Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ the agent confirmed.

Hunter’s gaze rounded the table and he shrugged.

‘Now, does anyone here think that was a coincidence?’

The girl opened her eyes and slowly rolled over on the bed to have a look at her alarm clock, though she didn’t really have to. Like always, she woke up just as the sun began infusing its first light into the dense night sky.

For a moment, the girl didn’t move, her eyes fixed on the dim red glow of the digital timekeeper on her bedside table. Then, as the stupor of sleep finally began to dissipate, her lips stretched into a timid smile.

‘It’s Friday,’ she whispered to herself.

With those words, the timid smile gained confidence before the girl rolled over again, this time to face the ceiling.

‘It’s Friday,’ she told herself one more time, her voice a lot more animated than a second ago.

‘Yes it is. Yes it is. It’s Friday.’

Her words came out dancing to a silly melody that she had made up on the spot. As she sang her improvised verse, her hips shook from side to side and her head bobbed up and down to her own crazy rhythm.

The reason behind all that happiness was simple — today she would see him again, just like she had last Friday, and the Friday before last, and the Friday before that one.

They always met at the old park, the one behind the ugly, disused school. No one played there anymore. No one walked their dogs or rode their bicycles there anymore either. With the school closure just a few years back, the whole area was slowly forgotten, which suited them just fine.

‘No one can know about our meetings, OK?’ he had told the girl the first time they had met, four weeks ago. ‘They won’t let us meet if they find out.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she had replied. ‘My mother really wouldn’t like that.’

With every meeting they got a little more comfortable with each other, and that was another reason for the girl’s barely containable happiness. Last Friday they’d held hands for the first time. It had made her feel like she had never felt before — warm inside, goose bumps on the outside, happy all over. She really hoped that he would hold her hand again today.

That thought alone brought a new smile to the girl’s lips and a new, more animated rhythm to her improvised song. Her arms punched the air in front of her one at a time in a syncopated movement.

‘OK, OK,’ she told herself, bringing her enthusiasm down several notches. Before she could see him again, she had to go to school, and before that she had to get ready.

She turned and checked the bedside clock one last time. Definitely time to get up.

She swung her feet over the bed and sat at its edge. Right then, an idea came to her — before leaving for school, why not sneak into her mother’s bedroom and hide one of her perfume bottles in her school bag? Her mother wouldn’t mind, would she? She had so many of them. Plus, she wasn’t stealing it; she was just borrowing it. She would return it when she got back. Maybe she could even borrow a pair of earrings — those shiny ones her mother only wore on special occasions. Those were beautiful. Everybody loved them, and if she wore them, he would love them too, wouldn’t he?

‘Yes, of course he would.’

Maybe he would even love her.

The reality of what Hunter had just suggested hit everyone square in the face.

‘There’s only one way the killer could’ve placed that call at the exact time Owen Henderson stepped into Timothy Davis’s house,’ Hunter said.

‘He was still there,’ Agent Williams said.

Hunter sat back on his chair.

‘I don’t think that he was still inside the house,’ he said. ‘Too risky, but he was certainly close enough to have seen Owen Henderson arriving. Once he was sure that Owen had entered the house, he made the 911 call, probably also knowing that Tucson PD’s response time would be under five minutes.’

‘Wait a second,’ Agent Fisher interrupted. ‘If the killer really waited for the reporter to enter Mr. Davis’s house before making the 911 call, then I think you might be wrong, Robert. You said that you think that the killer did all this because he wanted the press conference to happen, but I don’t think so. Let’s try to look at this logically. If the killer called 911 as soon as he saw the reporter entering the house, obviously it was because he wanted the reporter to be picked up by the police. If he wanted the reporter to be picked up by the police, it was because he wanted the reporter to talk to us. Clearly he knew that we would be interrogating anyone found at the crime scene. So, if he wanted the reporter to talk to us, it was because he wanted the reporter to try to get as much information out of us as he possibly could, which was exactly what happened.’

‘Yes and no,’ Hunter replied.

Agent Fisher stared at Hunter blankly.

‘Yes,’ Hunter explained. ‘The killer wanted Owen Henderson to be picked up by the police and he wanted him to talk to us, but no, the intention wasn’t for him to get information out of us. The cold-reading idea came from Owen Henderson himself, not the killer. There’s no way the killer could’ve predicted how the interrogation would play out. Owen Henderson wanted to get information from us because he’s a reporter and that’s what they do. The killer’s intention was to make us aware that now an ambitious reporter knows about the murders.’

‘What that means,’ Garcia jumped in, ‘like I’ve mentioned before, is that now there’s no way we can keep this whole thing under wraps anymore — if we don’t say anything, Owen Henderson will. To put it simply, Agent Fisher, the killer has just forced us to call a press conference.’

Agent Fisher considered everything for a long moment.

‘So you think that this killer is your typical, textbook, attention-seeking serial killer?’ she asked. ‘He did all this because he wants to be on the news?’

‘Nothing typical about him,’ Garcia countered. ‘But why not? From the level of emotional detachment this killer has shown toward other human beings, even animals, there’s no doubt that he is a high-grade psychopath and, as such, I’m sure he truly believes that he is indeed superior to everyone else around him... in every sense.’ Garcia paused, allowing his words to sink in for an instant. ‘People like fame, Agent Fisher. They like to be remembered. Revered if possible. It’s a fact. To some, it doesn’t even matter if that fame is good or bad. Fame and notoriety can both be very powerful motivators, especially for people who believe that they are much more than what they really are.’

It was Garcia’s turn to hold Agent Fisher down with a serious stare.

‘You said so yourself, remember?’ he continued. ‘Certain killers want not only us, but the whole world to know how great they really are.’

‘He’s got a point, Erica,’ Agent Williams commented.

‘Is it really hard to believe that a killer who goes through all this trouble and preparation with every single one of his murders,’ Garcia added, ‘would want recognition for his work? Think about it — the professional removal of body parts, the Latin clues, the completely crazy way in which he drained one of his victims of all his blood, the canvas-like staging of the crime scenes, everything. He’s showing off. What good is creating works of art if no one is able to appreciate them? This guy wants to be recognized for his... “talent”.’

While trying to organize their thoughts, all three FBI agents regarded the two detectives sitting opposite them.

‘All right, that’s a valid argument,’ Agent Fisher finally accepted. ‘But if this killer is after notoriety, why not go straight to the press with everything? We already agreed that he probably photographs his crime scenes for his own pleasure, for his “gallery of the dead” or whatever, so why not send a copy of everything to a newspaper or a TV station? That would guarantee him prime-time viewing, wouldn’t it? Why go through such an elaborate plan, sending a reporter to the crime scene so he could get arrested... so we could talk to him... and so on? Doesn’t all this sound too nuts to anyone?’