Patricia Cornwell - Predator

What about their eyes, Basil?

Well, let’s see. No pun intended.

Dr. Wesley didn’t laugh, and that annoyed Basil a little.

I’d let them dance around at the end of their rope, no pun intended. Don’t you ever smile? I mean, come on, some of this is funny.

I’m listening to you, Basil. I’m listening to every word you say.

That was good, at least. And he was. Dr. Wesley was listening and thought every word was important and fascinating, thought Basil was the most interesting, original person he had ever interviewed.

As soon as I was going to have sex with them, he continued, that’s when I’d do their eyes. You know, if I’d been born with a decent-sized dick, none of this would have been necessary.

They were conscious when you blinded them.

If I could have given them some gas and knocked them out while I was performing the surgery, I would have. I didn’t particularly like them screaming and jerking all over the place. But I couldn’t have sex with them until they were blind. I explained it to them. I’d say, I’m really sorry I got to do this to you, okay? I’ll be as quick as I can. It’s going to hurt a little.

Isn’t that funny? It’s going to hurt a little. Every time somebody says that to me, I know it’s going to hurt like a bitch. Then I’d tell them I was going to untie them so we could have sex. I said if they tried to get away or do anything stupid, I was going to do even worse things to them than I already did. That’s it. We had sex.

How long would this go on?

You mean the sex?

How long did you keep them alive and have sex with them?

Depended. If I liked having sex with them, sometimes I’d keep them around for days. I think the longest time was ten days. But that didn’t turn out to be a good thing because she got infected real bad and it was disgusting.

Did you do anything else to them? Anything besides blinding them and having sex?

I experimented. Some.

Did you ever engage in torture?

I’d say stabbing somebody’s eyes out… well, Basil replied, and now he wishes he hadn’t said it.

It opened a whole new line of questioning. Dr. Wesley started in on knowing right from wrong and comprehending the suffering Basil was causing another human being, that if he knew something was torture, then he was cognizant of what he was doing at the time he was doing it and also upon reflection. That’s not exactly the way he said it, but that’s what he was getting at. Just the same old song and dance he heard inGainesvillewhen the shrinks were trying to figure out if he was competent to stand trial. He never should have let them know he was. That was stupid, too. A forensic psychiatric hospital is a five-star hotel compared to prison, especially if you’re on death row, sitting around in your tiny, claustrophobic cell feeling like Bozo the clown in your blue-and-white-striped pants and orange T-shirt.

Basil gets up from his steel bed and stretches. He pretends he’s not interested in the camera high up on the wall. He never should have admitted that sometimes he fantasized about killing himself, that his preferred way would be to cut his wrists and watch himself bleed, drip, drip, drip, watch the puddle form on the floor, because it would remind him of his former pleasant preoccupations with how many women? He’s lost count. It might have been eight. He told Dr. Wesley eight. Or was it ten?

He stretches some more. He uses the steel toilet and returns to the bed. He opens the most recent Field amp; Stream, looks at page 52, at what’s supposed to be a column about a hunter’s first.22 rifle and happy memories of rabbit and possum hunting, of fishing inMissouri.

This page 52 isn’t the real one. The real page 52 was torn out and scanned into a computer. Then, in an identical font and identical format, a letter was embedded into the magazine’s text. The scanned page 52 was carefully reinserted into the magazine, a little glue used, and what looks like a chatty column on hunting and fishing is a clandestine communication intended for Basil.

The guards don’t care about inmates getting fishing magazines. They aren’t likely to even flip through them, not boring magazines that are completely devoid of sex and violence.

Basil gets under the covers, turning on his left side diagonally on the bed, his back to the camera, just like he always does when he needs to relieve his sexual tension. He reaches under the thin mattress and pulls out strips of white cotton from two pairs of white boxer shorts that he has been ripping up all week.

Under the sheets, he begins a tear with his teeth, then rips. Each strip gets tightly tied to what has become a six-foot-long knotted rope. He has enough fabric left for two more strips. He tears with his teeth and rips. He breathes heavily and rocks himself a little as if relieving his sexual tension, and he rips and he ties a strip to the rope, and then he ties on the last one.

Inside the Academy’s computer center, Lucy sits before three large video screens, reading e-mails as she restores them to the server.

What she and Marino have discovered so far is that before he began his fellowship, Joe Amos was communicating with a television producer who claimed to be interested in developing yet another forensic show for one of the cable networks. For his input, Joe was promised five thousand dollars per episode, assuming the shows ever make it on the air. Apparently, Joe started getting brilliant ideas in late January, about the time Lucy got sick while testing new avionics in one of her helicopters, fled to the ladies’ room and forgot her Treo. At first he was subtle about it, plagiarizing hell scenes. Then he became blatant, outright stealing them as he went into databases to his heart’s content.

Lucy restores another e-mail, this one dated February 10, a year ago. It is from last summer’s intern, Jan Hamilton, who got the needle stick and threatened to sue the Academy.

Dear Dr. Amos,

I heard you on Dr. Self’s radio show the other night and was fascinated by what you had to say about theNationalForensicAcademy. Sounds like an amazing place, and by the way, congratulations on being awarded a fellowship. That’s incredibly impressive. I wonder if you could help me get an internship there for the summer. I am studying nuclear biology and genetics at Harvard and want to be a forensic scientist, specializing in DNA. I’m attaching a file that has my photograph and other personal information.

Jan Hamilton.

P.S. The best way to reach me is at this address. My Harvard account is firewall-protected, and I can’t use it unless I’m on campus.

“Shit,” Marino says. “Holy shit,” he says.

Lucy restores more e-mails, opens dozens of them, e-mails that become increasingly personal, then romantic, then lewd exchanges between Joe and Jan that continued during her internship at the Academy, leading up to an e-mail he sent her early this past July when he suggested she try a little creativity with a hell scene that was scheduled to take place at the Body Farm. He arranged for her to stop by his office for hypodermic needles andwhatever else you might feel like getting stuck with.

Lucy has never seen the film of the hell scene that went so wrong. She has never seen films of any hell scenes. Until now, she wasn’t interested.

“What’s it called?” she says, getting frantic.

“Body Farm,” Marino says.

She finds the video file and opens it.

They watch students walking around the dead body of one of the most obese men Lucy has ever seen. He is on the ground, fully clothed in a cheap, gray suit, probably what he had on when he dropped from sudden cardiac arrest. He is beginning to decompose. Maggots teem over his face.

The camera angle shifts to a pretty young woman digging in the dead man’s coat pocket, turning toward the camera, withdrawing her hand, yelling-yelling that she’s been stuck through her glove.