Page 8 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions (Till Death Do Us Part #7)

Chapter One

Special Agent Shawn “Mal” Mallory

My partner, Mira Barnes, and I had exchanged a look upon entering the high school. Every décor, display cabinet, and poster referenced back to the two championships.

Unlike Mira who was a transplant from the lower forty-eight, I’d heard of Atelihai Valley before.

No native Alaskan hadn’t, but it was spoken more of as an urban legend than anything else.

They certainly weren’t known for their State Championships outside their own borders.

One version of the story is that a high school girl had committed suicide after sleeping with her boyfriend, getting pregnant, and losing the baby.

It was told as an abstinence/safe sex story for teenagers.

The tale my little brother had been told when he was in high school was a girl from Atelihai Valley had committed suicide after being molested by her father and becoming pregnant with his baby.

Only in Alaska would a small-town scandal, however tragic, spread like wildfire.

Regardless of which tale was true, Atelihai Valley did not have a good reputation.

It was probably one of the reasons for the recent population decline.

I had already graduated college and been through Academy training in Quantico, Virginia, to start my career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation when the rumors had started.

Only reason I even knew about them was because of my little brother, Tony.

This was the first time I’d ever stepped foot inside the town. Located halfway as the crow flies between Juneau and Sitka on Admiralty Island, it had a current population of twenty-eight thousand people compared to its posted population on their Welcome sign of thirty-one thousand people.

The reason Mira and I were called to Atelihai Valley stood center stage in the high school auditorium. Or rather, dangled.

Like most Alaskan towns, Atelihai Valley had a small police force.

The sheriff had called the State Police when the body was discovered this morning and the State Police had called my FBI Office in Juneau.

My boss, Special Agent in Charge Delroy Carr, then called Mira and me.

After a long car ride and an even longer boat ride, we now stood before a gruesome sight.

A John Doe hung limply from a wooden pillory.

All of the stage lights had been turned to shine on him, leaving no doubt of the symbolism.

I visually placed his age in his late-twenties to early-thirties, but it was difficult to tell with his injuries.

The pain permanently etched on his face had a way of aging a person.

While rigor mortis had set in, there was no doubt in my mind this man had died in agony.

I’d been at this job for over a decade and it never ceased to amaze me the lengths of torture one human was willing to inflict on another.

Mira and I both stood back as the crime scene investigators and the coroner we’d brought with us worked. Our job at this point was to observe. Unlike in the television shows, the investigating officers were not allowed near the body until after the coroner permitted it.

The man was Caucasian, trim and well-muscled.

He clearly took care of his body. It would have taken a lot of force to overpower him.

Or he was drugged. His dark hair looked like it had been styled prior to his current circumstances.

Given his condition, it was unknown how long he’d suffered before succumbing to death.

His legs had given out. I could see welts of some sort underneath the dark hair that lined his toned calves.

Instinct told me he hadn’t died in the pillory.

What had been done to him had taken time.

It was a Tuesday. The killer would have needed longer with John Doe than closing time Monday evening to Tuesday morning when the body had been discovered.

Plus, from my distance at the bottom of the stage, I couldn’t see markings around his wrists or neck that indicated he’d struggled while inside the pillory.

The pillory itself was well-balanced. Even with the man’s dead weight, it did not show signs of tipping.

I wondered if it was part of the school’s drama collection or if it had been brought here with the body.

If it was brought, it indicated the pillory meant more to the killer than a way to display his victim.

More glaring than the man’s distress was the fact that he was naked.

I’d seen a lot of naked bodies in my line of work.

It was unfortunate, but a common trait. Killers liked to dehumanize their victims. Clothing was a sign of their humanity, a right that could be easily taken away.

It made the victims feel vulnerable and ashamed without the killer having to inflict any physical torture to them.

“Any signs of rape?” Mira asked one of the techs. She had an iPad out and was taking notes using the white pencil. I couldn’t do that because, through many trials and errors, I learned that iPads could not read the chicken scratch that was my handwriting.

Given the man was naked, it was not out of the realm of possibilities for him to have been anally penetrated.

Men as a gender did not like to think about the fact that we could be raped just as easily as a woman could.

Statistics were not on our side because most male rapes went unreported.

Even in modern times, it was seen as reducing a man’s masculinity.

Making him less than. There shouldn’t be a difference between how a rape case is handled for men and women, but there is. Even amongst investigators and doctors.

I’d seen more cases of male victims being raped than I ever thought possible, just because the reported statistics were higher for women. Given John Doe’s condition and vulnerable position, my guess would be he was anally penetrated. The question of consent would be answered later.

As a sexual dominant, I knew my way around a pillory. I’d used them before with some of my submissive partners. Something about this pillory annoyed me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why or what.

It was the coroner who answered Mira’s question.

I’d worked with Dr. Robinson before. He was older, mid-fifties, and had a sharp eye.

I trusted his experience over some of these other hotshot doctors who tried to come onto a crime scene like they were on a television drama series with hidden cameras.

“I need to get him on my table to be certain, but preliminary findings indicate no. There is a possibility of post-mortem penetration, but lack of bruising and blood lead me to believe he was not sexually assaulted while alive.”

The creak of the auditorium door drew my attention to the back of the room.

Gary Hagley, principal and state championship storyteller, poked his head around the door.

The local officer clearly did not understand my instructions not to allow anyone inside.

School had been closed due to the crime scene, which I’m sure the students were more than thrilled about.

Morbid reason or not. Given the number of people who were here prior to our arrival, it would be a wonder if half our evidence wasn’t contaminated.

I glanced back at Mira, who gave me a chin lift.

Rolling my shoulders, I headed up the long aisle covered in worn maroon carpeting to the principal.

The man’s features reminded me of the actor who played Principal Snyder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer .

In all honesty, if the man mentioned their hockey State Championships one more time, I’d probably sacrifice him to a demon myself.

Principal Hagley slipped back out of the auditorium as soon as he saw me walking back up the aisle.

I opened the squeaky door and stepped out into the main commons that was empty of tables or furniture.

I wondered if they placed tables out for lunches or if they had another cafeteria section.

I was going to need floor plans and access to the school’s security systems too.

I needed to know how the killer entered and exited without the school being alerted.

The janitor who had discovered the body was still in the nurse’s office after being ill. He was told not to leave, though I wondered if he was as bad at listening to my orders as the principal and police officer were.

I was not a small man. At thirty-seven and with a physically demanding job, my body was hardened with muscle.

I’d long ago given up the pleasantries of smiling at victims and witnesses who were just as likely to lie to me as the perpetrators.

If I gave them no bullshit, I tended to receive less bullshit in return.

My suit was jet black and off-the-rack. In my early years as a field agent, I’d taken pride in my appearance and gotten tailored suits, which soon became damaged, stained, or ruined.

A cheap suit ripped just as easily as an expensive one did, but beat my wallet less.

My white button-up shirt was covered by my black tie and my black and gold badge on a silver chain.

Around my waist was my gun in its holster, my handcuffs, two spare magazines, a small flashlight, and a push blade that was not regulation.

I carried my wallet and identification on the inside of my left breast pocket.

Since I never knew when I had to run, I was wearing boots rather than loafers. Fashion became less practical the longer you were on this job. More than once, I’d lost a shoe while on a foot chase in my early twenties. Never again.

I was six foot-four with broad shoulders. The scruff around my chin and lips had less to do with sex appeal and more to do with a lack of desire to shave over sleep. If I’d known Mira and I were going to be up at the ass-crack of dawn, I would not have stayed so late at the club last night.

No , I mentally corrected myself. I would have still stayed.

Otherwise, I would have missed the sexy owl who’d let me bend her against the dancing pole on stage and fuck her in view of her admirers.

Her long raven hair, the black owl mask over her eyes, and that alluring body was exactly what I needed to get my mind off of my last case.

Cannibals. I internally shuddered at the memory. Not much freaked me out, but cannibals ? That would do it.

I crossed my arms over my broad chest and stared down—way down—at the principal. “What?”

He swallowed. “I was just… I wasn’t sure if you’d identified the…” He leaned in and whispered like it was a secret, “The body.”

“Not yet,” I answered shortly. “Why? Are you missing one of your staff members?”

His face paled as if he hadn’t thought of that option. “Oh dear. Oh my. No, I…” His voice trailed off. “No, I haven’t spoken with all of them yet. I’ll get right on that.”

“Is that why you asked me out here?” While annoyed to have my time wasted, at least the man hadn’t referenced anything to do with hockey. Yet.

“I wasn’t, well, I just needed to know if it was a man or a woman.”

I continued to stare down at him for several long, silent seconds.

The man was a squirrel. I knew his type.

He frightened easily and had no backbone.

It was a wonder he was principal of anything.

Didn’t his students just walk all over him?

But there was something there… My eyes narrowed. He knew something.

Despite what many thought, there were only two options when it came to gender.

After someone died, it didn’t matter what politically correct pronoun or made-up gender they wanted to use during their life.

Biologically, there were two: male and female.

Some people might not like that fact, but there you have it.

When you die, the coroner only cared about which genitalia you had.

The principal wasn’t asking if the victim was a man or a woman because he only had a fifty-fifty chance of either one, but because he knew something if it was one gender or the other. I took a shot in the dark.

“It’s a woman,” I lied.

If possible, the man got even paler. “A… A…” He looked like he was about to pass out. “A woman. A girl, a student? They did it again. Oh God, not again…”

I watched his reaction. The man really did look like he was going to bolt.

“Actually, it’s a man,” I told him. He froze, straightening slightly.

His hands that had gone to his cheeks lowered.

He looked at me accusingly. I stared back at him, completely unapologetic.

“Now, what the fuck did you mean by ‘they did it again’?”