Kennedy’s eyes scanned through several pages before he let out a heavy breath.
‘Jesus!’
Fifty-Three
Even with the ventilation system on full blast, the heat down in sublevel five of the Behavioral Science Unit building seemed oppressive. Hunter felt beads of sweat form on the nape of his neck and slowly start to trickle down his back, only to be frozen in place by Lucien’s words. They seemed to have chilled the air like an arctic blast.
‘They what?’ he asked, his voice puncturing the silence that had clouded the air since Lucien last spoke.
Lucien had reached the back wall again and had stopped pacing. His back was toward Hunter and Taylor.
‘Yes, you heard right, Robert,’ he said. ‘Susan’s parents ate her. .’ He bobbed his head to one side. ‘I mean. . not all of her, of course, just a few diced-up organs.’
Taylor felt something start to spin circles inside her stomach.
‘How?’ Hunter asked. ‘By then they’d already traveled back to Nevada after her graduation.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Lucien said. ‘I visited them.’
‘You what?’ Taylor this time.
Lucien faced them. ‘I visited them two days after that night. . took a gift with me. . a pie I baked myself.’
The circles inside Taylor’s stomach became scary roller coasters.
‘A trip from Stanford to Boulder City in Nevada doesn’t take that long,’ Lucien said to Taylor. ‘Susan had introduced them to us — Robert and I, that is — a year or two before. We met them again after the graduation ceremony. Susan and I had both graduated cum laude, and they were very proud of her. Any parent would be.’
It was barely noticeable, but Hunter picked up a sting of pain in Lucien’s last few words.
‘They were a sweet couple,’ Lucien proceeded. ‘Susan was a sweet girl. I decided it was the right thing to do.’
‘The right thing to do?’ Taylor had been knocked off balance so hard that she couldn’t contain herself. She had to ask. ‘How could that be the right thing to do?’
‘You’re the investigator in this case, Agent Taylor. You tell me.’ Lucien sounded condescending. ‘Let me throw you a pop quiz. Let’s say this was a completely different investigation. Let’s say that you didn’t have me in custody. Let’s say that you had a case where you found out that the UNSUB had fed some of his victim’s organs to her family, what would your conclusion be, Agent Taylor? I’m interested to know.’
‘Play his game. Let him believe he’s winning.’ Hunter’s words came back to Taylor. She knew that what Lucien wanted was to get under her skin, to shake her confidence. She now understood that every time she lost her temper, Lucien felt like he’d won another battle. ‘Give him what he wants.’
‘Because you’re a deranged psychopath?’ she said. ‘Because to you it sounded like something fun to do? Because it fed your “God” delusion?’
Lucien crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Taylor, intrigued. A challenging smile threatened to stretch his lips.
‘That’s a very interesting conclusion, Agent Taylor,’ he replied, sarcasm dripping off his words. ‘Spoken like a true professional. You know, I always found that there’s nothing as entertaining as seeing people feed off their emotions. The problem with it is that it takes away objectivity. It clouds judgment. It opens the door to a world of mistakes. I learned that a long time ago.’
As if he didn’t have a care in the world, Lucien pulled his sleeve up and again looked at his wrist as if he had a watch.
‘Anyway, I’m quite bored of all these questions, and I guess you two have got a lot of work to do now, don’t you? You know. . bones to dig up, explanations to make, stories to tell.’
Leisurely, Lucien lay down on the bed and interlaced his fingers behind his head.
‘Give Susan’s parents my best for me, will you, Robert? Oh, and by the way, if you’re wondering. . yes, I did sit down and have dinner with them that night.’
Fifty-Four
Hunter’s fist connected with the punch bag with so much force, it sent it swinging backward almost a whole meter. He’d been hitting one of the 45-kilo leather bags that hung from the ceiling in the BSU building’s boxing gym for a little under an hour. His shirt and shorts were drenched in sweat, which was pouring down from his forehead like rain. His whole body was sore from the grueling workout and he felt mentally exhausted. But he needed some time to think, to try to organize the mess of thoughts inside his head, to disconnect, even if only for a few minutes, and for Hunter, more times than not, heavy exercise did the trick.
Today was not one of those times. Frustration ran through his body like bad blood, and no matter how hard Hunter punched that bag or how much weight he lifted, he just couldn’t seem to get rid of it.
‘If I were thirty years younger, I’d spot you with that punch bag,’ Kennedy said, standing at the door to the gym. The place was deserted, except for Hunter. ‘But even so, the way you’re punching that thing, you’d probably put me through the wall. I’m surprised your hand isn’t broken yet.’
The long day and a full pack of cigarettes made Kennedy’s hoarse voice sound even weaker, even more guttural.
Hunter delivered one quick final series of heavy punches to the bag — jab, jab, cross, left hook, cross. The bag swung back and sideways awkwardly, as if it’d had enough and had been finally defeated, before Hunter embraced it into a stop. His breath was tortured, his face a dark shade of pink, the veins on his arms and shoulders swollen from the whole effort and the extra blood flow. Panting, he rested his head against the bag for a moment, taking his time, waiting for his breathing to slowly return to normal. Sweat dripped from his chin onto his shoes and the floor.
Kennedy stepped closer.
‘Any news from La Honda?’ Hunter asked at last, his arms still hugging the punch bag.
Kennedy nodded with very little enthusiasm.
Hunter used his teeth to pull free the Velcro straps on both of his gloves and turned to face the director.
‘I had four agents check the site.’
Hunter used the inside of his left arm and the left side of his torso to grab his right glove and pulled his hand free, before undoing his left glove.
‘They found the house Lucien mentioned.’ Kennedy threw Hunter a towel. ‘The agents followed Lucien’s instructions to the specific location and began digging. They dug for an hour.’ He handed Hunter an A4-size envelope. ‘And this is what they found.’
Hunter quickly dried his face and hands before reaching inside the envelope and retrieving a couple of printed-out photographs. As his eyes devoured the images, his heartbeat picked up speed once again.
The first photograph showed a full human skeleton, its bones old and time-discolored, lying inside what looked to be a five-foot-deep grave.
The second one was a close-up snapshot of the skull.
In silence, Hunter stared at both pictures for a long time, dwelling on the second one for a lot longer than the first, as if he were mentally reconstructing Susan’s face over her skull.
Kennedy took a step back, giving Hunter a moment before he spoke again. ‘Since we already know that Lucien is a serial offender, protocol dictates that we now dig up the entire site,’ Kennedy said, ‘looking for possible remains of other bodies. It’s a huge operation, and there’s no way of doing that without getting the local authorities involved and bringing a Hollywood-size spotlight to this case.’
‘I’d wait a while, Adrian,’ Hunter said. He’d never been a big fan of protocol. ‘At least until we’re finished interviewing him. So far Lucien has been straight with us. If there are other bodies buried around that same area, I have a feeling he will tell us. Bringing a spotlight to this investigation right now won’t benefit anyone.’