Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“Promise me one thing, Alex. When you give me the go-ahead for the collar, I get to pluck that cheap toupee off the top of his fat head and voucher it as evidence, okay?”

I nodded as I watched the tape roll, and Kalder hauled back with his arm and cracked the whip down against the woman’s broken body. I rested my elbow on the conference table as I sat beside Colin West, lowering my head and closing my eyes, rubbing them with my thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t think I could take much of this under the best of circumstances.”

The lieutenant fast-forwarded the tape as he talked. “I know you have to sell this one to your supervisors. I mean, after that other case you lost. You’ve got to watch some of this to see just how vicious he gets.”

“The chief assistant will back me on this one, Colin. No human being should be allowed to do this to someone else-it’s pretty extreme. The one that got dismissed? That was just McKinney overruling me, and a young prosecutor with no balls who flacked for him. They made a decision to redact some of the evidence in that case without telling me-took it over my head to McKinney-and then when the appellate court threw out the verdict, the woman who had tried the case the first time just walked away from it. Claimed to be sick. Seems to have gone to Lourdes in the interim so now she’s back doing McKinney’s bidding again. Don’t worry-we can handle Kalder. How much of this do you think you have here?”

“I don’t know yet. This is only the eighth tape we’ve gotten through.”

“Any sound to go with the video?”

“Yeah. Lots of time spent putting her down, calling her his slave. And games, he plays lots of games with her.”

I couldn’t conceive of anything frivolous happening in the middle of these beatings. As West rewound the tape Mike Chapman walked into the room and closed the door behind him. He leaned over the table to shake Colin’s hand, then put a finger on his lips and pointed outside, mouthing to me that I had company.

“Anyone I know?”

“Some broad who claims she represents a lawyer you’re investigating. I thought maybe you were expecting her, so I told security I’d bring her up with me.”

West and I exchanged glances. “She can wait,” I said as West played a portion of the tape I hadn’t seen.

Kalder stood at the foot of the mattress, shouting words at his companion. She was handcuffed and had her ankles in leg irons, but there was no gag on her mouth. On the bedside table, next to a studded dog collar, was a Barbie doll, her head and wrists locked into a colonial-style stock.

The pathetic-looking lawyer yelled at his subject. “Exegesis!”

The woman squirmed on the bed, and in a tentative, whispered voice began to spell the word she had just heard. “E…x…i…”

Kalder snapped the length of leather whip back over his shoulder and brought it down on the trembling woman’s bloody thigh. “No! That’s not right.” She continued to guess at the spelling.

“They’re both screaming pretty damn loud.”

West ran his finger across the top of the screen. “It’s all been soundproofed in here, Alex. The whole apartment was rebuilt to suit his needs. We canvassed the neighbors last night and they’ve never been disturbed by any noise, although you can hear how loud the volume is on the tape.”

“Syzygy!” Kalder shouted out, over our chatter.

Now she was writhing and whining at the same time. “I don’t know that word,” she cried. Then, choking as she tried to talk, she made an effort to spell out loud. “S…y…z…z…?”

This time the whip licked the ceiling on its way down to her thigh, streaking it with blood from its last contact with her body.

Chapman helped himself to one of the coffee cups. “Shit, Colin, who is this perv? I’d hate to play a game of Scrabble with him.”

I stood up and West put the tape on pause. “Just think of it as one of those reality TV shows. We’re calling itSurvivor Jeopardy.

“Let me see what Kalder’s pal has to say for him.”

Mike held the door open and I motioned for the woman who was waiting outside my office door to come in. “Good morning, I’m Alexandra Cooper.”

“Marcy Arent.” She extended a hand and introduced herself to each of us. “I represent Peter Kalder. I’m here to find out what your intentions are in this case.”

“My intentions? Right now the detectives and I are reviewing evidence that was taken from your client’s home last night. I didn’t ask for this meeting. You did. That’s about all I’m prepared to tell you this morning, so feel free to explain what brings you here if you want this conversation to go on any longer.”

“Are you planning to arrest Mr. Kalder?”

“If there is informationyou want to give to us, I’m happy to take it from you. I’m not going to answer any of your questions now.”

Arent’s facial expression was as severe as her dark brown ladylawyer suit and thick-heeled shoes. “There’s no sex crimes case here, Ms. Cooper. All of the sexual activity between Mr. Kalder and his friend was consensual.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then why is this any of your business? What does your unit have to do with this?”

Mike spoke. “Something unpleasant happens to a woman, between her knees and her neck, on the island of Manhattan, it’s Coop’s territory. Anything else we can help you with today?”

“She consented to the physical assault, too.”

I bristled. “Our court of appeals says you can’t consent to be beaten and whipped, Ms. Arent. Want the cite? I happen to agree with them.”

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her business card. “You obviously don’t have a clear understanding of sadomasochism. We’d like to help you with that.”

I didn’t reach for the card so Arent set it down on the conference table.

“You decide what kind of injury is acceptable for a human being to sustain?” I asked.

“As long as the sex is safe, sane, and consensual, you’ve got nothing to prosecute.”

“I think where you and Coop here don’t see eye to eye is on the sane thing. It’s okay with you to draw blood, to rip skin off another person, to leave permanent scars-”

“And who might you be?” Arent glared at Mike, thrusting one of her cards at him. “I’m with AASF-the American Alliance for Sexual Freedom. We’ve got more than sixty-five hundred members across the country. The simple truth is that whether or not you know it, fifteen percent of your friends-each one of you-engage in some kind of bondage or sadomasochistic behavior.”

“Speak for yourself, sweetheart. Me, Coop, and the lieutenant just like to cuddle. No leather, no flogging, no dripping candle wax.”

Arent’s unsmiling gaze flipped back and forth between Chapman and West. “Which one of you was at my client’s home last evening?”

“That’s me. Colin West.”

“You’re with…?”

“First Precinct.”

She pointed at Mike. “And you?”

“Mike Chapman. ADU.”

“What does that stand for?”

“Acronym Designation Unit. You see, Ms. Arent,” he said, studying her business card, “everybody’s got some catchy phrase that describes their organization. Me, I would have come up with a better name for yours. The one you’ve got captures none of the flavor you’re trying to express here. Like, uh, National Union for Thrashing Someone during Sex. Then you could all just call yourselves NUTSS. Okay?”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud and turned to roll my eyes at West. Battaglia would get a letter of protest about my insensitivity to the S and M community. So be it.

Mike ushered Arent to the door simply by taking two steps in her direction and watching her recoil. “Ms. Cooper’s got a lot on her plate today. Go tell your client to relax. The lieutenant’s not in any rush to lock him up. We know Peter’ll get a hard-on when we put him in cuffs, and we’d hate to make him that happy.”