Free Blind Rage by Terri Persons

deeper.
    “This is scary,” said Bernadette.
    Fat Man finally released the woman, and she popped up gasping for air, only to have the man dunk her again.
    The video stopped abruptly.
    “What happened?” asked Bernadette.
    “That was a clip to tease you,” said Creed. “You want more, you have to pay.”
    “I’ll pass.”
    Creed punched on another clip. “This one is for the Houdini fans.”
    The video showed a nude woman bound in rope and hanging upside down above a tall, clear tank filled with water. Slowly, she was lowered into the tank. After showing a full body shot while the woman fought against the bonds, the camera closed in on her face to highlight the air bubbles escaping from her nostrils. Finally, she was lifted out of the tank, dripping and coughing and gasping for air.
    “That’s about all I can stomach for the day,” said Creed, exiting the site.
    Bernadette took her hand down from his chair. “How did you find this?”
    “I went to a couple of general porn sites and clicked on specific fetishes.”
    “That would be—what…water sports?”
    He laughed dryly and swiveled his chair around to face her. “No, I tried that phrase and discovered an entirely different fetish. Water sports has to do with—”
    She raised her palm. “Is it relevant to what we’re investigating?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “Then I don’t want to know.”
    He tipped his head back toward his computer screen. “These videos were listed under the heading of ‘water bondage.’ In addition to watching people trying to drown each other…”
    “Do women also dunk men?”
    “I’ve seen no evidence of that. Men do it to women, or females do it to each other while men watch.”
    “Lovely.”
    “In addition to that sick stuff, you can also view women wrestling in swimming pools. Women with their hands tied behind their backs and their faces held down in buckets of water. Women strapped into these medieval-looking torture chairs and repeatedly dunked backward into big tanks.”
    “Did you find any local links to this sort of thing? Clubs around town? Web sites we can trace to someone in the Twin Cities?”
    “Not yet,” he said. “That will require a little more digging. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a break before I go another round with this smut.”
    She wheeled over a chair and sat down across from him. “Am I right about this, Ruben? Are these drownings about sex?”
    “Sex and violence. Violent sex.”
    “What if I’m wrong? What if these were—I don’t know, something else? Robbery attempts gone sour or…I don’t know.” She looked at the yellow wall. “Maybe some of them were suicides. These women were screwed up.”
    “No,” he said firmly. “You’re on the right track, Bernadette. After watching those disturbing videos, I’m certain we’re after someone who gets sexual satisfaction by drowning women.”
    “Watching the videos is one thing, but taking it all the way and really drowning someone…I don’t get it. I don’t get how someone would get his rocks off by doing something like that.”
    “Could be it started out as a game.”
    “A game?”
    “Playacting. Fake drownings, like in the videos. To really get off, he graduated to the real deal.”
    “I guess that works. It’s just that this water fetish thing is so—I don’t know…I’ve never heard of it before.”
    Creed nodded at the computer screen. “This might be new, but horrifically violent sex offenders are not. Some of them blame the porn.”
    “Ted Bundy.”
    “Yup. Maybe we need to talk to some shrinks,” said Creed. “Develop a profile of the sort of gentleman who would get his jollies by drowning women.”
    “Sounds like something for the folks in BSU,” she said, referring to the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico.
    “We don’t need those big shots,” Creed snapped. “We can do it ourselves, Bernadette.”
    She smiled, pleased that they were finally on a first-name basis.