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Chapter 5 - Memory Holes.

I’m right. It takes the Detective less than twenty minutes after Em makes the call for him to get to the party house. He must have been running with the lights and sirens on the whole way.

In the meantime, while we wait for the cops to arrive, I do my best to NOT think about anything at all. I’m so on edge, barely holding on as it is, and I don't want to get lost down that rabbit hole of memories before the cops even get here. I therefore busy myself by mentally reciting multiplication tables, trying to remember all the words to ‘Jabberwocky’ and then, when I run out of anything else to distract myself with, I start in on conjugating verbs in Spanish. It’s a good thing that this Detective guy hurries, though, because my college Spanish is pretty fucking rusty and I don’t remember enough to move on from regular verbs to irregular ones.

Emmett, who’s been sitting next to me acting surprisingly restrained and un-chatty, gets up as soon as we hear the noise of the nearing police cars. He’s holding open the door as the cops come jogging up the walk. I don’t think the police were expecting a friendly, gay, welcoming committee. I just hope they don’t mistakenly shoot him.

“Honeycutt, right?” the older, fatter, of the three cops says, and I immediately recognize him as the Gravelly Guy voice from my hospital room earlier in the evening.

“Please, call me Emmett. I hate being called by my last name,” Emmy Lou graciously offers as he shows our guests in.

Gravelly Guy comes right over to where I’m still seated on the big sectional couch. “You look a lot better than when I last saw you, Kinney. I’m Detective Carl Horvath. Pittsburgh Homicide. I came by to question you earlier in the evening but you were still unconscious. Now, tell me why you’re not still in the hospital when your doctor said she was going to keep you at least overnight, and also why you dragged me all the way out here at,” he looks at his clunky Timex watch, “three forty-five in the morning.”

I take a deep breath, rub my suddenly sweaty palms against the legs of my jeans and try to quell the fleeting urge to run away. I really do NOT want to do this. Talking about shit has never been my forte and talking about THIS . . . well, let’s just say I’d rather have a root canal, without anesthesia, and leave it at that.

Luckily, while I’m hesitating and scrambling to figure out where to start, Em takes pity on me. “So, you see, when Brian woke up back at the hospital, he was all upset because he couldn’t remember what had happened to him or where he’d been all week. The only thing he did remember was that there was some other guy who’d been hurt, and Brian needed to find him and bring help. Then Brian kinda freaked out a bit because the last thing he DOES remember is the kid lying in a pool of blood, and well . . . I sorta helped him break out of the hospital without the doctor knowing so we could go find the missing kid.”

Gravelly Guy looks at me disapprovingly.

“What? You going to arrest me for leaving without a hall pass or something?”

“Ooo! This is starting to sound suspiciously like a movie Teddy and I watched a couple weeks ago,” Em adds.

“Young Perps?” I suggest, naming a favorite porn flick of my own.

“No. But that’s a great one, isn’t it . . .” Em actually sighs and looks all dreamy for a minute and, if I wasn’t so nervous, I might have actually laughed. “No, it was a new one. ‘Dick Police’ with Tommy Salami. Have you seen it?” Gravelly Guy shakes his head and looks really uncomfortable - straight guys have no sense of humor. “Anyway . . . where was I?”

“You were telling me what any of this has to do with my homicide case. I hope,” Gravelly Guy prompts.

“Right. Okay, so, Brian couldn’t remember anything other than that he needed to find this missing blond boy. Which, let’s face it, isn’t a lot to go on. And, since he couldn’t remember what had happened to him or where he’d been all week, I figured that the best thing we could do was go to the last place we knew for a fact Brian had been seen and try to recreate what happened to him from there. So we went to Babylon.”

“Babylon?” the Detective asks.

“It’s a gay dance club on Liberty Avenue, Boss,” one of the Detective’s companions answers for us - the younger, male one, who’s not bad looking for a cop.

Emmett leans over so he can stage whisper in my ear, “if they decide to frisk us, I call dibs on Officer McHottiepants.”

“Thanks, Matthews.” Horvath shoots the younger cop a warning look. “But I’m pretty sure I can take these guys’ statements without your assistance. Why don’t you and Ziva take a look around this place or do something else that’s actually useful.”

“On it, Boss.”

Once Officer McHottiepants is gone, and Emmett can concentrate again, he resumes his story for Gravelly Guy. “Soooooo, we go to Babylon, and after asking around we figure out that Brian left there last Friday night just about closing time with one of the go-go dancers - a young blond kid by the name of Justin, who thankfully fits the description of Brian’s lost boy. Only nobody’s heard from Justin all week either. His coworker told us Justin didn’t show up for work on Saturday and hasn’t been seen since. After a little more prying, we figured out that Justin was supposed to have danced at a party that night and Brian apparently decided to tag along with him. Which is how we ended up here - which, as you can tell from the mess, seems to be where said party was held. But, obviously, since there’s nobody here to question, and we don’t have any other clues about where Brian’s missing blond boy might be, we decided we’d better call you.”

“If you can’t remember anything, how’d you find this place,” the Detective asks.

“Tracked my car with the on-board security system,” I explain succinctly.

The cop nods. “Smart. But I’m still not convinced this has anything to do with my homicide case.”

“You’re working on the Dumpster Boys case right?” I ask, receiving a nod in return. “Well, I don’t remember much, but I do know that some serious shit went down here last weekend. And, I know that MY missing blond, isn’t the only one these guys have messed with.”

Horvath looks around him at the trashed house, almost as if he expects to find a dead blond boy right there. When he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, he turns back to me, “Okay, son. You’ve got my attention. Tell me what you know.”

Then he just sits there, waiting expectantly. Now I’m going to have to say it. I’m going to have to finally tell them all what happened to me. And I really do NOT want to do this. But if I don’t, I won’t be able to help Justin . . .

I close my eyes and try to search for some inner calm, but find only barely restrained dread, so I guess there’s nothing for it but to just say the words. “Justin’s boss told him he’d get paid some ridiculous amount to come dance at this party for a couple hours. I thought I’d crash the gig and wait around till he was done so we could go back to my place together. Only . . . I was fucking stupid and drunk and not paying attention and, obviously, somebody spiked my drink . . . and because I was an idiot, I got to enjoy the same treatment your dead blond boys received before they turned up in various dumpsters.” I swallow, trying to hold back the nausea that’s threatening to overwhelm me as I voice that little confession, but then I hurry on, intent on getting it all out as fast as possible. “Justin is the one they really wanted - I was just a bonus, I guess - but afterwards they didn’t know what to do with me, so they held onto me and kept me locked up too.”

“Oh, Bri . . .” Emmett’s sympathy almost breaks me. I can’t stand the note of pity I hear in his voice and I flinch away from that almost as much as the well-meant hand he rests on my arm.

“Why would you be a ‘bonus’?” the cop asks in that nosy, cop-like, way, which thankfully provides a welcome distraction. “You’re nothing like the kids that keep turning up dead, Kinney. You’re the wrong age, body type, everything. Why would they mess with you at all?”

“Jealousy?” I offer. “See, I have a bit of a reputation . . .”

“A bit?” Emmett chimes in unhelpfully. “Our friend, Michael, calls Brian, ‘The Stud of Liberty Avenue’. He’s the toppiest top of all the tops in top-land. Of course these fuckers, who clearly can’t get laid without forcing themselves on poor innocent boys, would be jealous.”

I just roll my eyes and shake my head at my friend’s dubious praise. “Apparently, the ‘fuckers’ thought it would be fun to take me down a peg or two. Only, they couldn’t just make me disappear afterwards like the others, since I’m not some anonymous twink with no friends or family. I ended up being a big glitch in their plans. But I think the general idea was to keep me under wraps for long enough that all the physical evidence of . . . of what they did to me . . . would clear up. Then they were going to pump me full of enough drugs that I either wouldn’t have remembered anything, or better yet, I’d OD, and dump me somewhere.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Gravelly Guy concedes. “But you got away? How?”

I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose to counteract the headache that’s now throbbing so hard it feels like my eyeballs will explode, while I try again to remember. “I don’t know. It’s all so fucking hazy. They kept us drugged up pretty much the whole time. We knew they were probably dosing the food and water they gave us, but we had no choice other than to eat what they offered.”

“You keep saying ‘they’. Who was it that was holding you?” the Detective asks next.

“Again, that’s pretty hazy. There were at least twenty guys here at the party that . . . participated. I have no idea who they all were. I didn’t recognize any of them. Most of them were older guys; nobody I’d hang out with. And I remember maybe a half-dozen other faces coming and going for the rest of the time I was being held, but I probably couldn’t point any of them out to you even if I saw them again. The only one I do know for sure was the ringleader - it was The Sapp.”

“The Sapp? Sounds like a nasty disease you’d pick up in a foreign country,” the cop jokes, although I can’t quite find the energy to laugh along.

“Gary Sapperstein,” Emmett corrects him. “He’s the owner of Babylon. He’s also the guy who was hosting the party they threw here. According to the folks I talked to, he holds these ‘parties’ on a weekly basis. I say ‘parties’ in quotes, though, because they’re basically just orgies, and not particularly pleasurable ones at that. Most people know to steer clear of them, but I suppose the kind of boys they want to attract are too green to know better. Poor kids.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Either that, or the boys can’t afford to tell their boss ‘no’. Sapperstein was in charge of the whole thing. He organized the parties and, using one pretext or another, induced the boys who worked for him at the club to attend. A lot of them were dancers; Gary told them he’d pay big bucks if they’d come ‘entertain’ his guests. If the rest were anything like Justin, they were all probably so desperate for cash they would have jumped at an offer like that.”

“So you’re saying we’ve got some kind of serial rapist thing going on here? Maybe even a sex trafficking ring? That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, yeah, we’ve had three bodies turn up, but if this thing has been going on for as long as you claim, and it’s a weekly thing, we’re talking a lot of kids. You’d think someone would have spoken up before now,” Horvath posits.

“I doubt it,” Emmett immediately counters. “Do you know how prevalent rape is for men? Some experts claim upwards of three percent of the male population has been the victim of a rape or attempted rape. That’s, like, three million men. And the statistics are even higher for gay men. But only one out of every ten are reported, due to the stigma associated with rape.” He sounds very knowledgeable about these facts, which just spill out off the top of his head like he’s got them all memorized, making me wonder. “So, no, Detective, it’s not likely that any of these poor boys would have had the courage to speak up. Even if they weren’t so drugged out that they couldn’t remember what happened to them - I doubt any of them have the kind of support they’d need to come forward. Which is why creeps like The Sapp get away with this shit all the fucking time.”

Horvath shrugs, conceding the point, but then gets right back to the matter at hand. “Okay, if what you say is true, this Sapperstein character has a running party where he drugs boys and his friends take advantage of the situation? That sounds like a good set up, right? He and his buddies get their jollies off and the kids either can’t remember what happened or are too intimidated to report it. Why would he screw things up by keeping you and your friend, Justin, longer? He does that and he runs the risk of getting caught.”

“I told you, he wasn’t after me. It was Justin he wanted. After he and his pals had ‘taught me a lesson’, they mostly left me alone. They didn’t want me. Their ‘customers’ prefer pretty little blond boys . . .”

*****Flash*****

The two of us are huddled together, trying to stay warm. We’ve made a nest out of some rags and boxes so at least we’re not lying on the cold, hard cement floor. Justin is curled up in a little ball, almost as if he’s trying to make himself smaller, hoping they won’t see him. I’m wrapped around him, trying to provide what little protection I can give him.

Neither of us are sleeping. I’m not sure how we know, but it’s almost time for them to come back for us. I can feel my blond shaking and I know he’s crying again. There’s nothing I can do to help him.

Sure enough, a few minutes later we hear the noise of a key turning in the lock. Justin’s arms snake around my waist, holding on as tightly as he can. I’m holding onto him almost as hard. But when the door creaks open, I know there’s not much I can do for either of us.

“Let’s go, Blondie. You’ve got a customer waiting,” the shadowy figure standing in the doorway orders.

I can see, in the guard’s hand, the outline of the taser thing he carries around. The few times I’ve tried to fight him, he’s zapped me till I’ve collapsed. Fucking sadist. To hell with it, though, they can’t do anything worse to me than what I’ve already suffered, I might as well try . . .

I climb stiffly to my feet, approaching my captor slowly, with my hands held out in a non-threatening gesture. “Why don’t you leave the kid alone. He’s been hurt enough. Take me instead.”

The guy seems to think this is hilarious and breaks out laughing. “Get over yourself, Kinney. Anybody who wanted a piece of your tired old ass has already had you. You might be pretty, but you’re not as pretty as Blondie here. He’s a real crowd pleaser. Hell, there’s practically a fucking bidding war going on to see who gets a go at him next.” The creep lifts his electric cattle prod thing and points it at me menacingly, taking a step or two forward so I’m forced back. “Sit down, Kinney. And you,” he points with his weapon towards the cowering kid huddled behind me, “get your pretty little blond ass in gear.”

*****Flash*****

“I’d imagine that’s why all the ones that end up in the dumpsters are blond,” I conjecture sadly. “If Sapp finds one he thinks is particularly marketable, he keeps the kid and pimps him out to the highest bidders. Until the boy’s either too broken to go on or one of the customers goes too far and kills him.” Which brings me back to the most pressing point. “And you’re going to have yet another corpse on your hands, if we don’t get off our asses and find Justin soon, Detective. Can’t I give you the rest of my statement later? Right now you need to find Saperstein and get him to tell you where he’s holding Justin.”

Horvath nods. “Right. Matthews?” he calls out and I look behind me to find the other two officers have returned. “You guys find anything?”

“Depends on what you’re looking for, Boss,” Officer McHottiepants answers, with a bit of a smile aimed Honeycutt’s way, before he gets all serious again and focuses on Horvath’s question. “It’s pretty clear there’s been a wild party here. That part substantiates Mr. Kinney’s story. Whether there’s evidence of a crime or not will require forensics to go through everything . . . and there’s a lot to go through. But we did find some blood on the carpet in the bedroom.”

“Alright. That’s enough for me. Matthews, get on that damn computer thing of yours and order us up a warrant for this Gary Sapperstein. Ziva, put out an APB on our new suspect, then find me everything you can get on the guy and his dance club.” The Detective’s minions scramble to do his bidding while the top cop turns back to face me. “Either of you two got an idea where Sapperstein might be tonight?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Em answers for me. “We heard through the gay grapevine that tonight’s party was cancelled, despite the fact the bouncer said he left the club early.”

“Not surprising seeing as Kinney escaped. I’m sure that threw a monkey wrench in their plans. He might already be in the wind.” Horvath sets aside the little pocket-sized notebook he was using to take notes and looks at me in earnest. “While my guys are looking for Sapperstein, how about you and I try and approach this from the other end?”

“And that end would be?” I question.

“I know you say you don’t remember, but you obviously remembered enough to go looking for this blond of yours. Somewhere inside that head are all the answers we need. We just have to find a way to get to them. And, since it might take us a while to get to Sapperstein, if you really want to find the boy in time, you’re going to have to at least point us in the right direction.”

“I’ve fucking tried to remember,” I insist. “It’s all just a jumble.”

“Well you haven’t tried with me,” the Detective insists. “Work with me here, Kinney. Okay?” I nod, willing to try anything at this point. “Good. Now, close your eyes and try to relax. Take deep breaths . . .”

“Oooo, this is so exciting. It’s just like one of those tv crime dramas. You know the one - where the hunky FBI guy subjects the key witness to a ‘cognitive interview’,” Emmett interrupts with his over-the-top enthusiasm and pop culture references.

“Thanks for the help, Miss Marple, but I think I’ve got this,” the cop teases.

“Oh, that’s a great show too. My Aunt Lula and I used to watch it on PBS back when I was a kid in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Miss Marple always had the best hats,” my sometime-friend adds, causing both Horvath and I to glare at him. “Sorry. Shutting up, now.” And he does that annoying thing where he pretends to twist a key in his lips to lock his mouth closed.

Horvath and I exchange an annoyed look.

“As I was saying . . . Close your eyes and relax,” the Detective continues. “I want you to think back to the last time you saw Justin. Picture it in your mind. Got it? Now, tell me exactly what you see.”

On the black canvas of the inside of my eyelids, I can see the entire scene perfectly. “I’m kneeling on the ground. Justin is lying there in front of me. He’s hurt. There’s blood . . . I’m trying to stop the bleeding but it’s not working. So much blood . . . it’s fucking everywhere . . . I can’t . . . I can’t stop it . . .” So much for me trying to stay relaxed, right? My heart is beating a million miles a minute and I’m having trouble breathing.

“Don’t worry about the blood for now. We’re going to ignore that part. Don’t look at the blood,” the calm Gravelly Guy voice says. “Don’t even look at Justin at all, okay? I need to look around you, instead. Can you tell me where you are? What do you see around you?”

“It’s dark. I can’t see very much.”

“If it’s dark, how can you see Justin? There must be some light,” Horvath prompts.

“There’s a window. It’s not very big and it’s high up on the wall. There’s a little bit of light that comes through the window. Even that’s pretty dim, though . . .” The room in my mind starts to come into better focus as I talk, and I begin to see more of my surroundings. “It’s night time. The light from outside is . . . Maybe streetlights or moonlight . . . It’s not very bright, but it’s enough so I can see how badly Justin’s hurt.”

“You’re doing great, Kinney. You’re doing great,” Horvath encourages. “If there’s a window, I take it you’re inside?” I nod. “OK, tell me about the room you’re in. Is it large or small? What do you see?”

“It’s tiny. There’s barely enough room for us to lie down. It’s basically just a closet.”

“Excellent. What do you see around you in the room, Brian? Is there furniture?”

I gulp another breath and try to concentrate. “There’s not much. It’s a really small space. There’s no furniture . . . A storage closet? There’s boxes piled up against the wall. Boxes full of clothing?”

“That’s really helpful, Kinney. Keep going. Can you tell what kind of flooring there is or whether the walls are painted? Any other details about this room?”

“It’s hard to tell in the dark . . . The wall where the window is . . . is cement? The floor too. That’s all there is though. I don’t see anything else. Just some boxes and buckets and . . . Old clothing. Lots of clothing. I’m using a white T-shirt I found to try to stop the blood. It’s getting all stained . . .”

“Good, good. Anything else you can tell me about this room, Kinney? Can you see anything out of that window? Can you hear anything that might give us another clue?”

It’s actually really difficult for me to tear my mental focus away from the image of the hurt boy. Justin’s lying there, on the hard, cold floor, bleeding from that gash in his head while I press the wadded up T-shirt to the wound. I feel sick to my stomach as I think back on that moment and the image blurs as I blink back real tears that echo my memory-tears. But Gravelly Guy doesn’t stop prodding me. When his voice directs me to look around myself at the room one more time, I finally do . . .

“I can’t see anything out of the window. It’s too high up on the wall, and really small, and the angle is odd . . . It’s like you’re looking up at the sky not out at the world . . .” I turn the other direction in my mental room and get a surprise. “Oh! There's someone else here. A man. He’s lying on the floor over by the door . . . It’s the one who came to take Justin away. The big, red, taser prod thing is lying next to him, too.”

“You see one of the guys that was holding you on the floor of the room?” This seems to surprise my cop guide. “How did that happen?”

*****Flash*****

“Showtime, Blondie,” the thug says as soon as he opens the door. “You were such a big hit at last week’s party, you’re being given a command performance. I’m supposed to get you cleaned up and ready for your adoring public. So, let’s go.”

“No. Please, no. I can’t. Just let it stop . . .” My blond is crying again as he cowers in the corner of our little prison.

Sapp’s bully boy just laughs uncaringly and presses the trigger on his taser prod twice in quick succession causing the weapon to sizzle and spark. That’s when something inside me just snaps. It happens so fast it surprises even me, so it’s no wonder the thug is taken off guard too. But I can’t just stand here and let them hurt Justin again. I won’t do it. I don’t care what they do to me.

I lunge forward, none too steady on my feet because I’m still whacked out on all those drugs, but luckily the room is small enough that all I have to do is fall forward and I’m on top of our captor. I immediately feel the electric burn of the taser, causing my muscles to seize up painfully, but all that does is create more momentum as I fall into the guy, knocking him against the wall. The door is kicked closed in the process. By then Justin has joined in the fray, grappling with the man to get the weapon out of his hand. I manage to get one good gut punch in, which seems to enrage the guard even more. He grabs for me with his free hand, scratching my face as he goes for my throat. Then I watch - the scene shifting into slow motion - as the guy pushes me backwards a step, shrugs off Justin’s attempt to grab the taser, and swings his arm backwards with the obvious intention of using the heavy metal taser prod as a club to beat me down. Only, his backswing hits Justin instead, the sharp metal implement clipping the side of the boy’s head with an audible *thunk*. And we both turn and watch as the blond drops like a stone.

“Shit!” Our captor is apparently distressed by the fact he’s just clocked the evening’s star performer.

And while he’s momentarily distracted, I hit him with a cross to the jaw that would have made my abusive drunk of a father proud. The guy’s head twists with the impact so far to the side it’s like he’s looking behind himself. At the same time, I grab the taser out of his hand and hold it to his side, pressing the trigger and holding it down so that the man’s body is jolted again and again as the strong electrical current floods through him. He starts to sag to the ground, but I still hold that taser on him. And I keep on tasering him, even when he’s nothing but an inert blob of unconscious flesh lying at my feet.

Only when there’s been no movement out of the guard for a good minute or more do I drop the taser and turn around, ready to celebrate this victory with my fellow captive . . . finding Justin knocked out cold and bleeding profusely from a huge gap on his head.

*****Flash*****

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