44. Pure

FORTY-FOUR

Pure

Rus was pissed as shit.

He was wet because it was raining.

And he’d just come from the cave.

Good news, Richard let Madden loose and told her which way to run to get to the road before he got to work on Ezra.

Bad news, he didn’t have a lot of time, so he made light work of dispatching Ezra after it took little effort to neutralize him.

He’d slit his throat.

And while Ezra was bleeding out from that, to add his personal flair so no one could make the mistake and not connect his handiwork, Richard had stabbed him through the heart and left the knife there.

In other words, Ezra Corbin was very dead.

More bad news, since Ezra was dead, Rus couldn’t punch that fucker in the face.

But more good news, it had been reported to Rus that Madden didn’t see Richard putting Ezra down, just witnessed the takedown, and she thought he was there to save her.

It was going to suck, trying to figure out how to explain that wasn’t the case.

The last was more good news.

Ezra had been in that cave for a while. From how it appeared and the state of his person, he’d been there likely since he first took off. He might have changed clothes, but he hadn’t had a shower for days, and, probably scared to come out of it, he’d used that cave to relieve himself and he didn’t know enough about outdoorsmanship to bury it. A week’s worth of a man’s urine and feces in that small six-by-twelve niche did not make the place smell good.

How he knew of the cave, Rus would never know. Paddy Tremayne knew of it, but Moran, the Bohannans, nor a single deputy had been there. It wasn’t on a trail. It wasn’t large.

But it was the perfect hiding place.

And the prissy little boy-man who never grew up spent his final days on this earth in that cold, musty, fetid space with only a camp light, a sleeping bag, a portable radio and a small generator he used to charge his electronics. He’d been eating chips, cookies, candy bars and sandwiches, along with some pop and bottles of water, the only things he’d thought to buy before he went into hiding. And what probably drove him to make his move was because he was running out of food.

The man hadn’t even brought a book with him.

It had to have been a lonely, terrifying week up there out in the elements knowing life as he knew it was over and having only that to dwell on.

Rus knowing all of that and seeing Ezra lying in a pool of his own blood, wearing a sweat-stained Lacoste shirt and filthy dockers, it wasn’t the justice he deserved.

But at least Rus had that to hold on to.

He prowled to the interview rooms at the station and knew he had an audience observing when he opened the door to room one and let himself in.

Richard was in there alone, cuffed to the table, legs shackled.

Rus ignored the surge of feeling, both historical and current, that coursed through him and sat down across from Richard.

He didn’t bother with pleasantries.

“Did you get her to talk while you were torturing her?”

“Haven’t cracked her laptop yet?” Richard asked back. “Or was she smart and wiped her search history?”

Rus didn’t answer.

Something that would bump your shit straight to a tech?

A kidnapping.

Carrie Molnar had been smart.

She’d wiped her search history.

There were traces they could follow, but it’d take more effort, something they could do at their leisure since the case was very closed.

Though, in a folder titled Work Receipts in her inbox, the invoice for the plastic tarp and other items was found.

“You…we were fortunate she picked me first,” Richard continued. “She found her helper in that cretin in the cave. She had a plan. A whole list of acts she wished to follow. She wasn’t getting what she needed out of that repugnant lifestyle she lived. But she kept trying. Searching. When she found Ezra Corbin, she knew it was time. He was the missing link. So it began. If she’d never found him,”—he shrugged—“it wouldn’t have happened. She told me that. In the end, she was wishing she’d never met him.”

Undoubtedly.

Undoubtedly Ezra died with much the same thought.

“Too much access to true crime these days,” Richard went on, shaking his head in a I know exactly what’s wrong with this world way. “Documentaries. Reddit. Podcasts. People are fascinated by it. I understand. It’s fascinating. But you can learn anything. You know the whole story. It’s like a how to. Fortunately, most of the human race is stupid. So they might know the how, but not how not to get caught.”

In other words, Richard Sandusky was smart because he never got caught.

He gave himself away.

“Save me some time here,” Rus requested. “Is that how you figured out how to do the things you do?”

“Zachariah.” He tsked. “You know better than that.”

He did.

“You were a cop.”

He beamed. “Yes, in another life.”

“That’s how Dad met you. You recruited him. You knew about his accident.”

He looked like a proud father. “Yes. He wouldn’t meet me until later. I’d just started collecting then. People at their lowest. It was too easy. But I was at the scene of his accident. I knew his story. He was a perfect candidate.”

God, he hated this guy.

“It might be easy, but too easy, though, yeah?” Rus asked. “You needed a challenge. You needed more.”

“Is it ever enough?”

“For me, there are limits.”

“There aren’t many like you.”

“Is that why you picked me?”

Now he was delighted Rus had figured it out. So thrilled, Rus could taste it.

His stomach twisted.

“You were special,” Richard said.

“How’s that?”

“Obadiah wanted out because he was greedy. It was all about money for that boy. Greed isn’t good.”

“You were greedy.”

He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t. I was smart. I found a way, with very little effort, to enjoy my life, do the things I wanted to do, learn the things I needed to learn to do my work, and get someone else to pay for it. It came fast. You were young. You don’t even remember me being a police officer. The celebration we all had when I made detective. The one we had a few years later when I was able to retire.”

Correction: When he’d fleeced enough money off his followers to retire.

Rus wasn’t going to get into that.

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why me.”

“Jedidiah followed the leader. Not Obadiah. You. You’re a leader.”

“Again, we’re talking about my brothers, not me.”

“You’re pure, Zachariah.”

Rus said nothing, but that shitty taste was back in his mouth.

Richard kept talking.

“Impossible to sully. Free thinking. Free of pride. Free of lust. Envy. Gluttony. Sloth. Greed. Wrath. You were honest. You listened. You cared. You didn’t want the system to control you, but you were perfectly comfortable working within the strictures of the system. Unless, I would find out, those strictures were too strict. I had plans for you in my work with my congregation. At first, I was disappointed you left. It took some time, I despaired, but eventually the path became clear.”

He sat back in his chair, but he was already warm to his subject, and he kept living in it.

“You were fascinating to me. You loved your mom. You didn’t agree with your father, but you loved him too. Loyal to those people who took you from us. Loyal to that girl who won your heart. Right off the bat, got a job so you were loyal to our country. But you couldn’t be led. It was impossible to lead you. It’s an anomaly. You were strong, your own person even when you were a teenager. You couldn’t be knocked off the path to righteousness because you were just all around…good.”

“If you admired me so fucking much, why’d you put me through this?”

He looked confused. “Put you through this? We were partners.”

Oh fuck.

“This was the path. This was when I knew I could finally do the work I was meant to do. I took care of them,” Richard said. “But I couldn’t finish it. And I knew the only one whose hands I could trust them in was yours. You are me, Zachariah.”

Fucking hell, Bohannan had this asshole pegged.

Still.

“That makes no sense, Richard, because to take care of them, I needed to find you.”

His cuffs clanked when he spread his hands, palms up, fingers curled, like the grace of God would shine from them, and he said, “Here I am.”

“You came to me. I didn’t find you.”

“It was always going to be the way, Zachariah. I knew it from the beginning. There’d be a sign. It was when true evil darkened your life that it would have to be. True evil darkened your life.” He tapped the table once with his forefinger like he’d do to a pulpit before making a point to his congregation. “You go to your god. But your savior comes to you.”

Jesus Christ.

And that was literally.

He thought he was Rus’s Jesus.

Enough of this mindfuck.

“How’d you find Carrie Molnar before me? And please, tell me you didn’t go after Shannon.”

“Of course not,” he scoffed. “Though, when she left the sheriff’s office, I sensed with the way you tore in there, she was important. So I followed her.” He gave a father’s disappointed shake of his head. “She relies too much on her friends. She went right to them. They then went right to that coffeehouse and had a conversation anyone could hear. I contacted the website they mentioned and asked personally for someone in this area, a female with male partner, to assist me. They suggested her and sent the photos I requested. I knew the minute I saw her picture she was the one I needed. It’s all in the eyes, Zachariah. All in the eyes.”

Looking in his crazy-as-fuck eyes, Rus knew this was true.

“I booked it,” Richard went on. “I did this all at the coffeehouse. On my phone. It took maybe half an hour.”

There were so many things creepy about his story, Rus closed the lid on it to unpack later and kept to theme.

Though, he’d be a damned sight more careful about public conversations, and he was already careful.

“How’d you know he’d take Madden?”

That was how he’d gotten to the cave first. He’d been watching the school, and he didn’t intervene when Ezra grabbed Madden at recess.

No, the fuck didn’t neutralize him there so it could all be over, and Madden didn’t have to live with it. He let him take her and followed Ezra to the cave.

“It was all he could do. The only play he had to make. He was so weak, the only shot he had was going after a child. And the only child who would get your undivided attention, and he thought, though I knew it wouldn’t be true, make you do what he wanted you to do, was that little girl.”

They should have called that.

Though, Rus wouldn’t have expected Ezra to have the balls to make that play.

Still.

“If you could take him down so easily, why didn’t you let her loose earlier?” he asked Richard.

“You needed to be on your way to rescue her, Zachariah. I couldn’t have that little girl wandering in the woods while he lay dead in a cave. She could get lost. You hadn’t found him in days. I don’t blame you. He was not a man I’d peg who could live in that squalor. But he’d grown complacent because you hadn’t found him. I was just outside, listening to the whole thing as he made his arrangements. I knew when you’d be on your way. When the time would be right. In the end, he only had her for four hours.”

“You could have let us know where she was. He was. You could have intervened.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

Not true.

He could.

But he wouldn’t.

Because it was all about the drama with this fucking guy.

“Are there things you did I don’t know about?” he asked.

“You mean, when I was cutting my teeth, as it were?”

Cutting his teeth.

Fucking hell.

“Yeah,” Rus forced out.

“Of course you know I had disciples, and although they didn’t seem to enjoy it, in order to reach for their salvation, the women were very accommodating. And to seek their own deliverance, the men had no hesitation offering their wives. Then again, women always find ways to endure, just as men always find ways to use them to get what they need.”

Oh fuck.

“My mother?” Rus clipped.

“No,” he murmured. “Your father had his limits. I knew that. I didn’t even ask. Many of the other men didn’t feel the same, though. We were a special group within the larger whole. A secret society.”

It was thin, but at least there was that.

“It did get to the point where the women were wondering why things were how they were between us,” Richard shared. “How they didn’t seem to be able to touch the light, and why their men allowed it to happen. It was a period I found very frustrating, because, obviously, back then, I couldn’t bring it to fruition. I couldn’t complete their redemption and send them home. Not really.”

“So you started doing that, the bringing it to fruition gig, when I got in the FBI, thinking I’d catch the case so I could clean up after you.”

A dead, flat, sinister light hit his eyes and he said low, “You weren’t cleaning up after me, Zachariah. They weren’t messes. They were saved. You were part of the process. You took care of them, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “I took care of them.”

It was eerie as fuck how that evil light flickered out like it hadn’t been there, before, straight back to his we’re-all-friends-here conversational style, he shared, “If the FBI hadn’t given me to you, I would have requested you. I think they would have obliged. Though I knew you’d advance very quickly, so my chances were good. You are, as we both know, you.”

Fuck him and his compliments.

“You’re sitting there, looking me in the eye, telling me you started killing women because of me. How am I supposed to live with that?”

“Zachariah.” It was a parental snap. No, it was a reverend scolding a wayward deacon. “You don’t have responsibility for me. Don’t you dare take responsibility for me.”

It wasn’t an admonishment to make Rus feel better.

It was an admonishment not to claim dominion over his actions.

Those were his.

And he was proud of them.

“You know you’re never going to get out,” he said.

The man smiled.

He actually smiled.

“I’m excited for things to come,” he shared. “So many minds to mold. A captive audience. It’s going to be very satisfying.”

Christ.

He’d let the criminal psychologists and profilers work at figuring him out.

He wanted to see Lucinda and Madden and figure out what was next for…no big deal, just the rest of his life.

Rus stood. “I think we’re done.”

“Wait,” Richard called as he started toward the door.

He looked down at a man who took very good care himself. Tall. Nice-looking. Strong build.

And criminally insane.

If he didn’t know him, he’d think he was maybe ten years older than Rus.

But Richard Sandusky was seventy years old.

His dad had been taken in by a guy that was three years younger than him.

And Richard Sandusky had been five years older than Acre when he already had the beginnings of his cult.

What was wrong in a society that people were so lost, so desperate to find meaning, that if they looked, they could discover in a single pine tree, and they were so reckless with these needs, they grabbed hold of anyone who told them they had the answers?

Rus’s father was going to be wrecked by this.

And like all of it, that was on Pastor Richard too.

“What crystal did Molnar give you?” he asked. “She had no idea, and I’m dying to know.”

Rus wished that was true.

“A Pyrite,” he told him.

He wrinkled his nose. “Flashy.”

Yeah, that was what was wrong with Carrie Molnar’s whole thing.

But…

It was over.

Brittanie had justice.

Rus had answers to give her friends and family.

And he had the same for all the other victims’ families.

He didn’t have to dwell on it anymore.

He could leave the Bureau with this case closed and get on with his life.

Clean break.

New start.

Yeah.

On that thought, Rus turned his back on the man.

And he walked away.