An Evil Mind (26 page)

Kennedy remembered something Lucien had said during one of the interviews. ‘He wanted to experience them for himself.’

‘Back then, he never said so in so many words,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But now we know that that was exactly what he wanted, to experiment. And that’s what makes Lucien so different from most psychopaths I’ve ever come up against.’

Kennedy’s eyebrows moved up inquisitively.

‘We know that he killed Susan, his first victim, by strangulation,’ Hunter elaborated. ‘But if we compare her murder to his latest one, the two victims in his trunk . . . the MO, the level of violence, everything has skyrocketed. I’m willing to bet that the violence in every murder he’d committed in between moved up a step at a time. But Lucien escalates not because he’s being guided by uncontrollable urges inside of him.’

‘He does it consciously,’ Taylor said, picking up Hunter’s thread of thought. ‘He does it because he wants to know how he would feel as he becomes more and more violent.’

‘That’s a frightening thought,’ Kennedy said. ‘The level of determination and self-discipline one needs to carry on escalating murder after murder for twenty-five years is mindboggling. And you think he did it just so he could experience the feeling?’

Hunter had paused, his memory digging out something long forgotten. ‘I’ll be damned!’ He finally exclaimed.

‘What?’ Kennedy asked.

‘I can’t believe he’s really doing it,’ Hunter murmured.

‘Doing what?’

‘I think Lucien might’ve been writing an encyclopedia.’

Fifty-Seven

Kennedy’s shoulder’s stiffened as he felt an awkward shiver grab hold of his whole body, something that didn’t happen very often when it came to BSU investigations. He waited for Hunter to continue.

‘I remember this discussion we had once.’ Hunter’s memory searched the past. ‘I think it was during our second year in college. We were discussing emotional triggers and drives in extreme violent murders – what psychological factors could drive an individual to sadistically and brutally offend and reoffend.’

‘OK,’ Kennedy said, still intrigued.

‘Back then, all we had were a bunch of theories put together by several psychologists and psychiatrists, and a handful of accounts by apprehended killers. Now bear in mind that notorious cannibal killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Armin Meiwes, or Andrej Chikatilo hadn’t been caught yet. Their interviews, accounts and thoughts weren’t on file.’

Kennedy and Taylor both nodded together.

‘As I’ve said,’ Hunter moved on, ‘Lucien didn’t doubt the veracity of the accounts we had then, but he wasn’t quite convinced by many of the psychological theories. What I remember he used to say a lot was: “
How can they know for sure?
”’

‘They couldn’t,’ Taylor said. ‘That’s why it was a theory, not a fact.’

‘Precisely,’ Hunter agreed. ‘And Lucien understood that.’

‘But he wasn’t satisfied,’ Kennedy concluded.

‘No, he wasn’t. And that day he suggested something so far-fetched, I had completely forgotten about it.’

‘And that was?’

Hunter took a deep breath while trying to remember the details.

‘The surreal possibility of someone becoming a killer solely to experiment,’ he finally said. ‘Lucien argued how ground-breaking it would be for criminal behavior psychology if a fully mentally capable individual went on a killing rampage, escalating his or her way through different levels of violence, and experimenting with different methods and fantasies, while at the same time taking comprehensive notes of everything, including feelings and psychological state of mind at the time, and in the aftermath of each murder. Some sort of in-depth psychological study of the mind of a killer, written by the killer himself.’

Kennedy’s body tensed just a little, fighting the same awkward shiver that had run deep inside him just moments ago.

‘He believed that a notebook, or even a series of notebooks, filled with such true accounts would become an encyclopedia of knowledge, a bible of sorts to criminal behavioral scientists.’

Kennedy scratched his left cheek. He couldn’t help thinking that, as absurd as it sounded, Lucien was right. If such a book, or books, existed, they’d prove invaluable and probably become one of the most referred-to works by criminologists, psychologists and law enforcement officials and agents all around the world. Such a book, especially if written by someone with a criminal psychology degree, someone who understood the importance of such information and knew exactly what to add, would no doubt become some sort of holy book in the never-ending fight against violent predators.

‘I think that might be what he was doing,’ Hunter said, his thoughts beginning to turn his stomach. ‘Jumping from murder to murder, escalating the violence with each one, trying different things, different methods . . . and keeping a diary of how he felt, especially emotionally.’ In his mind, that would give him the excuse he wanted.’

Kennedy’s forehead creased as he looked at Hunter. ‘Excuse?’

‘Lucien is a sociopath, no doubt about that, we know it and he knows it. The difference is: he’s known it for a long time. He told us that, remember?’

Taylor nodded. ‘He started fantasizing while still in school.’

‘That’s right, and I think that that knowledge hurt him. A regular kid shouldn’t be fantasizing about killing people. Maybe it all made him feel like something inside his brain was broken, that he didn’t belong. He even told us that the reason why he decided to study criminal behavior psychology was to understand himself.’

‘But that backfired,’ Kennedy said.

‘No, it didn’t,’ Hunter replied. ‘If anything, it pushed his imagination further. It made him come up with what to him sounded like a plausible motive.’

‘What better excuse to commit atrocious acts of violence than to fool yourself into believing that you’re doing it for a noble cause,’ Taylor said, following Hunter’s line of thought. ‘All in the name of research.’

‘That false belief would’ve eased his internal pain,’ Hunter added. ‘Lucien could then start feeding his hunger because in his mind, he wasn’t a sociopath anymore . . . he was a scientist, a researcher. Everyone deludes in their own way, remember?’

Kennedy broke eye contact.

‘Is there something else?’ Hunter asked. ‘Something you’re not telling us?’

Kennedy shrugged and pursed his lips in reply. He walked over to his desk, opened the top right-hand drawer and pulled out a notebook. It was the same notebook Special Agent Chris Welch had handed him in the holding cells’ observation room earlier.

Hunter immediately recognized the notebook as one of those he and Special Agent Taylor had seen in Lucien’s basement.

‘Unfortunately, you might be right, Robert,’ Kennedy said. ‘Because we found this.’

Fifty-Eight

As if it were something he’d been dreading for years, Hunter took the notebook from Kennedy’s hands and flipped open its cover.

Taylor moved to Hunter’s side.

On the first page all they saw was a crude, black-and-white pencil sketch of a female face, screaming, contorted in agony.

Hunter’s eyes left the page and moved to Kennedy.

The BSU Director gestured for Hunter to carry on.

Hunter turned to the second page. No more drawings, just plain handwritten text. Hunter immediately recognized Lucien’s handwriting.

He began reading:

I guess my head is starting to change. At first, after every kill, I was overwhelmed by intense feelings of guilt, as I expected I would be. Sometimes for months. I came close to turning myself in many times. Many times I promised myself I’d never do it again. But as time went by and the guilty feeling began to lessen, slowly and very steadily, the desire to do it all again would come back. I wanted it to come back. With every victim, my guilt phase grew shorter and shorter, to the point that they are now almost non-existent – a couple of days long, if that.

There’s no doubt that my mind has adapted. Murder has become something that feels natural to me now. When I’m out, I often look around, and as my eyes settle on someone in a bar, on a train, on the streets . . . wherever I am, I find myself thinking of how easily I could kill anyone. How much I could make them scream. How much pain I could inflict before I actually kill them. And those thoughts excite me more than ever.

Getting rid of these thoughts has become harder and harder, but the truth is, I don’t want to get rid of them. I now understand that killing can indeed become a very powerful drug. More powerful than any drug I’ve ever tried. And I am completely hooked. But despite my addiction, one thing I’ve learnt is that I need some sort of trigger to finally push me over the edge.

That trigger can be anything – a certain physical type that matches a specific look, the way someone talks or looks at me, the way someone dresses, the scent they’re wearing, an action they take, a mannerism they have . . . anything. I don’t know it until I see it.

I saw it again last night.

Hunter flipped the page but stopped reading to look at Kennedy again. He had his hands tucked deep inside his trouser pockets. His saggy cheeks seemed to have gained more weight in the past few days, and the dark circles under his eyes had taken an even more morbid appearance. His gaze was locked on the notebook in Hunter’s hands.

Hunter went back to the words on the pages:

It was late. I had just ordered my third double Scotch. I wasn’t looking for anything or anyone. I just felt like getting drunk, that’s all. Actually, I felt like getting obliterated. It was by chance that I found myself in Forest City, Mississippi. I hadn’t booked into a motel or anything. I figured I’d just get hammered, pass out in my car outside in the parking lot, wake up sometime the next day and be on my way.

But things didn’t happen that way.

I was sitting at the far end of the bar, keeping to myself. It was a slow night with not many customers. The barman tried to be friendly and start a conversation, but I was curt enough that he quickly got the hint.

As the bartender poured me my next drink, a new face walked into the bar. He was big, a lot bigger than me – a mixture of muscle and greasy fat. He was taller too, by at least three to four inches. The bartender called him Jed.

Jed’s hair was cut so short I wondered why he didn’t just shave it all off. He had a jagged half-moon scar on the underside of his chin, clearly the result of someone taking the rear end of a broken bottle to his face. His nose had also been broken more than once, and his right ear looked a little out of shape, as if it’d been smashed against his skull. It didn’t take someone with a lot of brainpower to know that Jed liked to get himself into fights.

He took a seat at the bar, four stools to my left, and as he did, two other customers who were at the tables behind us got up and left.

It didn’t look like Jed was a very popular guy either.

He stank of cheap booze and stale sweat.

‘Gi’me a fucking beer, Tom,’ he called, his voice dragging a little. His pupils were the size of dinner plates, so he was definitely loaded on something heavier than just alcohol.

‘C’mon, Jed.’ The barman hesitated, keeping his voice even. ‘It’s late, and you’ve certainly had enough for one night.’

Jed’s Bulldog brow creased even further.

‘Don’t fucking tell me I’ve had enough, Tom.’

His voice grew louder by a few decibels, and another customer sneaked out the door.

‘I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough. Now gi’me a fucking beer before I shove one up your pussy little ass.’

Tom grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge, unscrewed its top and placed it on the bar in front of Jed.

Jed took it and swallowed half of it down in three large gulps.

I didn’t realize I was staring until Jed turned to me.

‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ he said, pushing his beer bottle to one side.

‘Are you some kind of fag?’

I didn’t answer him, and still didn’t look away.

‘I asked you a question, fag.’

Jed took another swig of his beer.

‘You like what you see, fag?’ He lifted his right arm and flexed his bicep like a bodybuilder before blowing me a kiss.

I was hypnotized by that sack of shit that called himself Jed.

‘C’mon, Jed,’ the bartender tried to intervene, clearly foreseeing what was to come. ‘Let it go, man. The guy is just trying to have a quiet drink.’

He looked at me with a face that said – ‘Dude, please just go. You don’t want this trouble, trust me.’

I didn’t move. I probably wasn’t even blinking.

‘Shut the fuck up, Tom,’ Jed said, pointing a finger at him, but looking at me. ‘I want to know why this fag likes looking at me so much. Do you want to fuck a real man tonight? Is that it, fag? Would you like a piece of this?’ Jed used both hands to point to his massive gut.

My eyes slowly ran the length of his body, and that seemed to piss him off way past his limit. His jaw locked in anger. His face became even redder, and he stood up from his stool threateningly.

And that was it.

That was the trigger.

It wasn’t his obnoxious way, or his smell, or the name calling, or the fact that he was so damn ugly he probably had to sneak up on his mirror. It wasn’t even that he didn’t allow me to get drunk in peace. It was the fact that he thought he could assert his superiority over me that did it. That pushed me over the edge.

Right there and then, I knew Jed would die that night.

Fifty-Nine

Hunter stopped reading and looked at Kennedy.

Even though he was looking at the words upside down, Kennedy had been following Hunter’s eyes and he knew exactly where he’d paused.