The Final Veil: Who had kidnapped America's favorite belly dancer? Read online

  "That's good to know," Jeff said.

  "I'll probably be over later tonight, to question Kitten," I said. "That OK with you?"

  "Fine," said Jeff. "We're having some friends over, maybe give you a better idea about Goreanism."

  "Oh, yeah," I said.

  As Jeff walked out the door I looked at the width of his shoulders and the easy way he walked and resolved never to try to beat any information out of him. It would go badly.

  I put my traveling office in my van -- my laptop, my portable fax and printer, and I put on my sunglasses, my taser and my .38. I suspected I'd be working out of my van a lot. That was OK, I'd had it fitted out for just that. It was an old passenger van that I'd taken most of the seats out of. There was a table in the back and the back seat folded out into a bed on which one could sleep in some discomfort.

  I also had a porta-potty for long surveillance jobs, but I hated to use it, since using it meant I'd have to clean it out sooner or later.

  I drove to Athena's Palace first. It was an older restaurant in nice part of town., Its red awning with white Grecian trim was clean and new, and the cars parked outside it were shiny and new. I walked inside and introduced myself to the manager, Arnold Papadakoulis, and told him why I was there.

  "I don't remember any suspicious people in the parking lot for the last couple of days," said Papadakoulis. "I'll ask the staff, but we don't really watch our parking lot. Nothing much ever happens there."

  "Then I don't suppose you have a security cam," I said.

  "No, we don't, but there's a few security cams in the car dealership across the street," said Papadakoulis.

  I'd printed out a handful of copies of pics of Dancer I'd found on her website, but I didn't leave any at Athena's Palace because the lobby already had an image of her that was nearly life-size, as well as several headshots. I borrowed one of the headshots.

  The salesmen at Joe Girardo's All-American Cars were old hands at selling and didn't do more than glance at me as I strode onto the lot. I asked to see the manager and got the run-around until I explained that it was a police matter involving the commission of a felony and would they like me to call up Lt. Jenson in homicide to talk with them in less convenient circumstances?

  This got prompt but still grudging results. I was able to winkle the tapes from the security cams in the front parking lot out of them. Auto salespeople were so into games and one-upmanship that I got the impression they thought I was trying to pull some kind of con on them. Well, if April didn't show by Friday morning, I was going to be down at police headquarters first thing, filing a report and doing everything I could to light a fire under the investigation, which wouldn't be difficult, since April was a celebrity. Let them see what kind of con the cops pulled when they tore the place apart looking for witnesses and clues. If the salesmen pulled that same garbage with Atlanta's finest, they'd find themselves downtown cooling their heels in various interrogation rooms for hours.

  Cheered by that thought, I drove the tapes over to Media Research and slipped them into the drop box after putting some stickers on them with my name and business address on them. I drove off, and as I drove off, I called and left a message telling Media Research what I wanted, which was images of anyone or anything out of the ordinary in Athena's Palace parking lot.

  Then I called Andrew Thomson, a reformed black hat hacker who knew all the tricks and now worked in freelance corporate security and told him I would need some hacking done tomorrow. A trace on any transactions with Dancer's credit/debit cards, which I'd gotten from Jeff before he left. A search of all area hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts and extended stay suites for anyone with April Dancer's name checking in or out in the last 48 hours.

  I had software on my computer that would let me search all area hospitals, clinics and emergency rooms for admissions, as well as all jail admissions, so I didn't ask for that. I could run that tomorrow morning while I ate breakfast. I needed Andrew's help because he had the software and skills to get into systems he really wasn't supposed to get into, and to get out, without leaving a trace. The cops could legally do everything Andrew could, but they couldn't do it nearly as fast, or as subtly.

  Next, I called Jeff and asked if I could come over in about twenty minutes to interview Kitten. He said sure, he had guests but I was welcome to join them and talk with Kitten at length.

  I could hear the twang of Middle Eastern dance music, laughter and happy voices in the background. Sounded like a party.

  Jeff lived in the wealthy northern suburbs of Atlanta, in a large house in a tract of large houses, the kind that had almost no lawn or vegetation, but had three floors of living space, with some rooms that were as big as my whole apartment. There were a group of cars in the street in front of his house.

  All the windows in the house were blacked out by heavy curtains, and the walls kept all the sounds of the party on the inside on the inside. Discreet, suiting the neighborhood.

  I walked up to the door and stood in the glare of the porch light and knocked. I noticed there were surveillance cameras around the house, including one covering the front porch. Not at all unusual in private residences, now that they'd gotten so cheap if you installed them yourself, and an excellent idea if you were a celebrity, especially a sexy one.

  In fact, I had one at my front door and several that covered my windows, despite my lack of sexy celebrityhood. That was a little unusual, for an apartment dweller. But there were people out there who had good reason to want to kill me, people who'd killed before. I didn't live in fear of them, but I did take precautions where I could.

  I rang the doorbell under the unblinking eye of the security cam. A moment later the door was opened by a strikingly beautiful blond who was wearing nothing but a thong and a few bells, beads, bangles and chains. Plus a large red plastic ball hung around her neck, secured by several black straps, like a choker. Her neck was also adorned by a close-fitting metal necklace. A collar. Of course.

  "Hi," I said. "I am John Bowman. Jeff is expecting me."

  "Please come in, Master Bowman," she said, bowing her head before me and stepping back. I stepped into the room and shut the door behind me.

  The woman dropped to her knees and put her head to the floor, crossing her hands behind her back.

  "Welcome to the keep of Master Skarpik of Brunisia, whom you know as 'Jeff'," said the woman. "This girl is called Kitten. This girl begs to serve you while you stay here, in any and all ways."

  I looked down at Kitten. She was gorgeous kneeling there with the smooth curves of her butt hiked into the air, her breasts pressed against the floor, her silky blonde hair splayed on the floor around the shoulders. Looking down at her I had an intimation of what it might be like to have such a woman, have in the sense the Goreans presumably did, as their absolute and unquestioning slave. If I told her to "Hold still" and then kicked her legs apart and put my cock in that lovely upturned butt, I bet she wouldn't object in any way. She would be serving me.

  I head read about this sort of behavior in my Web browsing last night, which had consisted mostly of finding out as much about Goreans as I could, but you read a lot of bullshit on the Web. It was startling to to see it in real life, right there at my feet. I had a brief sense that I was not in Atlanta and any more, and maybe I wasn't.

  Of course, Jeff had already made it clear that the key to keeping such women around was knowing what they wanted to do and then ordering them to do it. But I had a distinct impression that the fantasies aroused by Kitten's upturned butt with just a single black strap between her cheeks was pretty much what she wanted.

  But anyway. To business.

  "Thanks, Kitten," I said. "I'm just here to ask you some questions. Is there a place we could go and talk?"

  "This girl knows of a place, master," said Kitten. "This girl will show you there."

  "Fine," I said.

  Kitten rose to her feet in a graceful, well-practiced movement and led me out of the room, opening the door for me
and bowing her head as I passed. In fact, she kept her head lowered at all times. Her every move was a gesture of submission to me.

  We walked down a hallway with several adjoining rooms. Kitten opened the door to one of them and I entered.

  "This is Master Jeff's study, he said to make it available to you if it pleases you," Kitten said.

  I looked at the room. It was dominated by a custom-built easy chair in a corner of the room. It was custom-build in the sense that there was a notch cut out of the center of the chair, right where the sittee's crotch would be. There were also cuffs dangling from its arms and straps at its base. A collar dangled on a short chain beneath the notch. A bondage chair. Of course.

  "Please have a seat on the throne, master," said Kitten, gesturing toward the bondage chair.

  "Where will you sit?" I asked.

  "This girl will kneel before you, as befits a slavegirl," said Kitten.

  "All right," I said. It was her home.

  I sat on the throne and wasn't too surprised to find it very comfortable. Kitten knelt in front of me. Except she didn't kneel a meter or so in front of me, as I'd expected. She knelt right between my legs, with her torso snugged right up against the chair, so that her head was in the notch cut out of the chair seat. In fact, her head was poking right up between my legs, her face just inches from my crotch. I instinctively shoved my butt back against my chair at her closeness.

  She stayed where she was, looking not up at me but down at my crotch.

  "I am yours, master," she said. "Command me."

  "Could you move back just a little?" I asked. Normally I'm all for feminine closeness, but this was business.

  "As master wishes," Kitten said. She place her hands on my knees and shuffled backward on her knees until she was about a foot from me, then resumed her kneeling posture, with her hands clasped behind her back, making her breasts jut forward. There were rings in each nipple.

  I found this much more comfortable. But Kitten did not. Her sense of rejection was evident in every line of her body. Even the individual hairs on her forearm looked rejected.

  I realized that slavegirls, operating under rules of silence, were probably pretty good at communicating via body language. And as a private detective, I was good at understanding body language.

  "That's a little better," I said. "I hope I didn't offend you. I am not a Gorean, and am not used to such close contact in ordinary conversation."

  "Master is a man," Kitten said almost querulously. "This girl is female and slave. As a slave, this girl has no protective space around her body in the presence of a master. This girl's body is to be available to masters at all times. I am under strict orders to get as close to a master as he will permit at all times while in this house. I did not mean to offend."

  "It's all right, then, I am not offended," I said. "Now, can I get you to look me in the eye while we talk?"

  "Yes, of course, master," Kitten said, looking up at me with large, lustrous blue eyes that held the steady regard of a cat. There was something animalistic about her gaze, unwavering and sure of itself. I had expected a shyer gaze, somehow.

  "OK, Kitten, as you know, I'm investigating April's disappearance," I said. "I understand that you dropped April off in the parking lot of Athena's Palace the day she disappeared."

  "Yes master, this girl did," Kitten said calmly.

  "I need to know exactly what you saw on that trip to drop her off," I said.

  "This girl will do her best to tell you, master," Kitten said.

  I wanted to order Kitten to knock the "this girl" shit off and just use first-person pronouns like the rest of us, but I didn't. It made her comfortable, and I did my best reading of body language when witnesses were most comfortable. And I knew I had a problem already with Kitten in that her body still telegraphed her sense of rejection at being forced to kneel so far away from me that she didn't get a whiff of my cock every time she inhaled. There was an easy solution to the problem, and I decided to take it.

  "Good," I responded. "First thing is, I have changed my mind. I want you to snug right up here in my lap. As close as you can get."

  "As master wishes, but a girl would never wish to impose upon her master's space," said Kitten with a hopeful tone.

  "It will not be an imposition," I said. "I require it. I command it. Get over here."

  With body language that clearly indicated delight, Kitten crawled over and was once again sitting with her face directly opposite my cock, just as before except that her face now looked up at me and there was a definite merry gleam in her eyes. She had won, she was training me to be a master. I was beginning to understand some of the things I'd picked up from Jeff earlier.

  "OK, then," I said, looking down at the upturned face of the stranger between my legs, "did you see anything at all unusual or out of the ordinary in the Athena's Palace parking lot when you dropped April off?"

  "This girl has thought about it a lot since this morning," said Kitten. "She doesn't remember seeing anything at all unusual."

  "Nobody hanging around the parking lot, no unusual vehicles, no vans parked near the entrance to the club with their motors running?"

  "Not that this girl noticed, master," said Kitten. "This girl was not really paying attention as a girl should."

  "I will decide whether or not blame should be placed on you," I said, "and in this case there should be none. Your task that day was to drop off April, not to memorize the landscape and people around Athena's Palace. Correct?"

  "Yes master," Kitten said, and there was a genuine note of gratitude in her voice. She had been upset about it.

  "Were there any people at all in the parking lot when you came in?" I asked.

  "A few," Kitten said. "A group of blue-haired ladies, a few couples, one family group with a little boy and a girl."

  "A family group going in to watch April dance?" I asked.

  "It is not as if she dances nude there, Master," said Kitten. "In a place like Athena's Palace, she always hitches her skirt up over her butt crack and wears a coin belt around her middle that goes almost all the way up to her belly button. And her bra is large, her dance is more folk and ethnic than erotic."

  "What about at a Gorean meeting, like the one that is presumably going on tonight?" I asked.

  "Then she must dance fully exposed as the slave she is," said Kitten. "Gorean masters expect a slave's dance to express her whole personality, including her sexuality. She would start off wearing the scantiest of G-strings but plenty of chains, slave bracelets, veils, etc., to emphasize her body by concealing it. But she would always wind up absolutely naked and expressing her deepest feelings, which would include sexual feelings, feelings of submission and love and lust. She is not allowed to hold back on any of that when she dances for a master, most especially a Gorean master. Often such a dance will end with her serving a master sexually, as part of the dance, fully expressing her love for the master. More often, a master is overcome by the feelings she has aroused in him with her dance, and he ravishes her on the spot."

  "It's kinda raunchy, then," I said.

  Kitten smiled up at me. "Yes master, it is kinda raunchy," she said.

  "How did you feel about April?" I asked. "It must be hard, being in the shadow of someone with such a great talent. I understand that both of you belong to Jeff."

  "That is true," Kitten said. "This girl loves April as a sister. And it is not so bad as you think. Although this girl is not well known to the general public, as April has become, this girl is well known in the Gorean world for my talents."

  "And what talents would that be?" I asked.

  "Some have been so kind as to praise this girl for her talents in the arts of pleasing men sexually," said Kitten. "Some have paid especially kind compliments to this girl's ability to use her tongue on a master's cock. This girl has been well rewarded by masters for her mental and physical flexibility during sex. This girl's legs can be raised over her head and leave them tied behind her neck during sex. Thi
s girl has been trained to come at a word or a gesture from a master. This girl can bend her body so far forward she can lick her own pussy. This girl ... "

  "I get the idea," I said.

  "Yes, master," said Kitten. "This girl only wanted you to know that among Goreans, such talents and skills as I possess are a thing of great pride and public discussion, much as April's dancing skills are among non-Goreans. In a Gorean meet, I am often asked to demonstrate my skills before all, and happily do so."

  "This girl has no inhibitions, then," I said.

  "Yes, master," April said, smiling at my appropriation of her term. "This girl is a Gorean slavegirl, and as such she is permitted no inhibitions."

  "April is permitted no inhibitions as well, I take it," I said.

  "She is permitted none, and has none, where her dance is concerned," said Kitten.

  "So she might well have danced as a Gorean slavegirl at Gorean meets, and ended such exhibitions by making love, in a dancerly sort of way, with one of the attendees," I said.

  "She did so, on many occasions," said Kitten. "She enjoys the attentions of masters, as I do."

  "How does Jeff feel about this?" I asked.

  "Master Jeff is the one who takes us to meets," said Kitten. "He could put green silk on us if he did not want us to be available for the use of masters."

  "Green silk?" I asked.

  "The colors a girl wears signal her availability to masters," said Kitten. "White silk means she is a virgin and cannot be used by men. Red silk means she is experienced and available to masters. Green silk means she is experienced but not available to men. If a girl is sick or merely on her master's whim, she may be put in green silk. Both Dancer and this girl have worn green silk when we had colds, but most of the time, we wear red silk at meets."

  "And this suited you and April?" I asked.