Sex and Murder.com

Introduction

Excerpts:
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  • Chapter One
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  • Chapter Two
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  • Chapter Two (cont)
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  • Chapter Three
    An Interview with the Author

    Letter From the Editor

    Editorial: Having Our Say

    New Releases

    Authors On Tour

    Feedback

    Ordering

    Gay/Lesbian/Feminist Bookstores Around the Country

    The Mostly Unfabulous Homepage of Ethan Green

     




    Sex and Murder.com Sex and Murder.com
    Chapter Three

    By Mark Richard Zubro

     

    At crime scenes I like to watch from the assembled onlookers. The detectives always look so official in sport coats, or sometimes even suits. The techs usually look like they just got done mopping somebody's floor. I'd like to get close to all these cops. I'd like to be able to tell if they wear expensive cologne or cheap deodorant. I want to know them. I want to know them while they don't know me and don't know that I'm watching or that I'm learning about them. I like being silent and unseen. If I were invisible, it would be perfect.


    In an electronics room they found three computers, one printer, and rows of disks and shelves filled with technical manuals. Papers covered three large tables against one wall. In this room there wasn't an antique in sight. The décor ran to stainless steel stem lamps, stark white walls, and an absence of that which would make it warm or personal.

    There was a bank of smaller monitors tucked in one corner. "This must be the monitor's records," Turner said. "We'll have to check them out."

    "Want to bet the ones from last night are missing?" Fenwick asked.

    "No," Turner said. "Although, if he knew the killer, and let him in voluntarily, all the security in the world wouldn't have helped much."

    After they'd hunted through a drawer jammed with bills, checkbooks, and personal correspondence, Turner said, "I don't see an address book." Nothing they found revealed anything significant. Turner discovered a pile of postcards without messages or stamps. They were from cities throughout the world.

    "He didn't bank electronically?" Turner asked.

    "You'd think a computer guy would," Fenwick said.

    "A guy this wealthy must employ a team of accountants. We need to talk to them. We'll have to get some of the department computer people in here and go over everything carefully." Turner gazed at all the papers. "Not something I'm looking forward to quite yet."

    "You and me both," Fenwick said. They decided to leave the papers for that afternoon when the computer expert could be present. He would be able to tell them what was safe to touch, or what could be secret diagrams to technological marvels that could rule the world, or what could possibly be a clue in a murder investigation.

    In a walk-in closet off the electronics room they found an entire wall that held a library of DVD recordings, thousands of alphabetized movie tapes, and thousands of CDs. Numerous shelves were filled with pornographic videos.

    As he examined the outer coverings of these last, Turner said, "My guess is, he was straight." Fenwick checked several of the box covers. Many featured naked women wearing spike heels and enough makeup to fill yards of counter space in the cosmetics section of a major department store. Most were sprawled in fantastic contortions displaying as much flesh as possible.

    "Are these poses supposed to be enticing?" Turner asked, holding up one with a woman leaning backward while straddling the largest watermelon Turner had ever seen. She wore only a pair of red spike heels and the requisite gobs of makeup.

    Fenwick examined the proffered box for a moment and then said, "To the fourteen-year-old boy inside of every adult, straight male, they are."

    "No real woman has breasts that big," Turner asked, "do they?"

    "I haven't made a study, although I'd be willing to volunteer to do the research if my wife were on a trip to Mars and wouldn't be back for ten years, and that radar she has for knowing what I'm up to was turned off."

    "Is there any significance to the fact that he had all these tapes?" Turner asked.

    "He whacked off a lot?"

    "Maybe he was into making them. I haven't seen any apparatus for that yet. These sure look like regular commercial tapes. You don't make highly glossy boxes for your own self-filmed collection, do you?"

    "I never have," Fenwick said.

    Turner said, "I like the newspaper articles where, when a criminal is arrested, they include the porn tapes in a list of things found. As if by their very presence, they revealed something sinister about the owner."

    Fenwick waved his hand at the assembled tapes. "Having this many is a little unusual. Maybe he was just rich and could afford to indulge his tastes. We'll have to ask around to see if there is any significance. Adding a highly sexual element to a gritty murder always perks me right up."

    "I thought we disposed of the problem of you being perky and up earlier today."

    "Not hardly."

    "Ouch."

    Just off a second floor bedroom they found another large walk-in closet. They checked each dresser drawer. All the boxer shorts were silk. All the shirts were hand-tailored. A receipt was attached to several of them, each with the address of a dry cleaner two blocks away. Lenzati had a line of suits unlike any Turner had ever seen on racks in a store. They found another large closet tending to jeans and T-shirts. Turner counted the pairs of athletic shoes and then asked, "Who needs thirty pairs of gym shoes?"

    "One for each day of the month?" Fenwick offered.

    Lenzati also had warm-up outfits and athletic clothes, titanium tennis rackets and titanium golf clubs. When he saw the clubs, Turner said, "If we didn't have those tapes, I could still tell he was straight."

    "How's that?"

    "He played golf. No gay men play golf."

    "There must be some who do."

    "Nope. In the gay gene there is no golf strand."

    "I thought there wasn't a gay gene."

    "No one knows for sure, but if there is, trust me, it does not include playing golf. It's just one of those little oddities of the universe. Gay men play in all sports except golf."

    "Even hockey?" Fenwick asked.

    "I hope they play hockey, and I want to meet them."

    "Good for you," Fenwick said. "Next question. Did he live with someone? I see lots of expensive clothes, but I don't see evidence of two sets of clothes, or any feminine apparel. I don't see personal items that would indicate cohabitation. There was only one toothbrush in the john, one stick of deodorant, a razor, and shaving cream. My guess is he was single. Unless he kept wives and mistresses in mansions throughout the world."

    "Speaking of mistresses," Turner said, "where's the hired help? He must have had servants of some kind, but we haven't seen any. I wonder why not?"

    "How many guesses do I get?" Fenwick asked.

    "Not enough."

    Fenwick said, "Girote claimed Lenzati dated, but it doesn't look like anyone was sharing this place at the moment."

    "A safe enough conclusion."

    The king size bed in the master bedroom was covered with a quilt made of alternating red and black squares. The abstract paintings on the walls continued the red and black color scheme. On the top of glass cube endtables, they found several arrangements of toy rubber ducks and pink flamingoes in sexual congress with each other.

    Fenwick said, "If we were looking for sexual perversity, I think we found it."

    "My definition of sexual perversity is a little raunchier than this. More colorful too."

    "Care to tell me about it?" Fenwick asked.

    "Not in this life time," Turner said. They checked all the dresser drawers. "I don't see evidence of someone else. No underwear of a different size."

    "Either two males of exactly the same size lived here, or he was living alone. Or, he was dating a woman who wore the exact same clothes as he did."

    "I'm voting for alone," Turner said.

    They went back downstairs. Fenwick grumbled, "Where the fuck is the murder weapon?"

    "It's Carruthers' fault," Turner said. "He's talked to all the potential murderers in town and warned them not to help you in the slightest way." Randy Carruthers was the most maligned officer on the Area Ten detective squad.

    "Why is the world all of a sudden paying so much attention to Carruthers?" Fenwick asked.

    "If you can't trust someone who is dangerously stupid, who can you trust?" Turner asked.

    The front door swung open. Tommy Quiroz said, "I've got a guy out here who says he has to talk to whoever is in charge. Says his name is Brooks Werberg. Claims he was the corpse's business partner."


    Copyright © 2001 Mark Richard Zubro.


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