This was sounding stranger and stranger. Cassie looked up at Stone and raised one eyebrow.
“Live ink?”
“That’s a technique they use on Rigelis Four.” His deep voice was grimmer than ever. “The ink is actually a living creature that is injected under the skin. It feeds off the host’s sweat and can assume any form and appear anywhere on his or her body.”
“Wow,” Cassie muttered. “Well, so much for identifying marks. We can’t exactly put out an APB and say that the suspect has a tattoo that can look like anything and might appear anywhere on his body.”
“No,” Stone said shortly. “We cannot. Unless we want every male with a tattoo anywhere on his body to be brought in to the station.”
“Tell me more about this, uh, Beast,” Cassie said, turning back to Amelia. “Did he come on to you? Did you spend the night with him?”
“Oh, no!” Amelia looked shocked. “My mom and dad would have killed me! But I did invite him and his friend back here to party for a while.”
Cassie thought their witness was damn lucky she hadn’t ended up strapped to the St. Andrew’s Cross in the drawing room herself. But she only nodded and said, “So he had a friend? Was he Kindred, too?”
“Uh-uh.” Amelia shook her head. “He was a regular human. You know, like us.” She looked at Cassie and then shot an uncertain glance at Stone.
“Do you have pictures of him, too?”
“Sure. Here.” Amelia scrolled through the phone and showed them the screen. This time it showed a middle-aged human man with salt and pepper hair and brown eyes.
“He looks older than the rest of the crowd,” Cassie remarked.
“Oh, he was. See, Frank is The Beast’s manager—he was also the one who was bankrolling the, uh, movies they were making.”
“You mean the porn?” Cassie said bluntly.
Amelia blushed and nodded. Dropping her head, she murmured,
“I swear I didn’t know that was what it was going to be, or I never would have let them rent the house. But they said they only needed one room and that they wouldn’t mess anything up and that they had their own, uh, props.”
“Like the St. Andrew’s Cross?” Cassie asked, raising an eyebrow.
“The what?” Stone asked, frowning.
“The black X frame the victim is strapped to,” Cassie told him. She wondered if the Kindred ever got into the Kink scene or had their own form of BDSM. For that matter, did they even do porn? She didn’t know—the subject had never really come up with Stone. They talked about almost everything but somehow always managed to skirt around anything to do with sex.
Stone frowned at her but only nodded. If he had more questions about the St. Andrew’s Cross or the other BDSM paraphernalia scattered around the murder scene, he was clearly saving them for later.
“So you asked them to come party and they liked your house so much they asked if they could film a ‘movie’ here—right, so far?” Cassie asked Amelia, getting back to the questioning.
She nodded.
“Right. And since my parents are out of town this week, it seemed like a great way to make some cash. And at first, it was.” She looked like she might cry again so Cassie hurried to ask more questions.
“So they filmed more than one scene?”
“They’ve been here for the past four days,” Amelia said, nodding. “Frank and The Beast and a bunch of different girls. Only today, it was only the Beast and the…the poor girl in the drawing room.” Her voice trembled.
“Did anyone else get hurt or killed?” Cassie asked steadily.
“No—never!” Amelia shook her head rapidly, her blonde hair flying with the force of her negation. “I mean, they did some kind of whipping and spanking things, but nothing that ever…” Her throat worked. “That ever drew blood.”
“How do you know? Did you always watch them work?” Stone demanded, frowning.
Amelia blushed.
“No! Or…not much, anyway. Once I realized what they were really doing, I wanted them to leave—to stop. But Frank had me sign this contract—”
“So there’s a contract, too?” Cassie couldn’t believe it. “With signatures and last names and everything?”
“Oh, uh—you want to see it?” Amelia asked uncertainly.
Could anyone really be this stupid—or this naïve—Cassie wondered? She nodded patiently.
“Yeah. That would be good. You have it around here, somewhere?”
“We did it Docu-sign—online,” Amelia said. “But I have a copy on my phone. Look.”
Taking the phone back again, she scrolled some more until she got to a long document. Taking it from her, Cassie scrolled to the end, enlarging the screen so she could see the signatures.
“Frank Yarrow, Amelia Hawthorn, and…The Kindred Beast,” she read, frowning. Crap, she’d been hoping for the perp’s real name. But she supposed this was much better than nothing. Also, there was an address under Yarrow’s name—that was helpful.
“You said they worked with different females every day,” Stone said, frowning as he read over Cassie’s shoulder. “Where are their signatures?”
“Oh, they had their own contracts, I guess.” Amelia shrugged.
“Did you meet any of them? Did they seem to be pros? Er…professional actresses?” Cassie asked.
“I don’t think so,” Amelia said slowly. “A couple of them seemed surprised when they saw the cameras and some of them were upset when Frank told them he wanted to film their, uh, ‘scenes’ with The Beast.” She made air quotes again.
“Cameras?” Cassie frowned. “I didn’t see any cameras. Did The Beast take them with him?”
Amelia shook her head.
“No, today he didn’t have a camera. Not like the ones they used on the other days, anyway. Today he had this little silver ball shaped thing with lights all over it—about as big as an orange.” She cupped one palm to demonstrate. “It flew up into the air and went whizzing all around while he was…was doing what he did,” she finished in a whisper.
“A holo-recorder camera drone,” Stone growled. “That’s alien tech.”
Amelia shrugged.
“I dunno what it was, but he took it with him when he left.”
“So most days everything was okay—they just shot porn on regular cameras with the girls they brought in here and then they all left with nobody hurt or dead, right?” Cassie asked.
“Yeah.” Amelia nodded.
“But today it was just The Beast with a girl and things got violent?” Cassie said.
Another nod, this one very subdued.
“Okay, so tell us everything that happened today,” Cassie urged her. “How was it that The Beast didn’t see you watching?”
“I told you, I was hiding in the closet! See, most days the guys would come early and be setting up and filming by the time I was leaving for school,” Amelia said. “But today is senior skip day so I—”
“Wait—senior skip day?” Cassie frowned at her. “What school do you go to?”
“Our Lady of the Sacred Heart over on MacDill.”