Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

‘Emily Evans, thirty-three years old, from New York City. Owen Miller, twenty-six years old, from Cleveland, Ohio. Rafaela Gomez, thirty-nine years old, from Lancaster in Pennsylvania. And Leslie Jenkins, twenty-two years old, from Toronto, Canada. She was an international student back at Yale.’

Lucien paused and drew in another deep breath.

‘Would you like me to tell you how they died as well?’ His lips smirked, but his eyes didn’t.

Hunter had no intentions of sitting in that basement and listening to Lucien boost about how he had tortured and killed every one of his victims.

‘The location, Lucien, nothing more,’ Hunter said.

‘Really?’ Lucien pulled a disappointed face. ‘But it was just starting to get fun. Karen was only my second victim. I got better with each new one, believe me.’ He winked at Taylor suggestively. ‘Much better.’

‘You’re a fucking psycho,’ Taylor couldn’t contain herself anymore. She felt disgusted just looking at him.

Hunter matter-of-factly turned his head to look at her, silently pleading with Taylor not to engage.

‘You think so?’ Lucien seized the moment.

Taylor disregarded Hunter’s look. ‘I know so.’

Lucien looked like he was considering that statement for a moment. ‘You know, Agent Taylor, you really do have a problem with naivety. If you think I’m unique in the urges I have, then you’re unmistakably in the wrong profession.’ He threw a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Every single day thousands, millions of people out there have murderous thoughts. Some start having them very, very young. Every day there are people out there who in their own way consider killing their spouses, their partners, their neighbors, their bosses, their bank managers, the asshole bullies who torment their lives. . the list goes on and on.’

Taylor glanced at Lucien as if his argument didn’t have a leg to stand on.

‘What you’re talking about are spur of the moment, heated thoughts ,’ she returned calmly, emphasizing the word ‘thoughts’. ‘They are understandable, angry psychological reactions to a particular action. It doesn’t mean that any of it will ever materialize.’

‘The location, Lucien,’ Hunter intervened. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why Taylor was still feeding the fire. ‘Where are Karen’s remains?’

Lucien ignored him. Right then, he was more interested in pushing Taylor a little further.

‘Naive, naive, naive, Agent Taylor,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘With every human thought, spur of the moment or not, there’s always a risk that the thought might one day — fed by anger, hurt, disillusion, jealousy. . there are a thousand factors that could help it grow — become much more than just a thought. It’s called the law of probability . I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Your databases are overflowing with such examples. And it happens because anyone, and I mean anyone , independent of upbringing, gender, class, race, beliefs, status or anything else, could, under the right circumstances, become a killer.’

Let it go, Courtney , Hunter pleaded in his head.

Taylor didn’t. ‘You are delusional,’ she replied without thinking.

Her response only amused Lucien more.

‘I don’t think that I’m the one who’s delusional here, Agent Taylor. You see? It’s very easy for anyone to say that he or she will never cross a certain line, when that line is never presented to them.’

Lucien allowed his words to float in the air, giving Taylor a moment to digest them before moving on.

‘If one day they come face to face with such a line, they’ll sing a very different tune. Trust me on this, Agent Taylor. It was one of my experiments — presenting that line to someone who swore she could never take a life.’ Lucien looked at his nails as if considering if they needed trimming or not. ‘And, boy, did she cross it.’

Taylor choked on her own breath.

Hunter stared at him in disbelief.

‘Are you saying that you forced someone to commit murder as an experiment? To prove a point?’ Taylor asked.

Hunter had no doubt that Lucien was very capable of such an act. He was very capable of much more. But Hunter had heard enough, and despite Taylor being the lead agent in this investigation, he lifted a stop hand at her and took over.

‘The location, Lucien. Where in New Haven are those bodies?’

Lucien scratched his beard again while studying Hunter.

‘Of course I’ll tell you, Robert. I promised I would, didn’t I? But I’ve been telling you things for far too long now, and it’s my turn to ask a question again. That was the deal.’

Hunter could feel that coming. ‘Tell us where the bodies are first, then, while the FBI verifies the site, you can ask your question.’

Lucien agreed with an eye movement. ‘I can see your logic, but I’m sure that the FBI is already verifying the four names I’ve just given you.’ He looked up at the CCTV camera on the corner of the ceiling inside his cell and smiled at it. ‘Which means that I’ve already given you something to keep you busy. So now it’s my turn.’

Lucien gathered himself before staring deep into Hunter’s eyes.

‘Tell me about Jessica, Robert.’

Back in the holding cells’ control room, once Director Kennedy heard the four names Lucien had given Hunter and Taylor, he immediately got on the phone to one of his research teams.

‘I need proof that these people are real,’ he said to the lead agent. ‘Social security numbers, driving licenses, whatever.’ He dictated the first three names with the respective ages and home towns, just as Lucien had mentioned. ‘The fourth person — Leslie Jenkins — is from Toronto in Canada. She was an international student at Yale, probably in the early 90s. Check with Yale, and if need be check with the Canadian Embassy in Washington. I also need to know if these people have been reported missing. Get back to me ASAP.’ He quickly put the phone down.

Kennedy remembered once having a conversation with a military weapons expert who had joined the FBI. They had discussed LIN grenades and charges. The weapons expert had showed him actual footage of what happens to a human body when it’s exposed to a blast of supercooled liquid nitrogen. Kennedy had probably seen more dead bodies and attended more violent crime scenes than most people in the entire FBI, but he’d never seen anything quite like that footage.

Kennedy was ready to contact the FBI field office in New Haven, Connecticut, and ask them to dispatch a team to whatever set of directions Lucien was about to give them, when Lucien changed the game and asked Hunter about Jessica.

‘Who’s Jessica?’ Doctor Lambert asked, looking at Kennedy.

Kennedy gave him a delicate headshake. ‘I have no idea.’

While Lucien’s question resonated against the walls, Hunter felt the air being sucked out of his lungs as if somebody had just hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat. He looked at Lucien with narrow eyes, half doubting his ears.

Taylor couldn’t help but let her gaze wander over toward Hunter.

‘I’m sorry?’ Hunter said. No amount of poker face could mask his surprise.

‘Jessica Petersen,’ Lucien repeated, clearly enjoying Hunter’s reaction. The name traveled through the air slowly, like smoke. ‘Tell me about Jessica Petersen, Robert. Who was she?’

Hunter couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lucien, his brain trying hard to understand what was happening.

Police or medical records , he concluded. That’s the only possible way. Somehow Lucien gained access to either police or medical records, or both. Hunter then remembered the feeling he had when Lucien kept on asking him about his mother. Hunter felt as if Lucien already knew all the answers, and he would have, if he’d gotten his hands on police or medical records. The medical examiner’s report would’ve stated that Hunter’s mother had died of a pain-killers’ overdose, and put the time of death sometime in the middle of the night. Finding out that Hunter’s father worked nights, and therefore wasn’t at home, wouldn’t have been very difficult. The only other person in that household at that time was a seven-year-old Robert Hunter. Lucien would’ve had no problem putting together most of what had really happened that night. He just needed Hunter to fill in the gaps.