Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

Lucien didn’t seem bothered by Taylor’s sharp comment.

‘Oh, I paid more than enough attention, Agent Taylor. Unfortunately no one can foresee accidents. The only reason I’m sitting here right now is not because I made a mistake, or due to any merit of your own or the organization you work for, but because an unfortunate chain of chance events took place seven days ago. Events that were out of my control. Admit it, Agent Taylor, the FBI had no idea I existed. You weren’t investigating me, any of my aliases, or any of the acts I committed.’

‘We would have eventually got to you,’ Taylor said.

‘But of course you would.’ Lucien grinned confidently. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, I started planning. And the first thing on my list was to find an isolated and anonymous place. Somewhere where I wouldn’t be disturbed. A place where I could take my time.’

‘And you found such a place in La Honda,’ Hunter said.

‘I sure did,’ Lucien confirmed. ‘Just an old, abandoned little house in the middle of the woods. It was close enough to Stanford that it wouldn’t take me long to get there. And the best thing about it was that I could use remote back roads to reach it. No one would spot me.’

Lucien stood up and stretched his powerful frame.

‘The place is still there,’ he said. ‘I visited it not that long ago.’ He didn’t sit back down. ‘You know what? I’ve got a little bit of a headache and I’m getting hungry. So what do you say we all take a break?’ He pulled his sleeve up and looked at his wrist as if he had a watch. ‘Let’s start again in two hours, how does that sound?’

‘Not good, Lucien,’ Hunter said. ‘Susan’s remains, where are they?’

‘Another two hours before you find out won’t make a difference, Robert. It’s not like you have to rush to save her, is it now?’

Outside, the sun was shining bright in yet another cloudless sky. It was the kind of warm and joyful day that made most people smile for no apparent reason, but the magic of the day didn’t seem to reach as far as the BSU building.

Hunter had found an empty meeting room somewhere on the second floor. He was standing by the window, staring out at nothing at all, when Taylor stepped inside and softly closed the door behind her.

‘So there you are.’

Without turning, Hunter checked his watch. It had only been ten minutes since they’d left Lucien in his cell, but to him it felt like hours.

‘Are you all right?’ Taylor asked, stepping closer.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Hunter replied, his voice firm and confident.

Taylor hesitated an instant. ‘Listen, I need to get out of here for a while.’

Hunter turned and looked at her.

‘I need to go outdoors for an hour or so, breathe some fresh air or something before I go back down into that basement.’

Hunter could easily sympathize with her argument.

‘I know a place not very far from here where on a day like this, they’ll have tables outside,’ Taylor added. ‘Their food is great, but if you’re not hungry, their coffee is even better. What do you say we get the hell out of here for a bit?’

She didn’t have to ask twice.

Despite them having had their last meal over four and a half hours earlier, neither Hunter nor Taylor felt like eating. Hunter ordered a simple black coffee, while Taylor went for a double espresso. They were sitting at one of the outside tables at a small Italian cantina-style restaurant in Garrisonville Road, less than fifteen minutes’ drive from the FBI Academy.

Taylor stirred her coffee and watched the thin layer of dark brown foam slowly disappear from the surface. She thought about telling Hunter how sorry she was for what had happened to his mother. She thought about maybe telling him about her own mother, but as she thought better of it she decided that neither subject would benefit anyone. She finished stirring her coffee and placed the spoon down on the saucer.

‘What did Lucien mean when he said that your friend Susan just happened to fit the perfect profile that night?’ she asked.

Hunter was waiting for his coffee to cool down a little. He’d never been one of those people like Carlos Garcia, his partner back at the LAPD, who could pretty much pour boiling hot coffee into a cup, give it five seconds, and then drink it down as if it were just lukewarm.

Hunter raised his eyes at Taylor.

‘Lucien and Susan, had both just graduated from Stanford,’ he said. ‘For Susan, her college days were over. She didn’t need to be in class anymore. She had no job, no boss, no boyfriend, no husband, no “punching the clock” anywhere, so to speak. Her family lived in Nevada. No one was expecting to hear from Susan again soon, especially because she had already let everyone know that after graduation, she had her mind set on traveling.’

‘So, if she disappeared,’ Taylor said, picking up on Hunter’s line of thought, ‘people would’ve just assumed that she’d really acted on her promise of traveling. No reason for anyone to get worried, at least not for a while.’

‘Exactly,’ Hunter agreed. ‘The circumstances of that particular moment in time made her the best possible kind of victim. The anonymous kind. The unmissed. And Lucien knew that very well.’

A tall and young-looking waitress, with her long dark hair pulled back into a fishtail braid, stepped up to their table.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to have a look at the menu?’ she asked with a hint of an Italian accent. ‘I can recommend the gnocchi with the chef’s special cheese, tomato and basil sauce.’ She gave them a charming smile. ‘It’s so good you’ll want to lick the plate.’

Gnocchi was Hunter’s favorite Italian dish, but he still had no appetite.

‘Wow, that does sound very tempting,’ he said, matching her smile. ‘But I’m not very hungry today. Maybe another time.’ He nodded at Taylor.

‘Yeah, I’m not hungry either. Just the coffee for me today, thanks.’

‘No problem,’ the waitress said. She paused. Looked back at them. ‘I hope you guys work things out,’ she added kindly. ‘You look good together.’ She gave them one last sympathetic smile before moving over to take the order of a small group sitting just a few tables away.

‘Is that the vibe we’re giving out?’ Taylor asked once the waitress was out of earshot. ‘That we’re a couple trying to work things out?’

Hunter had an amused smile on his lips. He shrugged. ‘I guess.’

For an instant, Taylor almost looked embarrassed, but in a flash her game face was back on. ‘Do you really believe that Susan was never part of any of Lucien’s violent fantasies?’ she asked. ‘Do you believe she really was his first ever victim? And that he didn’t rape her?’

Hunter leaned back on his chair. ‘Why do you think he would lie about any of that?’

‘I’m not sure. I guess that what I’m trying to understand is — if Susan really was Lucien’s first ever victim, and he’d never had any “violent fantasies” about her, how come he went for her and not someone else. . a stranger?’

Hunter frowned. ‘I thought we just covered that a minute ago.’

‘No, I’m not talking about that particular night, or even that week, Robert. What I’m talking about is that despite the circumstances back then, giving Susan the quality of “perfect victim”, unless it was all an act, she and Lucien were supposed to be “friends”. From what he said, he even had some romantic interest in her, which suggests some sort of emotional attachment.’

Hunter’s coffee had cooled down enough for him to have a healthy sip. ‘And you’re thinking, it’s got to be a lot harder for a perpetrator to kidnap, partially skin, and then kill someone he knew, someone who was supposedly a friend, someone who he had a crush on.’