23. Fetish

TWENTY-THREE

Fetish

He was not met by Polly this time when he walked into the station.

Wade Dickerson waylaid him.

“Sheriff’s in with her,” he said.

Her?

“So’s Polly,” Dickerson went on. “I’ll take you back. But quick brief, she came in and she said she heard it going around town we were looking for Corbin. She said she had a story to tell. I don’t know what that is, but Harry wasn’t in with her long before he came back out, told me to tell you what I just told you when you got here, and to bring you back right away.”

Rus lifted his chin to him, then Dickerson continued following orders and guided Rus to Moran’s office.

The deputy knocked twice and waited until they heard Moran call out for them to come in.

“Special Agent Lazarus is here,” Dickerson announced. There was a grandiosity to it Rus wasn’t thrilled about, but he saw there was a reason for it when he walked in.

She was curved into herself sitting between Polly and Moran at Moran’s small round conference table.

She wasn’t this way because something had happened. Or at least not recently.

That posture was habit.

Making herself small. Not earning anyone’s attention.

She wore an oversized hoodie, no makeup, hair a mousy-brown and pulled back in a ponytail.

She glanced up at him as he walked in and Dickerson closed the door behind him, but she didn’t make eye contact and immediately aimed her gaze back to the table in front of her.

He did not like this.

“Rus, glad you’re here,” Moran said, friendly, familiar, we’re-all-buds here, but his voice was careful, modulated and quiet. “I want to introduce you to Shannon. She’s come forward to share something about Ezra Corbin.”

“Hi, Shannon,” Rus said, slowly pulling out the only remaining chair, and with equally slow movements, folding his body into it.

Shannon didn’t return his greeting.

Rus exchanged a look with Polly. She was hiding being pissed under a thick layer of compassion that was genuine, but she was still ticked.

He wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“Shannon gave us a little of her story, but we asked her to wait to tell us all of it,” Moran explained. “We told her we needed you here to listen in too, and we didn’t want her to have to share it twice.”

Fucking shit.

Not good.

“Right, okay, now I’m here,” Rus said slowly. “Shannon, before we start, do you need anything?”

She had an Aromacabana takeaway cup in front of her, he knew, because he’d noted someone there tended to get creative with markers, so all of the cups he’d seen had pictures drawn on them.

Shannon’s was no exception.

However, she wasn’t touching it.

“No, I’m good,” she mumbled to the table.

“Do we need to hurry?” he asked. “Do you have to get back to work?”

“No. Worked this weekend. Today’s my day off,” she answered.

“All right,” Rus said.

He then said nothing else.

She didn’t either.

They gave her time.

Eventually, Moran prompted, “Start whenever you’re ready.”

She pulled in a visible breath, slumped back in her chair, curled even deeper into herself, put her hand on the table and drew a mindless pattern with the tip of a finger, her nail having once been painted a deep blue, but now it was chipped and the polish was nearly all gone.

“Okay, so, like, years ago, I was raped.”

Taking her in, years ago would mean, his guess, she was fourteen, fifteen, maybe younger, maybe a bit older, since she couldn’t be much more than eighteen right now.

Yes, this was not good.

Rus felt his skin get tight.

“Like, more than once. Like, a lot. Like, by the same guy, the guy I had a crush on in high school, and, um…all his buds.”

Rus clenched his teeth, sliding his eyes to Polly, whose face was bright pink, then to Moran, who’s lips were thin.

Rus got a lock on it.

“Okay,” he said gently.

She rolled her head on her neck. It was an exaggerated movement, but still real, releasing tension, preparing.

They were disappearing for her, she was placing herself not in that room, but in a world all to herself. She had to so she could tell what she was going to tell.

“So, you know, that’s what I knew, of, like…sex. Because the first time they did it was my first time. And then they kept doing it. So, eventually, they got tired of me, and it was over. But then I got a boyfriend who was real, I mean, not like them, and we couldn’t, like, he didn’t, you know, we tried things, and it didn’t…work.”

Rus said nothing.

Polly and Moran did the same.

“I mean, unless, you know, he…you know, I told him what I might like, and it weirded him out.”

Rus wasn’t sure he was following.

Or, more aptly, he was, he just wished he wasn’t.

“So, he dumped me,” she continued. “And one of my friends hooked me up with a new guy. She said he was perfect for me. We would click. And I liked him loads. But it was the same thing.”

A breath and a moment as she remembered losing a guy she liked.

And, “Then he goes off and tells her what it was because they’re friends. And she has a big mouth, so she told another one of our friends. Then that friend comes to me and says she’s heard, like, there were people who would, you know…like, do things for you. And I should…maybe…just try it out to see if that’s what the deal is with me. She’s pretty cool, and has it together, and she was really mad all the earlier stuff happened. But when she told me what I could do, I got kinda excited.”

She paused, stared at her finger drawing, then began again.

“I told her I was. I mean, the excited part. And she said that just proved the whole thing and I had to try it. So I’d know. So I could figure it out from there. She helped me raise the money, ’cause it costs a lot, and we got online, and we did the whole thing. I think, you know, it took so long for it to happen, I thought they just took our money, and it was all bullshit.”

Another pause.

More drawing.

The next, she was whispering.

“And then, it happened.”

This pause lasted so long, Rus had to say, “What happened, Shannon?”

Keeping her head lowered, she lifted only her eyes to him, and said, “I paid for them to rape me.”

Rus’s stomach turned over, and he immediately felt sick.

Stranger danger.

She looked back at her finger, which never stopped moving.

“It wasn’t what I paid for,” she said. “I had a safe word, but he taped my mouth so I couldn’t say it, which I would have, but I couldn’t. And I didn’t pay for that tape, no way, because I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, and I wanted to be able to tell him to stop. So…so…”

She went silent and it was Polly who said, “Take your time, Shannon.”

Shannon moved in her chair, side to side, like it was a cushion she could get deeper into.

Then she said, “And I didn’t want two of them there. And not a woman. No offense to lesbians, but I’m not gay.”

Two of them.

Fucking hell, two of them.

“Are you reporting a crime, Shannon?” Rus asked, and he was pissed with himself because he wasn’t able to take the strain out of his voice.

Again with the looking under her brow at him.

“No. I paid for it. I just, you know, heard you were looking for a guy named Ezra, and she didn’t touch me. He did. But she called the shots. She told him what to do. And he touched me. And it was worse than what those boys did. Rougher. Mean. I paid to be raped because I would, they would…they’d rub me and put their mouths on me and make me, you know.”

“We know,” Rus said quietly.

“So I paid to be raped because my friend thought maybe that was how I’d like it now, and she was right. When he showed, I got excited. But then she pushed him to hurt me, and he was into it, so he hurt me. She pushed him more, and I could hear her doing things to him if he didn’t do it fast enough or hard enough or whatever. I heard, you know, like a fly swatter. And he’d jump. And moan or shit. And he took me like…back there, and those boys never did that, and like, regular too, and she kept pushing him to do it harder and smack me around. And…”

She dropped her head further, stopped drawing with her finger, put her hand in her lap, and finished it.

“And then it was done. I was fucked up when they left. Bleeding and shit. So no, you know, I’ll never pay someone to do that to me again. But I did pay. I consented. I just thought you should know, she called him Ezra.”

Rus stopped himself from getting up and throwing his chair across the room, but only barely.

He then kicked Moran’s boot under the table when he saw his face reflecting that same need.

When he had control, he asked Shannon, “Did you see her?”

Shannon shook her head. “No. It was dark. I was instructed to keep my window unlocked so they could get in, if that’s what they decided to do when they came for me. They came in while I was sleeping. He was on me before I knew they were in my place. It was dark. I heard her, never saw her.”

“Okay, can you give us the website where you found them?”

A mini-shrug and, “Sure.”

“It was important you came to talk to us,” he assured her. “I know that was hard, but it’s been very helpful.”

She lifted her chin to look right at him and asked outright, “With that girl, in the motel, they went too far, didn’t they?”

“We don’t know,” Rus told her. “But maybe.”

“He got off on it,” she bit out. “Like big time. It was sick.”

Yes, he got off on it.

Because the thing that was missing with Thea was the thing she’d never think to try with him or refer him out to someone else to do.

What he needed was to be told to hurt someone else.

That was his kink.

That was what he was missing.

He wasn’t big on the pain, but he was big on inflicting it, and bigger on being ordered to do it.

That was what they did in the motel room.

And either Ezra, or the woman he was with, had a serial killer fetish, or a snuff fetish, and they used CK’s MO to cover it up.

Because that was what Brittanie got in the motel room.

And that was why Ezra ran.

Because their play didn’t take.

Ezra knew they knew it wasn’t CK.

And he’d been found out.