “Password?”

Gino passed him the notebook. “It’s a jumble, one of those computer-generated passwords you don’t have a prayer in hell of remembering.”

Magozzi slowly pecked in the series of letters, numbers and symbols carefully, then hit return. Gino pulled up his chair and they both watched as Naughtykitten32’s profile page popped up along with an upper-body shot of Kelly Ramage. Her beautiful face and tawny hair looked angelic, but the leather bustier and studded collar she wore didn’t. It was disturbing. “I don’t understand the draw.”

Gino shrugged. “Naughty cheerleader next door. Or, in this case, the accountant’s wife. The corruption of innocence. It appealed to her for whatever reason. She had a shit childhood, and that’s where stuff like this starts.”

Below her photo was a personal statement: Inexperienced sub seeking gentle dom male for encounter. Forty or under, no exceptions. Light bondage only, NO hardcore, fetish, or pain.

Gino pointed to the user dashboard. “She has over two hundred messages. Seeing her picture, that’s not a surprise.”

Magozzi clicked on the message icon, which pulled up exactly nothing. “The two hundred messages aren’t here.”

“She probably erased them. Hit PRIVATE CHAT.”

PRIVATE CHAT was empty, too. “Maybe she deleted everything when she went over to Signal.”

“But her photo’s still up and she didn’t close the account.” Gino tapped his pen on the edge of the desk. “Check out her contact list.”

Magozzi navigated and clicked on it. There was only one saved contact: JamesBondage007.

“Oh, that’s real cute,” Gino seethed. “Let’s track this asshole down.”