The Adjusters V: Intermezzi
Intermezzo: Sam O’Neill (3)
Later that night, Sam O’Neill left the warm bed of a lightly snoring Lascelles and headed out into the cold night. He pulled out a cigar from his pocket and slipped it between his lips, chewing on it softly.
He walked to his car, a few street from Lascelles’s hotel, thinking about the text message he had received two hours earlier while Lascelles showered. Tonight 1am Roxie’s Diner. The caller was private.
When he found Roxie’s Diner, he hesitated. He was about to step outside when there was a knock on the passenger window. Now was not the time to be careful—if someone wanted him out of the way, they would not have brought him here. He unlocked the door, and his anonymous correspondent stepped inside.
O’Neill recognized him. It was the tall silent nurse from Blue Ward, whose name he had forgotten.
He and the man exchanged a glance. The man—Rasmussen, O’Neill remembered in a flash—pulled out a folded picture of Jennifer Hansen. It was the photograph O’Neill had left at Blue Ward the previous day.
O’Neill nodded to Rasmussen. “Where to?”
To O’Neill’s surprise, Rasmussen spoke. “Drive,” he said, in a thick accent. He gestured in the direction of the Institute.
O’Neill drove on, the sound of tires on the asphalt the only distraction from the silence.
“You’re not a big talker, are you?” O’Neill quipped to relax the tension he was feeling. Nothing today had gone the way he thought it would. He was not complaining, but it was getting to him. He wondered whether Rasmussen was taking him to see Jennifer Hansen.
They never made it to the Institute. “Turn here,” Rasmussen said and made O’Neill take a sharp right onto a dirt road that he would never had noticed otherwise. O’Neill calculated that they were circling the Institute from the back.
Rasmussen stopped them near a maintenance shed dwarfed by the hulking mass of the Institute’s power generator behind it. There was no light, no sign of life. The place looked abandoned, shrouded in darkness if not for the headlights shining a bright beam on the small cubic structure.
On Rasmussen’s signal, O’Neill shut off the engine, and darkness and silence engulfed them.
Rasmussen exited the car, and O’Neill followed. He had a bad feeling about this, and while Rasmussen walked ahead to the structure, he pulled out the revolver he kept strapped underneath his seat. It was not a powerful weapon, but it fit in the pocket of his trench coat. He pulled out his cigar and slipped it between his lips, unlit.
Rasmussen had a key to the maintenance shed, and waited for O’Neill to catch up. Without turning on any light, the tall Dane walked to the back of the shed and pulled up a trapdoor after unlocking its padlock.
He disappear down a set of steep stairs. After lighting up a flashlight he always carried with him, O’Neill followed him down.
They walked for ten minutes through what O’Neill guessed were maintenance tunnels. It was a maze, but Rasmussen was navigating it like a rat in the sewers, unlocking doors when he came to them, once in a while looking back to make sure O’Neill was still following him even though he could tell simply from the beam of the flashlight.
The only disturbance came from a ghoulish howl that seemed to come from below, a long wail that curdled O’Neill’s blood.
“Wind in the tunnels,” said Rasmussen, unfazed.
O’Neill clutched his revolver tighter in his pocket.
Eventually they passed through a door into a large hallway with doors on each side and which reminded O’Neill of a hospital corridor. He deduced that they were beneath the Institute, and that they were in a wing that had probably at some point been intended for patients but had somehow been abandoned.
Rasmussen approached one of the doors, and unlocked it with yet another key. He nodded O’Neill inside.
The private investigator doubted he would find Jennifer Hansen beyond that door, but he was not discounting it. He also doubted he would find a group of thugs out to teach him to keep his nose in his own business. Nonetheless, he kept his hand in his pocket to palm his revolver.
Neither Jennifer nor thugs greeted him inside. O’Neill found himself in an artist’s den.
All around the room, drawings of various sorts were plastered about the walls, large and small, charcoals and pastels and other in a medium that O’Neill could not readily identify. All were drawings of people, strong drawings demonstrating vitality and an uncanny eye for detail. Both men and women were staring back at O’Neill, but a recurrent theme up there on the wall was Jennifer Hansen, in a variety of poses and expressions, her hair shorted than it had been in the pictures Malcolm had given him, but still recognizably her, still unmistakably her.
“You did these?” O’Neill asked Rasmussen.
The tall Dane was motionless for a long time before nodding.
“You’re very talented,” O’Neill added. He looked around the room again, at the drawing material and the easel in one corner, trying to get a sense of Rasmussen from this one glimpse into the man’s life. But his eyes kept going back to the portraits of Jennifer Hansen. Rasmussen had captured something of her vitality, of her attractiveness.
O’Neill looked at Rasmussen. The tall Dane looked back almost defiantly before shrugging. “We all loved her” was all he said.
“So she was here, then?” He knew already from Beatrice, but he needed confirmation.
Rasmussen provided it. He nodded.
“But she’s not here anymore?”
Rasmussen shook his head.
“Was she taken with Lillian Shepard?” His choice of words was not accidental.
Rasmussen looked like he considered O’Neill carefully, and the private investigator had the distinct impression that the tall Dane was surprised by his statement.
Rasmussen nodded once more.
“So what happened to them?”
Rasmussen seemed to come to a decision. “There is someone you should meet.” He nodded for O’Neill to follow him. They went down the hallway to another door, which Rasmussen pushed open.
That room looked like a hotel room, for lack of a better term. O’Neill scanned it with a professional eye, from the cheap bed in the corner to the table against the wall and the utilitarian sink and mirror. He took in the ominous hook in the center of the ceiling as well. He had seen such rooms before. It was the sort of room one found in cheap brothels.
On the bed sat a woman—dark-haired, beautiful—slowly applying dark makeup, looking back into a small mirror. She was striking, with sharp features and smooth skin, her eyes ringer with black, her expression haughty. Whatever her physical beauty, it was her presence that captured the attention.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her legs crossed, in skin-tight leather, and wearing only a black lacy bra that barely contained her chest. She was applying a coating of dark red lipstick, slowly and methodically. O’Neill could not decide how old she was.
The woman glanced at them before smirking and returning to her task. When she was done, she puckered her lips as if to see if the lipstick would hold, and the act was so clearly sexual that O’Neill felt himself react even though sex was furthest from his mind at that moment.
He glanced as Rasmussen, but the tall Dane merely stood silent.
The woman stretched on the bed before standing up herself. She was tall in her spiked boots, and seen in full her body was as beautiful as her face. She did not walk but strolled toward the two men, her hips swinging in time to their own music. When she spoke it was a purr.
“What did you bring me, Rasmy?” She stepped up to O’Neill, lifted a hand to his face and ran a black-tipped fingernail down his cheek. She smelled musky and alluring. She was looking at him, and he tried to read her eyes, and he read much: amusement, pride, anger, fear, lust.
The woman smiled. “Are you trying to get into my head, Daddy? Better men that you have tried and failed like bed-wetting little boys.” Her smile turned ferocious. “What’s your name, Daddy?”
“Sam O’Neill, ma’am.”
“Sam O’Neill… I’m Cassandra, Sam O’Neill. Are you gonna be my toy for the evening?” She bit her lip.
O’Neill, who never missed much, saw that she was rubbing her thighs together. He wondered how effective the movement was through the leather.
Cassandra was looking at Rasmussen now. “Why did you wake me up, Rasmy? I was so happy before, and now I’m all hungry. Did you want some play time with your favorite mistress? Do you want to get your… cock manhandled a bit?” There was a challenge in her voice underneath the silk. She sounded and looked to O’Neill like a coiled serpent ready to strike.
Rasmussen stared at Cassandra, and O’Neill could see that his demeanor had changed. He had seemed laid back and casual earlier, if somewhat tensed, but now his back was straight and his face was severe and he was using his height to its full advantage, towering over the sexy brunette. His eyes dropped to Cassandra’s cleavage, coldly evaluating, assessing, judging, and O’Neill could see a slight shiver run through the brunette’s body.
“He has questions for you,” Rasmussen said in his thick accent.
“I don’t do questions, Rasmy, you know that. I do begging, I do bargaining, I do screaming. But no questions. Well,” and her voice dropped an octave and became caressing, “maybe questions like ‘Please mistress, can I come now?’”
O’Neill chimed in. “What do you know about Jennifer Hansen?” He asked. Taking a cue from Rasmussen and running on a hunch, he made his voice snap at the end of the question.
Cassandra turned her head toward him, a slight frown marring her forehead, but keeping her body and especially her breasts square in front of Rasmussen. “Who?”
“Jennie,” Rasmussen said.
Cassandra’s face changed, but O’Neill could not read it. Her eyes narrowed, and for the first time he felt that Cassandra actually saw him. Her smile turned into a wry grin that could have meant a great many things.
“Oh her,” she said, shrugging her shoulders in an effect meant to send a jiggle to her breasts. “Well, you know, she was a cute little bitch. She had a pretty sweet tasting pussy and a talented tongue, and she loved fucking like nothing else. How about you, Daddy? Do you love fucking like nothing else?” She turned to him fully, the serpent ready to strike. She was good, O’Neill had to give her that. “Do you want to fuck me like nothing else? Sink your cock deep into my hot snatch?”
She reached down and grabbed his crotch and O’Neill felt safer never taking his eyes off hers. “Oh my,” she said, her grin turning feral. “You’re packing down there, Daddy. You’re going to be a lot of fun to play with. Just so you know, I’m going to tease you for a bit, make you nice and hard for me, and then I’m going to have you beg for release, any kind of release, while I pleasure myself with you. And if you’re good, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll get that release you’re craving.” Her hand felt good in his crotch, demanding without being painful, a hand skilled in the handling of the male pleasure organ.
“And what do you know about Lillian Shepard?” O’Neill asked.
Without any sort of warning, Cassandra slapped him, and not in a playful way. O’Neill’s wondered idly whether she would also kiss him afterward and tell him she loved him—it was that sort of night.
But no. When he looked back at her, Cassandra was furious. Her eyes shone with white hot anger.
“How dare you speak her name, you little sniveling worm? Just for that, I’m going to make sure your release is painful, so that when you come it’s going to be like liquid fire hosing through your stupid cock. I’m going to make you lick my boots, make you suck on my heels, make you—”
“What happened to Jennifer and Lillian, Cassandra?” O’Neill snapped.
Cassandra smile was a snarl now as she stepped closer to him, her hands on her hips, her breasts thrust out whether consciously or not. “What do you think happened to them, Daddy? What do you think happens in this place? They got their holes fucked six ways from Sunday, their sweet mouths, their slick cunts, their oh-so-tight asses, until they were drowned in cum, begging to be fucked harder the whole time, over and over again until they went poof into that big orgy in the sky. Is that what you want to hear? They were fucked to death, Daddy.”
He could see the hurt in her face. Hurt, and fury of the undirected kind. And something else, too, completely unrelated, yet underlying everything. She was daring him, daring him to fight back. In a flash, he understood. It was a hunch, of course, but he had good instincts.
He glanced at Rasmussen, trying to read the tall Dane, and the man gave a slight node, as if he knew what O’Neill was about to do. Maybe he did.
Cassandra was still fuming when O’Neill grabbed her arm, hard, and pulled her to him. “Listen, Cassandra, tell what happened to Jennifer and Lillian, and maybe I’ll let you get out of here with your tits intact.” He put as much anger behind it as he could.
Cassandra’s eyes were yet again a study in conflict—anger spiked in them, as did lust, as did fear, as did expectancy.
“Let me go, you stupid fuck!” She struggled against him but his grip was too tight. “I’m going to shove my stiletto so far up your ass you’re going to enjoy it—and then I’m going to smother you with my cunt and and get off as you scream while I pummel your wrinkled old balls!”
O’Neill slapped her. It was not a hard slap, but it was enough to get her attention. She seemed flabbergasted for a second, and O’Neill took advantage of it to push her ahead of him toward the bed. He grabbed her arms and pressed a pair of handcuffs he always carried with him on her wrists.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Cassandra growled as O’Neill pushed her forward on the bed. Without answering, he slapped her ass hard, once, twice, three times.
He noted with interest that far from avoiding his strikes, she in fact thrust her ass upward to offer a better target, despite swearing at him the whole time, her face pressed into the bed, unable to straighten up.
“Let me ask you again, you little cunt,” he said with a clipped voice that held a rage that he did not feel. “What happened to Jennifer and Lillian?”
“Fuck you, you ancient piece of—Ah!—”
O’Neill spanked her again, three times in a row, harder than before, hard enough that he feared he might have left a mark despite her leather pants, hard enough that the palm of his hand would hurt for several hours.
And again, she tilted her ass upward to offer a better target. O’Neill glanced over his shoulder, and Rasmussen wore a small smile.
“Get back down, you little cunt,” O’Neill growled when Cassandra tried to straighten up, and he grabbed her cuffed wrists and pulled her arms up, allowing the growing pressure on her shoulders keep her in place. “There’s something I need to check.”
It was more difficult than he had expected, but he managed to unfasten and pull down her leather pants and fiery red thong, and without preliminary he pressed three of his fingers into her steamy hot slit.
Cassandra gasped, and pressed her ass back against him. “Get your hands out of my snatch you piece of—”
O’Neill slapped her again, on a bare cheek this time, the sound resounding in the empty room. “Shut up, cunt. Here.” He rubbed the fingers he had pulled out of her pussy onto her upper lips, spreading her juices around. “Look how wet you are. You’re just a little tramp that can’t wait for the first guy to grab her and teach her that she’s just a piece of meat.”
Before letting her recover, he slipped his fingers back into her pussy, and rammed them in and out, without any attempt at gentleness, once in a while pulling them out only to spank her forcefully a few times before resuming the finger fuck.
The sexy brunette was almost rambling by that point, her arms raised high behind her back, her face into the mattress, groaning loudly, pressing back against O’Neill’s assault.
“You want to fuck her ass, Rasmussen?” He asked the tall Dane behind him. “How about you fuck it dry, too, make it hurt some—don’t worry, cunt,” he added for Cassandra’s benefit, “the blood will eventually lube you up some.”
He had no intention to let Rasmussen do that, of course, but as he had expected Cassandra loved the threat and her pussy clenched madly around his fingers and her moans grew louder as she was raising her ass even higher in an open invitation to Rasmussen to come and claim her.
When he judged she was close to coming—she was not trying to hide it, she had given up any pretense at domination by that point—O’Neill pulled her up by the hair and tilted her head back and shoved his fingers slick with pussy juice deep into her mouth, gagging her.
“Now tell me, cunt—what happened to Jennifer and Lillian? Tell me, and I’ll make sure you come and come hard. Go on,” he added, thrusting his fingers in and out of her throat, “tell me!”
Cassandra clearly wanted to say something, but it came out as a gargle that led her to shoot out some thick snot out of her nose. She moaned louder and shuddered and struggled to spread her legs wider so she could—O’Neill presumed—rub her pussy against the mattress. He pulled her arms up to prevent her from doing just that. “Come on, cunt. Tell me!”
She made eye contact through tears that were leaving long trails of black mascara down her cheeks. He pulled his fingers out of her throat enough for her to form words.
“She… they… they took them.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know! They took them—they took her! They took her! Took her away from me! Please! Please! Please Daddy, make me come! I… I need it… I need it so bad… please!”
“Who took them?”
“I don’t know! Men! They wanted Jennie, they wanted her bad, looked for her, couldn’t find her because she was out of the way because she had a seizure or something and… please Daddy! Please! Fuck my slutty cunt again! Please! Stick your cock deep in me, deep in my cunt, my ass, anywhere you want! Make me hurt, tear me up, fuck me up! Please! PLEASE!”
“Those men, what did they look like?”
“I don’t know! Men! The kind you fuck! Big strong men that could make me come easy if they just took me and spread me out and fucked me until I choked on their cocks!”
“What did they look like?” O’Neill repeated more forcefully, pulling down on her hair and forcing her to twist her neck up or be hurt badly. It seemed merely to egg her on.
“I DON’T KNOW! The one… the silent one. He was there. Scary. Scary face, scary eyes. Chinese. Or something. Hard face. Scarred. Face that makes you cream as he looks at you as he stabs you with his cock deep into your gut and hurts you for being a slutty little bitch that can’t even keep her lover safe! He took Mouse! HE TOOK MOUSE!” Cassandra sobbed. “Please Daddy! PLEASE! Make me come, make me come! Anything, stuff anything in my holes! PLEASE!”
“Anything else? Anything you can tell me about Jennifer and Lillian?” Who was Mouse, he wondered. He jerked on her hair harder, feeling guilty, unsure what Cassandra needed right now.
“In… in my pocket. My pants. Please! PLEASE! Make me come! Fuck me, Daddy, fuck me so hard I forget everything! Please, I beg you…” Her tears were flowing freely now, and her hips were jerking wildly, trying to make any sort of connection with anything, the scent of her juices nearly sickening so strong it was.
Rasmussen had approached and was searching through the pockets of Cassandra’s leather pants and he pulled out a small micro SD card. O’Neill meanwhile had his hand between Cassandra’s legs and was lightly fingering her pussy, amazed at how wet she was.
O’Neill and Rasmussen did an exchange. O’Neill pushed Cassandra forward on the bed, and grabbed the card from the tall Dane. Rasmussen slid up behind Cassandra and pressed what looked like a gigantic black dildo into her pussy, eliciting a shriek from the brunette who started humping the large shaft.
“Please… please… make me cum, Rasmy. Fuck me like the cunt bitch I am! Please…” She was moaning and sobbing at the same time, which O’Neill found disturbing. “Please… it’s my only copy… my only copy… my only souvenir… Mouse… Please! PLEASE! Fuck me, Rasmy! FUCK ME!”
O’Neill slid the card into his phone. There was a single file on it, a video. He played it, and saw what looked like the output of a surveillance camera, a corner shot from a ceiling of a bed in the middle of a room, a patient room. There was a woman on the bed which O’Neill recognized. Jennifer Hansen. She was not moving. After several seconds, a man appeared in the frame, dressed as a nurse. Hispanic, O’Neill determined. Mexican descent most likely.
O’Neill made a copy of the file and tossed the SD card on the bed in front of Cassandra, who shot him what he interpreted as a grateful glance but that soon shifted and twisted into pleasure as Rasmussen slipped his own cock inside her while pressing the enormous black dildo against the brunette’s asshole. She looked like she was both in heaven and in hell.
Rasmussen made eye contact with O’Neill, and nodded towards the table near the exit. He then turned his attention back to Cassandra.
“I’ll find my way out,” O’Neill told Rasmussen, who grunted in assent. O’Neill gave them a last look, feeling a surge of pity for the woman on the bed who had started to come.
On his way out, he picked up what Rasmussen had left for him on the table. It was a drawing, on a thick piece of cream-colored paper. A pencil sketch, beautifully done, of a face: Asian, most likely Thai, serious, the features frozen in a rictus, with scars on both sides of his face a vestige of ugly lacerations. Scary, Cassandra had called it. O’Neill could understand her reaction.
This was the man that had taken Jennifer Hansen and Lillian Shepard.
ADCORP CONFIDENTIAL MEMO to Adonai Davenham.
SUBJECT: Craven-Wilford Institute
MEMO: As per standing instructions to be kept informed of any activity pertaining to Samuel O’Neill (private investigator, registered in New York state) coming in contact with any ADCorp resources, find attached the report from our standing observation team at the CWI describing O’Neill’s visit to the Institute three days ago. The observation team was unable to ascertain what prompted the visit. A summary of the report follows.
O’Neill rendezvoused with FBI Special Agent Kimberly Lascelles (ID 9528495, Philadelphia office). She was not on assignment, according to our Philadelphia Bureau contact. They both visited the Institute, including Blue Ward, and asked about patient Lillian Shepard (CWI Admission Number 3C343), known as Mouse within the unit. Reports suggest that O’Neill was interested in another patient, Jennifer Hansen [1], of whom there is no record within the Institute.
As a result of O’Neill and Special Agent Lascelles’s investigation, Doctor Michael Dante (formerly employed by CWI) was arrested for the murder of Richard Sanderson, a nurse in CWI unit 56 (Blue Ward). Richard Sanderson was involved in the incident involving Pietro Gutierrez earlier this year. Speculation from observation team suggests that one of the patients involved in the incident, known as Jennie, might have been the Jennifer Hansen patient O’Neill was looking for.
Both Lillian Shepard and the patient known as Jennie (presumed Jennifer Hansen) are no longer at CWI. Transfer orders were issued, but no authorizations for said transfers were given. Whereabouts of both patients unknown. An inquiry into other disappearances and abductions at the facility was initiated, but preliminary reports inconclusive. Recommend IE Division team be sent to investigate.
[1] Jennifer Hansen is cross-listed as a student at Darnell University in North Alexandria, reported dead within the time frame pertaining to Operation Cargyle. A Level 1 search revealed a connection with IE Division recruit Daniel Malcolm, ID 9113484. Since both Operation Cargyle and Daniel Malcolm are red flagged, further activity is suspended until clarification orders are issued. Agent Shawbank of IE Division, point of contact for Operation Cargyle, has been cc’d on this memo.