Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

Jim and I were on our way to Lily the Pink.  We were halfway there.  Poached was still trying to sort things out at the biggest mass murder in Tracy history.  Jim and I wanted to get a fresh perspective from people who might have done the activity that led to the mass murder.  What we had were a tall stack of bodies in the corner of a racquetball court.  The bodies were all naked.  There were nineteen women and eleven men in the pile.  Two people survived.  There was a bartender who set up just outside the court, but she saw everything, except for a short period where she took a break, but I will get to that later.  It seemed that the group inside was getting far beyond drunk.  As one couple collapsed in the far corner, the lady being the woman who had hired the bartender, the others were unable to walk.  They crawled over to the lady’s aid.  Many were throwing up.  And as it happened, they seemed to orderly climb on top of each other in a bizarre pyramid to die.

The other survivor was a man at the party, a celebration of a major project being completed for his company.  The twelve men, he being one of the twelve, made up the entire department, and the boss wanted to treat the team with a wild party.  Instead of crawling toward the others, he crawled toward the door.  He had just enough energy to get out of the room.  The bartender had been told that no one should leave, but obviously this guy was in bad shape.  She shut the door, as she had been instructed, and as it happened, that is the only thing that saved her life and the man who had crawled out of the room.

But since what the guy said was going on made no sense to us, we were on our way to see Pink Lady and a few of the other ladies that might know what was being done instead of playing racquetball.

On our way, Polly and Ruthie went by the surviving man’s home to pick up some things and tell his wife he was okay, but he had to go to the hospital.  He opened the door and Ruthie prevented him being killed, but she was injured.  Polly ended up solving the crime by accident.  Georges Evident went to the second crime scene to start cleaning up that mess while Ruthie went to the ER at the Medical Center.  Polly wanted to go with her, but with Ruthie going down, Polly subdued two assailants and caused a third to give himself up.  She was the only witness, with Ruthie out cold on the floor.  Who knew you needed backup to get a fresh pair of undies from the dresser drawer.

So far, Polly has had two partners go down, both surviving, or it seems Ruthie will survive.  If word gets out, no one will want to be her partner.  But Polly did her death grip (no death, no grip) thing on the assailant that went after the witness.  It was the wife who Polly heard say, “What are you doing here?  You are supposed to be dead!”  But with her getting a thirty-minute nap, another woman entered, and Polly got her down with a taser.  As she was cuffing the second woman, a guy came into the room, Polly pulled out her service weapon and he promptly relieved himself onto the carpet.  All three in the house were naked at the time.  The EMT arrived quickly and said Ruthie might be eating through a straw for a while, but otherwise, she was okay.  Polly said that if the guy had not fallen against the wall when his wife came after him with a golf club, Polly would have never had a clear field to take all three assailants down.  I think she may get a medal of some kind.

But with Poached digging out one body at a time at the primary scene, and all three assailants in cuffs at the second scene, Jim and I continued to Lily the Pink.  So that the D.A. could explain this bizarre case to the jury, I had to know what I was dealing with.

Pink Lady was still in her office, although it was late.  She said she was working on her message for the Vespers service.  She would listen to what we had to say, but she may have to leave.

I started, “Pink, we have a racquetball court that had been filled with propane.  Before you ask, the guy got the gas from the pipeline before the scent was added, the mercaptan.  So, there was no warning sign, enclosed space.  They even put a seal on the door.  Inside, there were nineteen women, nude, all dead.  There were eleven guys, nude, all dead.  One guy crawled out and the bartender closed the door behind him, as she had been instructed to do, knowing nothing about the gas, or she would have been long gone.  Those two are the only survivors.  Also in the racquetball court was a laptop tied to Wi-Fi speakers around the room, playing big band music on a continuous loop.  And after we gathered all the clothing, we had twelve sets of men’s dress clothing, not formal, but ties, coats, slacks, dress shoes, and underwear.  For twelve of the women, we had evening gowns, like it was prom night, no underwear, and reasonably short heels.  The health club wanted no stiletto heels. …”

Grannie Fannie came over.  “But you said something about nineteen women.  Were the other seven wearing waitress outfits?  Maybe one wearing something else?”

I coughed, “Well, yeah.  Three with the standard black and white waitress costumes.  Three with royal blue and white waitress costumes.  And the one odd clothing was a party dress.  Pink is confused, but I wanted her to direct me to someone who knew what was being done that turned deadly.  You are the person I need to talk to.  What happened last night?  The health club said that they set up a steak dinner on their patio and then the racquetball area, just two courts, but the one with glass walls, were reserved for a little dance party.  So, what was supposed to happen?”

Fannie smiled, “It sounds like Envy found out what Baldwyn’s most expensive, and profitable, themed offering was, the Dance Orgy.  He got the Idea from the book, The Joy of Sex.  If you are at home, you start dancing and while you dance, you take some of your partner’s clothing off.  They do the same to you, and in the long run, it adds some erotic flare to your love making, but the book said that if that were done in a group setting, it was usually the start of an orgy.  Thus, Baldwyn, being Baldwyn, figured out a way to make money off the idea.  The guys and gals were paired off.  Usually, the only ones that knew what was going on were the ladies who took their cue from the boss lady, and the guy paying for the night.  After all, when this lady starts taking off the boss’ tie and coat and throwing them into the corner, and your gal does the same to you, when you see the boss start to disrobe the lady, then you have to fight to make sure they do it in an orderly fashion.  Once everyone is crawling around on the floor doing their own thing, the waitresses and the disc jockey disrobe and crawl around in the mass of people to find things not being kissed or caressed and take care of that problem.  It must be well practiced by the ladies to keep it looking like it was happening naturally, to keep it from getting too crazy too quickly, and the whole thing is labor intensive, so Baldwyn asked for a lot.”

Pink got on the phone.  “Joseph, I hate doing this, but could you do Vespers tonight.  I have the police in my office, and they are questioning Fannie and me about something that happened in town last night.  We are not in trouble.  We are expert witnesses.  I will do what I prepared tomorrow night.  Yes, that gives me two nights in a row, but I am legitimately tied up.”

Jim burst out laughing, “You could have left, but in getting to know you, Pink Lady, you don’t want to miss a single detail.”

Pink sighed, “Jim, you know me well, but it sounds so naughty when you say it out loud.”  She fanned herself.  “As you know, I am a Lady.”

Scrambled and Ashmead entered the side door that leads to the kitchen.

I waved them over.  “Okay, a few people miss Vespers tonight because they want to hear a story.  Okay, Fannie, tell them what a Dance Orgy is.”  Fannie did so, and the two guys that used the excuse of protecting wife or daughter as the case might be, now were like Pink.  They wanted the details.

I used the Poached style, sort of, telling the story. “We got a call about two this morning.  The health club was assured that everyone would be gone by midnight.  They had a crew come to cleanup.  They luckily saw the lights on, and thirty naked bodies stacked like cordwood in the back corner of one racquetball court.  They were about to open the door when they heard a voice from behind the wet bar groan.  They walked around the bar and there were two naked people there.  There was a woman without any hair who suggested that there might be a deadly gas inside the court.  She started reaching for her clothes to get dressed.  Then the guy woke up, threw up, and then moaned that he had just had sex with a guy.  The woman said, ‘You had sex with me, buster! I am no guy, but if you just finished chemotherapy, you’d be bald too.’  More on them later.”

Pink asked, “But why were they having sex after he was too sick to stay in the death trap?”

I groaned, “I said that I would get there.  Anyway, the fire department was called in.  They found a propane truck parked outside the building and they thought they would be smelling mercaptan in the court area.  Mercaptan is relatively harmless that smells really bad, and it is added to propane and natural gas and such to make them smell.  Otherwise, you have what happened last night, a deadly odorless gas.  Polly later arrested the truck driver that obtained the gas without the scent added.  He is talking, but he knows nothing.  He especially does not know that a driver of a truck of that nature, parking the truck at a crime scene, will be charged as an accessory.  He was told, but he keeps insisting that he just drove the truck.  But back to the court, that enclosed room was a bomb waiting for the slightest spark.  So most of the morning from about 2:30am until maybe eleven was spent with the fire department carefully getting enough gas out of the room for it to be safe enough for us to enter and start taking pictures.  As I started when I came in, nineteen women, eleven men, all dead from inhalation of propane, a gas heavier than air, so they did not have to fill the room, and with them having sex on the floor, they got a heavy dose quickly.  The guy that we interviewed while the fire department was doing their thing said that he was seeing weird things, the bald lady said the same, but not as much.  Crime scene’s air sample came back late this afternoon with some hallucinogenic substance.  This was meant to be a wild party, and everyone was supposed to die who went on that court.  Kill them with the gas, make them disoriented with the wacky stuff, so that if anyone gets the idea of leaving, they won’t.”

I continued, “I started with the male witness.  He had a dance partner.  She was nice, but he had only gotten married about two months ago.  His wife insisted that he go to the party.  When it turned into an orgy, he was disoriented, as he said, and he was allowing his dance partner to take his clothes off and start riding him, as he called it.  But then he got nauseated, obviously since he was on his back on the floor.  He tried to get up, but could not stand.  He crawled to the door.  His dance partner then went on to someone else.”

Fannie nodded, “I was the disc jockey a few times and when older, I was the bartender.  If your guy got sick or finished his business, you were to move to someone else.  Keep everybody as happy as possible for as long as possible.”

I nodded, “He said that the disc jockey helped him out of the room.  She had just taken off her clothing and was about to join in the fun.  He noticed that the bartender was bald.  He tried to talk, but then started throwing up.  The bartender started wiping his face and before he knew it, she was on top of him, finishing what his dance partner had started.  He looked a couple of times through the glass wall.  Between the swirling lights, and other hallucinations, he saw the boss and the dance group’s boss crawl into the far corner.  One couple after another would crawl toward them and collapse.  The fire department said that the clean air comes in from that corner, but that was where the deadly gas was coming in.  They crawled for what they thought was the cleaner air, and they died quicker.  Poached still has not reached the bottom of the pile.  Each couple crawled until they could not crawl anymore.  And now they have thirty dead bodies, starting to smell, vomit, the normal body functions that let go, other excretions from their amorous activities.  It was stinking bad, so we left to come here.  Now it’s worse, I am sure.”

Pink asked, “Did the guy say anything else?”

I chuckled, “No, he still had the idea he had sex with a guy because of the bald head.  He said that he was too tired to shove the bartender off him, so he stayed there without protesting until he had climaxed.  He then passed out, as did she as it turned out.  As for her, the woman who was the lead dancer called her to be a bartender.  She was offered five times her normal rate.  All she had to do was make the drinks that the three waitresses would ask for.  There were three more waitresses that had things to eat.  The waitresses would go back in the room, and she had to make sure the door stayed shut otherwise.  And her bonus was for her to not tell anyone what happened in the room.  If she was good, they’d use her again.  Most of the drink orders happened before everyone went inside.  Two waitresses came for more after the music started.  Otherwise, she stood there watching everyone strip and have sex.  She was laughing her head off, but then this guy started crawling out of the room.  She shut the door after he got out, and she half dragged him behind the bar.  She also saw the leaders crawl to the corner, and then one couple after another started doing the same.  Then the guy next to her threw up.  She started cleaning him up and she noticed he had this stiff member.  She said that she thinks it was the slight hallucinogenic atmosphere, but then again she had just been cleared of cancer.  She was young and had not slept with a man, so why not take advantage of the situation.  I doubt if she was a virgin, but I am not going to spoil her story in my report.  She is in her early twenties and single.”

I sighed, “So, we were finally able to go inside.  I gathered the clothing after the photos of the clothing were taken.  I started bagging everything.  Polly and Ruthie were running back and forth getting more and more evidence bags.  Twelve men in dress clothing, business formal if you will.  The wallets identified the male bodies tentatively.  None of the women had purses.  There were various folding money, bills from $20 to $100 on the floor, abandoned when they crawled to the corner, I suppose the tips.  Twelve women in evening dresses.  Six waitress uniforms and one party dress for the disc jockey.  With the bodies sort of stacked, we could not see all the bodies.  It was like the old joke about how the farmer knew how many cows he had, he counted the hooves and divided by four.  Well, we did not see enough feet to equal the thirty people that were supposed to be in the pile.  We used the clothing and the two eyewitnesses to determine the numbers.  Following procedure, we took it one body at a time, with all the slime and everything making the lower bodies even worse to deal with.  We needed photographs of each body in place.  The M.E. had his instructions also.  The fire department let the M.E. and Poached borrow masks with breathing air provided from the fire truck outside.  When a body was ready to move, the M.E. assistants would enter with tanked masks to retrieve the body and bag it.  Otherwise, no one could handle the smell for very long.  Outdoors and a fresh breeze might help, but this was an enclosed space.”

With everything done except bagging the bodies one at a time, Jim and I decided to come here.  An ambulance took the bartender to the hospital.  Polly and Ruthie were going to take the male victim to the hospital, but he wanted to get his underwear.  His clothing was part of the evidence.  He was wobbly on his feet, so they helped him to the door.  His wife opened the door, later learning that a pizza guy was bringing pizza.  She was completely naked.  She saw her husband.  She shouted, ‘What are you doing here?  You are supposed to be dead!’  His golf clubs were near the door.  She picked up an iron to smash his skull, but Ruthie moved forward to block the blow.  She was hit across the face, breaking her jaw and knocking her out.  The witness was so weak, he fell against the wall.  Ruthie had at least thrown the guy’s wife off balanced, and it took Polly no time to use her non-death, non-grip thing on the woman.  The next woman, considerably older, also naked, caring a cast iron skillet, entered the room.  Polly zapped her with the taser.  She went down.  Then the naked guy who eventually identified himself as the truck driver of the propane and he knew nothing else, although Polly never hinted that there was anything else to know, he walked in to see a very sick guy leaning against the wall, an injured police officer, and his two love interests lying on the floor, cuffed.  He was so scared, he relieved himself, and threw his hands into the air.  Luckily, Polly had a spare set of cuffs.  And with that, we sent Georges to the victim’s house to investigate the second scene.  We are sure that these three concocted this entire murder.  I don’t know what went wrong in the marriage of 2-3 months to make it worth killing thirty people to kill the one.  And then failing to kill the one.”

Fannie asked, “I heard that all Envy’s girls had green hair and that Envy had red, white, and blue stripes.”

Jim shook his head, “I think it was what you said about this looking natural and an unexpected orgy.  They had what looked like an assortment of natural colors.  That threw us off too.  The bartender said that the woman who hired her for the night was a fiery redhead, it almost glowed.  We have not dug down that far yet.”

My phone rang.  It was Poached.  He said that he knew only one person out of all the dead bodies.  I told him that I was putting him on speaker.  He could tell his stepmother and a few others.

Poached said, “You know a local madam that insists on being part of the action?”  I reminded Poached to just say it.  This was no time for guessing games. “The woman on the bottom of the pile is Envy Apple.  Fiery red hair, but unmistakable.  What do I do, Uncle Dev?  This is over my head and way beyond my paygrade.”

I replied, “Call Captain Hart.  We can find others to interview our suspects.  They can stew in a cell for a while.  But see if their tongues will wag once they know who they killed.  Captain Hart can come to you and take over.  Jim and I will go where the Captain tells us to go.  This just became Tony Tags’ case as much as it is ours.”

We were halfway back to the crime scene when Captain Hart told us to go to the precinct.  When Georges told the wife of the intended victim that she had killed the wife of the crime boss, she suddenly had diarrhea of the mouth, telling all.  Georges and Gisele were getting everything recorded, but they needed help with the other two and with her to make sure she did not change her story too much.  Captain Hart and Organized Crime’s boss, Lt. Tony Tagliolini, would take over at the scene.  When this leaked to the press, this was going to be a mess.

And someone had to tell Empire Apple.  That fell to Tony Tagliolini.  The butler welcomed Tony into the house with no argument about the warrant.  Tony was led to the master bedroom where Empire was frolicking with four of the remaining prostitutes.  It seemed he might not really miss his wife.  Pink Lady still claimed they got married on the same day she and Scrambled got married, just to take wedding guests away from her wedding.  But no one takes the murder of their wife easily, and Empire did not like having his ‘property’ messed with.  Captain Hart had doubled the security at the precinct.  The mayor’s security was doubled.  And the Feds were asked to help.

The following is the story that the wife of the intended victim reported.

She met her future husband at new employee orientation.  Her name, Shawna, was a chemist, hired to provide environmental help for the company and Bart Clarkson was a new engineer, both fresh out of college.  She said Bart had a quick wit and the week of orientation went smoothly, making her laugh.  He noticed her laughter and invited her out for dinner that weekend.  One week in a new town and they had their first date.  The next week was team building training.  They were part of the same team, and they each bounced ideas off each other.  They worked well together.  The first date had been a bit clumsy, but with their teamwork, she accepted his offer for another date.  They went on a long walk along the river afterward, and they did a lot of talking.  The second date made up for the earlier clumsiness.  They went to the movies that next day, and when he walked her to her apartment, she invited him in, and they became intimate.  He was inexperienced, but she was not only experienced, she had read all the books.  She made subtle suggestions, and in that way taught him what to do.

After about two months on the job, the secretary for Bart’s work group invited Shawna out for dinner.  Emma was a lot older than Shawna, but she did not think it would hurt to meet other people.  Emma took her to the health club, and they had a healthy meal.  Emma suggested that they play a sport.  Shawna thought it strange that Emma bought Shawna some clothing to wear.  They played some pickleball.  Shawna had never played before.  It was mostly laughing and getting sweaty.  When they hit the showers, Shawna thought it strange that the three girls in the showers saw them enter and immediately left in a hurry.  But then, she thought she was imagining it.  As they showered, Emma approached and started kissing Shawna.  Shawna was not ready for anything like that, but somehow, she did not want to say “no.”  It became a Tuesday and Thursday thing for Shawna and Emma to go to the health club.  She was satisfied with Bart, but Shawna had this aura.  It was not sexual.  It was power.  She found out that Shawna was part owner at the health club and her charisma caused everyone to do as she wished.  It was the strangest phenomenon Shawna had ever seen.  One day in the sauna, Emma told Shawna that they needed something different, and about that time, two male weightlifters walked into the sauna.  They had a mini-orgy in the heat of the sauna.  Shawna said that she lived in three worlds.  The work world was all business.  The Bart world was all romance, and the Emma world was pure fantasy.

Then Bart proposed and Shawna accepted.  Emma was angry, but she took it in stride.  But as the wedding day approached, Shawna became more and more agitated.  She did not wish to give up her two nights of fantasy, but she did not think Bart would approve.  After the wedding, Emma pulled Shawna aside one day to ask how things were going.  Shawna voiced her concerns, and Emma said that the project was drawing to a close.  They usually threw a big party, but she had a wild idea.  How could a racquetball court be filled with gas to kill everyone inside?  Shawna told her without making the connection.  But as Emma produced a propane truck driver who could get a truck full that had no mercaptan in it, Shawna realized that Emma was going to go through with it. Emma had convinced her boss, who she had wrapped around her finger, to do a Dance Orgy.  He had been in one at Lily the Pink, but Emma could talk to Envy about one at the health club.  It was all set.  Shawna wanted Emma to back out, but Emma told her that the two of them would soon run half of Tracy.  But Emma said that too much was riding on this.  Bart had a million-dollar life insurance policy on top of the company’s two-year salary policy.  Emma had talked the boss into making her the beneficiary of a million-dollar policy.  The wife and kids could have the boss’ company life insurance.  Emma was the Svengali, and her chosen sidekick was Shawna.  Shawna knew it was wrong, but she was mesmerized by Emma.  Then on the night of the party, Bart wanted to be a no-show, but Shawna insisted that it was good for his career.  She wanted to go with him and die with him, but the party was set up to have no party crashers.  Emma and Todd, the truck driver, went to the Clarkson house, and invited her to bed with them.  She simply joined them.  They were expecting a phone call about the tragic deaths of everyone, and they got hungry.  Emma knew a pizza place and a guy who would not just deliver but stay for a party.  In the excitement of another boy toy, Shawna went to the front door to see her husband instead of the pizza guy.

After getting the statement from her and silence from Emma and Todd, the truck driver, we had a transport from the prison arranged to take them to the state prison under protective custody until their trial.  The transport was driven off the road two counties north and west of Tracy.  The driver and guards were not killed, but a gunman told them to not move while they took care of business.  Then Shawna, Emma, and Todd were executed.

Captain Hart and the police commissioner said the murderers of our murderers simply followed the transport, but I think we might have a leak.  Maybe the leak is connected with the puppet master.  This had the short hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

But on a very weird, and disturbing note.  Bart and the bartender met at the precinct to sign their statements before the execution of the suspects.  They left together.  The bartender, Tamara Collins, was a pharmaceutical tech during the week and a bartender on the weekend.  Her boss had given her a few days off to recuperate and get the legal things taken care of.  Bart’s boss’ boss had done the same thing.  Bart had no idea whether he still had a job, but Bart explained that he knew what needed done on the other projects.  The time off would give his boss’ boss time to think it over.  But for Tamara and Bart, Polly knocked on Bart’s back door to tell him about the death of his wife and take the crime scene tape down in his living room, and Tamara answered the door.  She smiled as she stood there wearing one of Bart’s shirts and no wig.  Bart was finally used to the look.

Credits

The Joy of Sex is a tastefully illustrated book by Alex Comfort (1972).  When my son was cleaning up my wife’s room, he found the book.  I did not know she had the book, but in thumbing through the book, I caught the paragraph entitled “Dancing” and I just had to read it.  And upon reading it, it sounded like something that Baldwyn Apple might have done.

The term “cordwood” should be cord of wood.  A cord is roughly the full bed volume of a standard pickup truck.  Most people who sell you cordwood by the truck load, but they loosely throw the wood into the truck.  A cord of wood would be firewood carefully stacked with no gaps.  Loosely piling the wood means you, as the buyer, bought about two-thirds of a cord of wood, and one-third of expensive air.  But since they have been doing it that way for a few generations, can you claim they are cheating?  By accepted practice, they have effectively changed the definition of the term.