Keeping It in the Family (Linstead)

Chapter 26

"None of this floats my boat," Halstead said.

"It obviously floats the Layfields'," Purrazzo replied.

They were sitting in a small office that had been requisitioned by Sergeant Lindsay for Intelligence. In the room were two chairs in front of a small desk, a TV and a VCR player on a stand, and the stack of VHS tapes that had been found at the Layfield house. So far, they had made their way through several of the tapes, all of which had contained bondage-themed porn, none of it featuring the Layfields themselves, or anything incriminating. Thankfully that had allowed them to watch on the skip forward setting and speed the process up a bit. It also saved them having to listen to the audio.

"Never thought I'd get paid to watch porn when I joined Intelligence," Purrazzo said a couple of minutes later.

"Neither did I, yet here we are. Put the next tape in," Halstead said, having just reached the end of the current one.

Purrazzo got up and ejected the tape from the machine. After replacing it in its cardboard sleeve, she added it to the small stack of tapes that was going to form the 'watched' pile.

"Right, let's see what's next," she said with a notable lack of enthusiasm. She took the next tape from one of the piles and put it into the machine.

Halstead waited for her to sit down again before he hit play. Immediately, he realised that this tape was different to the ones they had watched so far. It was clear that this one was a home video. It showed an empty four poster bed, filmed from the bottom end.

"Is that the Layfield house? That looks smaller than the four poster they had in their master bedroom," Purrazzo said.

"It is smaller. And it's not the master bedroom. To me it looks like that room that was being used for storage when we were there. And based on where the camera must be, I'd say it's being filming through a hole in the wall from the bathroom."

"Okay, lie on the bed, honey," a female voice said on the tape. It was unmistakeably Jillian Layfield before she even walked into the shot, leading a young blonde woman over to the bed by her hand. Both women were naked, and very attractive. The video quality wasn't the best, but it was possible to tell that Jillian wasn't much over twenty years old. It didn't take a genius to figure out who the cameraman would have been.

Jillian dumped a bunch of items on the bed while the mystery woman did as she was told, getting on and lying down.

"I'm going to tie you up, gag you, then we'll really have some fun," Jillian said seductively.

"Wonder who that is? Could be one of the victims," Purrazzo said.

"No idea. But when we're done here we'll get Z on it. If anyone can get it enhanced and analysed, it's her. That's still no guarantee we'll be able to identify her, though."

On the screen, the young woman who wasn't Jillian Layfield was having her ankles tied to the two posts at the bottom of the bed with white bondage ropes, spreading them wide. With that done, Jillian moved up the bed to work on her wrists. The speed at which she worked while apparently getting good results showed that even at the young age she had been experienced in bondage.

"You think she's being paid, or she's there for her own enjoyment?" Purrazzo asked.

"Jillian said something about both of them having fun, so I don't think she's being paid. Whether she knows she's being filmed though, that might be another thing."

"There we go, Beth. Try and move," Jillian said when she was done applying the bondage.

"Beth. Note that down," Halstead instructed Purrazzo, who hurried to do so on the notepad she had been keeping at hand.