Keeping It in the Family (Linstead)

Chapter 20

"These are pornos," Purrazzo announced. Her first task had been to start going through the stacks of magazines, while Halstead had gone to work on the cardboard boxes. So far, all he had found in them was unmarked VHS tapes.

"Any good?" he asked with a bit of humour.

Purrazzo laughed. "I'm not much of a porn expert, so I'll let you be the judge. Oh, this is actually pretty extreme stuff," she added as she flicked through one of the magazines.

"Oh?" He moved over to have a look with her, and she held two pages open for his viewing pleasure, or not. On one page was a photograph of a naked young blonde woman who was elaborately bound to a wooden chair with white ropes. A tick white cloth was tied in her mouth as a gag. On the other page was possibly the same naked woman, tied up lying on her stomach on a bed. The bondage looked painful, which was likely the point.

"It doesn't do much for me," Purrazzo commented.

"No, me either. But I guess it floats Mr Layfield's boat. Or Mrs Layfield's, I guess. Or both. Are there any more like this?"

Purrazzo picked up a big stack of magazines with both hands and dropped them in front of him with a loud thump. "Looks like all of these are."

"Well," Halstead said, looking at the stack. "Looks like someone has a porn addiction."

"And maybe a bondage addiction, too," Purrazzo added. She had opened another magazine, discovering even more graphic images of women in bondage than the first one had contained.

"It's extreme and it's distasteful, but it's not illegal. Let's keep searching."

"I bet all of these boxes are these old VCRs," she said, moving over and opening one. "What are we going to do with these, anyway?"

"We're going to load them into the car and take them back to the station. Who knows, there might be child abuse on some of these. If we find something like that, that's our green light to dig up the garden."

They worked their way through the boxes. VHS tapes, VHS tapes, and more VHS tapes, all in unmarked cardboard sleeves. It was going to be a mission to get them back to the station, Halstead thought. And then Erin was going to have someone go through them all. What a drag that threatened to be.

"Oh, there's something different in this one," Purrazzo said a couple of minutes later.

"What have you got?"

From one of the cardboard boxes, she produced a smaller metal one with a lock on it. She tried to open it, unsurprisingly finding it locked. "Do you think Burgess has a key for this?"

"Kim?" Halstead called out.

Burgess appeared at the doorway in short order. "Yeah? Oh, porn. Lots of porn."

"Yeah, lots of porn. Pretty hardcore bondage porn at that. We've just found that box. Have you got a key that might fit the lock?"

The bunch of keys came out of Burgess's pocket and she flicked through them, looking for one small enough to fit the lock on the box. "No," was her verdict.

"Then we open it another way," Halstead said. He took a multi-purpose utility knife out of his pocket and went to work on the lock with one of the implements. In less than a minute, the lock popped open.

"Nice," Purrazzo said, admiring his handiwork.

As the box opened, Halstead saw what was inside. Polaroid photographs. The ones he initially saw were of an attractive blonde woman, presumably Mrs Layfield. She was naked in all of them, striking various suggestive poses, either standing or on a bed. He took the top few out, intending to hand them to Purrazzo. But then they both saw what was underneath.