An Evil Mind (31 page)

Taylor shifted on her chair.

Hunter’s nod was subtle. ‘Yes, I was in love with Jessica.’

‘Did you make plans to marry her?’

Silence.

Lucien’s eyebrows arched, indicating that he was waiting for an answer.

‘Yes,’ Hunter said. ‘We were engaged.’

For the briefest of moments Taylor heard Hunter’s voice croak.

‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Lucien commented. ‘So what went wrong? I know that you aren’t married or divorced. So, what happened? How come you never married the woman you were in love with? Did she leave you for someone else?’

Hunter gambled. ‘Yes, she found someone else. Someone better.’

Lucien shook his head and noisily sucked his teeth with every head movement. ‘Are you sure you want to test me again, Robert? Are you sure you want to lie to me? Because that’s what you’re doing right now.’ Lucien’s look and voice became hard as steel. ‘And I
really
don’t like that.’

Taylor kept a steady face, but her eyes looked lost.

‘You know what?’ Hunter said, lifting both of his hands up. ‘I’m not talking about this.’

‘I think you’d better,’ Lucien countered.

‘I don’t think so,’ Hunter replied in the same conservative tone a psychologist would use to address a patient. ‘I was brought here because I thought I’d be helping an old friend. Someone I thought I knew. When they showed me your picture back in LA just a few days ago, I was sure that there had been some sort of bad mistake. I agreed to fly over here because I thought I could help the FBI clear all this up and prove you’re not the man they thought you were. I was wrong. I can’t help because there’s nothing to clear up. You are who you are, and you did what you did. Unfortunately, no one can change that. But you said so yourself – there’s no rush to any of this because there’s no one we can save – and when I leave, the FBI will carry on interrogating you about the location of all your victims’ remains.’

Hunter peeked at Taylor. A frown had creased her forehead after she heard the word ‘leave’.

‘They’ll just use different methods,’ Hunter continued. ‘Less conventional ones. I’m sure you know what’s coming. It might take a few days longer, but trust me, Lucien, in the end you will talk.’

Hunter got up, ready to leave.

Lucien looked as calm as he’d ever looked.

‘I would really suggest that you sit back down, old friend, because you’ve misquoted me.’

Hunter paused.

‘I didn’t say that there was no rush to any of this. I said that there was no rush in finding Susan’s remains, because you couldn’t save
her
anyway.’

Something in the way Lucien phrased his words made Hunter’s heartbeat stumble, pick itself up, and then stumble again.

‘And I’ve never said that you couldn’t save anyone. Because I think there’s still time.’ A tense pause as Lucien looked at his wrist, consulting his invisible watch once again. ‘I haven’t killed all the victims I’ve kidnapped, Robert.’ Lucien accompanied those words with a look so cold and devoid of feelings, it could’ve belonged to a cadaver. ‘One is still alive.’

Part Three

A Race Against Time

Seventy

Hidden location.

Three days earlier.

She coughed and spluttered awake, or at least she thought she was awake. She couldn’t really tell anymore. Her reality was as terrifying as her worst nightmares. Confusion surrounded her twenty-four hours a day, as her brain seemed to be in a constant state of haziness – half numb, half awake.

Due to the lack of sunlight, she had lost track of time a while ago. She knew she’d been locked in this stinking hell-hole for a long time now. To her it felt like years, but it could’ve been just months, or even weeks. Time just trickled by, and no one was counting.

She could still remember the night she met him in that bar on the east side of town. He was older than her, but charming, attractive, well educated, very intelligent, funny, and really knew how to compliment a woman. He made her feel special. He made her feel like she could light up the sky. At the end of the night, he put her in a cab and didn’t offer, or even suggest joining her. He was very polite and gentleman like. He did ask her for her phone number, though.

She had to admit that she was quite excited when he called just a few days later and asked her if she would like to go out for dinner with him. With a huge smile on her face she accepted.

He picked her up that evening, around 7:00 p.m., but they never made it to a restaurant. As soon as she entered his car and buckled up, she felt something sting the side of her neck. He’d acted so fast she didn’t even see his hand move. The next thing she could recall was waking up in this cold and damp room.

The room was exactly twelve paces by twelve paces. She’d counted and recounted it many times. The walls were crude and made of brick and mortar, the floor of rough cement. The door, which sat at the center of one of the walls, was made of metal with a rectangular, lockable viewing slot about five feet from the floor. Like a prison door. There was a thin and dirty mattress pushed up against the back wall. There was a blanket that smelled of wet dog. No pillow. On one corner there was a plastic bucket she was told to use as a toilet. There were no windows, and the weak, yellowish bulb locked inside a metal-mesh box at the center of the ceiling was on 24/7.

Since she’d been taken into captivity, she’d only seen her kidnapper a handful of times, when he would enter her cell to deliver food and water, a new roll of rough toilet paper, and to swop her toilet bucket for a clean one.

So far, he hadn’t touched or hurt her. He never said much either. She would scream, beg, plead, try to talk, but he barely ever replied to her. On one occasion, his simple physical response scared her so much she wet herself. Out of pure fear, her subconscious mind kept on urging her to ask him what he wanted with her, what he would do to her. So one day, she gave in and asked him. He didn’t reply with words. He simply looked at her, and in his eyes she saw something she’d never seen before – unadulterated evil.

He would bring her food and water, sometimes daily, but not always. Though she had completely lost the concept of time, she could still tell that some of the intervals between rations were way too long. Certainly, way over a day or two.

Once, just after the third or fourth food delivery, she had waited for the door to open and tried surprise-attacking him with all the strength she had in her, clawing at his face with her chipped nails. But it seemed like he’d been waiting for it to happen all along, and before she was able to put even a small scratch on him, he punched her stomach so hard, she immediately doubled over and puked. She spent the rest of that day lying on the floor in the fetus position, contorted in pain, her abdomen sore and bruised.

Sometimes the rations were larger than others – more bottles of water, more packets of crackers and cookies, more candy bars, more loaves of bread, sometimes even fruit. Then he’d be gone for a long time. The larger the ration he brought her, the longer it would be before he came back, and the last ration she got was the largest of them all.

She didn’t know exactly how long ago that was, but she knew it was longer than ever before. Very quickly she learned to rationalize everything almost to perfection. By the time she was running out of food and water, he’d be back bringing new supplies, but not this time.

She had run out of food some time ago, maybe three or four days. To her it seemed longer. She ran out of water maybe a day or two after that. She felt weak and dehydrated. Her lips were dried and cracked. Because of how hungry she was, the cold and dampness of the room affected her more than usual now. She spent most of her time curled up into a ball against one of the corners of the room, wrapped up in that stinking blanket. But even so, she couldn’t stop shivering.

For some time, her throat had been feeling like it was on constant fire, but today more than ever. She desperately needed a drink of water. Her eyelids felt heavy and it required an effort of will to force them open. Her head ached in a way that every little movement she made felt as if it would be her last, before her brain exploded inside her skull.

She brought a hand to her clammy forehead, and it felt as if she was touching hot metal. She was burning up.

With amazing effort she lifted her head and looked at the door. She thought she heard something. Steps, maybe. Someone coming.

As crazy as it seemed, a smile came to her lips. The human brain is a very complex organ, and a fragile and shattered mind sometimes clutches at straws. Right there and then she didn’t think of him as the man who would probably rape her repeatedly before killing her. She thought of him as the man-savior who was coming to bring her food and water, who was coming to take away her overflowing toilet bucket that filled the room with stench and sickness.

She held on to the wall and slowly propped herself up on her feet. With the hesitant steps of a battle-weary soldier, she gradually made her way to the door and placed her ear against it.

‘Hello . . .’ she called in a voice so weak that it seemed to belong to a scared child.

No reply.

‘Hello . . . are you out there? . . . Please?’

. . .

‘Please can I have some water?’ Her voice was now strangled with tears. She was shivering so badly her teeth were shattering against each other.

‘Please . . .?’ She began crying. ‘Please help me . . .? Just a few drops of water, please?’

She heard nothing but absolute silence.

She stayed on the floor by the door with her ear pressed hard against it for a long time – a couple of hours, probably. There was no noise. There never was. Her tired brain was so desperate it was starting to trick her. Her fever was so high, she was starting to hallucinate.

It took some time for her sobs to subside. She wiped the tears from her eyes and her dirty cheeks, and with no strength left in her to get back up on her feet again, she crawled back to her corner and her blanket on the other side of the room.

She was losing her mind. She could feel she was losing her mind.

As she curled herself back into a ball again, she started whispering to herself. ‘Don’t give up. Stay strong. You’ll get through this. Stay strong . . .’ She paused, frowning as her confused eyes circled the room. ‘Stay strong . . .’ she repeated and paused again, forcing her brain to remember, but it was gone. She couldn’t believe it was gone.

‘I’m . . .’

Nothing.

‘My name is . . .’

Blank.

She desperately wanted to tell herself to stay strong, but she couldn’t remember her own name.

She began crying again.

Seventy-One

‘Madeleine,’ Lucien said. He was still sitting on his bed with his legs stretched comfortably in front of him. ‘Her name is Madeleine Reed. But she likes to be called Maddy.’

A prickling began to run deep inside Hunter’s body, as if soda bubbles were racing through his bloodstream in an expanding sense of urgency.

Taylor felt as if someone had just slapped her across the face.

‘What?’ she asked, leaning forward on her chair.

‘Madeleine Reed, or if you wish, Maddy Reed,’ Lucien repeated with a shrug. ‘She’s twenty-three years old. I picked her up on April 9, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but she was born in Blue Springs City, Missouri.’ He jerked his head toward the end of the corridor outside his cell. ‘You can go check it out if you like. Her family must be going crazy by now.’

Hunter and Taylor both knew that Adrian Kennedy was listening in on the interview. He would have the name and everything else checked in a matter of minutes.

‘April 9?’ Taylor said, her eyes wide with surprise. ‘That’s four months ago.’

‘It is indeed,’ Lucien agreed. ‘But don’t worry, Agent Taylor, I’ve got a little system that works. It’s been proven over the years.’ He smiled. ‘I leave her rations of food and water before I leave, and Maddy is very clever. She figured out very quickly that she had to go easy on it, or else it would all run out before I got back with more. And I’ll tell you, she became quite an expert at it.’ He opened his hands and studied the veins crisscrossing the backs of them. ‘But I was supposed to be back four, maybe five days ago.’

He allowed the seriousness of his words to punch everyone square in the face before he continued.

‘If Maddy ran out of food and water a few days ago, she’d be very weak by now, no doubt about that, but she’s probably still alive. Now, how long she’ll stay that way? I can’t tell you.’

‘Where is she?’ Hunter asked.

‘Tell me about Jessica Petersen,’ Lucien came back. ‘Tell me about the woman you loved.’

Hunter sucked in a deep breath.

‘Tell us where she is, Lucien, so we can save her, and I promise you that I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’

Lucien rubbed the patch of skin between his eyebrows. ‘Umm.’ He pretended he was thinking about it. ‘No. No deal. Like I’ve said, now it’s your turn to answer my questions. I’ve given you enough.’

‘I will answer them, Lucien,’ Hunter said. ‘I give you my word I will. But if she has run out of food and water four days ago, we need to get to her now.’ The urgency in Hunter’s voice filled the air with electricity.

Lucien just looked at him, unperturbed.

‘What’s the point in letting her die this way, Lucien?’ Hunter pleaded. ‘Whatever satisfaction you got from killing your victims, Madeleine’s death will not give it to you.’

‘Probably not,’ Lucien agreed.

‘So please let her live.’

Lucien looked unfazed.

‘It’s over, Lucien. Look around you. You’ve been caught. By chance, but you’ve been caught. There’s no point in taking anyone else’s life.’ Hunter paused. ‘Please, there must still be something human inside you. Have mercy this once. Let us bring Madeleine in.’

Lucien got back on his feet. ‘Nice speech, Robert,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘Short, to the point, and with just the right amount of emotion. For a second there, I thought your eyes would tear up.’ Sarcasm was like a second skin for Lucien. ‘But I
am
having mercy. My kind of mercy. And this is how it works. First I want to hear about Jessica; then, and only then, I’ll tell you the location of Karen Simpson and the other four victims’ remains in New Haven, and I’ll tell you where Madeleine Reed is. After that you and Agent Taylor can go be heroes.’