This is part of a multi-chapter story and not a stand alone story; you are recommended to start reading from the first chapter.
Author's notes.
This story is quite light on the sex part and definitely not meant as stroker/written porn. Don't expect many explicit sex scenes. It is about recollections of sexual activity rather than about having sex directly.
Synopsis
A young, pretty woman is found lying unconscious on the road, naked. She is taken to hospital, where a check-up reveals she's had sex with no less than five different men.
Oswald Jones, detective, is in charge of the investigation in this strange case. Together with his colleague Julia, a police counsellor, and his friend Thelma, a news paper journalist, he tries to figure out what has happened to this lady.
During the investigation they find out that this lady is not alone in her ordeal. Oswald and his friends dig in deeper and deeper, to uncover it all.
* * * * * *
Chapter 2. Real memories, or just dreams?
The next morning Julia went to the hospital to visit Ms Locatelli again, while I followed up on the number found on Ms Locatelli's phone.
Through the local court I arranged for a warrant to get more information on this number from the telephone company. The state in which we found Ms Locatelli was more than enough probable cause to suspect a crime, making the warrant a formality.
I checked up with the team analysing the CCTV footage from the parking garage. They were by now halfway through the tapes but so far they could not tell me anything other than that they had confirmed that Ms Locatelli's car had entered the building at the registered time, and that there had been many cars exiting the car park shortly before the time she was found naked on the road. However the license plates on those cars were for some reason not readable on the camera image. The direction and focus of the camera were both wrong for that.
This of course was highly suspicious. Early Saturday morning is not the time for many people to start driving, or to be leaving a shopping mall, telling me that these people were likely at the party. And the camera is supposed to be set up so it does catch the license plates. That is the whole purpose of it.
I asked Cart, who was overseeing this part of the investigation, "Any way to figure out who this may be?"
"No, we seized the car park's records already and they have no records of these cars leaving the building. The records are just not there."
"They have records of Ms Locatelli's car."
"Correct. I think they delete records the moment the car leaves the building. By law they must keep these records, so in case of a check they must have records of all cars present. But they can simply delete the record from their database and we're none the wiser, and as they probably do so selectively it doesn't stand out. Having the records of many cars leaving at such odd hours would stand out more. Until you compare CCTV footage with those records, no chance to find out who they were, and with their cameras not catching the license plates properly, we can merely see there are cars entering and leaving."
"Any chance to see who is in the car? Man or woman, naked or dressed?"
"No, again the quality is too low, and windscreens are reflective, the way the camera is positioned we just can not see through."
"So we can't see anything there."
"What we can see is the make and model of the cars. More than half of them are large, luxury cars, not the kind of wealth one would expect in such a run down car park. It is a low-income area, the mall reflects that as well."
I was really disappointed to hear that this CCTV footage was of such low value. Usually we can get a great deal of information from CCTV recordings, this time not so much. It seems again these party people took precautions, and rigged the CCTV in such a way that while it is there, it is pretty useless.
Later that morning Julia returned from a visit to Ms Locatelli who was still in the hospital for observation.
"So how was it, any new information?"
"Yes, some new information, and it fits the story very well. I've got the whole conversation recorded on video, she was very confused when recalling her memories, she couldn't believe it herself, and it was not very coherent."
"Interesting."
"Indeed - she says she remembers being excited, even happy. She also reported feeling sexual arousal just by recollecting the events, as vague as they are. She was only able to remember feelings and a few images."
"Being taped didn't bother her?"
"Small camera, put discreetly aside, no blinking lights, she quickly forgot about it. Video quality is of course not that great, sorry about that."
"Never mind, it's better than nothing. Me being there in person would probably have been far more of an inhibition to her. What do you think about the case?"
"She seems honest to me, in both what she tells me, and how she feels about it. However she's overall a bit emotionless. I mean, she does show emotions but it's not as much as what I'm used to when working with rape victims, and the emotions she does show are very different than what I expect."
"Do you think she was raped?"
"Not sure. Well, I think technically she was, as in she was likely drugged and lost her normal inhibitions. The drugs made her want to have sex, allowing her to genuinely enjoy it, and as a result she doesn't feel violated now."
"That sounds like one hell of a powerful drug. Much more than your typical date-rape drugs, that mostly result in your date passing out, and being unable to stop you. Those drugs she has been tested for, and she came out clean. I wonder why we haven't seen any of this on the streets yet. There must be quite a market for a drug that turns any woman into a wanton sex animal."
"We've got an interesting case on our hands, Oswald, a very interesting case, and I have the feeling it's going to take a while to get to the bottom of it. I wonder where it will lead us. Please do listen to what she has to say, you may hear stuff that I didn't."
"You're much better at reading people than me. Anyway, I'm curious what she has to tell. And I wonder what more, if any, memories will surface from her later. For now we don't have much to go by. Let me watch it, I'll see you at lunch."
Julia handed me a copy of the recording on a USB stick, and using my laptop and headphones I watched and listened to the conversation. Ms Locatelli sounded quite shocked and upset, but she was also really open and willing to tell in embarrassing detail what she remembered.
The recording started with a formal introduction by Julia as a police officer, as is mandatory for such interviews. After that the interview started. It showed Ms Locatelli sitting straight up in her hospital bed, the head end of which was raised.
"My memories are very foggy, no real memories at all, nothing much coming back to me. It is like a dream."
Ms Locatelli looked a bit confused as she tried to recall what had happened after she left work that Friday.
"How do you feel thinking about that night?"
"Confused, mostly. I have had my share of drunken parties before, but nothing like this. I just don't remember anything it seems. When I got there, where it was, the other people there, nothing. Just some random feelings. Feelings of being drunk, being excited, having an overall good time. I think it was a good party."
"You'd been drinking heavily?"
"Well, I don't remember, really. I'd been talking to many people I think, just chatting. Oh, I remember, some were walking around naked, no clothes. Why would they do that?"
"It offended you?"
"Well no, not really, not at all even, it was more like exciting. The whole atmosphere I recall was exciting, arousing. Those naked people, maybe we were all naked, it's sexy." She smiled.
"And how about you?"
"Naked? I have no idea. No idea. Very well possible. I recall a very erotic atmosphere as a whole, it's titillating. I really don't remember why we did that. Why would people just get naked among strangers? It just doesn't make sense." She looked puzzled.
"People are not supposed to do those things. Did they put something in our drinks or so?"
"It might be, but we haven't been able to find anything in your system other than a moderate amount of alcohol."
"So strange. I just don't remember much from that night, if anything. Just a lot of naked people, and sexual arousal. Strong arousal actually. As if we were going to have sex, but I don't remember having sex. You say I did, but I don't remember anything about it, just memories of a crazy party."
"You feel those memories are good? Or bad?"
"Good, mostly good memories, it feels good at least. Nothing bad happened to me there, I believe."
"Not even the sex?"
"That's strange. I don't recall having sex, you say the doctor thinks I had sex. Thinking about that part makes me strangely excited. Thinking of being at a party with everyone naked and aroused, makes me feel excited. Maybe it's the taboo, we shouldn't do that, but if everyone is doing it, it's OK. It's naughty, isn't it?"
"I suppose so. You feel excited now you're thinking of it?"
"Yes ... a bit, it's exciting. It makes my nerves twitch, I don't really know how to describe it. It's just a feeling, a feeling of anticipation I guess. I don't know where that comes from, I never had this before."
The tape continued with more of the same, nothing concrete that I could work with in my investigation. In the end Julia asked Ms Locatelli for the login credentials to her e-mail and Facebook and other social networking sites she may have used, and permission to access that information to look for more evidence on what happened.
I let it all sink in for a while. I really wondered what drug they used to make her do all that, and indeed why we hadn't heard of any such drug yet. It must be so valuable on the streets, a date-rape drug where your date ends up actively participating and enjoying the sex, instead of just passing out and resembling a bag of rice, incapable of saying "no".
A few minutes later I called up Julia, as it was time for lunch. We often enjoy our lunch together, and I wanted to discuss the video a bit with her, and reveal to her the information I had learned from Thelma.
"I am really not surprised hearing that," Julia said when I told her about the other victims Thelma had uncovered. "The most surprising part is maybe that we haven't seen any other cases yet. This drug, the effects it has on those girls, it must be like heaven for the guys involved. Don't you guys all love the idea of fooling around with a bunch of naked girls?"
"Maybe not all, but many guys do, not going to deny that. Anyway, it's going to be hard to find other victims, as it appears they don't remember what happened at all, or if they remember it is as a lively dream."
"And we still have no idea of what it is that affected them?"
"No idea. I haven't found anything on the Internet, no mention on the party-drugs forums that I follow, nothing. I have the feeling that someone invented this drug, somehow accidentally found out its effects, and is now having a hell of a lot of fun with it."
"I guess so. And I'd really like to know who that is, and hopefully put him behind bars."
"Sonar."
"Sonar?"
"Sonar, the Facebook user my friend mentioned. I guess Ms Locatelli has had contact with him as well. Now the big trick is going to be to figure out who's behind that account. And I have the feeling this is not going to be easy."
As expected after lunch the warrant came in, and I immediately contacted the phone company, asking for telephone and location records related to the number we found. Of course it would be a while before that information would come back to me, so it was time to focus on my next lead: Facebook.
With the information Julia gave me I logged on to Ms Locatelli's Facebook account, to check out her activity over the past month or so. Private messages are always the most interesting part.
Almost instantly I discovered chats with a user named Sonar, in which Ms Locatelli was invited to the party marked in her diary. Sonar, just like the name Thelma gave me. I read through their messages, a bit embarrassed, as I always feel when going through other people's personal stuff. There were some exchanges with other guys, some flirting there, but not more than a few messages back and forth.
Ms Locatelli was single and looking, the perfect target for guys like Sonar, I thought. Her exchanges with Sonar proved that. He showed interest in her, asking her all kinds of questions, without really revealing anything about himself. All the while gaining her trust, and making it feel her like he's really interested in her. That trust must be really great, as indeed he tells her to go to a specific place, then to call him to pick her up from her car and take her to the party. She doesn't even seem to care where that party really is, or who's invited, or anything else about it.
What I also noticed is that the conversations with Sonar often turned to sex, and sexual fantasies. Ms Locatelli was quite open in what she was telling. Even though Sonar was a stranger to her, a pure Facebook friend. Or maybe it was because Sonar was the perfect stranger, who she'd never meet in real life, and as such could talk to freely.
Sonar: How are you today?
Emily Locatelli: I'm good, just back from work. You?
S: Fine. Have you had your dinner already?
E: Yes.
S: Any plans for tonight?
