“ ‘Sexual habits.’ ” Teller laughed harshly. “The senator begged to be treated like a slave, a dog. He was into leashes, obedience training.” Teller shook her head and laughed again. “Can you believe, the same guy that’s deciding our nation’s fate likes being told to roll over and sit up and beg?”
Dana listened to a detailed description of Dorothy Crispin’s sessions with the senator. She felt queasy by the time Teller finished.
“Is there any way you can prove anything you’ve told me?” Dana asked.
“There might be. Dotty never met a date at her apartment. Executive Escorts owns a condo a few blocks from here where we meet tricks who have special needs. There are hidden cameras in all the rooms.”
“For blackmail?” Dana asked.
“No, Executive doesn’t go in for that. It makes too much money playing it straight. If it ever got out that we were blackmailing our clients, no one would use us.”
“Then why the record?”
“Protection. If a john doesn’t want to pay or gets angry and threatens to go to the cops, one look at the way he looks in a hood and dog collar is usually enough to dampen his enthusiasm.”
“And there’s a record of Senator Carson’s sessions with Dorothy?”
“Definitely, only I don’t know where it is. The equipment was voice-activated. As soon as anyone entered the apartment, the camera and sound equipment would turn on, but Dorothy had no idea where it was. Neither did I. On the occasions I used the place, I always left with the customer. I’m sure someone got the tape or DVD or whatever they use, but I never saw it, and I don’t know where they’re kept.”
“If you never saw the equipment, how do you know it was there?”
“We were told about it. We were also instructed to make sure the john was facing in a certain direction in each room so his face would show up on camera.”
“I would love to get my hands on the recording of Carson’s session.”
“I can’t help you.”
“And there’s no other way you can think of to prove he had a professional relationship with Dorothy?”
“I’m not testifying or talking to the cops, if that’s what you mean.”
“Without the tape or DVD, your tale of what Dorothy told you would be inadmissible hearsay.”
“A professional call girl wouldn’t make much of a witness, anyway,” Teller said with another humorless laugh.
Dana talked with Teller a little longer. Then she told her again how sorry she was about Crispin. Teller nodded. Dana guessed that she was too choked up to speak.
Chapter Twenty-six
The next morning, Dana called Brad at work.
“I’ve found a link between Jessica Koshani and Dorothy Crispin,” Dana said as soon as Brad took her call. “Koshani is rumored to be the owner of Executive Escorts, an upscale call-girl service. Dorothy Crispin was a law student, but she was also a prostitute who turned tricks for Executive.”
“Can you prove this?” Brad asked.
“Right now I don’t have anything that would fly in a court of law or anything Exposed can print without getting hit with a huge libel suit, but multiple sources have told me that your boss was one of Crispin’s customers and that he had some pretty kinky fetishes, S and M, bondage.”
“That’s something I’d rather not know,” Brad said.
“I was also told that Executive secretly recorded their customers’ sex acts as protection in case one of them tried to do something that would threaten the business. If Koshani had that type of leverage on your boss, there’s no telling what she could force him to do. Blackmail is a pretty good motive for murder.”
“That’s a stretch, Dana. And wasn’t Carson with Dorothy Crispin when Koshani was killed?”
“The medical examiner knows she was killed sometime on Sunday between noon and the early evening, but she can’t pin down an exact time.”
“I know for a fact that Carson didn’t kill Crispin. He was in D.C. Clarence Little is a much better bet for both murders. He’s an engineer, and he made pretty good money. He could afford an upscale escort service. Maybe Crispin was the call girl Executive provided. Maybe there was something Koshani recorded in one of his sessions that could be used to convict him of murder.”
“Good thinking, but I still can’t exclude the possibility that your boss was involved in Koshani’s murder. Do you think you can find a connection between Carson and Koshani? Maybe she gave him campaign contributions personally or through her businesses.”
“Can’t you get that information from public records?”
“I might, but you may be able to dig around in your office computers for records of back-door contributions.”
“I won’t do it, Dana,” Brad said firmly. “Senator Carson is my boss, and I’m not going to betray his trust to help you get dirt on him for an article for Exposed. I’m surprised you asked me.”
Dana didn’t respond right away. When she did, she sounded contrite.
“Forget I asked. You’re right. I’ll try to get the information some other way.”
“You know I appreciate all you’ve done for me and Ginny…”
“Don’t apologize. Working as a vice cop and digging up dirt for Pat Gorman has given me an odd view of humanity. Sometimes I forget that there are people who aren’t sleazy and try to act ethically.”
Brad laughed. “I’m no saint, Dana.”
“You come close, Brad. And you better not change. Say hi to Ginny for me.”
Brad hung up just as his intercom buzzed and the senator’s secretary told him that his boss was ready to discuss the testimony of a witness who was going to appear before the Judiciary Committee in the morning. Brad wondered if there was any way he was going to get through the meeting without imagining United States Senator Jack Carson bound, gagged, and naked.
D ana Cutler parked in the shadows up the street from Jessica Koshani’s house. She wasn’t worried about being seen in Koshani’s upscale neighborhood. There were no lights on in any of the houses at two in the morning, and the mansions stood well back from the street, surrounded by walls. As soon as Dana got out of the Rover, a frigid wind forced her to pull her watch cap tight over her ears and hunch her shoulders. According to the readout on her dashboard, the air temperature was 39, but that didn’t take the wind-chill factor into account.
Dana jogged down the street. She didn’t see any lights in Koshani’s house. When she was a few feet from the gate that guarded the property, she noticed a keypad. Bummer. She eyeballed the wall on either side of the gate to gauge whether she could scale it. When she turned her attention to the gate for the same reason, Dana noticed that it was slightly ajar. She breathed a sigh of relief. Dana bet that Portland police officers had been through the house at the request of the D.C. police and had forgotten to close the gate. Dana pushed the gate inward, slipped through the opening, and hurried toward the front door hoping that it, too, was unlocked. It wasn’t.
Dana circled around the back of the villa to a large covered patio. On the other side of a brown winter lawn was the Willamette River, coal black except for the patches of water that reflected lights from homes on the shore. Dana was about to try one of the French doors when she noticed that a pane of glass had been knocked out of the next door. Dana frowned. Would the police break in this way?
Dana reached through the door and opened it. When she walked inside, she found herself in a large living room that looked as though it had been searched. She turned in a slow circle, looking through the debris that littered the expensive Persian rug for DVDs that might star Jack Carson. There was a home theater in the room next to the living room. A bookcase next to the television had been filled with movies that were now scattered across the floor, their cases open with many of the disks beside them. Dana sighed and started going through them anyway, hoping that whoever had come before her had missed something. Twenty minutes later, she decided that the disk wasn’t mixed in with the movie collection.
A search of the downstairs did not turn up more DVDs, and Dana headed upstairs to find the bedroom, the most likely place to find porn. She was afraid to turn on any lights, so she’d brought a heavy police flashlight that
