“See, in the movies I make sometimes we do a little fake S and M. We take a cat-o'-nine-tails made out of yarn or a riding crop that's wrapped in foam rubber. Some guys get off watching girls in leather bras and garters and black stockings making men lick their high heels. But that's all silly stuff. Somebody really into S and M'd take a tape like that back and ask for a refund. Real S and M uses things like this.”

Nicole whipped the thin stick down onto a vault. It whistled and bounced with a slap like a gunshot. Rune blinked.

“Hickory,” Nicole said. “Doesn't look bad, but it raises welts. It'll break the skin. You could kill somebody with this if you hit them enough times. I've heard about it happening.”

“And you're telling me that Danny's into that?”

“I came down here one time and saw him making one of those flicks. He sells them privately. I don't think the regular tapes Lame Duck makes do it for him anymore. He needs something like this to get it up.”

“What was he doing?”

“It was terrible. He was beating this girl and using needles — I mean, they're sterile and everything but, still, Jesus. And what happened was she started begging him to stop. But he just went crazier when he heard that. He was, like, totally out of control. I think he wanted to kill her. She passed out and a couple assistants grabbed Danny and took the girl to the hospital. She was going to go to the cops but he paid her off.”

Nicole looked around the room. “So you like asked if he'd kill Shelly? I don't know. But I can tell you he likes to hurt people.”

Rune picked up a thin chain with sharp alligator clips on each end. The clips were crusted with blood. She set them down.

Nicole shut off the lights, and they walked down the corridor to the stairs.

Which is when Rune heard the noise.

She whispered, “There, what was that?”

Nicole paused on the second step. “What?”

“I heard something, back there. Are there other rooms like that?”

“A couple of them. In the back. But they were dark, remember? We didn't see any lights.”

They waited a moment.

“Nothing.” Nicole was halfway up the stairs before Rune put her foot on the lower step. Then she heard it again, the noise.

No, she decided, it was actually two noises. One was similar to what she'd heard before: the ominous swishing of the hickory stick as it swung down on the leather bench.

The second was maybe just the sound of air escaping from a pipe or steam or distant traffic.

Or maybe it was what Rune thought it sounded like — the sound of a man's restrained laugh.

Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWELVE

The watering can leaked but aside from that, Rune decided, it was a pretty good idea.