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.
A step at a time, he thought. Take it a step at a time, Lucien.
And step one seemed to have gone perfectly so far.
Lucien would’ve given anything to have seen Hunter’s face when he entered the basement down in the house in Murphy and finally realized that the wall frames weren’t drawings. He would’ve given anything to have seen Hunter’s face when he finally recognized Susan’s tattoo.
Yes, that would’ve been worth a small fortune.
He felt his blood warming as memories of his last night with Susan came rushing back to him. He could still remember the sweet smell of her perfume, how soft her hair felt, how smooth her skin was. He reminisced on those memories for just a while longer before pushing them aside.
Lucien wondered how long it would take the FBI search team to find the box he had hidden inside the mattress in the master bedroom.