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Agent Shriner was balding and carried himself with confidence that was uncomfortable. While his colleague was trim and physically fit, Dale made up for his lack of athleticism with a brusque attitude and an intimidating glare.
His obnoxiously patterned tie exuded egocentrism, and I had a hard time focusing on anything else.
He loomed over me with a scowl, and his interrogation style relied more on bluster and bluff than any real detective work. He saw himself as the epitome of a tough, no-nonsense FBI agent, even though his physical stature and lack of interpersonal skills said otherwise.
Agent Beck also wore a grey suit, but his tie was a muted grey and plain. He wore an expression of concern, whereas Agent Shriner pursed his lips and continued to push closer to me.
I cringed at his closeness, but if he noticed, he didn’t bother with giving me space.
I watched him carefully and shifted my body to the left to put distance between us.
Agent Shiner’s shrill tone forced my attention from his tie to his face. “We wanted to show you a series of photos while he is still fresh in your mind?”
He was always fresh in my mind.
“Can you point to the man that tortured you?” He placed a stack of photos of men with blue eyes in front of me.
The scent of stale coffee lingered on his breath, and as he talked, there was a hint of bitterness in his tone. His face was set in a perpetual scowl; lines etched deeply around his mouth and brow. Sweat dotted his forehead, not from exertion but from an underlying annoyance, an impatience with the world and those in it.
I clumsily flipped through the photos, and the throbbing ache behind my eyes intensified. I could feel my heartbeat quicken and my blood pump in a loud cadence through my ears. I don’t know if I expected to see his face staring up at me. Or if I was more afraid that his sycophantic face wasn’t in the pictures.
I felt my hands begin to sweat, and a lurid sickness slithers its way into my stomach.
My doctor came into the room and protested against the agents questioning me. His voice was muted by the loud whoosh of my blood pounding in my head. He said something about being fragile, and then Baldy threatened obstruction of justice and charges for impeding an investigation back at him.
Agent Shriner and his goon fervently directed the medical staff out of the room, thrust their badges in their faces, and slammed the door.
The obnoxiously loud clap of the door slamming shut startled me, and I winced as the noise around me returned to normal.
I recognized very quickly that what I had experienced was neither here nor there to the agents before me. They were here with the one goal of using whatever information I had to catch the killer and call it a day.
I was their best shot. The only one that ever escaped and lived to talk about it.
Agent Shriner wanted to secure a conviction and close the case as soon as possible. The sooner he released formal charges, the sooner he could accomplish that goal. The Skinner had made the bureau look like idiots, highlighting their incompetence, where he had already killed nine girls before me, and they had not caught him. I was his tenth victim, and they were convinced I was the key to identifying the killer. They needed to prove to the public that they had done their job and ensure that the public’s outwardly misaligned distrust of the FBI was remedied.
I grimaced as I sat up to look at the photos, he handed me. My hands trembled as I slid them closer to me. I stared at each face, struggling to see the similarities. But none of them were him.
Or maybe I could not remember.
I close my eyes and see him smirking at me in his grotesque way as he cuts into the flesh on my thigh with meticulous, calm movements.
No.
I saw his face like he was in the room with me. My hands were soaked in sweat from my nerves and my fear. His thin lips curled as the unspoken words between us promised that I would not survive him. His blue eyes held a darkness that ran deeper than the surface. I was terrified and shook my head, doing everything I could to erase his face from my memory.
But he was still there.
As he raped me, I was forced to look at him. He grabbed my face, digging his fingers into my cheeks, screaming at me to open my eyes, his words laced with perverted promises of punishment if I didn’t.
When I disobeyed him, he made good on those promises.
He tore into my flesh, lapping up my blood with his tongue, moaning as he swallowed.
He used his knife to make little cuts into my skin. His attempt at scaring me into submission.
When his rage consumed him, he shoved broom handles deep inside my core. Everything he forced inside me was brutal and unforgiving, and it ripped me apart.
Blood seeped out of my body from his abuse, the brutality like nothing I could ever have conjured in my imagination. There was nothing more cruel and wicked than the things he did to me in the dark, dank room he imprisoned me in.
