“Oh, I got a lot of messages, most of them jerks. But I only met two of them. One of them, I just had coffee with and it never went any further. He was much older, and there just wasn’t that connection, you know?”
“No chemistry,” Gina said.
“Right.”
“The other?”
Cherry frowned.
“He was a little pushy. Told me that if I were a real submissive I’d . . . I’d give him a blow job in the parking lot. I didn’t like him at all.”
“I know the type,” Gina said.
“Everybody tells you how dangerous it is to meet people online,” Cherry said. “But everybody does it. Most of the time, it works out just fine. I know lots of people who met their doms or subs on the Internet.”
“How long did you and Kerberos talk online?”
“About a month. He sounded so exactly right for me, you know? He seemed smart—”
“What made you think he was smart?” Hanson interrupted.
“Just the stuff we talked about.” Cherry chewed her lip. “Like, he said
Ulysses
was one of his favorite books. I was an English major, and I could never get past the first chapter.”
“Did he ever say if he’d lived anywhere else? Did he grow up in this area?”
“I don’t think so. He talked about places he had visited—San Francisco, Chicago—but he was probably lying.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, he lied about just about everything else,” Cherry said bitterly. “He
said
he was a ‘true’ dominant. He
said
he would respect my limits.”
“You said his profile didn’t have a photo,” Gina said. “Did he ever send you one privately?”
“No!” Cherry covered her face with both hands. “I’m not even sure I could recognize him again! That’s what’s so scary about this. He could walk right by me and I might not even know him!”
Hanson felt for Cherry, but he also wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. She was an attractive, educated twenty-something who seemed to be relatively intelligent. But she had gone to a hotel to meet a total stranger.
Not just to meet him . . . She had followed his instructions to the letter.
“He told me which hotel. It was a very nice one. I remember thinking an ax murderer wouldn’t pick such a nice hotel, would he? Then I was supposed to text him the room number.
“He wanted me to have the lights off, and to light the candles I brought with me. I had wine—red wine, that’s what he told me to get—chilling in the ice bucket. And Enigma on the portable CD player.”
Jesus, Hanson thought. This guy made plenty of demands, and poor Cherry had been so eager to please him. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to file a report.
“He said to take off everything except my bra and panties—and he told me I should wear something sexy, something red or pink if I had them. I was supposed to leave the door unlocked and wait for him on my hands and knees, with my forehead against the floor.”
“I see how you’re looking at me,” Cherry said, hiding behind her hands again. “I know how stupid it was! But at the time, it sounded so exciting and romantic even . . .”
Cherry had waited as instructed, until someone entered the room. All she saw were shiny black shoes, when a male voice, with no particular accent, told her to lick them.
As she licked and kissed his shoes, he began hitting her with a leather belt.
“I think it was a belt. Things began to happen so fast, and I never got a good look at his face or what he was hitting me with—”
“I tried so hard not to scream. I was still trying to be a good submissive, but I must have tried to crawl away from the belt. That’s when he grabbed me by my hair.”
He had pulled her to her feet, then lifted her and thrown her on the bed. She realized that this was all wrong, but she was afraid to do anything except what he told her to do.
“He—he put his—his penis in my mouth. I tried to—tried to do what he wanted, but he said I wasn’t taking it deep enough.”
He had forced her head down until she vomited.
“I tried to say I was sorry,” Cherry cried softly. “But that was when he started hitting me. In my face, in my stomach . . . just all over.”
That was when Cherry realized this was not what she’d signed up for, not the erotic fantasy she’d been promised. She’d started to scream.
“At first, I just kept shouting, ‘Red’! Over and over! But he didn’t stop! He just shoved a rubber gag in my mouth and hit me harder.”
He had ripped off her bra and panties as she’d lain there sobbing, begging him through the awful taste of the gag to
please stop, just please, please don’t hurt me anymore.
“My nose was bleeding and I couldn’t breathe . . .”
“And then he raped you?” Gina asked quietly.
Cherry nodded miserably.
“Did he say anything to you this whole time?”
“Just—just that I was his now, and he could do anything he wanted to with me.”
She had pulled her bare feet up under her and curled her arms around her knees, as if she could make herself small enough to escape the memory.
“How did you get away from him?”
Cherry was silent, looking up at Gina with agonized eyes.
“I can’t—” She was choking on her tears now, her voice a croak. “I just can’t tell you, I’m so . . . so ashamed.”
When the beating stopped, when he was done with her, she had been too terrified to move. She had lain facedown on the bed where he left her and she had felt his weight lift from the mattress. She heard him go into the bathroom and the sound of water running.
She realized now it wasn’t just fear that pinned her to that bed, it was shock. She had begun trembling all over, suddenly cold as if the temperature in the room had dropped twenty degrees. It had made her even more afraid, afraid that he would see her shaking and it would make him angry again.
She had felt his weight on the bed again and tensed, waiting for the next blow.
But it never came. Instead, she had felt a hand stroking her hair. Tenderly.
“I’m proud of you,” he had whispered.
She couldn’t have heard him correctly. He was
proud
of her?
“I am disappointed that I had to gag you,” he had continued, still stroking her hair. It had taken all her strength not to flinch away from his touch. “But you’ll do better next time.
“I have so much to teach you, but that’s to be expected. You are mine now, to mold into a perfect vessel for my pleasure.”
Cherry shuddered with the memory, realizing that she could try to explain for hours, but that no words could capture the horror of that final realization: he was crazy. He had to be. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. It couldn’t be. She had called RED. She had screamed it, over and over. He was supposed to stop.
“I had told him in the e-mails that I didn’t think I was into pain,” Cherry said, getting a little more control over herself and sipping the water Gina pressed on her. “He had said that was okay, that he was more into domination and control. I said that was what I wanted.”
Cherry gave a pathetic half-laugh, half-sob.
“Serious pain scared the hell out of me,” she said. “I thought people who wanted to be hurt were
sick
. How fucked up is that?”
“D/S and sadomasochism are two different things,” Gina said. “Unfortunately, too many people don’t get that.”
“Yeah, well, I know that now,” Cherry said wearily. “Roger and Marla explained that to me. They explained a lot of things that no one bothered to tell me before. They made me go to some classes at the Inferno and made me read a lot of books.”
“So this guy,” Hanson said, “he just left you there in the hotel room?”
Cherry nodded.
“He told me to take a shower, clean myself up. He said I could take a nap if I wanted.” She laughed, a bitter sound this time. “And then I should go home and begin my assignments.”
“Assignments?” Griggs asked. The cat was asleep in his lap now, and he was still rubbing the feline’s belly.
“I was supposed to start an online journal ‘processing’ my experiences.” Cherry blushed again, but there was nothing pretty or coy about it. Just two hectic blotches on her cheeks. “And I was supposed to get a dildo and practice. . . Practice how to—”
“It’s okay,” Gina said. “Did you do what he asked?”
“Are you kidding?” Cherry asked, almost angrily.
As soon as she’d been able to get to her feet, she had gotten in the shower and scrubbed herself until the hot water turned cold.
She had looked at herself in the mirror and begun crying again. She had been terrified that he would come back. She had wanted out of that room, but couldn’t find the nerve to walk out through the lobby where people would see her. They would take one look at her and know what had happened.
Her clothes would hide most of the welts and bruises, but one eye was turning black, and she had a shallow cut running down the other side of her face. Her lip was split in two places. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but more blood kept trickling from her anus. She had thought about going to the emergency room, but how could she explain it? They would call the police. They might even call her parents.
The idea of her parents finding out had made her vomit in the sink.
“I finally sneaked out one of the fire exits,” Cherry explained.
And then she burst into full sobs of such pain that Hanson wanted to put his hands over his ears.
The two men waited in the kitchen while Gina talked Cherry down from her crying jag.
“She’s a mess,” Gina said, coming into the kitchen. “I’m going to make her some tea.”
“So, we have an online profile,” Griggs griped, “but no real name, no photo—only a fuckin’ vague physical description that could be anybody—”
He flipped back through his notebook.
“Mid to late thirties,” he read. “Average height and weight. Brownish hair,
she thinks,
but it could be dark blond. Are people really this stupid?”
“Keep your voice down,” Gina whispered. “She took a dumb risk, but that doesn’t make this her fault.”
“You think this Kerberos could be our guy?” Hanson asked.
Gina was filling the kettle.
“He could be. He’s certainly violent, attracted to the Lifestyle but not really a part of it—”
“Whaddaya mean, not a part of it?” Griggs demanded. “Oh, come on!”
“He’s a sociopath who hides behind BDSM because he thinks it legitimizes what he wants to do anyway. But he’s the kind of person we do our best to keep out.
“If this guy has approached the community, he’s probably been shut out, or just hangs around the edges. He probably hasn’t got the social skills to deal with people face to face, that’s why he runs his game online.”
“But why would he kill the others?” Hanson asked. “Cherry said she had already stopped communicating with him before Roger put her under his whatchacallit—protection.”
“He could have found out,” Griggs said. “It pissed him off; he snaps and kills Roger.”
“He did send her that newspaper clipping with the collar,” Gina said. “That’s pretty creepy.”
“And Robyn?” Hanson asked. “Why kill her?”
“Robyn and Cherry were friends.” Gina shrugged. “He might have seen her as a threat, someone coming between him and Cherry.”
“Could be he started out the same way with Robyn,” Hanson said. “He lost control and went further than just beating and raping her.”
“You’re talking like this guy has to make sense,” Griggs said. “He’s a nut job, plain and simple.”
“Whoever the killer is,” Gina said, “he’s been smart enough not to leave us shit for trace.”
“If it
is
this Kerberos,” Hanson said, “we need to find Paul as soon as possible. He could be at risk.”
“Marla Banks, too,” Griggs said, pulling out his phone. “I’m gonna get some guys over to her house.”
“I don’t think Cherry should be here alone,” Gina said, pouring water into a mug. “Even if we post a couple of guys outside, she needs somebody with her.”
“Maybe Marla will let Cherry stay with her?” Hanson asked. “Kill two birds?”
“Maybe. But Marla sent Cherry here. She’s probably worried how to explain Cherry to her family and friends.”
Gina moved toward the door with the mug of tea. Hanson put a hand on her arm.
“She’s the same redhead you remembered, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“So she knows Quinn, right? She would know if he was the one using an alias to get to her?”
Gina just looked at him, then went on into the living room.
But she hadn’t said it was a crazy idea.