An Evil Mind (24 page)

Taylor had no time to shout out a command or a warning, but she also knew that it would make no difference. The kid wouldn’t have responded. He would’ve shot her with the same determination with which he had shot the police officer.

Taylor squeezed her trigger only once.

The .40 Smith & Wesson bullet was intended to just wound. To hit the kid on the upper arm or shoulder. To force him to drop his weapon, but the shot had been hurried and the kid was in mid-movement. The bullet hit him higher than intended and a few inches to the right. The kid fell back. A chunk of his throat splattered onto the wall behind him. It took him three and a half minutes to bleed out. It took the ambulance ten minutes to get to the store.

He was only eighteen years old.

Fifty-One

Doing her best to keep her face and movements as steady as she could manage, Taylor blinked away the memory.

‘Excuse me?’ She angled her head in a way that suggested she hadn’t heard Lucien’s question properly.

‘I’m sure you’ve been involved in hundreds of FBI investigations, Agent Taylor,’ Lucien said. ‘What I want to know is: have you, in any of them, had to pull out your gun and kill someone, even if in “self-defense”?’

Taylor wasn’t prepared to go through any of what had happened that night all those years ago with Lucien, but she knew that if she answered truthfully he would pick at that wound until it bled again. Trying to concentrate on her breathing, her eyes, and everything else that could give her away, she gave him her answer.

‘No.’

Lucien was observing Taylor, but this time her poker face worked. If anything had betrayed her answer, he didn’t seem to notice it.

‘Robert?’ Lucien moved the question over. His head skewed sideways. ‘Don’t lie to me now.’

Once again, Hunter had the feeling that somehow Lucien already knew the answer.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, I’ve killed people in the line of duty.’

‘How many?’

Hunter didn’t have to think about it. ‘I’ve shot and killed six people.’

Lucien savored those words for an instant. ‘And you weren’t overcome by a feeling of tremendous power? You didn’t get the “God-like feeling”? Not even once?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Hunter didn’t hesitate. ‘If I could have avoided it, I would’ve.’

For several seconds, they exchanged a fierce stare, as if their eyes were fighting their own private tug-of-war.

‘Susan’s remains, Lucien,’ Hunter finally said. ‘Where are they?’

‘Very well,’ Lucien agreed, breaking eye contact. He breathed in deeply. ‘Like I said before, Robert, the place I used in La Honda is still there. Once the magic of the moment had worn off that night, once I stopped shaking from the adrenaline rush, I knew I had to dispose of the body in a way that no one would find it. But I had already given that a lot of thought. That was just another reason why I chose that place – it was surrounded by wild woods.’ A careless shrug. ‘I didn’t know it would happen that night though,’ he added. ‘It wasn’t my intention when I left the dorm to go meet Susan. As I said, it just turned out that way.’

He started pacing his cell again, his hands behind his back.

‘So I dug for the rest of the night, all the way until morning. Ended up with a four, maybe five-foot-deep grave. I had already bought bags and bags of coffee powder and a few bottles of mountain lion urine.’

Both Hunter and Taylor knew that coffee powder is a very strong animal scent distractor. It confuses them, and usually makes them lose a scent trail, if they were on to one. Mountain lion urine can be easily bought in several shops around America, and it’s used for its predator scent quality. Its smell scares away a multitude of other animals, like foxes, wolves and coyotes. It’s a simple law of nature – the stronger and deadlier the predator, the more animals its scent will scare off.

‘I buried her body in the woods behind the house,’ Lucien said, ‘under layers of dirt, coffee powder and mountain lion urine. Covered it all with some leaves and sticks. And I can tell you, it’s never been disturbed by man or animal.’

‘So where is this house?’ Hunter asked.

Lucien spent the next two minutes giving Hunter and Taylor specific instructions of how to get to it from Sears Ranch Road.

Lucien paused directly in front of Hunter. ‘Will you tell them everything? Will you tell them the truth?’

Hunter knew Lucien was talking about Susan’s parents again.

‘Yes.’

‘Um . . . I wonder how they’ll feel. What their reaction will be?’

‘What do you care?’ Taylor spat the words. ‘At least they’ll have closure at last. They’ll be able to bury their daughter’s remains with dignity. And they’ll also have the certainty that the monster who took her away from them will be locked up for the rest of his natural life.’

Lucien was still pacing his cell, but instead of moving from left to right, he’d started walking back and forth between the back wall and the Plexiglas at the front.

‘Oh, no, I wasn’t talking about that, Agent Taylor.’ Lucien’s lips broke into something that looked like half a smirk, half an amused smile. ‘I meant . . . I wonder how they’ll feel when they find out that they
ate
their own daughter.’

Fifty-Two

Adrian Kennedy had decided to cancel all of his appointments back in Washington, DC and stay at the FBI Academy in Quantico, at least for another day or so. In all his years with the Bureau, no single investigation or suspect had intrigued him as much as Lucien Folter had.

He’d ordered a check on Susan Richards’ parents late last night. That was how Hunter knew they were still alive. Her father was now seventy-one and her mother sixty-nine, both retired. Kennedy had also told Hunter that they were still living in the same old house in Boulder City, Nevada, and they were still calling the police departments in Palo Alto and Santa Clara County at least once a month asking for any news.

Kennedy and Doctor Lambert had been following all the interviews through the monitors in the holding cells’ control room. Every once in a while one of them would make a brief comment on something that was said, but mostly they watched in silence. As soon as Kennedy heard Lucien’s instruction of how to get to Susan Richards’ grave behind the house in La Honda, he reached for the phone on the desk in front of him.

‘Get me the Special Agent in charge of our field office in San Francisco . . . ASAP!’

Within seconds Kennedy was speaking to Special Agent Bradley Simmons, a softly spoken man who had been with the FBI for twenty years, nine of those with the San Francisco office. He still had a strong southern Texas accent.

Kennedy had paid intense attention to Lucien’s instructions. He didn’t even need to listen back to the recording or check his notes. He could easily recount word for word.

‘Get in touch with the La Honda Police Department and County Sheriff’s office
only
if you need to, you understand?’ Kennedy said, once Agent Simmons had taken everything down. ‘This is
exclusively
an FBI operation. From what we understand the location is isolated by woods, no neighbors, no one around, that was the main reason why it was chosen, so if there’s no need for you to let anyone else know . . .
don’t let anyone else know
. Get on to it now, and get back to me the second you find anything.’

Kennedy put the phone down and returned his attention to the monitors and the interview just in time to hear Lucien’s last comment. His body tensed and he looked at Doctor Lambert.

‘Did he just say that they
ate
their own daughter?’

Doctor Lambert was sitting before one of the monitors with a disbelieving look on his face. He wanted to play back the recording just to be sure, but he knew he didn’t need to. He knew he’d heard right. Without diverting his attention from the monitor, he nodded slowly.

At that precise moment there was a knock on the door to the control room. The person didn’t wait for a reply, pushing the door open.

‘Director Kennedy,’ the man said, stepping into the room.

Chris Welch was in his early forties with short blond hair that was brushed back off his forehead. He was carrying what looked to be a notebook of some sort.

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir.’ Welch was with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. ‘You asked me to notify you immediately if we came across anything that seemed relevant in any of these books.’ He nodded at the notebook he was holding. It was a regular 8x10.5-inch notebook, with a marbled brown and black hardcover.

All the books and notebooks that were retrieved from Lucien’s house in Murphy had been handed in to the FBI’s BAU. Their task was to scrutinize their content.

‘I thought you’d like to have a look at this.’ Welch Hipped the notebook open and handed it to Kennedy.

Kennedy’s eyes scanned through several pages before he let out a heavy breath.

‘Jesus!’

Fifty-Three

Even with the ventilation system on full blast, the heat down in sublevel five of the Behavioral Science Unit building seemed oppressive. Hunter felt beads of sweat form on the nape of his neck and slowly start to trickle down his back, only to be frozen in place by Lucien’s words. They seemed to have chilled the air like an arctic blast.

‘They what?’ he asked, his voice puncturing the silence that had clouded the air since Lucien last spoke.

Lucien had reached the back wall again and had stopped pacing. His back was toward Hunter and Taylor.

‘Yes, you heard right, Robert,’ he said. ‘Susan’s parents ate her . . .’ He bobbed his head to one side. ‘I mean . . . not all of her, of course, just a few diced-up organs.’

Taylor felt something start to spin circles inside her stomach.

‘How?’ Hunter asked. ‘By then they’d already traveled back to Nevada after her graduation.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Lucien said. ‘I visited them.’

‘You what?’ Taylor this time.

Lucien faced them. ‘I visited them two days after that night . . . took a gift with me . . . a pie I baked myself.’

The circles inside Taylor’s stomach became scary roller coasters.

‘A trip from Stanford to Boulder City in Nevada doesn’t take that long,’ Lucien said to Taylor. ‘Susan had introduced them to us – Robert and I, that is – a year or two before. We met them again after the graduation ceremony. Susan and I had both graduated
cum laude
, and they were very proud of her. Any parent would be.’

It was barely noticeable, but Hunter picked up a sting of pain in Lucien’s last few words.

‘They were a sweet couple,’ Lucien proceeded. ‘Susan was a sweet girl. I decided it was the right thing to do.’

‘The right thing to do?’ Taylor had been knocked off balance so hard that she couldn’t contain herself. She had to ask. ‘How could that be the right thing to do?’

‘You’re the investigator in this case, Agent Taylor. You tell me.’ Lucien sounded condescending. ‘Let me throw you a pop quiz. Let’s say this was a completely different investigation. Let’s say that you didn’t have me in custody. Let’s say that you had a case where you found out that the UNSUB had fed some of his victim’s organs to her family, what would your conclusion be, Agent Taylor? I’m interested to know.’

‘
Play his game. Let him believe he’s winning
.’ Hunter’s words came back to Taylor. She knew that what Lucien wanted was to get under her skin, to shake her confidence. She now understood that every time she lost her temper, Lucien felt like he’d won another battle. ‘
Give him what he wants
.’

‘Because you’re a deranged psychopath?’ she said. ‘Because to you it sounded like something fun to do? Because it fed your “God” delusion?’

Lucien crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Taylor, intrigued. A challenging smile threatened to stretch his lips.

‘That’s a very interesting conclusion, Agent Taylor,’ he replied, sarcasm dripping off his words. ‘Spoken like a true professional. You know, I always found that there’s nothing as entertaining as seeing people feed off their emotions. The problem with it is that it takes away objectivity. It clouds judgment. It opens the door to a world of mistakes. I learned that a long time ago.’

As if he didn’t have a care in the world, Lucien pulled his sleeve up and again looked at his wrist as if he had a watch.

‘Anyway, I’m quite bored of all these questions, and I guess you two have got a lot of work to do now, don’t you? You know . . . bones to dig up, explanations to make, stories to tell.’

Leisurely, Lucien lay down on the bed and interlaced his fingers behind his head.

‘Give Susan’s parents my best for me, will you, Robert? Oh, and by the way, if you’re wondering . . . yes, I did sit down and have dinner with them that night.’

Fifty-Four

Hunter’s fist connected with the punch bag with so much force, it sent it swinging backward almost a whole meter. He’d been hitting one of the 45-kilo leather bags that hung from the ceiling in the BSU building’s boxing gym for a little under an hour. His shirt and shorts were drenched in sweat, which was pouring down from his forehead like rain. His whole body was sore from the grueling workout and he felt mentally exhausted. But he needed some time to think, to try to organize the mess of thoughts inside his head, to disconnect, even if only for a few minutes, and for Hunter, more times than not, heavy exercise did the trick.

Today was
not
one of those times. Frustration ran through his body like bad blood, and no matter how hard Hunter punched that bag or how much weight he lifted, he just couldn’t seem to get rid of it.

‘If I were thirty years younger, I’d spot you with that punch bag,’ Kennedy said, standing at the door to the gym. The place was deserted, except for Hunter. ‘But even so, the way you’re punching that thing, you’d probably put me through the wall. I’m surprised your hand isn’t broken yet.’

The long day and a full pack of cigarettes made Kennedy’s hoarse voice sound even weaker, even more guttural.

Hunter delivered one quick final series of heavy punches to the bag – jab, jab, cross, left hook, cross. The bag swung back and sideways awkwardly, as if it’d had enough and had been finally defeated, before Hunter embraced it into a stop. His breath was tortured, his face a dark shade of pink, the veins on his arms and shoulders swollen from the whole effort and the extra blood flow. Panting, he rested his head against the bag for a moment, taking his time, waiting for his breathing to slowly return to normal. Sweat dripped from his chin onto his shoes and the floor.