The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

(Charleston, West Virginia. Now.)

“I finished crunching through the data,” said Brisecoeur, his image on the tablet planted on the dashboard of the rental car between Daniel and Shawbank.

“Good,” said Shawbank.

“Well, based on your search parameter, namely change in reported sexual behavior coinciding with weddings—and let me say, that’s a maudit general parameter right there, I think I managed to narrow our presumed victims down to about twenty from the original fifty-one first-child births with conception around their wedding night.”

Daniel thought back to what Shawbank had told him the day before, before their visit to Natalie Grifford. “So thirty-one of those are... well... natural.”

Brisecoeur’s image on the screen nodded. “Roughly. Depends a bit on what you count as changes in sexual behavior. But projections were that between thirty-two and thirty-eight such births would be expected, so it fits.”

“Meaning,” completed Shawbank, “that the parameters were correct.”

“Well... let’s not get into a correlation and causality discussion, but yeah, it does suggest that the parameters were useful ones.”

“Is Desirée Cummings on the narrowed list?” asked Shawbank.

Daniel looked at Shawbank. Desirée Cummings was the woman they had just interviewed not an hour ago, the second such interview they have had. Cummings lived in a trailer park twenty miles from Beckley, where they had interviewed Natalie Grifford. The interview had not gone well, partly because Cummings had been belligerent, not trusting the two agents not to be from Child Services there to take her newborn, who was crying in the adjacent room. Cummings, never letting her eyes off Daniel—who had wanted to make sure the child was okay—had told them her husband had been cavorting with “a cheap slut on his construction crew” and that she had kicked him out after kicking his ass. The bruises on Cummings arms suggested to Daniel that Mister Cummings had done his fair amount of kicking ass before leaving, but after a warning glance from Shawbank he had kept his mouth shut.

While Shawbank had conducted the interview—“no, things had not been different since the wedding, except for that bastard putting his dirty grubby paws on that no good cheap whore!”—Daniel had looked around the trailer, always feeling Cummings’s eyes on him whenever he approached the door that led to the room where the baby was crying. He had been itching to find a reason to actually call Child Services.

When Shawbank’s questions turned to Cummings’s husband and she launched into an invective-filled narrative, she has been distracted enough that Daniel could quietly open the door to the child’s room. While the trailer as a whole was in bad need of upkeep, the baby’s room—in which said baby was now quieting down to sleep—was almost pristine, and cheerfully decorated. A stack of reusable diapers sat on table, and toys lined one of the shelves. Two of the walls were decorated with what had to be hand-painted figures from well-known children’s book—Daniel had spotted the Velveteen Rabbit, and Winnie the Pooh at first glance. The crib looked, if not new, nice and serviceable. Perhaps most importantly, Daniel had felt a sense of love and protection from the room. He had closed the door softly so as not to disturb the baby. When he turned back to the two women, Cummings was still talking, but also staring at him with a challenge in her eyes. He had given her a little smile with a nod.

“Desirée Cummings...” mumbled Brisecoeur, typing on his keyboard at his end of the connection. “Nope. No flag on behavior. Could be she didn’t do anything worthy of mention anywhere though.”

Shawbank shook her head. “No, it fits. I didn’t get the sense from her that she was in contact with the Special.”

“Parfait,” said Brisecoeur. “So I’ve run through the narrowed data, and there’s little commonality in either demographics or standard classification categories. The strongest correlation is in terms of age and race and physical characteristics: all identified victims are young, between twenty and thirty-three, white or at least not overtly non-Caucasian, all above the culturally acknowledged standard of beauty. Much of this is expected.”

Shawbank nodded. “So it doesn’t tell us much?” asked Daniel.

Brisecoeur shrugged. “Not all that much, no. I mean, it does say that our freak is not all that freaky—he’s into young conventionally beautiful women.”

Daniel completed the thought. “Right, which doesn’t really narrow things down because he’s pretty much average in that respect.”

“Exactly. If the guy was into morbid obesity, we would have something to work with, because people with extreme fetishes will tend to leave easily identified traces.”

“Skin color,” said Shawbank. “The skin-color thing is data. Only going for white women. Is there a correlation between skin color of the victims and other demographics or geographic markers?”

Brisecoeur typed for a while on his keyboard, his lips pursed, then waited as he undoubtedly read out and interpreted whatever data his analysis algorithms were reporting.

“No strong correlation. Based on the sample data—which is small, I need to remind you—the victims list should have a projected five African-Americans and at least three of undifferentiated Hispanic origin.”

“Good,” nodded Shawbank. “Run further analysis down that path.”

“Will do.” Brisecoeur seemed to start on it right away.

“So we’re probably looking for a... a what? A racist? A white supremacist?” asked Daniel. Did Freak psychology affect radical positions? He remembered his run-in with the New American Deal Association back at Darnell, an ultra-conservative and decidedly racist organization that had almost mutilated his friend Radhu.

“Not necessarily. Our Special is attracted to white women, to the probable strong exclusion of other ethnicities. It may just speak of deeply ingrained cultural drivers. Those bleed into aesthetic judgments, especially if this Special has an eye towards procreation.”

“So we’re looking for someone who comes from a background with deeply ingrained segregationist beliefs?”

“Most likely. Maybe a closed community, likely religious, likely fundamentalist, and undoubtedly homogeneous.”

“I don’t know much about Western Virginia, but from where I stand it looks pretty homogeneous already.”

Brisecoeur piped up on the screen. “You can say that again, mon ami. Probably why this freak managed to stay out of sight for so long. Earliest victim suggests it goes back to almost two and half years ago. Shawbank, I have an update on your question. No further correlations even projecting onto a Caucasian demographic and marginalizing probabilities.”

“Do we know what might have happened two and a half years ago to trigger such an episode?” asked Daniel. “Maybe that can help identify suspects.”

“There’s rarely a triggering event for this,” replied Brisecoeur. “A Freak’s ability will just pop out of the blue and off they go.”

“Okay,” continued Daniel, who was not ready to let the idea go. “But we’re working on correlations, right? What if this guy had victims before, but completely different ones—which because of the difference we can’t identify. Then two and a half years ago, he shifts to brides and decides to procreate? Maybe something happened then to change his perspective. Maybe he just arrived in the state, got a job here, something...”

Brisecoeur gave this a thought. “That’s a long shot. But could be. And it really opens up the field. I guess I can push the search for correlations with similar events prior to that time elsewhere in the country, and correlate it with employment information. Mmmm... that’s really going to beat up those machines downstairs.” He seemed to already start thinking of possible models and equations and statistical tests for these new hypotheses.

“Data,” said Shawbank. “We need more data. We should interview other victims.”

Daniel mused. “Do you mind taking the next interview and dropping me off at the hotel? I have a few ideas I’d like to explore, and I need to look at the data Brisecoeur has.”

Shawbank looked at him with an expression that he had to interpret as amused “Ideas? You think you can outperform Brisecoeur’s supercomputers?”

“Not outperform, no. But I may spot something his analysis missed. He works from models, right? And models can only extrapolate from existing data and assumptions that have been built into the model.”

“Assumptions. And you’re going to question them?”

“Well, maybe refine them a bit.”

Shawbank gave him a long look, then nodded. “Fine. Hotel it is. But you keep me up to date.”

Two hours later, at the desk in his Marriott hotel room in downtown Charleston, Daniel was staring at data files that Brisecoeur was pumping at him at a rate faster than he could process them.

Brisecoeur was sitting in a chat window in the corner of the screen, looking none the worse for wear.

“It doesn’t seem to bug you too much,” said Daniel after a long pause.

“What doesn’t?” Brisecoeur did not look up from his own data crunching.

“This complete lack of progress. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, and not even knowing there’s a needle there in the first place.”

“Part of the fun, mon ami. The thrill of the chase and all that.”

“And while we’re banging around in the dark, this guy is going around raping women.”

“Hey, at least, that’s all he’s doing. Not to minimize it, but premièrement, the women don’t seem to remember what has happened to them, and deuxièmement, he’s not leaving them messed up and crawling around from jerk to jerk begging to be abused.”

Daniel stiffened as he flashed to an unbidden image of Jenn crawling around from jerk to jerk begging to be abused, and he clasped hard on his mind, dreading what else it might dredge up. Did Brisecoeur know something about Jenn? About Biff? Shawbank showed up at Darnell when Biff captured and programmed his fiancée. Was it correlation—Shawbank looking for Doctor Cargyle, as she claimed—or was it causation—Shawbank working with Doctor Cargyle until something went wrong? He recalled O’Neill’s words, you shouldn’t trust anybody. And Jenn crawling from jerk to jerk begging to be abused was exactly what Biff had promised he would have Jenn do if she were to get away from him—and now he was dead, and Jenn was missing, and who knew where she was and what she was doing.

“Are you okay?” asked Brisecoeur. He was frowning, and Daniel realized that he must have made a face.

“Yeah, just a... Never mind.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, then rubbed his cheek, still unused to the feel of the soft beard. But that a slightly different face stared at him every time he looked in the mirror, a face different from the man that had failed his fiancée, that had lost her, that had dropped her in the lap of a monster and that had been unable to recover her in time, well, it helped, a little bit. How was O’Neill doing in his search for Jenn?

“So nothing came up on the guest list we got from Natalie Grifford?” Daniel said to try to get his mind back on track.

“Nothing. Though many of those people don’t have much of an online or even official presence anywhere,” replied Brisecoeur.

“So there’s no commonality in the churches or the officiating ministers? Maybe the church organists all going to school together or something?”

“Nothing. And two of the weddings were civil ceremonies, and one was Jewish. That rules out a lot of common ground right there.”

Daniel leaned back in his chair. One of his ideas was that the victims may have had something in common not based on who they were, but based on the externalities of their wedding ceremonies. But that seemed to be a bust.

Closing his eyes, he thought back to the admittedly preliminary discussions he had had with Jenn about their own nuptials, and tried to navigate the hurt it was bringing him.

“Okay, let’s move away from the ceremony itself, and to the receptions. For I assume that all of those people had receptions after the wedding?”

Brisecoeur nodded. “Yeah, I managed to pull out that information, and they all had some sort of party. Different venues—in different cities. All in West Virginia, so that’s a commonality, though not a useful one.”

“Management?”

“For the venues? All of them owned and operated by different companies. Even ran a search three-plies deep on employees relationship both within the companies and without, and nothing came up, except for an old lady in Florida being a distant cousin of two employees at two different companies.”

“A friend in common to many of those people?”

“The search did include most social networks, and nothing came up—not even a name with connections to more than two management companies. It could be someone without much of an online life.”

“Or someone trying to hide their tracks,” mused Daniel.

“Exactement.”

“All right, what about the classics?”

“Excuse me?”

“The reception equivalents of the butler. The staff. Or the caterers. It’s always the caterers, isn’t it? They have access, no one looks at them twice because they’re in uniform and they belong, and it’s a comparatively easy job to get.”

Brisecoeur tapped away at his keyboard. “Good idea. I don’t have catering information here.”

Daniel was thinking, having moved from receptions to support. “And what if it happened right before the ceremonies? How about hairdressing for the bride? Makeup? Hell, what about the dresses? Where did they get their dresses?”

Brisecoeur frowned. “Mmm... I can do a rundown of the wedding shops in the state, and also try to narrow down purchases. Hairdressing and rest, no data. Although again I can narrow down likely possibilities. We’ll need to do some of this the old-fashioned way, though, and talk to people.”

Daniel nodded. “I’ll call Natalie Grifford and see if I can get that info from her. Is Shawbank done with her interview?”

“She has not checking in, so I presume not. I’ll tell her to get as much information as possible about the reception, including catering and organization, and ask about hairdressers and wedding dresses and generally anything that the bride may have done leading to the wedding.”

Daniel grabbed his phone, pulled out Natalie Grifford’s number from his notes, and called her.

“Mrs Grifford? Agent Daniel Malcolm here. We talked recently about... about the events surrounding your daughter Chloé?”

“Yes, of course. Agent Malcolm. How are you? How may I help you?” Daniel could hear soft cooing in the background. Chloé, he thought.

“I was wondering if I could get some information from you about your reception, and about the people you talked to prior to the wedding: people who did your hair, your makeup, who tailored your dress. We want to make sure we talk to everyone that was involved in the wedding and reception.”

Natalie Grifford gave a short laugh at the other end of the line. “I’ll get you the information I have, but to be honest, I probably don’t know half the people that were involved. You really need to talk to the wedding planner.”

“You had a wedding planner?”

“Of course. Who has the time to plan a wedding anymore? I’ll get you the info I have, but you should definitely talk to Elizabeth Bowden. She took care of everything.”