The Scavenger's Daughter: A Tyler West Mystery Read online

  THE SCAVENGER’S DAUGHTER:

  A TYLER WEST MYSTERY

  By MIKE MCINTYRE

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Dark Theaters

  Part One: The Five W’s

  Part Two: The Juggler

  Part Three: The Inquisition

  Part Four: Friar Tom

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE:

  DARK THEATERS

  CHAPTER 1

  Candles flickered inside his self-storage unit. Santa Claus tapers, Easter Bunny pillars, Valentine votives, Halloween jack-o’-lantern tealights, a Rugrats menorah. He’d paid fifty cents for a crate of holiday candles on eBay after he was the only bidder to spot the misspelled listing: candells. He saved where he could. His was an expensive hobby.

  Unit 67 was the size of an auto repair shop, the largest for rent at Sea Breeze Mini-Storage. The terraced complex of concrete buildings hugged the hillside above the I-5 freeway. A battered sign—24-HOUR ACCESS, YOU KEEP THE KEY—dangled from the sagging chain-link fence. The neighborhood of taxi garages, shabby apartments and weedy sidewalks was miles from San Diego’s palm-lined beaches. A pimple on the shoulder of America’s Finest City.

  His drive-up unit was in the top row, its back wall embedded in the steep hill. Shamu, SeaWorld’s star killer whale, winked at motorists from a billboard towering above.

  Most of the storage units held the furniture, dishes and clothing of the newly divorced and sailors at sea. Others contained sports equipment, camping gear, boats and RVs.

  His unit housed medieval instruments of torture.

  It was noon. He heard a jet pass overhead on final approach to Lindbergh Field. More pasty tourists had come to squeeze through turnstiles at the San Diego Zoo, splash in the surf and soak up the Southern California sun.

  They could keep it all. He liked to play indoors.

  “Dark theaters are prepared for dark deeds,” he intoned, quoting the motto etched on European torture chamber walls during the Middle Ages.

  He popped a CD into the boombox—A Collection of Gregorian Chants. The medieval music filled the room, melting the tension in his neck.

  He pulled on a black leather executioner’s mask and gazed at his treasures. Candlelight bathed the spiked interrogation chair. Chain flails and thumbscrews rested on the pillory. A ripping trestle stood near the ax and block. Whips, saws, branding irons and breast pincers hung from hooks on the wall. An oak rack with a stretching winch loomed in the shadows.

  He was a collector. One of the foremost. He knew as much about medieval torture devices and their history as any scholar in the world. Everybody’s good at something.

  It was time to become good at something else.

  He was crossing over. He could feel it. Intellectual curiosity was giving way to perverted cruelty.

  He watched drops of wax fall to the floor and puddle in the layer of sand he’d spread to soak up the blood. He hoped ten inches was deep enough.

  His name was Friar Tom. Though no one called him that. Not yet. It was a private joke, a nod to Tomás de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. The humble Dominican friar had tortured 100,000 heretics and burned 10,000 more during his reign of terror, approaching his task with a calm, moral clarity. Torquemada had targeted Jews, Moors, alleged witches and other non-Catholics. He converted them to his faith by force of pain, then hurled their souls into eternity.

  Friar Tom didn’t care about converting souls. He wasn’t even religious. But he was a zealot.

  He glanced at the cinder-block walls and frowned. He wanted to soundproof the torture chamber, but money was tight. He hated to gag his victims.

  What’s the point in torturing people if you can’t hear their screams?

  He thought about that and laughed so hard he cried.

  He wiped his eyes and looked to the far wall of the room, where a naked woman writhed in wrist and leg irons, a red rubber ball stuffed in her mouth.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER 2

  It was all a game to Nina Tate. The writhing, the moaning, the look of horror—pure role-playing. Sure, this guy was rough, but that’s how she liked it.

  Nina was a pain slut, an object for her master. She lived to fulfill his every cruel whim—so long as they didn’t draw blood or leave scars.

  They met in an S&M chat room on the Internet. Master promised slave a spin through his medieval torture chamber. Nina knew that most online claims were bogus, but she was desperate. Her recent S&M scenes had been tame—whipping, spanking, bootlicking—almost as boring as vanilla sex. Her body begged for the endorphin rush that accompanies serious bondage and discipline.

  Their first face-to-face was a half hour earlier in Balboa Park. Nina quivered as she squinted at the images scrolling by on the man’s digital camera: the garrote, the Spanish Tickler, the Heretic’s Fork. She ducked below the dash of his white panel van on the ride to Sea Breeze Mini-Storage. She couldn’t risk being seen—not when San Diego Magazine names you to its annual list of “10 People to Watch.”

  Nobody who knew her would recognize the person Nina played in her fantasy life. Once the nipple clamps and crotch ropes came off, she submitted to no one. She was the head of Tate Development, the city’s top real estate developer. The firm had just won a prestigious architecture award for its latest project, Gaslamp Galleria, a glitzy shopping mall downtown. She sat on the boards of the United Way, the symphony and Children’s Hospital. Republican Party officials had asked her to run for Congress.

  A shrink might explain her desire to be dominated as guilty compensation for the power she wielded. Nina thought that some people just needed to be tied up to be free.

  Inside the dark storage unit, the strike of the first match had sounded like a small explosion. She stifled a laugh when she saw the holiday candles. Don’t embarrass the master. He might not hurt me.

  She gaped at the Judas Cradle. She’d only seen a drawing of one in a book. The nude victim, bound in an iron waist ring, was hoisted in the air by a wall winch, rope and pulley, then lowered, spread-eagled, onto the sharp point of a wooden pyramid.

  Nina’s stomach fluttered.

  She awaited her orders, but the man was silent. Probably a newbie, Nina thought. All the toys but none of the talent.

  She checked her watch in the dim light. The Cartier Tank Francaise was a gift from her husband Alan, a tax attorney who doted on her in their Spanish-style oceanfront house in Del Mar. She had to pick up the twins from school and take them to soccer practice in two hours. She didn’t have all day to be punished.

  “Okay, cowboy,” she said over her shoulder, “getty-up or whoa.”

  The ball gag was in her mouth before she could set her Kate Spade handbag on the chopping block. She whimpered as her master twisted her shoulder-length hair around his wrist, searing her scalp. She kicked off her Manolo Blahnik pumps as he shackled her to the wall. He ripped her cream silk blouse from her shoulders, sending pearl buttons flying into the sand.

  Nina was violating every rule of the submissive’s creed. She was playing with a stranger. She didn’t know his real name, address and phone number. She hadn’t scheduled a safe call. She knew that predatory sadists masquerading as dominants occasionally killed submissives. But knowing the risks eroticized the scene. She was an edge player, and if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.

  Friar Tom reached for the Skinning Cat. The whip’s hemp cords were each tipped by an iron star. He’d soaked the cords in a solution of salt and sulfur to intensify the sting.

  Nina moaned into the ball gag a
nd struggled against the chains.

  Friar Tom grinned behind his mask. How long will she think it’s make-believe? He imagined the look in her eyes when she realized she was going to die. And why.

  He drew back the Skinning Cat. Nina cowered. What a great little actor! He took dead aim at her perfect ass. Those gorgeous white buttocks would soon be flayed to a red, pulpy mess. He drew the whip forward. An instant before the iron stars tore into their target, he recoiled his arm.

  Friar Tom heard a car pull up to the unit next door.

  He kicked the sand.

  Someone might hear the whip, not to mention the clanging chains.

  He unlocked Nina and shoved her onto her back in the sand. He pulled an iron bondage frame from a hook on the wall. Nina shook her head in mock terror.

  The Scavenger’s Daughter was authentic, from the sixteenth century. It was a wickedly simple device, prized in its day for its pain and portability. Shaped like a big keyhole, its iron hoops immobilized the neck, hands and feet.

  Friar Tom tightened the contraption, forcing Nina’s head between her knees, and secured it with an antique padlock at her ankle.

  Nina looked like a human medicine ball.

  The cramps started in her abdomen and worked toward her groin. Nina thought the pain was exquisite—at first. Then it was excruciating. Even a masochist has limits. She had to stop this scene.

  Before they had started, Nina told her master that her safe word was Go. Her safe word couldn’t be Stop, because that’s what she screamed when she was getting off.

  This was the first time she ever needed to use her safe word.

  “Go!” Nina shouted. But the ball gag turned the safe word into a slobbery, muffled moan.

  Friar Tom headed for the door.

  “Go!” Nina screamed into the back of the gag. “Go!”

  Friar Tom snuffed the candles on his way out.

  PART ONE:

  THE FIVE W’s

  CHAPTER 3

  The mound of dishes in my kitchen sink buried the faucet. If I didn’t shake this slothful funk soon, I’d die of thirst. It had taken two weeks to reach the back of the cupboard as I dirtied the measuring cups, the Pyrex collection, the bundt pan and the clay Moroccan tajine pot. When the doorbell rang, I was eating Raisin Bran with a wooden spoon out of a colander lined with Saran Wrap.

  It was the FedEx guy. He had bleached-blond hair and purple shorts. Wraparound Ray-Bans framed his tanned face.

  He held a long, thin cardboard box under his arm.

  “Tyler West?” he said.

  “That’s the rumor,” I said.

  “The newspaper reporter?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “I always wondered who lived here.”

  My house snags a lot of stares. It’s only one bedroom, but the view is huge. It’s perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I built it myself.

  Six years ago, when my reputation and bank account were still intact, I bought two acres from my neighbor to the south, Point Loma Nazarene University. Students had used the land to grow organic bananas, selling the fruit at farmers’ markets. The college kept the farming rights and had final say over any new buildings. The trustees barely approved my unconventional design.

  “Sweet place,” the FedEx guy said, handing me the box. “What’s it made of?”

  “Cob.”

  I opened the box and pulled out a golf club, a Cleveland CG15 sand wedge. Maybe I could use it to dig my way out of the bunker called my life.

  “Cob?” the FedEx guy said. “Like corn on the cob?”

  “English cob,” I said flatly. “Puddled adobe. I mixed clay, straw, sand and water, then sculpted a pot to live in. It’s my pottery barn.”

  “Pottery barn,” he said, “I like it.”

  I didn’t feel like company, so I shut down his eager laugh with a blank expression.

  The FedEx guy glanced over my shoulder. Maya the dog and Torpedo the cat dozed on the terra cotta tile floor amid spent Stone Pale Ale bottles and sandy flip-flops. Greasy pizza boxes and empty Peanut M&M bags covered my starfish and seashell coffee table. The leather sofa with the Mexican blankets was heaped with DVDs of the first four seasons of Breaking Bad. They were on loan from Jimmy Nettles, TV critic for the San Diego Sun, the newspaper where I may or may not still be employed.

  “Catch many stories from your couch?” the FedEx guy said sarcastically.

  “I was sent home from school,” I said.

  “Fighting on the playground?”

  “Nope, got caught coloring outside the lines.”

  There are five W’s in journalism: Who, What, When, Where and Why. You can screw up any of the last four and keep your job. But if you get Who wrong—or, in my case, get too close to the wrong Who—you’ll be lucky if they give you a paper route.

  Until two weeks ago, I was the investigative reporter for the Sun. The San Diego Times has a larger circulation, but the Sun has the Pulitzer Prize. I won it last year.

  My series on local corruption—“Scam Diego”—exposed misconduct from City Hall to the courthouse. The bombshells included fixed court cases, kickbacks on public works projects and a drug market run out of the police property room. The stories led to forty-four indictments, a dozen resignations and one suicide. The guilty each got ten to twenty years; I got a gold medallion and a raise.

  But gratitude has a short shelf life in the news business, especially in this era of plummeting profits. When I forgot Who matters most, advertisers pulled their ads—and Sun owner and publisher Elizabeth Rampling slapped me with an indefinite suspension.

  It’s not the first time I forgot Who matters most. Somewhere beneath the clutter behind me was a stack of letters, each stamped: “Refused, Return to Sender.” Each was addressed to the same person—Jordan Sinclair—my onetime love, now my full-time regret.

  I’ve spent the last fourteen years consumed by journalism. Now that it’s been taken away, I see how little I have. I’m thirty-seven years old. I’m wifeless, childless and clueless. I need my job back, but I also need a life to go with it.

  I took the electronic signature pad from the FedEx guy and scribbled my name.

  He looked at my signature and smirked. “Hey, you’re right. You do color outside the lines.”

  He turned around and slammed into two Jehovah’s Witnesses. Armfuls of religious literature fell to the ground. A hot Santa Ana wind scattered the pamphlets across the yard. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, the FedEx guy and I raced around retrieving the brochures before they blew over the cliff into the ocean. I plucked one from a giant banana leaf. I glanced at the cover. “Awake,” it proclaimed.

  Indeed.

  CHAPTER 4

  I dropped the sand wedge in the trunk of my 1959 Chevy Impala two-door convertible. It’s sea foam green with a 348. I bought it from a mechanic I met on vacation in Guatemala. He was also the village dentist. He sold me the car for five grand and filled a cavity for free. The windshield wipers don’t work, but the tooth has held up fine.

  The sand wedge joined a pile of other golf equipment: assorted irons, woods and putters; several shag bags of balls; golf practice mats; and golf shoes.

  Another lifetime ago, I was a pro golfer—a card-carrying member of the PGA Tour. I lasted eight months.

  I steered my land yacht away from Point Loma and headed for a makeshift driving range in Logan Heights. It was time for my weekly golf lesson with inner-city kids. The popular “Tee It Up With Ty” clinic was born from a contempt of court charge. When I refused to reveal an anonymous source for one of my stories, a judge ordered me to perform eighty hours of community service. I completed my sentence seven years ago.

  Hundreds of boys and girls have come through my clinic. Dozens made the golf teams at some of the city’s better high schools, where many kids from this bleak Southeast San Diego neighborhood are bussed.

  When I pulled into Memorial Park, the kids unloaded the clubs, shag bags and golf mats from the trunk, and I counte
d heads.

  “Where’s Jared?” I said.

  “He practicin’ at Coronado,” said Waymon Jackson, a skinny thirteen-year-old.

  “Coronado?” I said. “How’d he get there?”

  “Bike.”

  Memorial’s so-called driving range is more dirt than grass, stretching only 150 yards, with chicken wire at the end to stop balls from flying into the street. The nearest real range is at the golf course in Coronado, a town on the northern end of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Diego Bay. Jared didn’t have the money to buy a bucket of balls—he’d probably pinched them from the dispenser. But what really troubled me was that he rode his bike. The busy Coronado Bridge doesn’t have a bike lane.

  The kids set out the golf mats while I cleared the ground of used hypodermic needles. Memorial is an open-air drug market. Dealers hide their dope in fence pipes, sprinklers heads, even the sandbox.

  Jared rode up on his battered bike, golf clubs tied to the frame with shoelaces.

  “Where’s your helmet?” I said.

  “Aw, Ty, man, this is Southeast. I more likely get shot before I get hit by a car.”

  Jared Turner is fifteen, going on twenty-five. His father is serving life at Donovan State Prison for murder. His brother was killed in a drive-by shooting four years ago. His mother sells her body for drugs. He lives with his third set of foster parents.

  I work with him as much as I can. We play some of the top courses in the area, including Torrey Pines and The Bridges. In tournaments, he beats boys from such affluent enclaves as La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe. He qualified the past two years for the Junior World Golf Championships, held in San Diego, and this year, he could win his age group.

  He’s got what it takes to get out of Southeast and go to college—if he doesn’t stray.

  “You want to take Maya to Dog Beach with me Saturday?” I said.