Substantial Risk (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 5) Read online

  SUBSTANTIAL RISK

  David Brunelle Legal Thriller #5

  Stephen Penner

  Published by

  Ring of Fire Publishing

  Substantial Risk

  ©2014 Stephen Penner. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred without the express written consent of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity with real persons or events is purely coincidental. Persons, events, and locations are either the product of the author's imagination, or used fictitiously.

  Cover image by Alexstr.

  Cover design by Stephen Penner.

  DAVID BRUNELLE LEGAL THRILLERS

  Presumption of Innocence

  Tribal Court

  By Reason of Insanity

  A Prosecutor for the Defense

  Substantial Risk

  Corpus Delicti (coming Fall 2014)

  Case Theory (Short Story)

  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Short Story)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Preview: Corpus Delicti

  About the Author

  SUBSTANTIAL RISK

  A person is reckless if he or she knows of and disregards a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and this disregard is a gross deviation from conduct that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation.

  State of Washington Pattern Criminal Jury Instruction 10.03

  Chapter 1

  The Cu-CUM-ber Club.

  The sign flashed a lurid purple and green, as if arguing with the red and blue strobe of the police cars parked in front of the ‘business.’ The middle syllable flashed the brightest.

  David Brunelle, homicide prosecutor with the King County Prosecutor’s Office, squeezed his car into a ‘loading only’ spot across the street and stepped out into the frenzy. Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood was euphemistically described as ‘eclectic.’ In fact, it was ground zero for both the city’s arts community and its gay community. There were arts and gays elsewhere of course, but if you wanted to see a 6’4” drag queen walking down the street playing the accordion, then you went to Capitol Hill. And when the cops showed up, the locals spilled out of their lofts and studios to make sure their safe place was still safe. It was. Except for one poor soul inside the Cu-CUM-ber club.

  “Hey, Dave,” Seattle P.D. Detective Larry Chen greeted Brunelle as the D.A. crossed the street and ducked under the crime scene tape. “Welcome to the show.”

  Brunelle nodded toward the sign. “You should have said, ‘Welcome to the club.’”

  Chen grinned. “Sorry, Dave. I don’t belong to this particular club, so I can’t welcome you to it. But trust me, there’s a show inside. Or there was. But it went horribly wrong.”

  Brunelle frowned thoughtfully as he examined the exterior of the club. There really wasn’t any doubt it was a sex club. No need to hide that up here. The gift shop Brunelle had parked in front of had greeting cards in its front window featuring artistic photos of pierced genitals. Capitol Hill wasn’t ashamed of itself. It wasn’t shy either.

  This particular sex club seemed to feature some sort of fetish culture. There was a definite dungeon theme going on with the exterior decorating. Brunelle found himself curious about what was inside. That gift shop had a lot of Curious George dolls in its window too.

  “Something went wrong, huh?” Brunelle finally replied, pulling his mind back to why he was there. The 1 a.m. phone call about the new homicide on 12th Avenue. “So is the body still inside?”

  Chen nodded. “Yep.” He looked at the dungeon doors, then back to Brunelle. “Ready to go in?”

  Brunelle looked at the doors too, their faux stone paint job daring him inside. He smiled despite the circumstances. “Yep.”

  * * *

  Brunelle anticipated experiencing several different feelings in addition to his curiosity, but the overwhelming emotion he felt as they stepped inside was disappointment. He’d expected dark and seedy, with dim lights and scantily clad customers. Devices and noises, music and dancers, lions and tigers and bears. He wasn’t exactly sure. But he was expecting a sex club. What he found, of course, was a crime scene.

  All the lights were up. There were no customers, just cops. Fully dressed and definitely not dancing. There were also what appeared to be a couple of employees—civilians who wouldn’t normally be allowed inside otherwise. One such civilian hurried up to them, obviously upset. He was tall, with receding brown hair and a small belly fighting against his white button-up shirt. He wore glasses that were a bit too large and thick enough to distort his eyes.

  “Detective Chen!” he called out. Obviously Chen had been inside already. Of course he had, Brunelle realized. That’s how Chen knew to call him. “Detective Chen, I just wanted to tell you, Michael is in my office.”

  Chen nodded to the man. “Thank you, Mr. Gillespie.”

  “Who’s Michael?” Brunelle asked as Mr. Gillespie scurried away to attend to whatever the manager of a sex club needs to attend to when there’s been a murder in the club.

  “Michael’s our killer,” Chen replied.

  Brunelle raised an eyebrow. “He stuck around?”

  Chen nodded. “The victim was his long-time girlfriend.”

  Brunelle wasn’t that surprised. Domestic violence homicides were unfortunately common. Although not so much in public. “What happened?”

  Chen opened his mouth to explain, then closed it again. “Come on, Dave. You should see it for yourself.”

  * * *

  They walked down a long narrow hallway with exposed concrete floors and framed photos on the walls. The photos, Brunelle didn’t even pretend not to notice, were of various clients performing various acts with various other clients and equipment. Most of the identities seemed to be hidden beneath masks and/or said equipment. He finally tore his eyes away when they reached the private room that housed the remains of the victim.

  “In here.” Chen gestured into the room. Brunelle hesitated, then walked in first, uncertain what he’d find.

  Like the main room, the lights were all on, thereby destroying the mood that likely existed during regular operating protocols. Also doing violence to the mood were the two police officers in full uniform photographing the scene—although Brunelle could imagine circumstances where that might work into the fantasy. The final nail in the eroticism coffin was the dead body on the dais in the center of the room.

  The only thing helping the
mood at all was the woman attending to the body: Brunelle’s girlfriend, medical examiner Kat Anderson. When Chen had called Brunelle, he’d jokingly asked if Kat was lying next to him. But they hadn’t moved in together—not yet, anyway—and it was a school night. Kat had a teenage daughter and, girlfriend or not, she was a mom first.

  Brunelle stepped over to where Kat was visually examining the bindings on the body, her hand hovering over, but not quite touching them. She was lost in thought and hadn’t reacted to their arrival.

  He knelt down next to her. “Dr. Anderson, I presume?”

  She snapped her gaze at him and smiled. “David. Fancy meeting you here.”

  Brunelle looked around. “We should try this place under different circumstances.”

  Kat grinned. “You think so, huh?” She nodded back toward the hallway. “Have you seen the cock-and-ball cages yet?”

  Brunelle’s eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t seen those. He didn’t even know what they were. But the name suggested he’d rather not find out. A blush burned his cheeks and he changed the subject. “So what happened here?”

  What had happened there was open for all to see—at least the part up until the victim had died. She was a woman—that much was obvious. Her breasts were completely exposed and she wasn’t wearing any clothes below her waist, except for a pair of knee-high, high heel boots. Her ankles were tied to the back of her thighs with expertly knotted rope and her face was covered in some sort of leather hood. The only openings were for her eyes and her mouth, but the one for her mouth seemed superfluous since the mouth was gagged with a red rubber ball tied around the back of her head with black straps. There was also a decoratively applied coil of rope around her throat, raising from her collarbone to her jaw, then secured behind her to the rope on her ankles.

  It was a lot to take in all at once. Brunelle pointed to the woman’s arms, which were held behind her back and straight down by a long leather sheath that laced up the back. “And what the hell is that?”

  “It’s called an arm-sleeve,” Kat replied. She shook her head. “You really should get out more, David.”

  The blush deepened. “So what did she die of?” he deflected. “Embarrassment?”

  Kat shook her head. “Oh, very sensitive. Wow. Maybe don’t say that in front of the jury.”

  Brunelle regretted the joke. It was disrespectful. Maybe more importantly, it was unprofessional. So he got professional again. “I only get in front of a jury if this is homicide.” He nodded toward the bound corpse in front of them. “How did she die?”

  Kat looked again at the young woman’s remains. She frowned thoughtfully. “I’m guessing she was strangled to death, by the rope around her throat.”

  Brunelle looked at the ligature. “Good guess.”

  Kat shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll need to do a full autopsy. My suspicion is that the rope alone probably wasn’t enough, but add the leather over her nose and the ball in her mouth, and I’m guessing she asphyxiated.”

  Brunelle looked again at the dead woman. If they’d found a body bound like that in the trunk of a car or somebody’s basement, there would have been no doubt it was murder. Somehow, though, at that club, the bindings themselves seemed to suggest accident.

  He stood up again. “Come on, Larry,” he said to Chen. “Let’s go talk to Master Michael.”

  Chapter 2

  Master Michael was sitting in the office of the previously encountered club manager. Gillespie was in there with him, trying to make distracting small talk, while a patrol officer silently guarded the door. All three of them were awaiting the return of the detective. Brunelle peered inside to get a look at their suspected killer. Michael was probably late 30s, with thick black hair, no shirt, and black leather pants; he’d pulled on a light jacket to cover his bare chest, which was muscular enough, but nothing special.

  Brunelle was satisfied with his glimpse and stepped to the side of the doorframe, still in the hallway. He could hear from there. He didn’t need to be in the room. In fact, he didn’t want to be in the room. If Master Michael confessed, Brunelle would be calling Chen as a witness to the confession. He didn’t need to muddy the waters by being in the room at the time. Still, he wanted to hear what Michael had to say, so he nodded at Chen then jerked his thumb toward the office. Chen showed his understanding with his own nod then stepped inside alone.

  “Hello, Michael,” Chen began. “I’m Larry Chen. I’m a detective with Seattle P.D. I need to talk with you about Tina’s death.”

  “Okay,” Michael croaked. “I—” but his thought trailed off.

  Brunelle was listening but let his eyes wander across the hallway to more of the photographs he had noticed earlier.

  “Let’s start with the basics,” Chen said. Brunelle heard a chair scrape across the floor and the sound of the detective dropping his heavy frame into it. “What’s your full name?”

  “Michael Edward Atkins.”

  “And what was Tina’s full name?”

  A pause, then, “Christina Lynn Belfair.” There was a crack in Michael’s voice as he said her first name. Brunelle frowned. He didn’t need that kind of remorse showing to the jury. On the other hand, it bode well for the likelihood of an impending confession.

  “What was your relationship with Tina?” Chen asked.

  Another hesitation. Finally, “She was my girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” Chen repeated back. “Nothing more? Not fiancée or anything?”

  “Well,” Michael answered, “it’s kind of complicated. We’ve been together for almost five years. But we didn’t have any definite plans to get married. But we were exclusive. She was my sub and I was her dom.”

  Brunelle raised an eyebrow. Oh, this should be good.

  “Could you explain that a little more?” Chen asked. “I get this is some kind of sex club, but I might need you to spell it out for me. Sorry.”

  Michael exhaled audibly. “Right, Sure. No worries. It’s just. Well, that’s why we came here. There are a lot of people who don’t get it. It’s kind of tiring trying to explain it. And I’m not going to try to convince you it’s okay. It’s okay. And if you can’t handle that, then, well, you can fuck off.”

  Nice. Brunelle smiled. Maybe this guy won’t be so great on the stand after all.

  “You might want to rein it in a bit,” Chen replied, an edge to his voice. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened. Nobody’s judging you.”

  Not for the freak sex stuff, Brunelle thought. The whole killing your girlfriend thing might be different. He glanced from a photo of someone ‘dressed’ amazingly like a pony—down to the blinders—to another of a woman whose proclivity for leather seemed to reach everywhere but her sexual body parts, which were, of course, completely exposed. The mask reminded him of the one the victim was wearing, except that it allowed for a long ponytail out the back.

  “Okay, okay, sorry,” Michael replied. “It’s just. I’m sorry. This is a lot. I just… I loved her. And now she’s gone and…”

  Michael stopped and Brunelle could hear him choking back his tears. “I just loved her,” Michael said. “That’s all.”

  Several seconds of silence followed. Chen must have decided that was in fact all, or at least it was enough for right then. He moved on. “Tell me what happened.”

  There was another pause as Michael sniffed back the tears and refocused himself on answering the questions. Facts were always easier to talk about than feelings. Leather-clad ‘master’ or not, he was still a man.

  “Uh, okay,” he started. “We came here tonight for a session. Nothing special. We like to come here a few times a month. We have our own dungeon at home—”

  Of course you do, Brunelle thought with a roll of his eyes. Still, he was enjoying the photos on the walls a bit more than he might have admitted. Was that a stockade?

  “—but it can be fun to be out too. Part of enjoying each other is letting others know we enjoy each other.”

  “Okay,” Chen said. It w
as noncommittal, but encouraged more talking.

  “So, anyway. Tina likes—liked,” Michel correctly darkly, “the pain side of it, but I enjoy the restraint a little more. She’s more S&M and I’m more B&D, but we made it work. Taking turns, just like who’s going to do the dishes, ya know?”

  Wow. This guy is totally nuts, Brunelle thought, but his attention was divided by a photograph of an attractive brunette standing at attention, her wrists and ankles apparently cuffed. And she is totally hot.

  “So what was tonight?” Chen asked, as if they were discussing whose turn it was to drive to church.

  “Tonight was restraint,” Michael explained. “She knew I’d give her some pain too. Some lashes on her ass, but only after I had her fully restrained. So it was me deciding to give her what she needed. So there was no doubt I was in control.”

  Brunelle snapped his full attention back to the interview. He needed to listen. Then he noticed one more photograph…

  “So did you guys have sex then?” Chen asked, a bit brusquely.

  “What?” Michael replied, a bit surprised. “Oh, no. We hadn’t gotten that far. It can take a while to do all those restraints. That’s part of the fun. It’s a kind of foreplay. I mean, I was going to enter her, but not right away. It’s not about that. Well, not just that. It’s about intimacy and trust and love.”

  “Right,” Chen interjected. “So what happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” Michael admitted. “I mean I’d finished the bindings and she was ready. I was going to play with her for a bit. Give her pleasure. Get her close to cuming, but not let her. Then we’d move on to some other stuff. Clamps, clothespins, toys. But then I noticed she wasn’t responding to me. At first I thought she was trying to play with me. To resist by failing to respond, by not giving me the moans I was causing in her. But then she didn’t respond to the lashes either. Nothing. Not even the coat hanger. That’s when I knew there was a problem. I checked and she wasn’t breathing. I tried to undo the bindings, but my hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t grasp the rope. So I panicked and ran for help. Pat here came in and I just fell back against the wall. He checked for a pulse, then turned and said we better call the police.”