“I’m not clear on how you discovered him,” Marino said. We resumed climbing steps as Mote struggled for composure. The floor was covered in the same dark red carpet I had seen downstairs, the heavily varnished pine paneling the color of honey. He cleared his throat.
“About six this evening I stopped by to see if Max wanted to go out for some supper. When he didn’t come to the door, I figured he was in the shower or something and came on in.
“Were you aware of anything that might have indicated he had a history of this type of activity?” Wesley delicately asked.
“No, sir,” Mote said with feeling.
“I can’t imagine it. I sure don’t understand… Well, I’ve heard tell of people rigging up weird things. I can’t say I know what it’s for.”
“The point of using a noose while masturbating is to place pressure on the carotids,” I explained.
“This constricts the flow of oxygen and blood to the brain, which supposedly enhances orgasm.”
“Also known as going while you’re coming,” Marino remarked with his typical subtlety. Mote did not accompany us as we moved forward to a lighted doorway at the end of the hall.
SBI Agent Max Ferguson had a manly, modest bedroom with pine chests of drawers and a rack filled with shotguns and rifles over a rolltop desk. His pistol, wallet, credentials, and a box of Rough Rider condoms were on the table by the quilt-covered bed, the suit I’d seen him wearing in Quantico this morning neatly draped over a chair, shoes and socks nearby.
A wooden bar stool stood between the bathroom and closet, inches from where his body was covered with a colorful crocheted afghan. Overhead, a severed nylon cord dangled from an eye hook screwed into the wooden ceiling. I got gloves and a thermometer out of my medical bag. Marino swore under his breath as I pulled the afghan back from what must have been Ferguson’s worst nightmare.
I doubted he would have feared a bullet half as much. He was on his back, the size-D cups of a long- line black brassiere stuffed with socks that smelled faintly of musk. The pair of black nylon panties he had put on before he died had been pulled down around his hairy knees, and a condom still clung limply to his penis. Magazines nearby revealed his predilection for women in bondage with spectacularly augmented breasts and nipples the size of saucers.
I examined the nylon noose tightly angled around the towel padding his neck. The cord, old and fuzzy, had been severed just above the eighth turn of a perfect hangman’s knot. His eyes were almost shut, his tongue protruding.
“Is this consistent with him sitting on the stool?” Marino looked up at the segment of rope attached to the ceiling.
“Yes,” I said.
“So he was beating off and slipped?”
“Or he may have lost consciousness and then slipped,” I answered. Marino moved to the window and leaned over a tumbler of amber liquid on the sill.
“Bourbon,” he announced.
“Straight or close to it.” The rectal temperature was 91 degrees, consistent with what I would have expected had Ferguson been dead approximately five hours in this room, his body covered. Rigor mortis had started in the small muscles. The condom was a studded affair with a large reservoir that was dry, and I went over to the bed to take a look at the box. One condom was missing, and when I stepped into the master bathroom I found the purple foil wrapper in the wicker trash basket.
“That’s interesting,” I said as Marino opened dresser drawers.
“What is?”
“I guess I assumed he would have put on the condom while he was rigged up.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“Then wouldn’t you expect the wrapper to be near his body?” I picked it out of the trash, touching as little of it as possible, and placed it inside a plastic bag.
When Marino didn’t respond, I added, “Well, I guess it all depends on when he pulled down his panties. Maybe he did that before he put the noose around his neck.”
I walked back into the bedroom. Marino was squatting by a chest of drawers, staring at the body, a mixture of incredulity and disgust on his face.