13. Not A Subject

THIRTEEN

Not A Subject

He had another reason to like Fret County’s woman-behind-the-sheriff when he came into the station with Lucinda at his side, Polly intercepted her while Rus kept moving.

He looked back, and he felt his gut lurch, because she didn’t appear ticked or stymied to be left behind.

As she had been the whole ride there, she was lost in the knowledge of how Brittanie had spent the last hours of her life.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“Okay,” she replied woodenly, her eyes on him, but he knew she didn’t see him.

And his gut lurched again.

He wanted to be with her.

But he had work to do for Brittanie.

The story of his life when it came to women.

He made his way to Moran’s office.

The door was open, he stood in it and knocked, seeing Moran behind his desk and on the phone.

The man looked up, motioned for him to come in, then motioned for him to close the door.

“Right, right,” he said into his phone as Rus did as motioned and sat in a chair in front of Moran. “Lazarus is here. Yeah. Okay. We’re on it. Let me know if there’s more. Later.”

He touched his screen and looked at Rus.

“Fuck, man, everything is exploding.”

“I want to know, but Lucinda is out there, and she needs a ride to her mother’s.”

“On it,” he mumbled and picked up his desk phone.

“I had to tell her how Brittanie died. She’s not in a good place.”

Moran’s gaze came to him, he nodded, then said into the phone, “Get Polly to take Cin Bonner to her mom. I want Polly to do it. And find a way to let her know that Cin just found out how Brittanie Iverson died. She needs to handle this with care.” Pause then, “Great.”

And he put the phone in the cradle.

“Where are Jace and Jesse, Dakota and Gary Iverson?” Rus asked.

“Cade showed. He’s talking to his boys somewhere. Dakota and Gary are in separate interview rooms, waiting for us to speak with them. They’re pissed as shit.”

“Please tell me the Bohannan twins did not do something to fuck all this by abducting the brother and father of the victim in order to bring them in,” Rus begged.

“No, I mean they’re pissed as shit Brittanie was killed. They were holed up in some hunting cabin, it’s owned by a friend of Gary Iverson. No cell service. No internet. Apparently, they’ve been mostly getting drunk and shooting bottles and doing shit I don’t know, because I have a job and a life. They came in of their own accord. Which is good Jace and Jess talked them into it, because, as I noted, they both got guns and they both got a reason to hunt anyone down who might have looked at Brittanie wrong and shoot him in the face. And right now, since they just found out she’s been murdered, they’re all hepped up to do that.”

Rus blew out a breath and sat back in his chair.

“I’m deputizing them,” Moran went on.

Rus felt his eyebrows shoot up. “What? Who?”

“Jace and Jess. They’re good with an interview, hate to say it, but better than any of my people. They’re also good with communication. If anyone can calm these guys down, Jace and Jess can. And these guys are far from calm. I’m prepared to hear someone shouting and tearing my station apart at any minute. But we don’t have time to deal with that. We need to get to the lab.”

His neck suddenly itched.

“Why?”

“Because they’ve had some time with the stuff they took from the scene. And another break from the Crystal Killer’s MO, the plastic sheeting was wiped down. I don’t know what happened in that motel room. I do know that the coroner is close to finalizing her report, but about five minutes ago, she called and told me, down Brittanie’s right side, the one she was resting on, there are carpet burns. Even if we moved her before you got there, we probably wouldn’t have noticed them. They were reddish marks but came up stronger post-mortem. I think she was taken off the plastic, it was wiped down, then put back on it and struck in the head there. The blood was there, and that was undisturbed. But I think she struggled on the carpet. And I know our perp wiped down the plastic because he worried he left something behind. And he should be worried, since he did. They found a pubic hair that was not Brittanie’s on the very edge of the sheeting. They didn’t get everything, Rus. And it’s viable. The whole shaft, with skin. He left something behind. If we find him, we can put him there on that goddamned plastic.”

It was gut, but he’d learned to go with his gut.

From the minute Thea said, I didn’t say that, he felt the niggle.

But now it was more than a niggle.

A lot more.

Therefore, urgently, Rus ordered, “Right now, you need to send deputies to pick up Ezra Corbin.”

A light lit in Moran’s eyes. “The dominatrix give you something?”

“It’s a little thin, but I think still solid. And if we can break him in interrogation, yeah. It could get way more solid. So we need a warrant to get his DNA. Get on that, and I’ll tell you on the way to the lab.”

And again, Moran reached for his phone.

* * *

Rus did not tendto get squeamish.

The FBI normally didn’t investigate homicides unless there were extenuating circumstances. Like the perpetrator abducted their victim and crossed state lines, or it was a serial killer, or the local authorities asked for their assistance.

Still, seventeen years on the job, five more as a cop, four as a soldier, and he’d been deployed, so he’d seen death.

And he’d been in autopsy suites.

Even with all that experience, he’d never learned to divorce himself from the fact that the person on the table had their most precious possession stripped from them against their will. And there were people who cared about them who were grieving.

For Rus, it was always personal.

Standing, listening to the coroner, with Brittanie naked on a table in front of him, the Y-cut on her chest stitched shut, it was the worst in his career.

It wasn’t that he’d investigated her life deeper, felt he knew her better. He worked at being thorough in all his cases.

It was Lucinda.

And Madden burying her face in her mother’s cardigan.

“Bludgeoning,” the coroner was saying. “A mess was made, but there were depressions left consistent with a hammer.”

“Is there something you need to show us on her body, or can we cover her?” Rus asked abruptly.

She startled and looked to him.

“I get she’s a subject to you and you have to be removed from it,” he continued. “But she’s been through enough, don’t you think?”

“Of course,” she muttered, moving to grab a surgical drape.

He felt Moran’s attention on him, but he looked to his shoes while the coroner covered Brittanie.

He lifted his head when she started speaking again.

“Like I reported earlier, there was no skin or blood under her nails. We did find fibers from her fingers, both carpet and hemp. She possibly tried picking at the rope she was tied with. Those fibers are in the abrasions around her wrists and ankles too. Carpet fibers in her toenails, and as I said, fingernails.”

“She was raped on the floor,” Rus said dully.

“It would seem consistent to being on all fours on carpet,” the coroner replied. “I compared the fibers I found with some retrieved from the hotel room, and they’re the same. That said, she only had carpet burns on her side, not on her knees or the palms of her hands. With the way she was assaulted, if it was on carpet, she’d have burns.”

“Any residue around her mouth?” he asked.

She nodded. “Glue, yes. From tape.”

“Messy?” he asked.

“Sorry?” she asked in return.

“Did you find a lot of it?”

“There was an attempt at cleanup, but not much. So I suppose.”

More evidence this was definitely copycat and not CK getting sloppy.

He might one day get sloppy.

But not this sloppy.

“The bleeding, bruising and internal injuries indicate she was raped while she was alive.”

“Is there evidence of more than one person assaulting her?” Rus asked.

“Yes, and no. Yes, in the sense I believe she was physically assaulted by a penis, both vaginally and anally. And yes, in the sense that she clearly sustained a prolonged assault. But a possible no, because she was penetrated by something else a single assailant could use to keep assaulting her even if he wasn’t able to sustain an erection. I found latex proteins internally that are consistent with a prophylactic. Silicone doesn’t leave a residue, but whatever was used was much larger than even a very well-endowed penis.”

“So somebody else could have been there,” Rus stated. “And it could be any gender.”

She shook her head. “I can’t rule that out. I found no hairs or other organic matter on her body that weren’t hers. But even though they didn’t clean her up down there, that isn’t entirely out of the ordinary. Especially if condoms and gloves were used and she was moved around. Hairs could have fallen away. And I found latex powder around her wrists, ankles and neck, also in her hair. Someone touched her in these places wearing gloves. Gloves don’t carry that much powder, so either a single assailant wore multiple pairs, or there were multiple assailants wearing gloves.”

The hairs fell away, or at least one of them did.

They’d gone to the coroner’s office from the lab. He’d seen the dark pubic hair himself. They were now far more closely examining the hairs and anything else combed from the carpet.

Ezra Corbin had dark hair.

And there was someone else there.

Rus would stake his career on it.

“Tox screen indicates she was given a mild sedative.”

Rus’s attention sharpened on her.

Her eyes wandered to Brittanie. “I wish I could say it was enough she didn’t feel or know what was happening to her, but it wasn’t. Though, it was enough to render her incapable of real struggle, and definitely she couldn’t have fought back.”

Christ.

Not even a fighting chance.

“Anything else you got for us?” Moran asked.

She watched Moran ask the question, but on her answer, again, her gaze drifted to Brittanie. “In this case, I’m afraid it’s what you see is what you get.”

“I appreciate you working on a Saturday, Dr. Pfeiffer,” Moran said.

“I’ve been working Saturdays for seven months, Sheriff,” she replied. “Too many stupid people doing too many stupid things. I’m sorry it took me so long to get to her. The three ODs, the road rage idiot, the two Darwin Award nominees who tried to make a trail bike into a motorcycle then climbed on for the test drive, and the guy who had no idea how to clean his brand-new gun came in first.”

“You sure they’re not all Darwin Award nominees?” Moran asked.

“No,” she replied shortly.

Moran’s lips quirked and he said, “We gotta get back to the station. Thanks again.”

Rus lifted his chin to her, and Moran and he started to walk away.

“Special Agent?” she called.

He turned back.

“She’s not a subject. I did everything I could for her. But she’s safe here and she has been from the minute I got her.”

“I didn’t mean to imply differently.”

“I know, I just want you to know, I did all I could for her.”

He studied her.

Yeah.

Brittanie ate at her too.

“Obliged.”

She nodded.

They left.