Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

I stood by the door, staring at her asleep in bed for a little while. I was still buzzing from cutting Jed’s throat. How can anyone, high on his favorite drug, walk away when some more is so freely offered to him?

I felt my body start to tingle again, and I felt the trigger being pulled inside my head for the second time in the same night. I decided that I wouldn’t fight the urges anymore, so I carefully and quietly walked into the room and lay in bed beside her. I could still feel the warmth from where Jed had lay.

I didn’t move for twenty-two minutes. I just lay there, watching Jed’s girlfriend asleep, waiting, inhaling the scent from her hair, feeling the warmth of her body so close to mine.

Then she moved.

She rolled over and threw her arm over my chest in a sleepy hug, like couples do. Her eyes remained closed. Her hand fell on my shoulder, and I couldn’t contain myself. As softly as I could, I took her hand, brought it over to my lips, and began kissing and licking her fingers. They smelled and tasted of hand cream.

I guess she enjoyed the kissing and nibbling, because she moaned quietly and slowly threw her leg over me. As it settled over my body, subconsciously and understandably, she missed Jed’s body volume. That’s what she was used to. The nerves in her leg registered it, but it took a few seconds for the signals to be decoded by her drowsy brain. As they did, she frowned even before her eyes blinked open.

The light in the room wasn’t great. All she had to go by was the full moon, now low in the sky outside the open window on the east wall. My face was half obscured by shadows.

I guess I hadn’t washed myself as well as I thought I had, because at that exact moment, a drop of Jed’s blood dripped from my hair onto my forehead, ran down over my eyebrow, and onto the white pillowcase.

The woman blinked again. This time a nervous, full-of-fear kind of blink. Her brain, registering that something wasn’t right and sensing danger, became awake fast. She jerked her head back a couple of inches so her eyes could better focus, and as they did, fear froze them in place.

All she saw was a stranger with his clothes soaked in blood, lying where her boyfriend was supposed to be, staring straight into her eyes, with two of her fingers stuck into his mouth.

Hunter stopped reading and closed the notebook.

An uncomfortable Special Agent Taylor took a step back and finished her Scotch in one gulp.

‘Where are the others?’ Hunter asked, nodding at the notebook.

‘That’s the only one,’ Kennedy answered. ‘All the other notebooks found in the house in Murphy contained nothing. A few drawings and sketches but nothing else. Nothing like this.’

‘But there must be others.’ Hunter sounded a little confused. ‘Are you sure they’ve checked through all the books and notebooks they found?’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Kennedy confirmed. ‘Lucien must’ve kept them somewhere else, or even scattered around several different locations. That wouldn’t surprise me, and that’s something else you must find out during the course of your interviews.’

Hunter’s stare hardened.

Kennedy read it. Tiredness began really showing in his hoarse voice, which was now starting to croak.

‘Look, Robert, there’s no way on earth I approve of what Lucien has done, but if you’re right about him writing down everything he’s done and experienced into notebooks, then it’s already done, and it cannot be undone . If these notebooks do indeed exist, then we might as well have them. For one, they’ll constitute evidence in a serial murder case that I have no doubt will go down in history. Two, the psychological and behavioral knowledge, the understanding that we’ll gain from those notes and texts, may prove to be a game changer in our fight against extreme violent repeat offenders. As a law-enforcement officer and as a psychologist, you know that full well, Robert.’

Hunter had no argument to come back with.

‘Nothing inside the storage facility in Seattle?’ Taylor asked.

‘Nothing but the chest freezer and the severed body parts,’ Kennedy confirmed.

Everyone appeared to have gone into thinking mode for a beat.

‘I checked with the Scott County Sheriff’s Department in Mississippi,’ Kennedy moved on. ‘Jed Davis and his girlfriend, Melanie Rose, were butchered inside the house they shared just outside Forest City twenty-one years ago. They were found by her mother who had dropped by with a homemade apple pie about two days after the incident. No one was ever arrested.’ He paused for effect and to catch his breath. ‘According to the medical examiner, Melanie Rose’s head was hacked off with a kitchen knife. The head was left on the dining table in the living room. That was the first thing her mother saw when she looked in through the window.’ Kennedy looked at Hunter, the expression on his face as serious as a heart attack. ‘He killed her just because she was home, Robert. He killed her for pure pleasure.’

Hunter closed his eyes and pressed his lips against each other.

‘You read the accounts,’ Kennedy added. ‘They were written the day after he butchered them. The narrative and the words are clear and concise, not hysterical or even nervous. We all know that that spells total emotional detachment. As you’ve said, his accounts are like a study into what goes on inside the mind of a vicious killer — how he thinks, how he feels, what drives him — prior, during, and after each attack. Call me selfish, Robert, but I want that knowledge. We need that knowledge. If those books exist, I want them.’

Hunter walked over to the window and had a look outside. Night and rainy clouds had darkened the sky, but it somehow made him see things clearer, understand something that until now he hadn’t. And he cursed himself for not having seen it earlier.

‘I guess you will have them, Adrian,’ he said. ‘Because Lucien wants you to have them.’

Taylor frowned and Kennedy threw Hunter a skewed look.

‘What do you mean?’

‘This was all planned,’ Hunter said.

Taylor and Kennedy’s confused looks intensified.

‘What was all planned, Robert?’ Taylor asked.

‘Being caught.’ Hunter turned to face them. ‘Well, maybe the timing wasn’t one hundred percent there. Maybe Lucien would’ve liked to carry on doing what he’s been doing for a while longer. He could never have predicted the accident in Wyoming that led us to him, but I think that he was always counting on being caught one day.’

Kennedy took just a few seconds to board Hunter’s thought ship. ‘Because what’s the point in writing an encyclopedia on killing and behavioral motivation if no one will read it. . or study it, right?’

Hunter agreed in silence.

Taylor thought about it for a second but wasn’t as convinced. ‘Yeah, but then why would he want to be caught? He could’ve arranged for the books to be delivered to the FBI, or he could’ve sent them in anonymously, or something.’

‘It wouldn’t have had the same effect,’ Hunter disagreed.

‘Robert is right.’ Kennedy backed him up. ‘The notebooks on their own wouldn’t have had the same “weight” as if we’d caught the perpetrator. It would’ve taken us a lot longer to follow it up because there would always be doubts as to whether the books were a hoax or not. Having Lucien in custody. . the interviews, him guiding us to the remains of his victims’ bodies. . it all adds to the whole credibility of the notebooks.’

Kennedy paused as a new realization finally hit him. He looked at Hunter. ‘And that’s why he asked for you.’

Hunter breathed out and nodded.

‘Because you add even more credibility to Lucien’s character,’ Kennedy said. ‘You went to college together. You shared a dorm. You were the best of friends. You know how intelligent he is and he knew that you could vouch for that.’ He walked over to the other side of his desk. ‘I bet that he’s counting on you remembering the conversation you had about the “killing encyclopedia” idea. He knew you would remember Susan Richards. You were always a major part of his plan, Robert.’