Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice Read Free Page A

to do this to her
. God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no.
    The man slipped his hand inside her dress and began to fondle her breast. The camera caught the flinching in her eyes—she so didn’t want him to do it, but nothing except her eyes was able to say no.
    “Did they give her a sedative that keeps her immobile?” Zerbrowski asked.
    “They didn’t need to,” Manning said. “There’s no doubt that she’s a zombie, so she follows their orders. Notice she never breathes. A live human being needs to breathe, and she never does in this one.”
    “Does she breathe in later films?” I asked.
    “She talks, and you have to take air in to do that, but other than that, no.”
    The man was wearing a pair of silk boxers with hearts on them, like a parody of dressing up for a romantic evening, except for the mask, which didn’t match the almost silly-looking shorts. Yes, I was concentrating on details that might help me find any clue to finding out who or where this was, but I was already trying to concentrate on the details that wouldn’t haunt me as much. The silly heart shorts were almost a kindness, a break in the horror, like whoever was picking out the costumes had goofed.
    I missed the heart-covered shorts when he stripped them off, because then I had to concentrate on his body, looking for birthmarks, or tattoos, or anything that made him not generic guy in a mask. I didn’t want to look at his body, didn’t want to search every inch of it for identifying marks. I wanted to look away, but if the woman in the film had to endure it, because that’s what the eyes meant, then I wouldn’t look away. I would not flinch and miss some visual that might lead us to these bastards—though part of me knew that if just watching the films would lead anywhere, the FBI would have found it by now. But I watched it anyway, because most cops believe that they will see something that everyone else has missed; it’s the hope that keeps us all putting on the badge and gun every morning. When that hope runs out we find different jobs.
    A man off camera told her to lie on the bed and she did it instantly, even while her eyes showed just how much she didn’t want to do it. The naked man in front of the camera slid her panties down those long legs that were still covered in grave dirt, the one high heel still on. Someone had painted her toenails a soft pink, as if it still mattered with closed-toe shoes and a corpse. I expected more of her clothes to come off, but the naked man just climbed on top of her with no preliminaries, except to move her dress a little out of the way.
    Zerbrowski breathed out, “Jesus,” behind me.
    I didn’t look at him, I didn’t look at anybody, and none of us looked at each other, because when watching this kind of shit, no one wants eye contact. You don’t want the other officers to know you’re afraid, or too emotional, and if anything this awful excites you, don’t share that either. None of the other cops want to know.
    The only plus was that the camera had moved back enough to catch the sex, so we couldn’t see her eyes. She just lay there like the corpse she almost was, and that was the only tiny saving grace. He ended by taking his dick out of her body and doing the obligatory porn movie end to show that he’d actually gone.
    The film ended there, and I felt my gut loosen a little. I’d watched it all; bully for me. Bully for us all.
    “The production value goes up as the films progress,” Brent said.
    I turned and looked at him. “What do you mean?”
    “The almost joke-worthy boxers go away, the camerawork gets better, and they put more personal touches around the bedroom to make it look less like a set and more real,” he said.
    “Is it always the same guy onstage?” Zerbrowski asked.
    “For most of the films, but there’s a second, younger-looking guy featured in the last two,” Brent said.
    “How many films are there?” I asked.
    “More than I want to