Federal Discipline Page 7

  “Here,” he said, coming into the room suddenly with a can of soda. “Are you all right? You look flushed.”

  “Yes,” Jamie said. “Thank you. I’m fine.” She continued to blush, going from shade to shade of embarrassed red. Perhaps she should excuse herself, go to the bathroom and relieve herself. She really couldn’t see any other way out of the mess she was fast making in her panties, soaking through the gusset.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, returning to the kitchen. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Jamie scooted to the edge of the couch, just in case she was leaking through her panties and onto her slacks. The wetness was becoming a menace. She was certainly going to have to excuse herself.

  “Where is your restroom?” She called the question out.

  “Down the hall, third door on the left.”

  Making good her escape, Jamie walked to the bathroom, locked the door and peeled her pants and panties down. Just as she’d feared, the crotch of her panties was completely soaked.

  There was a long mirror in the room, so Jamie couldn’t avoid looking at her bottom. As he’d promised, there weren’t any marks or bruises. But there was a red glow that made her backside look like a Christmas bauble.

  “Damn,” she swore under her breath, running her fingers over her heated skin. Her bottom was radiating warmth. But it wasn’t her bottom that was concerning her in that moment. It was her arousal. She put the toilet lid down and sat on it, spreading her thighs wide enough to allow her fingers to press down over the slick tingling bud of her clit and then to the entrance of her body.

  She sighed with relief as she pushed her fingertips inside, pressing against the quivering walls in a way that was most satisfying. Her mind drifted as she played with herself, imagining not her fingers delving inside, but another part of Jack’s anatomy, thick and hard pressing deep inside, filling her over and over again.

  The knowledge that what she was doing was completely over the line only served to spur her on. There she was, hot bottomed, naked from the waist down, masturbating in her boss’ bathroom. It was wrong. It was naughty. And it was the hottest thing she’d ever done.

  She climaxed quickly, dabbed her panties off with tissue as best she could and tried to compose herself. Looking in the mirror, she saw a pale woman with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, hair slightly askew, likely from the spanking.

  Smoothing down stray wisps of hair, Jamie took a deep breath. It was okay, she told herself. He wouldn’t know what she’d been doing. He wouldn’t know anything at all.

  Jack was sipping coffee in his armchair when she returned. Her soda was waiting for her, beads of moisture tracing down to the coaster on the table.

  There was a silence as she sat. What did one say in such circumstances? Jamie filled the silence by cracking the tab on the soda can open and taking a sip. “Refreshing,” she said, hiding a nervous smile behind the can.

  Jack checked his watch. “I got a call,” he said. “The results from the autopsy are in. We’ll finish our drinks and go check them out.”

  “Okay,” Jamie said. “Sounds good.”

  Just like that, things were back to business as usual. The spanking was almost forgotten, though not quite because Jamie could feel her backside stinging on and on as she sipped her soda.

  Before they could finish their drinks, Jack’s phone rang.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brampton,” he answered. “Yes, Mrs. Brampton… We’ll be there right away, Mrs. Brampton.”

  “Are we going to see Mrs. Brampton?” Jamie asked when he shut off his phone.

  “Excellent deductive skills, agent.” He winked in her direction.

  Jamie smiled. She would never have predicted it, but for some reason Jack Harley was actually being nicer to her after having spanked her. Maybe it was another FBI rite of passage or something.

  “We need to get going, agent,” he said, discarding his coffee. “Now. She sounded distressed.”

  Jamie was relieved to be going out. It was good to pay attention to the case again, and not the state of her bottom or other intimate parts of her body.

  *****

  Mrs. Brampton had asked to meet at her house. House wasn’t really the word for where the Bramptons lived though, it was more like an estate. It even had its own name, ‘Brampton Court’. The manicured lawns, the finely tripped topiary, bushes shaped like chess pieces looked like something out of a movie. Jamie couldn’t begin to imagine what had made a man run away from all these riches and immerse himself in filthy street drugs. Why, in a place like this he could have gotten any drug in the world.

  “Whoa,” Jamie said as they drove up to the house, a process that took several minutes from the main gate. “This is a mansion.”

  “It’s a nice place,” Jack agreed in his typical restrained fashion.

  “This case is making less and less sense,” Jamie murmured out loud. She couldn’t possibly imagine the man she’d seen foaming at the mouth and leaping onto cars like King Kong ever having lived in such salubrious surroundings.

  “We’re here to make it make sense,” Jack said, pulling in next to the house. “Be ready to take notes, agent.”

  Jamie nodded and drew out her notepad and pen. They were archaic in her mind, but Jack insisted on them. Something about not being able to format a piece of paper or something.

  Mrs. Brampton met them at the door. She had clearly been crying. Her eyes were rimmed red, the underside of her nose somewhat raw from the rubbing of tissues. That wasn’t what arrested their immediate attention, however. What arrested their attention was the way she was clasping at her stomach.

  “I’ve found something, detectives.”

  They weren’t detectives, but neither Jamie nor Jack corrected her. It seemed like such a minor detail compared to the fact that her hands were covered in what looked like fresh blood.

  “Mrs. Brampton,” Jack said. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

  She dropped in a dead faint. Thanks to Jack’s quick reflexes, he managed to catch her before she slammed onto the floor. As she slumped forward in his arms, the cause of her unsteadiness became apparent. The handle of what looked like a steak knife was sticking out between her shoulder blades.

  Chapter Six

  “Call an ambulance,” Jack said over his shoulder. Jamie was already making the call.

  Paramedics arrived on the scene in a matter of minutes. Mrs. Brampton was just barely conscious when they arrived and began working on her. Jack had done his best to plug the holes and apply pressure and Jamie had helped, but Mrs. Brampton had been stabbed several times by an unknown assailant. She was soon unconscious and unable to speak, but she did at least maintain a weak pulse. A butler also came to her aid, but his help was largely limited to providing towels to staunch the flow, then fretting about the state of the bloody towels once they were applied to Theodora Brampton.

  With the paramedics in place, they were able to question the butler more deeply. An inspection of Brampton Court had revealed a distinct lack of knife wielding maniacs, and the butler claimed not to have seen anybody enter or leave the house. Mrs. Brampton had spent the afternoon in her rocking chair as usual, looking out over the garden, he said. He also said that he had been in the kitchen the entire time, polishing the silver and preparing the employment schedules for the next month. Further investigation proved that to be true in the form of half-polished silver and a half-finished roster.

  Jamie was immediately suspicious of the butler. It was hard to trust anyone with that much of a poker face. The genteel man had a haughty aloofness that seemed to prevent him from feeling human emotion. He was either an android or British. The accent seemed to tip it towards British, but Jamie wasn’t going to draw any final conclusions just yet.

  “You know it’s always the butler who did it,” Jamie murmured to Jack.

  “Not now,” he murmured back. He had his serious face on, which made sense given that a woman had been brutally att
acked in her home. Brampton Court didn’t look like a place where bad things could happen. It looked like a place where people sipped tea, ate cucumber sandwiches and called biscuits scones and cookies biscuits.

  Aside from the butler, there was nobody present. It was a large house and apparently three maids were employed in its upkeep, as well as a cook. According to the butler, the cook had departed for the fish market after lunch and the maids were spending the afternoon training at a local school for domestic servants.

  “What about a groundskeeper?” Jack indicated around the place. “Someone has to keep up with those lawns.”

  “Mr. Hemmingway comes twice a week, on alternate Monday Wednesday, Tuesday Thursdays,” the butler informed him. “Being as he was here yesterday, he is not here either.”

  “Someone knew the staffing schedules well enough to slip in here and do damage whilst Mrs. Brampton was relatively alone,” Jack said. “Are there any disgruntled ex-servants? Anyone who is familiar with the workings of Brampton Court who might have a reason to do something like this?”

  “No sir,” the butler said. “The Bramptons are generous employers.”

  “And, for the record, your full name is?”

  “I do not typically carry identification papers on my person,” the butler sniffed. “But my name is Agnew Boutelle.”

  “How do you spell that, sir?” Jack nudged Jamie, indicating she should make a note.

  “A-G-N-E-W B-O-T-T-L-E,” the butler spelled out.

  “Agnew Bottle,” Jamie repeated the name incredulously.

  “It is pronounced Boutelle,” the butler corrected her. “It is Italian.”

  “It’s written Bottle,” Jamie replied.

  The sharp crease of Jack’s brow made her fall silent. No antagonizing people. She remembered the rule. She remembered the spanking associated with the rule. She just managed to avoid an urge to reach back and rub her bottom, which would have been embarrassing had she given way to it.

  “We’re going to conduct a scene examination,” Jack informed Butler Bottle. “The police will be arriving soon, if you wouldn’t mind waiting for them. We may have some additional questions.”

  The scene investigation involved following the trail of spattered blood out to a porch where a rocking chair sat. There was a short table beside it, upon which sat a glass of iced tea, Mrs. Brampton’s cell phone, and that day’s newspaper. There was also a plate with a half eaten blueberry muffin top upon it.

  “Looks like she was enjoying a nice afternoon,” Jack said. “Until someone stabbed her in the back.”

  “And in the front,” Jamie pointed out. “She had wounds in both sides. If the attacker came from behind first and stuck a knife in her back and left it there, there must be another knife that was used for inflicting the lower wounds at the front. Where is it?”

  “Good question,” Jack said. “Hopefully we’ll get prints off the knife in her back, but I’m willing to wager we won’t. Whoever did this planned it. They knew who was in the house and where those people would be.”

  Jamie frowned. An investigation that had started with several mangled bodies had lead to a meth-fueled shoot out between a stockbroker and the cops and now this attack on a refined lady. None of it made sense. None of it hung together.

  “Are these… are these things even related to one another?” Jamie scratched her head.

  “When the bodies start piling up like this, you can be sure that there is a connection,” Jack said grimly. “And in my experience, they keep piling up until you find it. So get looking, rookie.”

  Carefully making their way around the crime scene, Jack and Jamie made sure not to disturb the evidence.

  “I think I found something,” Jamie said, pointing downwards with the lens of her camera and setting off a series of flashes as she captured the image more clearly on digital media than could be seen in real life. The way the shadows were falling cast a dark pall under the rocking chair obscuring something. Something that became briefly visible with every bright flash. It was a pentagram, smeared in blood on the deck.

  “Mrs. Brampton said something about a daemon,” Jamie recalled.

  “She did,” Jack agreed. “Forensics is going to need to take a good look at this.”

  “Forensics and a priest.”

  “I think we can leave a priest out of it,” Jack said dryly. “In my experience, ghosts don’t go about stabbing people with steak knives.”

  “Lee Brampton had been stabbed with a steak knife too,” Jamie said quickly. “Maybe that’s a clue.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Jack agreed.

  “Daemons and a set of steak knives,” she mused. “Where’s the connection?”

  Where indeed.

  *****

  What followed was a lot of hurrying up and waiting. Lab results and steak knife matching took all afternoon to come in, during which time Mrs. Brampton passed away. She had been too fine and frail a woman to stand up to the shock, which had killed her more surely than her wounds.

  It was a sad result, one that left Jack and Jamie sitting silently in his office wordlessly. They both had the sense that someone nasty was getting the better of them. Neither of them liked that feeling, nor did they like the accompanying sensations of helplessness and impending doom.

  The high point of the day came later that evening, when the results of Mr. Brampton’s autopsy came in. Jamie crowded around Jack’s desk to read them over his shoulder, which he didn’t seem to mind, though he did draw the line at her grabbing at the results before he could open them. She earned herself a quick slap to the back of her hand for that, after which she withdrew her stinging fingers and waited for the results to be presented.

  “Anything on the tox screens?”

  “No,” Jack said. “Well, yes and no. None of the victims test positive for any known drug, but there’s definitely something in their systems. Their nasal passages show the sorts of micro-abrasions consistent with cocaine usage, and their behavior also speaks to a stimulant of some kind.”

  “Maybe we’re not looking for a killer,” Jamie suggested, resting her elbows on his desk as she leaned over to get a closer look.

  “You think we should keep our eyes out for a daemon?”

  “No.” She gave him a withering stare. “Maybe this isn’t about some sick serial killer. Maybe this is just some new street drug. Bath salts make people eat other people’s faces. Is it so strange to believe that there could be something new on the street that makes people want to carve pentagrams into things and stab themselves with steak knives?”

  “That would be a strangely specific drug,” Jack said. “But I like the line of thought, agent, very good.”

  Jamie tried not to smile too hard, but she couldn’t help herself. Given the number of times she’d ended up over his knee being spanked like a brat, it was nice to earn his praise, for once.

  “If it’s a drug, this is the DEA’s jurisdiction,” Jack said. “But I’m not entirely convinced. These killings, they’re too similar. There’s a pattern to them. There isn’t the general mayhem you get when something new is released onto the streets. Besides, wealthy women don’t usually get murdered because of street drugs.

  Jamie nodded, deferring to Jack’s years of experience. Maybe he was right, someone had gone after Mrs. Brampton, and she’d certainly not taken any street drugs. She was straight as an arrow, that woman.

  “It’s late,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms. “And we’ve worked long enough. Go home, agent. Get some rest. You’ve earned it.”

  *****

  When Jamie got home she was still thoroughly turned upside down by the events of recent days. There was the case, which was picking up steam and strangeness in equal amounts, and there was Jack – whose no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners-including-her-bottom, attitude was a lot to stomach.

  Looking at herself in the mirror as she prepared to shower, Jamie sighed. “Did we bite off more than we can chew?”

  Her ref
lection stared back unblinking. No damn help at all.

  At least the shower was refreshing. After a day like the one she’d had, Jamie was eager to wash the grime off. It felt like a sticky film coating her skin. Not just physical dirt, but the memories of what she’d seen. Psychic dirt, she might have called it – if she believed in anything psychic.

  Stepping into the hot spray of the shower, she lifted her face to the flow of the water and allowed it to hit her clavicle and run down over and between her pink tipped breasts. Would Jack like her breasts? She blushed at the shameful thought. It was not proper to be thinking of her boss that way. Not at all.

  Then again, it wasn’t proper for her boss to be spanking her when he felt like it. Jamie looked over her shoulder and discovered that her bottom had retained some of the pink hue from earlier that day. The memory of his hands on her bare flesh, the intimacy of their bodies being pressed together – there was an undeniable sensuality to it all.

  Jamie wasn’t the sort of girl to get into sordid affairs. She hadn’t been the type to sleep with professors in college, nor did she flirt with her instructors at the academy. So why did she now feel so damn wanton when it came to Jack?

  It was his fault, she told herself. He was the one who’d started all the spanking business. He was the one who’d taken her back to his place for the express purpose of, okay, maybe not getting into her panties, but getting her panties down. There were people she’d dated without getting that intimate.

  Jamie began to soap her body. The smooth touch of the lather against her tender places, lightly bubbling with the drumming of the water further lulled her into a state of arousal and relaxation. Taking the shower head in hand she rinsed the soap away, lowering the flow of water until it was drumming over the hood of her clit. Pleasure spiraled around her bud, flowing into her tired, stressed muscles. Oh god yes.