Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

‘So now that his credibility is more than established,’ Taylor cut in, ‘why not just ask him for the notebooks? If you’re right, and the idea from the beginning was for the Bureau to get those books, he should be forthcoming with the information.’

‘No, he won’t be,’ Hunter said. ‘Not yet.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because he’s not done yet.’

Hunter managed only three and a half erratic hours of sleep. He was up by 5:00 a.m. By 6:30, he’d already been for a five-mile run, and at 7:30, he and Taylor were back down in sublevel five.

Like the previous day, Lucien was sitting at the edge of his bed, right leg crossed over his left one, hands clasped together and resting on his lap, calmly waiting for them.

Hunter, Taylor and Kennedy had decided the night before that pushing Lucien to talk about the notebooks now, if they indeed existed, wasn’t the best strategy. His victims’ remains were still the priority.

‘I was wondering if you’d still be here or not, Robert,’ Lucien said as his interrogators took their seats. ‘I thought that maybe you’d want to see Susan’s remains for yourself. I thought that you might be halfway to Nevada to see her parents by now.’ He studied Hunter’s expression but got nothing. ‘You did find her, didn’t you?’ The question sounded unconcerned.

‘We found her,’ Taylor confirmed.

‘Ah, but of course,’ Lucien said as he’d just remembered something. ‘Tests and more tests. You know that it’s her, don’t you, Robert?’

No reaction.

‘But the FBI won’t move a muscle until they have lab confirmation. It’s protocol. Contacting her parents without being one hundred percent sure that you have Susan’s remains is careless, and potentially very damaging for both sides. That’s very understandable.’

‘Are there any other victims buried in the vicinity of the house in La Honda, Lucien?’ Hunter asked.

Lucien smiled. ‘I did think about it. It’s a great location. Hidden from everything. No neighbors. No one to sneak up on you.’ He shook his head. ‘But no. Susan was the only one in La Honda. This is a huge country, Robert. Similar places aren’t that hard to find. Anyway, after Susan it took me a long time to get my shit together.’ He cracked the knuckles on his hands against each other. ‘We’ve all heard and read about the “cooling-off” period between serial murders, but let me tell you. . it can be one hell of a dark time.’

Hunter wasn’t very interested in hearing Lucien’s personal accounts of how he felt, and though he knew Lucien would want to stretch every interview as much as he could, he still pushed for the information he wanted.

‘So give us the name and the location of another victim, Lucien.’

Lucien carried on as if he’d never heard the question.

‘On the days, weeks, months, after Susan, as the “killing drug” effect wore off —’ he had drawn quotations marks in the air with his fingers — ‘I was as sure as I could be that I’d never do it again. But as time went by, all the urges started to creep up on me again. And they came back stronger, more demanding. I missed the transcendent high. I missed the feeling of power that I had that night with Susan. And I knew that my body as well as my brain were dying to experience it again.’

‘How long was it?’ Taylor asked. ‘The cooling-off period? How long between Susan Richards and your second victim?’

‘Seven hundred and nine days.’

Lucien didn’t even have to think about the answer. The number was etched in his brain. Every detail about everything he’d done was etched in his brain.

‘I was already at Yale,’ he proceeded. ‘Her name was Karen Simpson.’

Hunter frowned.

Lucien looked at him and nodded. ‘That’s right, Robert, Karen was real, with all the tattoos, the lip and nose piercings, the left ear stretched to a full centimeter, the Bettie Page-style fringe. . I met her at Yale, just like I told you, but I did lie about something. Karen was never a drug addict. That was just something I made up because it fit the story I wanted to tell you a couple of days ago. That’s something I learned along the way. If you’re going to lie, then use as many true facts as you can — real people, names, descriptions, locations, time frames or whatever. They’re easier to remember, and if you need to retell your story at a later date, you reduce your chances of being caught out.’

Hunter knew the theory.

‘Like I told you before, Karen was a very sweet woman. She was also doing a PhD in psychology. We used to study together. In fact. .’ Lucien gave them a goofy smile, one that said, ‘I know something that you don’t.’ ‘Both of you have already made her acquaintance.’ He gave Hunter and Taylor a challenging look.

‘The other framed tattoos down in that basement,’ Hunter said.

‘That’s right, Robert,’ Lucien agreed. ‘The cranes.’

One of the framed human skin pieces found in Lucien’s basement had a colored tattoo of a pair of cranes. The design had been taken from a painting called Cranes on a Snowy Pine , by the artist Katsushika Hokusai.

‘She had it tattooed on her upper right arm,’ Lucien said. ‘Now, despite Karen being only my second victim, I decided to get adventurous.’

There was something in the way Lucien phrased his last words that seemed to freeze the air for an instant, as if evil had been waiting around the corner all this time, and was just about to make its presence felt.

‘As I’ve said,’ Lucien continued, ‘the urges started coming back to me a few months after I left Stanford, but they didn’t become unbearable until much later. At first, I thought I could deal with them. I thought that they’d be easy to curb, but just like every repeat offender eventually finds out, I was wrong.’

Lucien used both of his hands to rub the back of his neck while closing his eyes and tilting his head back. After several silent seconds, he breathed out.

‘There was a difference this time. Like I said before, I had never looked at Susan as a potential victim until the night it all happened. This time, I knew Karen would be the one. I’d known it from the day I met her.’

‘What guided you toward that decision?’ Taylor asked. ‘What made you choose Karen?’

Lucien pulled an impressed face. ‘Very good question, Agent Taylor. Looks like you’re learning.’

The tattoos , Hunter thought. Even if physically, Karen didn’t resemble Susan at all, the tattoos would’ve reminded Lucien of her. And as he’d already admitted, he was chasing the same high. A new victim also carrying large tattoos meant that Lucien would’ve been able to partially skin her just as he’d done with Susan. By repeating the same methods, the same MO, most perpetrators believe they can achieve the same feelings and highs as they have in previous murders.

Lucien looked as if this was the first time he had actually thought about the reasons behind choosing Karen.

‘I guess the first thing that guided me toward Karen were her tattoos.’

Hunter didn’t even blink.

‘You’ve got to remember that large, colored tattoos weren’t as popular twenty-three years ago as they are now,’ Lucien said. ‘Especially on women. They reminded me of Susan.’ His words were dry as bone. They seemed to suck all the moisture out of the air. ‘I began having dreams about them. I began fantasizing about skinning those drawings off Karen’s body just like I’d done to Susan. And that was when I realized that another theory was proving true.’

Lucien nodded at Hunter as if they’d had some sort of secret bet all those years ago about which theories would prove true and which ones wouldn’t.