by T. M. Smith
Rand’s hand on his shoulder was unexpected, catching him off guard, and he jerked away, gasping. Physically turning him around, Rand took Rory’s hands in his and jolt of electricity shot through him. Looking up, he could see the spark of recognition in Rand’s deep brown eyes; he’d felt it too. Thankfully, they seemed to be in silent agreement to pretend it didn’t happen. “I see it too, Rory, see him in here. It’s almost like this place was painted from his descriptions—everything is so perfect and vivid. But he’s not here anymore, Rory. Shannon is back in Dallas with Taylor and Frank and he’s fine, okay?”
Sucking in a breath and slowly releasing it, he nodded. There was something in Rand’s eyes, the way he looked at him, but now was not the place or the time to try and figure it out. “All right, I’ll start in the closet while you go through the drawers.” Rand passed him a pair of latex gloves, and they got to work.
Slipping the gloves on, Rory pulled the top drawer out, and it was empty. They were all empty—as were the small drawers in the nightstands. “He must be between victims. Everything out here is clean as a whistle,” he called out.
“Same here aside from a couple of boxes on the shelf.” Rand grunted, coming back out into the room with three boxes in his hands. They each took a box and meticulously went through it, examining every single piece of paper, but it was all files and court documents, likely from past cases Pearson had worked.
Moving to the master bedroom, Rory wasn’t surprised to see life in the room—unlike the sterile guest room. Still immaculate, but with minimal decor. A couple of pictures on the wall, some bits and baubles on the dresser, and a book on the bedside table. Rand moved past him, picking up the book and chortling. He held the book, laughing so hard he doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees. Rory went over and snatched the book from him, reading the title. “Grey, EL James. Holy shit, are you kidding me?”
It took the better part of ten minutes for them to regain focus and start combing through the closet and the dresser. A large, black leather jewelry organizer on top of the dresser held fourteen watches, at least four of them Rolex, a dozen pairs of cuff links, tie pins, and a set of wedding rings. The rings showed wear and age, so Rory deduced they were likely Bruce’s parents’, maybe even his grandparents’. He set them back in the box and closed the lid. “Hey, look at this.” Rand waved him over.
He held a wooden box with the letter P engraved on the lid. “Where’d you find that?” Rory asked. Rand pointed to the bedside table with the drawer still open. It was almost comical, seeing the big, brash detective hesitant, his hand hovering over the box for a few seconds. He glanced at Rory as if silently asking for permission. He nodded once and Rand lifted the lid, eyes going wide.
Sitting on the side of the pristine bed, Rand lifted the stack of pictures out of the box, handing half of them to Rory. All young men that looked to be between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, all blond-haired, blue-eyed, and beautiful. Some happy, some sad, some looking like they’d been run over by a truck. Turning, Rand started laying the snapshots out on the bed, sorting through and matching them up as there were multiple images of each person. “Son of a bitch. Look, it’s Junior.”
An image of Judge Tullor’s grandson smiling at the camera sickened him. Had the kid been smacked around yet prior to the Polaroid? Was he happy or pretending for fear of getting the shit kicked out of him? Three images later, his question was answered, a picture of Junior on the patio staring out at the water, the right side of his face swollen and bruised. Rory closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath and concentrating all his energy on staying focused and calm. He had to, not only for Shannon but for each and every young man forever immortalized in Bruce Pearson’s box of pictures. Rand sucked in a breath, and the noise he made truly alarmed Rory. “What is it?” he asked, praying that it wasn’t Shannon, though he already knew it was.
Slowly lifting his head, Rand’s eyes were imploring, full of sadness and pain. “Rory, you don’t…”
Give me the damn picture, Davis,” Rory barked. Sighing, he held it out and Rory snatched it, growling.
Had there been any food in his stomach, he would have thrown up all over Pearson’s pristine bed. His gorgeous, eccentric, vibrant Shannon was sitting on the bed in the other room, legs drawn up to his chest. An area the size of a dinner plate on his back was bruised, the skin angry, purple, and black. At least a dozen more bruises were evident on his body, including his face, but what jarred Rory to his core was the vacant, hollow look in Shannon’s eyes that were a dull shade of blue. “Jesus.” He groaned and almost lost it.
“It’s harder when it’s someone you know, someone you love.” Rand reached over and slid the image from Rory’s hand, starting a new stack on the bed. Eyes lingering on another picture of Shannon in the kitchen cooking dinner, a genuine smile on his face, Rory noticed something. The edges of certain images were more weathered than others, fingerprints dulling the shine of the paper they were printed on.
By the time they were done playing the match game, there were nineteen different people spread out on the bed. Helms, Junior, Doral, and Shannon were all present and accounted for, as well as seven unknown victims. “Do you think Shannon was the only one to make it out alive? Or are we to assume that all the others are dead and buried somewhere, waiting for us to dig them up?” Rand asked, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. God, he hoped not, but it was starting to look that way. Grabbing the box, Rory shuffled all the images together and shoved them in, slamming the lid and leaving the room with Rand on his heels. He stopped long enough to complete an evidence form for the officer at the door before heading downstairs to the car. He sat in the passenger’s seat, cold and angry, while Rand drove them back to the station.
Chapter Eighteen
Rand
White-knuckling the steering wheel, Rand silently fumed. Bruce Pearson was one sick fuck. It wasn’t enough for him to prey on innocent, young, naïve kids. No, he had to demoralize them while immortalizing their pain and suffering on film. Something inside him cracked open when he saw the picture of Shannon, his body a roadmap of fury. Having to hand that image over to Rory and watch the light in his eyes dim made the crack inside him bleed. More than anything, Rand wanted to take Pearson to some dark, remote place and take his time torturing the man until his face looked like Junior’s and his body was a collection of bruises and scars. But that would make him a monster, a piece of shit that was no better than Pearson.
Arriving back at the station, they found Connie at the coffee machine filling a paper cup with sludge thick enough to put hair on your ass. “Well, did you learn anything more while you were babysitting?” Rory asked, pouring two more cups, offering one to Rand. He side-eyed the dark liquid, declining. He could smell the bitterness from five feet away; no way was he drinking that shit.
“Not really. Sadly, he’s a cocky piece of shit, but he’s also smart and not easily rattled.” She groaned, stretching. “You guys find anything useful at his condo?”
“You could say that.” Rand smirked, tapping the box in his hand.
“Excuse me, Detective, there’s a guy here asking about Bruce Pearson.” The desk sergeant pointed to a man in the waiting area. He was tall and broad with black hair and dark-brown, almond-shaped eyes. Ah yes, Pearson’s thug, Tuan Nguyen.
“Tell him to have a seat and get comfortable. It’s going be awhile.” Rand fought the urge to walk over to the man, grab him by his hair, and drag him across the floor. To do the same thing to him that Tuan had done to Shannon. Just his presence was unnerving—the set of his shoulders and the intense look in his eyes rubbed Rand the wrong way.
“All right.” Rory drained his cup before tossing it into the trash. “Let’s do this.”
The three of them went to the room on the other side of the mirror, so they could fill Connie in on the contents of the box. Rand started organizing them individually, placing the happy images at the top. He had an idea of how they could rattle Pearson’s cage.
Once he had them in the order he wanted, Rand grabbed a manila folder, giving Rory the empty box. “I want you to walk in there, close the door, walk over to the table, and set the box down. Then come over and stand in the corner by the mirror. Don’t open the box, and don’t say a word to him.”
Normally, Rory argued with him about every damn little thing, and Rand fully expected that to be the case then as well. Instead, he simply nodded and followed Rand’s instructions to the letter. He and Connie watched through the glass as Rory entered the room, kicking the door shut behind him. It startled the attorney, and he jerked back, his wide eyes narrowing when he looked at Rory, the surprised expression quickly becoming a scowl. Rory sat the now-empty box on the corner of the table and waited several long moments before sliding it across. There was a brief flicker of recognition in Pearson’s eyes, but he quickly put his brash exterior back in place, glaring up at Rory. “Yeah, that’s my boy!” Gonzales nudged him with her elbow. “Okay cowboy, your turn.” She snapped her fingers, shooing him out of the room.
Polar opposite, Rand blew into the room like a tornado. “Good afternoon, Mr. Pearson, I’m Detective Davis. I just have a few more questions for you, and then we can call it a day. May I call you Bruce?” He rapped his knuckles on the table.
“No,” Pearson quickly responded.
Grabbing the chair, Rand flipped it around, leaning the back of it against the table and taking a seat, setting the folder on the table in front of him. “Listen, Bruce, I was hoping you could clear some things up for me. You see, we found these pictures in your condo and, well, to be completely honest with you, Bruce, they’re rather disturbing.” Pearson glared at him, one eyebrow raised, arms crossed.
Opening the folder, he lifted the first picture, turned it around, and slid it across the table. It was Mitchell Helms sitting on the couch in Pearson’s condo, smiling up at the camera. Next was Junior, then Doral and so forth; the last smiling happy face was Shannon. “What I do in my own home and whom I do it with is none of your concern, Detective.” Pearson was dispassionate.
Shaking his head, Rand clicked his tongue a couple of times. “Not if one or more of the young men portrayed in these photographs was underage at the time you took their picture, Bruce, you naughty, naughty boy.” Pearson’s eye would twitch every time Rand called him Bruce, and Rand took a smidge of satisfaction in knowing he was slowly unraveling the pent-up bastard across from him. He covered the images with a set of more somber ones, taking note when Pearson cocked his head to one side, popping his neck. Next came the more graphic pictures—the early stages of the abuse that nineteen young men had endured while in the company of Bruce Pearson. Rand’s fingers itched to reach across the table, grab the piece of shit by the neck, and slam his head on the hard, cold steel until his face looked like the image of Shannon’s back that would be forever imprinted on Rand’s brain.
With each new image the violence escalated, a silent movie depicting the horrors Pearson had inflicted. “This one here,” Rand pointed at Mitchell Helms. “His body was found in Portland, Oregon in 2007 in Macleay Park less than a week after you were there. And before you ask, we have your credit card statements that put you on a plane to Portland and booking a hotel in the city at that time. Coincidence? I think not.”
“Circumstantial at best,” Pearson huffed. A tiny bead of sweat dotted the attorney’s immaculate brow. Inside, Rand did a happy dance, knowing that with each new image, with every name and place he told Pearson they’d tied him to, his cold, hard exterior took a blow.
Rand pressed on, deliberately trying to sound jovial. “Howard Manning Tullor Junior.” He whistled. “Damn, now ain’t he a pretty one?” Waggling his brows, Rand fanned himself with his hand overdramatically. “Did you know his grandfather was a judge before you took him to your bed while he was still a minor?”
Nostrils flaring, a spark of pure desire lit Pearson’s eyes, and Rand wondered briefly if he could talk Gonzales into turning off the camera and voice recorder, so he could kick the shit out of Mister Malice. “Here’s another question for you. Did you know every person you decided to have a Kodak moment with is now either dead or missing, all except one?” Technically, Rand wasn’t lying; at this point the only person in Pearson’s picture box they could say with certainty was alive, was Shannon.
That got his attention. “What?” Pearson sat up straight, eyes roaming over the images before him, lingering a few extra seconds on Shannon. Rand could hear Rory growling behind him and prayed that Pearson didn’t say something that would set the agent off. “That’s…no, that can’t be.” He mumbled, probably the first time an iota of humanity leaked into his voice.
“I assure you, Bruce, it is the truth.” Rand rummaged through his folder, pulling out several newspaper clippings he’d downloaded that morning before they went to Pearson’s condo. One by one, Rand placed each story in front of Pearson, thoroughly enjoying the variety of shocked expressions dance across the man’s face.
“The body of eighteen-year-old Mitchell Helms was found in a shallow grave in Macleay Park in Portland over the weekend.”
“Portland man, 18, drowns near Sauvie Island.”
“Dental records prove that the badly decomposed body found in Lakeview Park last summer was Brian Doral, a teenager that had been reported missing by his mother four years ago when he was just thirteen.”
“Howard Manning Tullor Jr, grandson of Judge Tullor, likely the most outspoken judge on the bench against gay rights, has now been listed as a missing person for almost a decade. Judge Tullor has recently requested the assistance of the FBI along with a Cold Case detective in Dallas, Texas to resume searching for his grandson.”
Resting his elbows on the table, Rand sat quietly while Pearson frantically read each article, eyes roaming the piles of pictures. “All of them? No—how—why?” It made his day that he’d managed to break down the stone-faced attorney. “Wait,” Pearson sat back in his chair. “You think I did this? That I killed them?” And the wall went back up. “No, Detective, I loved them. I opened my heart and my home to these young men, gave them everything, asking for nothing but their honesty and devotion in return, and they all left me in the end.”
Rory snorted. “Honesty and devotion? You mean blind submission, right, Mr. Pearson?” In an instant, Rory was across the room, hands on the table as he leaned over Pearson. “Is this what you call love, Mr. Pearson?” He grabbed the image of Junior on the patio, his face mangled and beaten, slapping it down on top of the newspaper articles. “Look at his face, Mr. Pearson. Do you see that? You did that, and you call that love? You are one sick fuck, you know that, Mr. Pearson?”
Ah, yes. Good cop, bad cop. Rand loved this game. Gonzales was probably in the other room cursing them both to hell, in Spanish, for cracking Pearson’s tough exterior and reducing him to one-word sentences. “You know what I think, Mr. Pearson?” Rory shouted, fist slamming down on the table hard enough that it rattled.
“Easy, Agent, take a step back.” Rand gently touched Rory’s arm, praying he’d understand the schematics of the game they were playing and not think that Rand actually felt sorry for the piece of shit. He stared at Rand for a long moment, nodding once before straightening and moving over to lean against the wall, less than two feet away from Pearson. Rory was appeased for the moment.
Smiling, Rand turned his focus back to Pearson. “Listen, Bruce, I want to believe you, that you loved these young men. But you know the adage, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’? These words don’t bode well for you, Bruce.”
“They were never my prisoners, Detective. They were free to come and go as they pleased. Which is exactly what they did, what they all do, eventually.” Pearson growled. Finally, some modicum of truth fell off his foul tongue. The abusive, domineering, evil fuck of a man sitting across from him in a thousand-dollar suit was insecure. Well, how ’bout that? Rand surmised.
Pushing off the wall, Rory stepped over to the table again, this time leaning into Pearson’s
personal space until the man flinched and pulled back. “Why the fuck would anyone in their right mind choose to stay with you, Mr. Pearson? You show your love with your fists, your feelings forever imprinted on the minds of the young men you preyed on.” Rory poured so much disdain and hate into the word “love” that it made Rand shudder. Thankfully, Pearson only had eyes for the agent currently rattling his cage to notice the movement.
Gaze dark and angry, hard face staring back at Rory, Pearson gave as good as he got. “You have no grounds to hold me or charge me with anything, Agent, so unless I’m under arrest…”
Rand cut him off with a smile and a wave of his hand. “Oh, you’re under arrest all right, Bruce, so wrap your arrogant head around that. We have photographic, electronic, and physical evidence that you entered into a relationship with multiple young men while they were still underage. Whether or not they wanted to be smacked around and treated like animals is neither here nor there, not in this instance.”
Rory stood, pulling his handcuffs out, swinging them in a circle and grinning maniacally. “Oh please, let me do the honors.”
“Wait!” Pearson shouted, catching them both off guard. “You said that all but one was dead.” Rand stood, deliberately stepping between Rory and the idiot. “Who…” Pearson reached over, his hand lingering over the images of Shannon. “Which one?”
Rory made a noise, a sound you’d normally hear from a wounded animal, and Rand thanked the lord above that he’d put himself in the way. Otherwise, the agent would likely have been jumping up and down on their suspect. “I can’t answer that question, Mr. Pearson. The lone survivor is now in protective custody.”
Pearson slowly turned and met his eyes, his gaze hard and angry. The man was not stupid; he’d immediately caught the change from Bruce to Mr. Pearson and realized that Rand had been playing him from the moment he walked into the room. “Gonzales,” Rand called out, mere seconds going by before the vivacious brunette was bounding into the room.