Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

Kennedy shrugged and pursed his lips in reply. He walked over to his desk, opened the top right-hand drawer and pulled out a notebook. It was the same notebook Special Agent Chris Welch had handed him in the holding cells’ observation room earlier.

Hunter immediately recognized the notebook as one of those he and Special Agent Taylor had seen in Lucien’s basement.

‘Unfortunately, you might be right, Robert,’ Kennedy said. ‘Because we found this.’

As if it were something he’d been dreading for years, Hunter took the notebook from Kennedy’s hands and flipped open its cover.

Taylor moved to Hunter’s side.

On the first page all they saw was a crude, black-and-white pencil sketch of a female face, screaming, contorted in agony.

Hunter’s eyes left the page and moved to Kennedy.

The BSU Director gestured for Hunter to carry on.

Hunter turned to the second page. No more drawings, just plain handwritten text. Hunter immediately recognized Lucien’s handwriting.

He began reading:

I guess my head is starting to change. At first, after every kill, I was overwhelmed by intense feelings of guilt, as I expected I would be. Sometimes for months. I came close to turning myself in many times. Many times I promised myself I’d never do it again. But as time went by and the guilty feeling began to lessen, slowly and very steadily, the desire to do it all again would come back. I wanted it to come back. With every victim, my guilt phase grew shorter and shorter, to the point that they are now almost non-existent — a couple of days long, if that.

There’s no doubt that my mind has adapted. Murder has become something that feels natural to me now. When I’m out, I often look around, and as my eyes settle on someone in a bar, on a train, on the streets. . wherever I am, I find myself thinking of how easily I could kill anyone. How much I could make them scream. How much pain I could inflict before I actually kill them. And those thoughts excite me more than ever.

Getting rid of these thoughts has become harder and harder, but the truth is, I don’t want to get rid of them. I now understand that killing can indeed become a very powerful drug. More powerful than any drug I’ve ever tried. And I am completely hooked. But despite my addiction, one thing I’ve learnt is that I need some sort of trigger to finally push me over the edge.

That trigger can be anything — a certain physical type that matches a specific look, the way someone talks or looks at me, the way someone dresses, the scent they’re wearing, an action they take, a mannerism they have. . anything. I don’t know it until I see it.

I saw it again last night.

Hunter flipped the page but stopped reading to look at Kennedy again. He had his hands tucked deep inside his trouser pockets. His saggy cheeks seemed to have gained more weight in the past few days, and the dark circles under his eyes had taken an even more morbid appearance. His gaze was locked on the notebook in Hunter’s hands.

Hunter went back to the words on the pages:

It was late. I had just ordered my third double Scotch. I wasn’t looking for anything or anyone. I just felt like getting drunk, that’s all. Actually, I felt like getting obliterated. It was by chance that I found myself in Forest City, Mississippi. I hadn’t booked into a motel or anything. I figured I’d just get hammered, pass out in my car outside in the parking lot, wake up sometime the next day and be on my way.

But things didn’t happen that way.

I was sitting at the far end of the bar, keeping to myself. It was a slow night with not many customers. The barman tried to be friendly and start a conversation, but I was curt enough that he quickly got the hint.

As the bartender poured me my next drink, a new face walked into the bar. He was big, a lot bigger than me — a mixture of muscle and greasy fat. He was taller too, by at least three to four inches. The bartender called him Jed.

Jed’s hair was cut so short I wondered why he didn’t just shave it all off. He had a jagged half-moon scar on the underside of his chin, clearly the result of someone taking the rear end of a broken bottle to his face. His nose had also been broken more than once, and his right ear looked a little out of shape, as if it’d been smashed against his skull. It didn’t take someone with a lot of brainpower to know that Jed liked to get himself into fights.

He took a seat at the bar, four stools to my left, and as he did, two other customers who were at the tables behind us got up and left.

It didn’t look like Jed was a very popular guy either.

He stank of cheap booze and stale sweat.

‘Gi’me a fucking beer, Tom,’ he called, his voice dragging a little. His pupils were the size of dinner plates, so he was definitely loaded on something heavier than just alcohol.

‘C’mon, Jed.’ The barman hesitated, keeping his voice even. ‘It’s late, and you’ve certainly had enough for one night.’

Jed’s Bulldog brow creased even further.

‘Don’t fucking tell me I’ve had enough, Tom.’

His voice grew louder by a few decibels, and another customer sneaked out the door.

‘I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough. Now gi’me a fucking beer before I shove one up your pussy little ass.’

Tom grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge, unscrewed its top and placed it on the bar in front of Jed.

Jed took it and swallowed half of it down in three large gulps.

I didn’t realize I was staring until Jed turned to me.

‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ he said, pushing his beer bottle to one side.

‘Are you some kind of fag?’

I didn’t answer him, and still didn’t look away.

‘I asked you a question, fag.’

Jed took another swig of his beer.

‘You like what you see, fag?’ He lifted his right arm and flexed his bicep like a bodybuilder before blowing me a kiss.

I was hypnotized by that sack of shit that called himself Jed.

‘C’mon, Jed,’ the bartender tried to intervene, clearly foreseeing what was to come. ‘Let it go, man. The guy is just trying to have a quiet drink.’

He looked at me with a face that said — ‘Dude, please just go. You don’t want this trouble, trust me.’

I didn’t move. I probably wasn’t even blinking.

‘Shut the fuck up, Tom,’ Jed said, pointing a finger at him, but looking at me. ‘I want to know why this fag likes looking at me so much. Do you want to fuck a real man tonight? Is that it, fag? Would you like a piece of this?’ Jed used both hands to point to his massive gut.

My eyes slowly ran the length of his body, and that seemed to piss him off way past his limit. His jaw locked in anger. His face became even redder, and he stood up from his stool threateningly.

And that was it.

That was the trigger.

It wasn’t his obnoxious way, or his smell, or the name calling, or the fact that he was so damn ugly he probably had to sneak up on his mirror. It wasn’t even that he didn’t allow me to get drunk in peace. It was the fact that he thought he could assert his superiority over me that did it. That pushed me over the edge.

Right there and then, I knew Jed would die that night.

Hunter stopped reading and looked at Kennedy.

Even though he was looking at the words upside down, Kennedy had been following Hunter’s eyes and he knew exactly where he’d paused.

‘Read on,’ he said. ‘There’s a twist.’

I didn’t face up to Jed. Not there. I wasn’t about to get into a fistfight with him in a public place. That would’ve been way too reckless.

I placed thirty dollars on the bar to cover my drinks, got up and took a couple of steps back.