Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

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.’

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!’

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.’