by Chris Carter
Hunter’s coffee had cooled down enough for him to have a healthy sip. ‘And you’re thinking, it’s got to be a lot harder for a perpetrator to kidnap, partially skin, and then kill someone he knew, someone who was supposedly a friend, someone who he had a crush on.’
‘Exactly.’ Taylor nodded. ‘Especially if that person is his
first ever victim. If Lucien hadn’t fantasized about killing Susan in particular, then why torture and kill a “friend”? He could’ve easily found another anonymous victim – a total stranger – someone he could’ve picked up in a bar or a club, a hooker, I don’t know, but someone who he had zero feelings for, someone he couldn’t care less about.’
‘And to Lucien, that was exactly who Susan was.’
Taylor frowned.
‘You’re trying to look at it with your own eyes, Courtney,’ Hunter said, putting his coffee cup back down on the table. ‘You’re trying to understand it with your own mind. And when you do that, your emotions get in the way. You have to try to look at it through Lucien’s eyes. His psychopathy isn’t victim-centered.’
Taylor held Hunter’s gaze for a long while. Every agent with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit is aware that there are two major types of aggressive psychopaths. The first kind – victim-centered – are the ones to whom the victim is the most important part of the equation. The perpetrator fantasizes about a specific type of victim, so everyone he chooses has to match that type, fit the profile. And it usually boils down to physical type. With victim-centered psychopaths, the whole fantasy revolves around the way the victim looks. It’s the victim’s physical attributes that excites and ‘turns them on’. Most of the time because it reminds them of someone else. In those cases, there’s always some sort of strong emotional connection, and nine out of ten times their fantasies will involve some sort of sexual act. The victim being sexually assaulted either before or after being murdered is almost a certainty.
The second major type of aggressive psychopaths – violence-centered – are the ones to whom the victim is secondary. The most important part of the equation is the violence, not the victim. It’s the killing act that pleasures them. They don’t fantasize about a certain type of victim. They don’t fantasize about having sex with the victim, because sex will bring them little, or no pleasure at all. On the contrary, it’s a distraction from the violence. What they fantasize about is torture, about how to inflict pain, about the God-like power that it gives them. To those psychopaths, anyone can become a victim, even friends and family. There is no distinction. Because of that, they achieve a much higher level of emotional detachment than the victim-centered ones. They can easily kidnap, torture and kill a friend, a relative, a lover, a spouse . . . To them it doesn’t matter. Emotions simply have no relevance.
‘How do you know Lucien’s psychopathy isn’t victim-centered?’ Taylor finally asked.
Hunter finished his coffee and used a paper napkin to dab his mouth.
‘Because of what we have so far.’
Taylor leaned in slightly and cocked her head.
‘The tokens that were found inside that box in Lucien’s house, remember?’ Hunter elaborated. ‘Not all of them came from women, and the ones that did drastically varied in size. That tells us that the victim’s physical type and even the gender aren’t that important to him. But Lucien also told us so himself . . . twice.’
Taylor paused, and Hunter could tell that she was searching her mental record of that morning’s interview.
‘He told us that when he was in high school he dreamed of hurting people.’ Hunter reminded her. ‘Sometimes people he knew, sometimes people he had never seen before . . . just random creations of his imagination – not a specific type.
Taylor remembered Lucien saying that, but she hadn’t fully made the connection.
‘Then he told us that when he started fantasizing while wide-awake, the star roles in his violent fantasies usually belonged to people he disliked. Sometimes teachers, sometimes school bullies, sometimes family members . . . but not always. No physical attributes, or gender came into play. In Lucien’s dreams and fantasies, who he was hurting made no difference to him. What excited him was the act of murder, itself.’
Hunter consulted his watch. It was time to get going.
‘Trust me, Courtney, whatever feelings Lucien felt for Susan wouldn’t have stopped him. Not even love.’
Forty-Nine
For lunch Lucien had been given an aluminum tray containing one portion of bread, lumpy mashed potatoes, a small amount of vegetables, and two pieces of chicken, which were swimming in some sort of yellowish sauce. Everything lacked salt and seemed to have been seasoned with an extra pinch of absolutely nothing at all. Lucien was convinced that the FBI had redefined tasteless food, but he didn’t really mind. He wasn’t eating for taste or pleasure. He ate to keep his body and mind fed, to give his muscles at least some of the nutrients they needed. And he ate every last scrap.
Just ten minutes after he’d finished his lunch, Lucien heard the familiar buzzing and unlocking sound that came from the door at the end of the corridor.
‘Two hours almost to the second,’ he said, as Hunter and Taylor came into his line of sight. ‘I had a feeling you two would be punctual.’ Lucien waited for them to sit down. ‘Do you mind if I stand up and walk about a little while we talk? It gets the blood flowing to my brain better, and it helps me digest that crap you guys call food around here.’ He jabbed his head toward the empty tray.
No one had any objections.
‘So,’ Lucien said. ‘Where were we?’
Hunter and Taylor both knew that Lucien hadn’t forgotten where they’d left off. The question was just part of his game.
‘Susan Richards,’ Taylor said, calmly crossing her legs, interlacing her fingers together, and resting her right elbow on one of the chair’s arms.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Lucien replied as he slowly started pacing from left to right at the front of the cell. ‘What about her again?’
‘Her remains, Lucien,’ Hunter said in a firm but unthreatening tone. ‘Where are they?’
‘Oh, that’s right. I was about to tell you, wasn’t I?’ There was a perverse quality to Lucien’s new smile. ‘Have you contacted her parents yet, Robert? Are they still alive?’
‘What?’
‘Susan’s parents. We met them a couple of times, remember? Are they still alive?’
‘Yes. They’re still alive,’ Hunter confirmed.
Lucien nodded his understanding. ‘They seemed to be nice people. Will you be the one in charge of giving them the news?’
Hunter suspected he would be, but he was getting tired of Lucien’s games. The way he saw it, right then, any answer was an answer, as long as it got Lucien talking.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you be doing it over the phone, or do you intend to do it face to face?’
Any answer.
‘Face to face.’
Lucien chewed on that for a beat before returning to Hunter’s original question. ‘You know, Robert, that night I experienced things . . . feelings, actually, that until then I had only read about in criminology books, interview transcripts, and accounts from apprehended offenders. Personal and intimate feelings that the more I read about them, the more I wanted to experience them for myself, because that’d be the only real way to find out if they’d be true for me or not.’
He paused and stared at the wall in front of him, as if fascinated by some invisible work of art hanging from it.
‘That night, Robert, I could actually feel Susan’s life-light fading away right at my fingertips.’ Lucien’s gaze moved down toward his hands before continuing. ‘I could feel her heart pulsating in my palms, and the more I squeezed, the weaker it got.’ He turned and faced Hunter and Taylor one more time. ‘And that was when I was elevated, like an out-of-body experience. That was when I realized that what so many had testified to, the feeling we read about so many times, was indeed true.’
T
aylor’s eyes darted toward Hunter and then back to Lucien. ‘What feeling are you talking about?’
Lucien didn’t answer, but his eyes passed the question over to Hunter.
‘The “God-like feeling”,’ Hunter said.
Lucien nodded once. ‘Right again, Robert. The “God-like feeling”. A feeling of such supreme power that until then I believed it was reserved only for God. The power to extinguish life. And let me tell you, it’s true what they say. That feeling changes your life forever. It’s intoxicating, Robert, addictive, hypnotizing even. Especially if you’re looking straight into their eyes as you squeeze the life out of their bodies. That’s the moment when you become God.’
No, Hunter thought. That’s the moment when you delude yourself that you had, for the quickest of instants, equated yourself to God. Only a deluded person would believe that he or she could become God, however briefly. He said nothing, but noticed Lucien’s fingers slowly closing into fists before he turned and faced Taylor.
‘Tell me, Agent Taylor, have you ever killed someone?’
The question caught Taylor completely by surprise, and in a whirlwind of memory, her heartbeat took off like a fighter jet.
Fifty
It’d happened three years after Taylor had graduated from the FBI Academy. She’d been assigned to the New York field office, but the events that took place that night had nothing to do with any of the investigations she’d been working on at that time.
That night, Taylor had spent hours poring over NYPD’s and New Jersey PD’s combined investigation files into a serial killer that they had named ‘The Ad Killer’, or TAK for short.
In the past ten months, TAK had sodomized and killed six women – four in New York and two in New Jersey. All six of them had been private sex workers. All six of them fitted a specific physical profile – dark, shoulder-length hair, brown eyes, aged between nineteen and thirty-five, average weight, average height. The pseudonym ‘The Ad Killer’ was used because the only solid fact that the police had been able to gather over nine months of investigations was that all six women had placed private advertisements, offering their ‘tantric massage’ services, in the back pages of free local newspapers.
After nine months and not much to show for it, the Mayor of New York had demanded that the chief of police requested the assistance of the FBI. Courtney Taylor was one of the two agents assigned to assist with the case.
It was past midnight by the time Taylor left the FBI office on the twenty-third floor of the Federal Plaza building that late October night. She drove slowly through Manhattan before crossing the Midtown Tunnel in the direction of her small one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, in the northwest corner of Queens. Her mind had been so busy, sifting through an earthquake of thoughts and trying to piece together a few aspects of the investigation, that it was only after spotting a 24-hour grocery store on 21st Avenue, that she remembered she had completely run out of several supplies back home.
‘Oh, damn!’ she breathed out, quickly swinging her car right and taking a parking spot just past the store. As she turned off the engine, her stomach also decided to remind her of how hungry she was by demonstrating its own version of a whale’s mating call.
At that time in the morning the store wasn’t busy at all – two, maybe three customers browsing the aisles. The young clerk at the counter nodded a robotic ‘good morning’ at Taylor, before returning his attention to whatever paperback he was reading.
Taylor grabbed a basket by the entrance and, without putting too much thought into what she needed, started throwing items into it. She’d just picked up a half-gallon of milk from one of the fridges at the back of the store when she heard some sort of loud commotion up front. She frowned and took a glance around the corner but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still, her instincts told her that something wasn’t right, and Taylor had learned a long time ago to always trust her instincts. She put the basket on the floor and walked around to the next aisle along.
‘Hurry the fuck up, man, or I’ll blow your fucking brains all over this dirty floor. I ain’t got all fucking night,’ she heard somebody say in a very anxious voice, even before she had a chance to peek around the corner again.
Instantly, Taylor reached for her Glock 22, thumbed the safety off, and very quietly chambered a round. Her stomach’s mating whales had gone quiet all of a sudden, giving way to a heavy-metal drum solo from her heart. This was no well-prepared and thought-out FBI operation. This was no drill. This was sheer bad luck. This was real, and this was happening right there and then.
Crouching down to keep herself hidden from view from the front counter, Taylor moved stealthily up the aisle. She paused before reaching the end of it, and through a gap between some items on one of the shelves, was able to check the round surveillance mirror in one of the ceiling corners.
‘Motherfucker, you think I’m playing wit’ you?’ she heard the anxious voice say again. ‘You think this is a fucking game? You better speed the fuck up or I’ll pop a cap in your ugly ass. You dig what I’m saying, holmes?’
The drum solo in Taylor’s heart gathered momentum. Through the mirror she could see a single perpetrator. He looked young. He was tall and skinny, wearing blue jeans, a dark, loose, New York Yankees sweatshirt, and had a red and black bandana covering most of his face. He was pointing a Beretta 92 semi-automatic pistol directly at the terrified store clerk’s head.
Like a frantic chicken, the perpetrator kept on quickly turning his head every few seconds to check the store’s entrance and aisles. Even from a distance, Taylor could tell that he was completely wasted, wired up on some kind of drug. And that made everything a lot worse.
Despite his incessant checking, the kid with the Beretta was so out of it that he didn’t even notice the police car that had parked just outside the shop.
Officer Turkowski wasn’t responding to a distress call. That small grocery store, stashed away in a dark corner of Queens, had no silent alarm or panic button hidden behind the counter. No, Officer Turkowski simply got hungry and decided to grab a couple of donuts and maybe a few Twinkies to keep him going for the next hour or so. He thought about grabbing a burrito from the Taco Bell on Jackson Avenue, but he was just around the corner from the 24-hour grocery store, and he decided that he fancied something sweet.
Turkowski was a young officer who had been with the NYPD for two and a half years. He’d only started doing solo patrols – twice a week – in the past two months. Tonight, as luck would have it, was a solo-patrol night.
He stepped out of his Crown Vic and, for once, closed the driver’s door without slamming it shut – no noise.
Inside the shop, the terrified store clerk had finished placing all the cash from the register into a paper bag, and was about to hand it over to his assailant when he saw the young police officer appear at the shop’s door.
Turkowski saw the kid with the Beretta a second before the kid saw him. No time to call for backup. Hardcore police training kicked in, and in a flash he had unholstered his gun and, in a two-hand grip, had it aimed at the kid.
‘Drop it,’ he called out in a steady voice.
The kid had already forgotten everything about the money and the store clerk. His only concern now was the cop with the gun. He swung his body around, and in a split second he had his Beretta aimed at Turkowski’s chest.
‘Fuck that, cop. You drop it,’ the kid said, holding his gun sideways in a one-hand grip – street gangster-style.
It was obvious the kid was nervous, but he was no first-timer. In a very agile move, as he pivoted his body to face the police officer, he had taken a step back and strategically positioned himself with his back to the front of the shop. He now had the store clerk slightly to his left, the police officer slightly to his right, and the shop aisles directly in front of him, giving him, out of the three of them, the best overall viewpoint of the entire scene.
Hiding in the aisle, Taylor had the kid’s inverse viewpoint.
‘I said
drop it,’ Turkowski repeated, easing himself one step to his right. ‘Put your weapon on the ground, take a step forward, and kneel down with your hands behind your head.’
Still crouching down, Taylor had silently moved up the aisle and was now almost at the front of the shop. No one had noticed her yet. From her hidden position, she got a better look at the entire scene, especially the perpetrator. The kid’s eyes were wild with a mixture of adrenaline, anxiety and drugs. His posture was rigid, but fearless, as if he’d been in that position before. As if he had everything under total control. Turkowski, on the other hand, seemed edgier.
‘Fuck you, cop,’ the kid said, using his left hand to pull the red and black bandana down from his nose and mouth, allowing it to hang loosely around his neck, and revealing his face.
Taylor instantly knew that that was a bad sign. She instantly knew it was time to act before the whole situation got out of control.
Too late.
Like a film on the big screen, as Taylor started getting up from her crouching position, the entire scene switched into slow motion. The kid hadn’t yet noticed her, and no one will ever know if he sensed her presence before she revealed herself, but he gave Officer Turkowski no chance . . . no warning. He squeezed the trigger on his Beretta 92 three times in quick succession.
The first bullet hit Turkowski on his right shoulder, rupturing tendons, shattering bone, and blowing up a red mist of blood. The second and third hit him square on the chest, directly over his heart, destroying the organ’s left and right atria, and the pulmonary artery and veins. Turkowski was dead before he hit the ground.
Despite the mess and the blood, the kid didn’t panic. He quickly swung on the balls of his feet to face the store clerk again, grabbed the bag with the cash, and raised his gun. The way he saw it, since he’d already killed a cop, why leave a living witness?
