I didn’t tell him about the apartment just yet–instead, I asked him about Bernard, about whether anything he’d seen him say reminded him of his own experiences. He was dismissive of him. Bernard didn’t know anything, really. He said that he didn’t matter, that he could see Master had gotten tired of him, found nothing worth his time and effort, not like him–and only realized after the fact that he’d let his guard slip. I pressed him, and he clammed back up, refusing to say anything at all. He knew more about this–all of it–than he was willing to tell me, but I didn’t understand why. What sort of loyalty could this rapist possibly engender in his victims, that they would go to these lengths to defend him, and praise him? I had seen Stockholm syndrome before, on rare tragic occasions, but this…this was something else. This was a degree of change and control that, I had no reasonable explanation for at all.
He wanted to leave, and I told him it would be best if he settled down, and waited for his clothes to arrive, so he wouldn’t leave walking around in a prison jumpsuit. He didn’t argue with the point…but I think he also realized that no one was going to be finding anything of his back at the address he’d given me in the car. Instead, I went to my superiors–I wanted to hold him overnight, or really, as long as I could manage. I knew, if I wasn’t careful, that as soon as he was out of here, he’d disappear just as quickly as Bernard had. Ray changed tactics, and instead started asking about Jules–he still wanted to apologize to him for his accident earlier, and I told him I’d do my best to find him…but he was beginning to panic. Jules, however, had returned from his place, wearing a new change of clothes, and so I told him Ray wanted to talk to him and apologize–and that anything he could do to convince him to cooperate would be a big help.
Jules was a bit off, though. I didn’t realize it in the moment–after all, what we’d been through that day had us all a bit on edge, but I remember smelling the piss on him still–piss and something else, something that I now think was probably his own cum, judging by what happened later. Maybe if I’d been less distracted, I could have prevented what happened next–but as I was about to go down with Jules to see him, Marcus, Mr. Cold Case, came barging in, demanding to see the latest victim I was holding. Jules went down to talk to Ray, while I dealt with him. I refused to let Marcus get involved, of course and he had no legal ground to demand anything from me at all– but I was more interested in how he’d learned about us bringing him in, because as far as I’d heard, no one from the media had caught wind of the case yet. He made a scene eventually–I think he was trying to get locked up down in the hold with him, but in the end he left without doing anything stupid. With that taken care of, I went down to holding, only to discover that, while Marcus had been distracting me, Ray had simply left.
To say I was furious was an understatement. I demanded to know who, exactly, had cleared him to leave, and the officers on duty told me that Jules had gone into the room with him for a few minutes, alone, and then the two of them had left the precinct together. I went into the room where the session had been taped, rewound the footage, and watched and listened to what had happened when Jules had gone into the room, but as…normal as the encounter might have seemed on the surface, something was very, very wrong.
Jules had entered the room and hurried over to where Ray was standing, getting…very close to him, and on the tape, I think I can hear him sniffing, or maybe even snorting. “There you are,” Ray said, “I wanted to say sorry for gettin’ my piss all over you earlier,” Ray says, putting one massive arm around Jules’ shoulder, and bringing him close, turning around so their backs were to the camera. Whatever was said next I can’t make out on the tape–they’re both talking too quietly, but I can see Jules leaning in closer and closer, nodding along to whatever Ray is telling him, and then they leave–and when they leave, I can see that Jules is hard as a rock in the front of his uniform pants, eyes a bit distant, licking his lips–and Ray just looks…thrilled with himself, somehow.
I called Jules immediately, but he didn’t answer. The Captain was furious that we’d just let a victim walk out without getting any information about where he was going or what he was planning on doing–and I didn’t have a good answer for him. I went by Jules house that evening to talk to him, but his wife told me he’d come home to change, reeking of something awful, and had left again without even bothering to shower. He didn’t show up again the next day either, and now the Captain was even more furious–not only had a victim walked out on us, leaving us with a dead end on the most high profile case in years, apparently he had kidnapped one of our own cops in the process.
I had no leads. All I had was the video from the interrogation room, and so I poured over it, turned up the volume as much as I could, watching body language from those few minutes, trying to understand. Trying to understand why, without even knowing why, I kept trying to jack off while I watched it. Trying to understand why I could still…smell him, even now, as I walked around the precinct. I found nothing–and so I started digging into Ray’s past, only to discover it was scrubbed. No employment records. No driver’s license. No birth certificate. Someone had wiped him off the face of the Earth, whoever he’d been, and left a stinking brute in his place–and the monster who did it had who knew how many other victims in the wings, ready to reveal to the world whenever he wanted–and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
To Be Continued…
Bracken's Corner 