Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

Susan breathed in and the air seemed to travel into her nose in lumps.

‘But never on you,’ Lucien moved on. ‘I thought about picking up a prostitute many times. As I know you’ll remember from our criminology classes, they are easy targets — approachable, accessible and, most of the time, anonymous.’ He shrugged indifferently. ‘But unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way. I never really felt ready for it before, but tonight I felt different. I guess I can say that tonight I felt my first real “killer’s” impulse.’

Tears welled up in Susan’s eyes. To her, the air inside the room became denser, even more polluted. . almost unbreathable.

‘I felt this amazing drive to simply do it and not think of the consequences,’ Lucien said.

His eyes shone with a new purpose. Susan saw it, and that sent a new current of panic traveling through her body.

‘So I decided not to fight it,’ he proceeded, moving a step closer. ‘I decided to act on it. So I did. And here we are.’

Susan tried to calm her breathing, tried to think, but everything still felt like a horrible dream. But if it were, why wasn’t she waking up?

‘Lucien. .’ she said, her voice rasping, catching on her swollen throat, ‘. . I don’t kno—’

‘No, no, no,’ Lucien interrupted, shaking his left index finger at her. ‘There’s nothing you can say. Don’t you see, Susan? There’s no turning back now.’ He stretched his arms out to his sides, calling attention to the room. ‘We’re here now. The process has started. The floodgates are open, or any cliché sentence you’d care to come up with. But no matter what, this is happening.’

That was when Susan noticed the look in Lucien’s eyes — distant and ice cold, like a man without a soul. And it paralyzed her.

Her fear filled Lucien with excitement. He was expecting that excitement to conflict with something inside of him — maybe morals, or emotions. . he wasn’t quite sure what, but something. That conflict never came. He felt nothing but exhilaration to be finally doing something he’d fantasized about for so long.

Susan wanted to speak, to scream, but her panic-frozen lips wouldn’t move. Instead, her eyes begged him for mercy. . mercy that never came.

Without any warning, Lucien exploded forward, and in a flash his hands were on Susan’s neck.

Her eyes went wide with terror, her neck muscles tightened as her body tried to defend itself from the attack, her jaw dropped open, gasping for air, but her brain knew that the battle was already lost. Lucien’s thumbs were already compressing Susan’s airway, while his large palms were applying enough pressure to the carotid arteries and jugular veins to cause significant occlusion, and interfere with the flow of blood in her neck.

When Susan’s body started kicking and wriggling on the chair, Lucien placed most of his body weight on her lap to keep her steady. That was when he felt something collapse under his thumbs. He knew then he had just crushed her larynx and trachea. Susan would be dead in seconds, but Lucien never stopped squeezing, at least not then. He carried on until he had fractured the hyoid bone in her neck, all the while his mad and frantic-looking eyes locked on to Susan’s dying ones.

Hunter sat in silence. Not once did he interrupt Lucien’s account of events, which was conveyed coldly and without sentiment, but all throughout it Hunter fought to keep his emotions in check.

Taylor had also listened to everything in silence, no interruptions, but she found herself shifting in her chair at least a couple of times. Every tiny nervy movement she made seemed to please and amuse Lucien more and more.

‘Before you ask,’ Lucien said, looking at Hunter, ‘there was no sexual gratification. I did not touch Susan in that way.’ He shrugged. ‘Truth be told, she was never supposed to be my first. She was never supposed to be a victim at all. She was never part of the thousands of fantasies I had before that day. It was just very unfortunate that it happened that way.’

‘Thousands?’ Taylor asked.

Lucien smiled. ‘Please don’t be so naive, Agent Taylor. Do you think that people like me just suddenly decide to start killing and that’s that? We’re ready to go out the next day and pick our first victim?’ He shook his head sarcastically. ‘People like me fantasize about hurting others for a long time, Agent Taylor. Some might start fantasizing when kids, some a lot later in life, but we all do, and we do it all the time. Me, I guess I can say that my fascination with death started very early. You see, my father was a great hunter. He used to take me hunting up on the mountains in Colorado, and there was something about waiting, stalking, and looking straight into the animal’s eyes just before pulling the trigger that captivated me.’

Lucien scratched his chin while regarding Hunter. Then he smiled.

‘Look at you, Robert. I can practically hear your brain working. The psychologist in you already starting to make theoretical connections between my early hunting days and the killer I became.’ He laughed. ‘Before you ask, I didn’t wet the bed when I was a kid, and I never liked setting fire to anything.’

Lucien was referring to the Macdonald triad: a psychology-based theory that suggests that a set of three behavioral individualities — animal cruelty, obsession with fire setting, and persistent bedwetting past the age of five — if all are present together while young, can be associated with violent tendencies later in life, particularly homicidal behavior. Though studies have shown that statistically no significant links between the triad and violent offenders have been found, if the triad is split, animal cruelty is by far the individuality that had been proven to manifest itself in the early lives of a great number of apprehended serial killers. Hunter was well aware of that.

Lucien used his index finger to pick at something that was stuck between his two front teeth. ‘Well, knock yourself out, old buddy. Analyze what you like, but I’m sure I will surprise you.’

‘You already have.’

The edges of Lucien’s lips curved up smugly.

‘Despite my hunting days,’ he continued, ‘it was during my first year in high school that I started having dreams.’

Interest grew across Taylor’s face.

‘In these dreams I wasn’t hunting. I was hurting people. Sometimes people I knew, sometimes people I had never seen before. . just random creations of my imagination. They were very violent, and supposedly scary dreams, but they filled me with excitement, they made me feel good, so good that I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want them to stop. . and that was when I started fantasizing during the day, while wide-awake. The star role in these. .’ Lucien searched the air around him for the right words: ‘. . let’s say, “intense fantasies” of mine, usually belonged to people I disliked. . teachers, school bullies, some family members. . but not always.’ He paused and made a ‘whatever’ face. ‘Anyway, Susan was never one of them. She was never part of any of my violent fantasies or dreams. She just happened to fit the perfect profile that night.’

Lucien stood up, crossed over to the washbasin and refilled his cup with water.

‘That was the real reason I wanted to study psychology and criminal behavior,’ he continued, returning to the edge of the bed. ‘To try to understand what was going on in my head. Why I had these violent fantasies swimming around in here.’ He tapped his right temple with the tip of his index finger. ‘Why I enjoyed them so much, and if there was anything I could do to get rid of them.’ He chuckled. ‘But wouldn’t you know it? College had the adverse effect. The more I studied and the more theories I read about how psychologists believed the mind of a killer worked, the more intrigued I became.’ Lucien paused and had a sip of water. ‘I wanted to test them.’