Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

‘Who was she?’ Lucien asked again, coolly.

Hunter blinked the blur of confusion away. ‘Someone I knew years ago,’ he finally replied in the same tone.

‘C’mon, Robert,’ Lucien shot back. ‘I know you can do better than that. And you know you can’t lie to me.’

Their stares battled for a moment.

‘She’s someone I used to date when I was young,’ Hunter said.

‘How young?’

‘Very. I met her just after I finished my PhD.’

Lucien sat back on his bed and stretched his legs in front of him, getting as comfortable as he could. ‘How long did you date her for?’

‘Two years.’

‘Were you in love?’ Lucien asked, tilting his head slightly to one side.

Hunter hesitated. ‘Lucien, what does this have to do with—’

‘Just answer the question, Robert.’ Lucien cut him short. ‘I can ask whatever I like, relevant or not, that was the deal, and right now I would like you to tell me more about Jessica Petersen. Were you in love with her?’

Taylor shifted on her chair.

Hunter’s nod was subtle. ‘Yes, I was in love with Jessica.’

‘Did you make plans to marry her?’

Silence.

Lucien’s eyebrows arched, indicating that he was waiting for an answer.

‘Yes,’ Hunter said. ‘We were engaged.’

For the briefest of moments Taylor heard Hunter’s voice croak.

‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Lucien commented. ‘So what went wrong? I know that you aren’t married or divorced. So, what happened? How come you never married the woman you were in love with? Did she leave you for someone else?’

Hunter gambled. ‘Yes, she found someone else. Someone better.’

Lucien shook his head and noisily sucked his teeth with every head movement. ‘Are you sure you want to test me again, Robert? Are you sure you want to lie to me? Because that’s what you’re doing right now.’ Lucien’s look and voice became hard as steel. ‘And I really don’t like that.’

Taylor kept a steady face, but her eyes looked lost.

‘You know what?’ Hunter said, lifting both of his hands up. ‘I’m not talking about this.’

‘I think you’d better,’ Lucien countered.

‘I don’t think so,’ Hunter replied in the same conservative tone a psychologist would use to address a patient. ‘I was brought here because I thought I’d be helping an old friend. Someone I thought I knew. When they showed me your picture back in LA just a few days ago, I was sure that there had been some sort of bad mistake. I agreed to fly over here because I thought I could help the FBI clear all this up and prove you’re not the man they thought you were. I was wrong. I can’t help because there’s nothing to clear up. You are who you are, and you did what you did. Unfortunately, no one can change that. But you said so yourself — there’s no rush to any of this because there’s no one we can save — and when I leave, the FBI will carry on interrogating you about the location of all your victims’ remains.’

Hunter peeked at Taylor. A frown had creased her forehead after she heard the word ‘leave’.

‘They’ll just use different methods,’ Hunter continued. ‘Less conventional ones. I’m sure you know what’s coming. It might take a few days longer, but trust me, Lucien, in the end you will talk.’

Hunter got up, ready to leave.

Lucien looked as calm as he’d ever looked.

‘I would really suggest that you sit back down, old friend, because you’ve misquoted me.’

Hunter paused.

‘I didn’t say that there was no rush to any of this. I said that there was no rush in finding Susan’s remains, because you couldn’t save her anyway.’

Something in the way Lucien phrased his words made Hunter’s heartbeat stumble, pick itself up, and then stumble again.

‘And I’ve never said that you couldn’t save anyone. Because I think there’s still time.’ A tense pause as Lucien looked at his wrist, consulting his invisible watch once again. ‘I haven’t killed all the victims I’ve kidnapped, Robert.’ Lucien accompanied those words with a look so cold and devoid of feelings, it could’ve belonged to a cadaver. ‘One is still alive.’

Hidden location.

Three days earlier.

She coughed and spluttered awake, or at least she thought she was awake. She couldn’t really tell anymore. Her reality was as terrifying as her worst nightmares. Confusion surrounded her twenty-four hours a day, as her brain seemed to be in a constant state of haziness — half numb, half awake.

Due to the lack of sunlight, she had lost track of time a while ago. She knew she’d been locked in this stinking hell-hole for a long time now. To her it felt like years, but it could’ve been just months, or even weeks. Time just trickled by, and no one was counting.

She could still remember the night she met him in that bar on the east side of town. He was older than her, but charming, attractive, well educated, very intelligent, funny, and really knew how to compliment a woman. He made her feel special. He made her feel like she could light up the sky. At the end of the night, he put her in a cab and didn’t offer, or even suggest joining her. He was very polite and gentleman like. He did ask her for her phone number, though.

She had to admit that she was quite excited when he called just a few days later and asked her if she would like to go out for dinner with him. With a huge smile on her face she accepted.

He picked her up that evening, around 7:00 p.m., but they never made it to a restaurant. As soon as she entered his car and buckled up, she felt something sting the side of her neck. He’d acted so fast she didn’t even see his hand move. The next thing she could recall was waking up in this cold and damp room.

The room was exactly twelve paces by twelve paces. She’d counted and recounted it many times. The walls were crude and made of brick and mortar, the floor of rough cement. The door, which sat at the center of one of the walls, was made of metal with a rectangular, lockable viewing slot about five feet from the floor. Like a prison door. There was a thin and dirty mattress pushed up against the back wall. There was a blanket that smelled of wet dog. No pillow. On one corner there was a plastic bucket she was told to use as a toilet. There were no windows, and the weak, yellowish bulb locked inside a metal-mesh box at the center of the ceiling was on 24/7.

Since she’d been taken into captivity, she’d only seen her kidnapper a handful of times, when he would enter her cell to deliver food and water, a new roll of rough toilet paper, and to swop her toilet bucket for a clean one.

So far, he hadn’t touched or hurt her. He never said much either. She would scream, beg, plead, try to talk, but he barely ever replied to her. On one occasion, his simple physical response scared her so much she wet herself. Out of pure fear, her subconscious mind kept on urging her to ask him what he wanted with her, what he would do to her. So one day, she gave in and asked him. He didn’t reply with words. He simply looked at her, and in his eyes she saw something she’d never seen before — unadulterated evil.

He would bring her food and water, sometimes daily, but not always. Though she had completely lost the concept of time, she could still tell that some of the intervals between rations were way too long. Certainly, way over a day or two.

Once, just after the third or fourth food delivery, she had waited for the door to open and tried surprise-attacking him with all the strength she had in her, clawing at his face with her chipped nails. But it seemed like he’d been waiting for it to happen all along, and before she was able to put even a small scratch on him, he punched her stomach so hard, she immediately doubled over and puked. She spent the rest of that day lying on the floor in the fetus position, contorted in pain, her abdomen sore and bruised.