An Evil Mind (14 page)

‘Gun box,’ Reyna said, but without much conviction. Goldstein’s thick eyebrows arched up inquisitively. The box was actually large enough to hold a submachine gun like an MP5 or an Uzi, or even two or three handguns.

‘Only one way to find out,’ Goldstein said.

Surprisingly the box had no locks, just two old-style flip latches. Goldstein undid them both, and flipped the lid open.

There were no guns inside, but still its contents made both agents pause, their eyes opening wide.

The box had a division down the center of it, splitting it into two separate compartments.

After several seconds of complete silence and absolute stillness, Goldstein finally used a pen to cautiously rifle through the contents inside both compartments.

‘Holy shit,’ he whispered before looking over at Reyna. ‘You better go get Hawk.’

Twenty-Eight

At 01:30 a.m., Hunter and Agent Taylor were called into a special NCAVC meeting, which was held inside a sound-proof conference room on the third floor of the BSU building. Four men and three women sat around a long, polished red oak table. A large, white projection screen had been lowered from the ceiling toward the far wall. As soon as Hunter was ushered into the room, he could sense the heavy, worried atmosphere, which was further emphasized by the tense look on everyone’s faces. Director Adrian Kennedy was sitting at the head of the table.

‘Please come in and have a seat,’ he said without standing up, indicating the two empty seats by his side, one to his right, one to his left.

Hunter took the seat to Kennedy’s right.

‘OK, let’s start with introductions,’ Kennedy continued. ‘I know everyone here is familiar with Detective Robert Hunter’s paper,’ he said to the group, ‘but I believe this is the first time most of you have met the man behind that work.’ He glanced at Hunter then in turn nodded at each person around the table. ‘Jennifer Holden oversees our PROFILER computer system; Deon Douglas and Leo Hurst are with our Criminal Investigative Analysis Program – CIAP; Victoria Davenport is with the FBI’s Violent Crime Apprehension Program – VICAP; Doctor Patrick Lambert, who you met earlier, is our chief of forensic psychiatry, and Doctor Adriana Montoya is one of our chief pathologists.’

They all nodded a silent ‘Hello’ at Hunter, who returned each and every one a nod of his own.

‘To my left, is FBI Special Agent Courtney Taylor,’ Kennedy said. ‘She’ll be heading this investigation.’

More silent nods.

‘I already took the liberty of contacting your captain with the LAPD once again, Robert,’ he said to Hunter. ‘We now need you in this case, and I know you want in, but we’ve got to do this by the book. A request has already been expedited and sanctioned by both sides.’ He drew quotations in the air with his fingers. ‘You’re now officially “on loan” to the FBI.’ He placed an FBI ID card with Hunter’s name and photograph on the table in front of him. ‘So, until we’ve got this all figured out, you are Special Agent Robert Hunter.’

Hunter seemed to cringe at the title. He left the ID card where it was.

‘OK,’ Kennedy said to the whole room. ‘Sorry to have dragged you all out here for such a late, unscheduled meeting, but there’s no doubt that today’s turn of events constitutes a major game changer.’ He sat back on his seat, locked his fingers together, and rested his hands on his lap before addressing Hunter and Taylor directly.

‘Doctor Lambert and I were in the observation room earlier today, during your second interview with Lucien Folter.’

Hunter didn’t look surprised. He knew that Taylor had called Kennedy from the house in Murphy right after their discovery. She had also used her smartphone to email him pictures of the framed human skin pieces, and a short video of Lucien’s basement room. Hunter had expected that Kennedy would’ve postponed whatever he had on for the rest of the day, and made the trip back from Washington, DC to Quantico, ASAP.

‘Everyone in this room has also watched the recorded footage of both interviews at length,’ Kennedy added before nodding at Doctor Lambert, who took over.

‘The transformation Mr Folter went through in the space of just a few hours, from interview one to interview two, was nothing less than astounding.’ He looked a little embarrassed. ‘I must admit that after the first interview, after the drug addiction story he told you, some part of me had started to believe him. I felt sorry for him.’

Victoria Davenport with VICAP nodded her agreement before Doctor Lambert carried on.

‘I had really started to entertain the possibility that Mr Folter had in fact been just another victim of an elaborate plan by a very sadistic killer, or killers. That he’d been just a pawn, a delivery boy in something much bigger.’ The doctor ran a hand through the little hair he had left on his head, just a handful of white strands that never seemed to want to stay in place. ‘In all my years as a forensic psychiatrist, I’ve seen very few people who were able to lie so convincingly, and most of those suffered from dissociative identity disorder.’ He looked straight at Hunter. ‘And you know that’s not the case we have here.’

Hunter said nothing, but he knew Doctor Lambert was right. Lucien had shown absolutely no indications of split personality. He never claimed to be, or hinted at being, two or more different people.

With someone suffering from dissociative identity disorder, once an identity takes over, it’s like a whole new person, with his/her own feelings, emotions, history and memories. Feelings, emotions, history and memories that aren’t shared between identities. So if Lucien suffered from DID, causing him to display a different identity in the second interview from the identity he’d displayed during the first one, the second identity wouldn’t have remembered the first interview, or anything that was said during it. The crimes committed by one of his identities also would not be remembered, and possibly not even known, by any other identity his brain had developed. But that hadn’t been the case. Lucien knew exactly how he’d acted, and what he’d said in both interviews.

‘After what I saw,’ Doctor Lambert said, ‘I have very little doubt that Mr Folter had simply acted a very well-thought part during the first interview to perfection. The real Lucien Folter is the one we all saw and heard in the second interview – cold, emotionless, psychopathic and in total control of his actions.’

He paused, allowing his words to hang in the air for a moment before proceeding.

‘He might have been caught by chance after that freak accident in Wyoming, but he willingly guided Detective Hunter and Agent Taylor to his house in North Carolina, knowing very well that they would find the framed human skin pieces. Knowing that Detective Hunter would personally recognize one of them. That shows a very high level of cruelty, arrogance, and pride, together with a tremendous sense of achievement and pleasure in what he’s done.’ The doctor paused for breath. ‘This guy really likes hurting people . . . physically and emotionally.’

Twenty-Nine

Doctor Lambert’s last few words caused almost everyone sitting inside the conference room to shift uneasily in their seats.

Kennedy took the opportunity to glance over at the pathologist in the room, Doctor Adriana Montoya. She had short black hair, striking hazel eyes, full lips, and a tiny tattoo of a broken heart on her neck, just behind her left ear.

‘DNA analysis might still take a couple of days,’ she said, leaning forward and placing her elbows on the table. ‘We might have the results of the skin pigmentation test and epidermis analysis sometime later today. There’s a chance that they will show that the pieces came from five different people.’ A short pause. ‘If that’s the case, that’ll gives us seven victims so far, which already makes Lucien Folter a very prolific serial killer. One the FBI had no knowledge of until about a week ago. And I have to agree with Doctor Lambert. His level of brutality and cruelty is astonishing. The two victims in his trunk were decapitated. The five in his basement were skinned.’ She softly shook her head as she considered the possibilities. ‘And, according to him –
this is only the beginning
.’

Hunter noticed that for some reason Doctor Montoya’s last words made Kennedy tense a fraction further.

Leo Hurst from CIAP – early forties, heavily built, somber – flipped a page on the document sitting on the table in front of him. It was a transcript of both interviews.

‘This guy knows his game,’ he said. ‘He knows that the FBI doesn’t give in to a psychopath’s demands. Whatever the situation is, we dictate the rules . . . always. The problem is that in this case he has managed to tip the scales in his favor, and there isn’t much we can do about it. He knows that we’ll have to play ball because the investigation’s priority has just shifted from arresting a subject to identifying the victims.’

Everyone’s attention moved to him.

‘OK, let’s suppose for a moment that he’s lying about this being only the beginning,’ he continued. ‘Let’s suppose that all we get are these seven “possible” victims. Yes, there’s a likelihood that we could positively identify all seven of them without his help, depending on DNA analysis, and if they had all been added to the national missing-persons database.’ He scratched the skin between his two very thin eyebrows. ‘But even if we manage to identify them all without his help, then we’re faced with problem number two.’

‘Finding the bodies,’ Kennedy said, and for a brief moment he locked eyes with Hunter.

‘Precisely,’ Deon Douglas, Hurst’s partner at CIAP, agreed. He was African-American and also looked to be in his early forties, with a shaved head and a stylish goatee that no doubt took some maintenance. ‘Their families will want closure. They’ll want to give the bodies, or whatever remains are found, a proper burial, and this Folter character knows that without his cooperation, we probably won’t have a prayer finding the location where he disposed of them.’

Again, Hunter noticed that Kennedy seemed to tense up more than anyone else in the room, which seemed very uncommon. Adrian Kennedy had been with the FBI NCAVC and the Behavioral Science Unit for as long as Hunter could remember. He wasn’t easily rattled by any sort of crime or perpetrator, no matter how brutal or unusual. Hunter sensed that there was something else. Something that Kennedy wasn’t telling them, at least not yet.

‘He could be lying about this being only the beginning,’ Jennifer Holden said. ‘As you’ve said –’ she nodded at Leo Hurst ‘– he seems to know his game. He knows that by saying that, the scales would tip in his favor. Maybe we should put him through a polygraph test.’

Hunter shook his head. ‘Even if he’s lying, he’d easily beat it.’

‘He would beat a lie-detector test?’ Jennifer Holden asked, a little surprised.

‘Yes,’ Hunter replied with absolute conviction. ‘I’ve seen him do it before just for fun, twenty-five years ago, and my guess is that he’s gotten better at it.’

A few odd looks circled the room.

‘You all saw the recording of the first interview,’ Hunter offered. ‘Even the facial analysis software that was being used failed to pick up any significant changes in his expressions. It looks to me that Lucien has almost no psychological response to lying. His pupil dilation and breathing remained exactly the same throughout. I’m sure that he’s trained himself, and we’ll find that even his pore size and skin flush will remain unchanged. He’s probably counting on a polygraph test. Whether we put him through one or not, it will make no difference to him.’

Doctor Lambert nodded his agreement. ‘Long, elaborate lies take a certain type of individual and a great amount of talent to do it convincingly. It requires creativity, intelligence, control, great memory and, most of the time, very high improvisational skills. And I’m only talking about regular circumstances here. When a person has to do all that before an authoritative figure, like a cop, or a federal agent, knowing that his freedom is on the line, those qualities will multiply themselves by a factor of X. Judging by how convincing he was in that first interview, I really wouldn’t be surprised if Lucien Folter waltzed his way through a polygraph test.’

‘Do you think he’s lying about this being only the beginning?’ Taylor asked Hunter.

‘No, I don’t, but what I, or any of us think, is irrelevant. Like Leo said, Lucien knows his game. He knows that after what we’ve seen, we don’t have the luxury to doubt. Right now, he’s calling the shots.’

No one said anything, because no one really knew what to say.

Hunter took the silent break opportunity and turned to face the man sitting at the head of the table.

‘How’s the house searching going, Adrian?’ he asked. ‘Any news?’

Kennedy looked at him as if Hunter had read his thoughts.

There was a stretched, worried pause.

‘Well,’ Kennedy said at last, ‘that’s the real reason we’re here tonight. The search team found something inside Lucien Folter’s bedroom. It was hidden inside his mattress.’

The tension in the room climbed up a few degrees.

Everyone waited.

‘And this is what they found.’

Kennedy clicked a button on the small remote-control unit on the table in front of him, and the image of the closed wooden box Goldstein and Reyna had found was immediately projected onto the white screen on the far wall.

‘Looks like a gun case,’ Deon Douglas commented. ‘Big enough for a machine gun, or a disassembled long-range rifle. Has it been opened yet?’

Kennedy nodded. ‘Unfortunately, a weapon wasn’t what was found inside it,’ he replied.

‘So what did we get?’ Taylor asked.

Kennedy’s eyes circled the table and paused on Hunter before he pressed the remote-control button one more time.

‘We got this.’

Thirty

Despite lights off and the total darkness that surrounded him, Lucien Folter lay awake in his cell down in sublevel five of the BSU building. His eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling as if some fascinating movie that only he could see were being projected against it. But this time he wasn’t lost in one of his meditation trances. The time for meditation was well and truly over. He was simply reorganizing his thoughts, putting them in an appropriate order of execution.