Page 7 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions

The police and an ambulance were called. I gave names, including those who had witnessed and taken pictures for their own sick pleasure. I recognized most of their voices; some were even stupid enough to call each other out by name. What followed was more humiliation and so much doubt that evenIquestioned my own story.

Fifteen students were accused and fifteen students were set free. Not a single one was punished beyondrecommendationsto sign up for volunteer hours within the community to show their sympathy for my attack.

Since not a single one bothered to use protection, it was no surprise to anyone when I became pregnant. As my belly grew larger, the insults increased. I was dubbed a slut, a whore, and a harlot by those in town. Many were saying I wasn’t the victim but the instigator.

I stopped attending school. I stopped eating. I stopped drinking. About five months into my pregnancy, I lost the baby. My entire life became a blur. To be honest, I don’t even remember the hospital stay following my miscarriage.

On the one-year anniversary of my rape, I hung a rope from my ceiling fan.

Chapter One

Special Agent Shawn “Mal” Mallory

The clickingof the cameras and the scuffle of rubber shoes were the only sounds in the echoing auditorium. Atelihai Valley High School had a decent size stage and seating for the roughly two hundred and fifty student body. To my knowledge, the population of this Alaskan hockey town had declined drastically in the last decade. I call it a ‘hockey town’ because I’d been here for less than an hour and already been told the history of their State Championships in 2010 and 2013. Since it was 2025, I found it peculiar, and rather annoying, that they were still riding that glory.

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 littlebrother 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 vulnerableand 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-mortempenetration, 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 allowanyoneinside. 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.

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