Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

‘I told you,’ Billy said, nodding at the cutter. ‘This bad boy is the shit. Now comes the easy part.’ He placed the cutter jaws around the exposed shackle and gave it one more firm squeeze.

Click.

This time the cutter didn’t slide off the padlock. Its jaws simply cut through the shackle as if slicing through wet clay.

Everyone looked impressed.

‘I need to cut it again,’ Billy explained. ‘The shackle is too thick and too sturdy for us to be able to twist it out of place and free the lock. I need to cut a chunk off the shackle.’

‘Knock yourself out, Billy,’ Decker said.

Billy repeated the same steps as seconds earlier, this time placing the cutter’s jaws about three centimeters up the shackle from where he’d cut through the first time.

Click.

As the cutters sliced through the metal again, a small piece fell to the ground, leaving a sizable gap on the padlock’s shackle.

‘And Bob’s your uncle,’ Billy announced triumphantly, removing the padlock from the door bolt.

‘Great work, Billy,’ Figueroa said.

Billy stepped away and Figueroa slid the door bolt back and rolled the metal door up. All four of them stood still for a moment, staring into the almost empty, ten feet by ten feet, storage unit. There was nothing there, except a large industrial chest freezer pushed up against the back wall.

‘Thanks, Billy,’ Decker said, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. Figueroa did the same. ‘You can go back now. We’ll call you if we need anything else.’

Billy looked disappointed. ‘Can’t I stay and have a look?’

‘Not this time, Billy.’

They all waited until Billy had rounded the corner before entering the storage unit. Hughes stayed a couple of paces behind both agents.

A low hum that came from the freezer’s motor provided a very unnerving and creepy background soundtrack. There was no padlock or lock on the freezer’s lid.

Figueroa moved closer and studied the freezer for several seconds, checking underneath and behind it as well.

‘Looks OK,’ he said at last.

‘So let’s check inside,’ Decker replied.

Figueroa nodded and lifted the lid open.

They all frowned in almost perfect synchronization as Figueroa, Decker and Hughes looked inside.

‘What exactly are we looking for here, guys?’ Hughes asked in a semi-sarcastic tone. ‘Supplies for an ice-cream parlor?’

All they could see inside the large freezer were stacks of two-liter plastic tubs of ice cream. In fact, they were about three layers high. From the labels they could see on the top layer, they had a rainbow of flavors: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, pistachio, cookies and cream, apple cinnamon, and banana choc-chip.

Decker was still frowning at all the tubs, but Figueroa had a much more concerned look on his face.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he finally said in a deflated breath, reaching for one of the tubs. He picked up a strawberry one.

Hughes and Decker were now frowning at him.

Holding the opaque white ice-cream tub with his left hand, Figueroa slowly pulled the lid undone.

Hughes’ eyes went wide as she saw what was inside it. A second later, she vomited.

Hunter and Taylor were called into Director Adrian Kennedy’s office fifty-five minutes after Kennedy had left them with the report on Megan Lowe and Kate Barker.

The office, which was located on the third floor of the BSU building, was spacious and nicely decorated, without being too imposing. There was an old-fashioned mahogany desk, two dark brown Chesterfield leather armchairs, a furry rug that looked comfortable enough to sleep on, and a huge bookcase with at least one hundred leather-bound volumes. The walls were mostly adorned with framed diplomas, awards and photographs of Kennedy posing next to political and government notables.

Kennedy was sitting behind his desk, his reading glasses high up on his nose, staring at his 27-inch computer screen. ‘Come in,’ he called in response to the door knock.

Taylor pushed the door open and stepped inside. Hunter was just a couple of paces behind her.

‘Don’t sit down,’ Kennedy said, motioning them to come closer and nodding at his screen. ‘We got word from Seattle. Come have a look at this.’

Hunter and Taylor moved past the armchairs and positioned themselves behind Kennedy’s desk. Hunter was to his left, Taylor to his right. The screen showed only Kennedy’s desktop. He had minimized the application he was looking at.

‘About forty minutes ago,’ Kennedy began, ‘two of our agents and a US federal marshal breached the padlock on the storage unit’s door in Seattle. This is what they found inside.’

Kennedy clicked his mouse and brought back the application he had minimized seconds earlier. It was a regular image-viewing program.

‘I received these photographs about five minutes ago,’ he explained.

The first picture on the screen was taken from just outside storage unit 325’s open door. It was a standard, wide-angle ‘crime-scene’ photograph, depicting the whole room. It gave everyone a good idea of the size of the unit. It also indicated how unsuspicious the space looked. Pushed up against the back wall, they could all see the large chest freezer.

Kennedy clicked the mouse again.

The second picture showed the freezer by itself, with its lid closed. Again, nothing suspicious there either.

Another click.

The third photograph was taken from an up/down view angle, showing what the agents saw as they lifted the freezer’s lid.

For a moment, Taylor frowned at all the ice-cream tubs.

‘From now on it gets sick,’ Kennedy said, clicking his mouse again.

The image on the screen was substituted by a close-up snapshot of an agent holding one of the ice-cream tubs in his left hand. Its lid had been pulled open.

Taylor hesitated for a split second while squinting, trying hard to understand what exactly she was looking at. . and then she finally saw it.

‘Oh, Christ,’ she whispered, bringing a hand to her mouth.

Hunter’s stare stayed on the screen.

Frozen inside the ice-cream tub were two pairs of human eyeballs and a pair of human tongues.

It was easy to see why Taylor had struggled to understand the image at first. Due to dehydration and lack of blood, everything had shrunk in size. The eyeballs were on the left of the picture, stuck together like a bunch of grapes. The tongues sat to their right, also stuck together, one on top of the other, creating an odd X shape.

Kennedy gave Hunter and Taylor a few more seconds to study the picture before clicking his mouse again. The next image showed a second ice-cream tub. Inside it was a frozen human hand, severed at the wrist. No fingers. They had all been cut off.

Another click.

A second frozen hand inside an ice-cream tub.

One more click.

A different severed and frozen body part.

Kennedy stopped clicking.

‘It carries on,’ he said. ‘There were sixty-eight ice-cream tubs inside that freezer. Every single one of them holding a frozen body part. Some of them held internal organs too, or parts of it. . heart, liver, stomach. . you get the picture, right?’

Hunter nodded.

‘That section of the self-storage facility in Seattle has been locked down for the time being,’ Kennedy explained. ‘They guaranteed me two, three hours max, just so our forensics team can go over the entire unit and collect the freezer with all the ice-cream tubs. The lab will do a DNA analysis and compare it to the one we’ve got from the severed heads in Lucien’s trunk. Not that I have too much doubt they’ll match.’

Neither Hunter nor Taylor seemed to have any doubt either.