Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

‘I need to know if we need a plane or a car.’

Lucien nodded his agreement. ‘A plane first. Then a car.’

‘I need to know how much fuel we’ll need.’

‘Enough to get us to Illinois.’

As Hunter and Taylor took their first steps back toward the door at the end of the corridor, Lucien halted them.

‘I guess that day is closer than you think, Robert,’ he said.

Hunter and Taylor both paused and turned around to face Lucien again.

‘What day is that?’ Hunter asked.

‘The day that you might become the same as me.’ If Lucien’s voice had sounded cold and emotionless before, this time it sounded like it could’ve come from some ancient devil. . completely heartless. ‘Because for the past two days, my friend, you’ve been sitting before the man you’ve been seeking for twenty years.’

Hunter felt his stomach curl into a ball.

‘I was the one who took Jessica from you.’

Hunter didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. It was like his whole body went into lockdown.

‘What was that?’ Taylor was the one who asked the question.

Lucien’s gaze was cemented on Hunter, but other than the initial frown of confusion at his statement, he got nothing else from the LAPD detective.

‘You think I’m saying this just to get under your skin, don’t you, Robert?’

Despite the awkward feeling starting to gain momentum deep inside of him, Hunter still looked calm.

‘Which you obviously are,’ Taylor cut in. There was no disguising the irritation in her voice. ‘You ran out of tricks and now you’re just stalling. You know what? I wouldn’t be surprised if there is no Madeleine Reed held captive anywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d just made her up because you ran out of acts for this little performance of yours. I think your chamber is empty. You’re panicking, and now you’re firing blanks because you know the game is really up.’

Lucien faced Taylor, a smirk stretching his lips. ‘Is that really your argument, Agent Taylor? I’m firing blanks because I know the game is up? Is that the best you can come up with?’ He coughed a laugh before his stare turned to ice once more. ‘Wow, I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and shit a better argument than that.’ Lucien jerked his chin at the CCTV camera just outside his cell. ‘Why don’t you go ask your people who have been listening in on us? Go ask them if Madeleine Reed is real or not. I’m sure they’ve been busy running a few checks.’

‘Even if there is someone named Madeleine Reed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,’ Taylor shot back, still keeping her composure, ‘who has been reported as missing sometime after April 9, it doesn’t mean you’ve got her, or that you even know where she is. A list of names can be easily obtained over the Internet from every missing-persons bureau in the country. You are well prepared. You proved that. I’m sure that even someone as arrogant as you must have entertained the possibility that one day you might be caught. It’s reasonable to think that you’d have a few tricks already prepared for that eventuality. But even if you were the one who had kidnapped Madeleine, you can give us no proof that she’s still alive. You could’ve killed her months ago, and you know that there’s no way we can know for sure. So now you just picked her name out of the many that you’ve tortured and murdered, and are using her to give you a last chance outside.’

Taylor took a breath, looked at Hunter, and then back at Lucien.

‘I wasn’t joking when I said that we’ll gun you down if you try anything,’ Taylor continued. ‘If you think this trip will give you a chance at escaping and we’re not going to take decisive action because we think you might have information that’ll lead us to a live victim, you’ve got another think coming.’

‘Now that’s a much better argument than the firing blanks one, Agent Taylor,’ Lucien said, clapping his hands three times. ‘But as you’ve just pointed out, there’s no way you can know for sure. So when you find out that there really is a Madeleine Reed, who was reported missing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after April 9, can you really afford to call my bluff?’ He gave her a couple of seconds to think about it before adding, ‘Because if you do and I’m not bluffing, the amount of shit that will rain on you and on the FBI will last a lifetime.’

Hunter was barely listening. Lucien’s words were still bouncing around in his head — ‘ because for the past two days, my friend, you’ve been sitting before the man you’ve been seeking for twenty years. I was the one who took Jessica from you. ’

Every atom in his body wanted to believe that Lucien was just bluffing, but Hunter had seen something in Lucien’s eyes — a disquieting defiance that he knew usually only came with certainty.

‘I can see your eyes wild, Robert,’ Lucien said, taking his attention away from Taylor. ‘You’re trying to decide if I’m telling the truth or not. Maybe I can help you with that.’ He ran his tongue over his top lip. ‘Yellow-fronted house, number 5067 on the corner of Lemon Grove Avenue and North Oxford, in East Hollywood.’

Hunter felt his throat constrict. That had been Jessica’s address. But if Lucien had read the police reports, that information would’ve been very easy to obtain.

Lucien read his mind.

‘I know, I know,’ he conceded. ‘That proves nothing. An address is easy to acquire. But how about this. Out of the photographs you mentioned Jessica had scattered around the house, the largest of them all was in a silver frame on a small table by the dark brown leather sofa in the living room. The picture was of the two of you at some sort of LAPD dinner party or award ceremony. You were in uniform and proudly displaying an award. She was wearing a purple dress with a matching purse. Her hair was loose, but thrown to one side, over her left shoulder.’

Still with his gaze firmly set on Hunter, Lucien paused, giving his old friend’s brain a chance to try to match his words to the images locked away in Hunter’s memory.

And then he delivered a final blow.

‘But you know the real difference between that and all the other photographs that were vandalized in the house, don’t you, Robert? That was the only one on which the word “PIG” was written vertically, instead of horizontally.’

Hunter felt his heart stall, his blood freeze in his veins, and the pit in his stomach turn into a black hole that threatened to swallow his soul into oblivion. He wanted to speak, but his voice seemed to have gotten stuck in his throat.

His eyes were focused on Lucien, but not his mind. All of his thoughts had traveled back to the night that part of him had died with Jessica. He didn’t need to search long. Every detail of what he’d seen that night had been locked away somewhere in his brain. Accessing those memories was painful, but simple. He could practically see the photograph Lucien was talking about, right in front of him — the smashed glass, the silver frame, and the word ‘PIG’ written in large blood letters — vertically. As Lucien had said, that had been the only photograph on which a word had been written that way.

Trying his best to think logically, Hunter somehow managed to restrain his anger before it boiled out of his body.

If Lucien had somehow managed to get his hands on the crime-scene police reports from Jessica’s murder, then there was also a possibility that he’d managed to obtain copies of the crime-scene evidence report and inventory, which Hunter knew were very detailed.

Hunter breathed out.

Lucien picked up on his doubt.

‘Still not convinced, huh? Isn’t the brain’s defense mechanism intriguing, Robert? To try to avoid the intense psychological pain that it can see coming, it will, sometimes, even subconsciously, try everything to find an alternative answer. It will even disregard facts and try to hang on to things it knows not to be true. But I can’t blame you, Robert. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t want to believe it either. But the reality is — it’s true.’