by Chris Carter
‘Lucien said that the house was at the end of a wood’s edge,’ she continued, angling the laptop Hunter’s way.
They both studied the screen for a long moment and, as Taylor used the touch pad to drag the map from left to right and top to bottom, her demeanor changed.
‘Was he kidding?’ she finally said. Her voice was still calm, but it now had a sliver of annoyance to it. She lifted her sunglasses and placed them on her head before pinning Hunter down with a concerned stare. ‘This place is surrounded by woodland. It’s everywhere, inside and outside the city. Just look at this.’
Her gaze returned to her screen as she used the touchpad again to zoom out on the map. She wasn’t joking. The city of Murphy looked like it had been built slap-bang in the middle of a large, hilly forest. There seemed to be more woodland around than buildings.
‘What are we supposed to do? Find a house at the edge of every woodland we come across and go see if any of his keys fit?’
Hunter said nothing. He was still staring at the screen, trying to figure it all out.
‘He was fucking with us, wasn’t he?’ Taylor chuckled those words. ‘Even if this house does exist, which I now doubt, it could take us a couple of days to find it, maybe more. He sent us on a wild goose chase, Robert. He’s playing games.’ She took a moment to think about it. ‘I’m sure he’s been here before. Maybe even lived here for a while. He knows Murphy is surrounded by woodland. That’s why he sent us here with that crazy riddle. We could spend days here, and never come across this . . . fantasy house.’
Hunter spent a few more seconds analyzing the map before shaking his head. ‘No, this is wrong. This isn’t what he meant.’
Taylor’s eyebrows arched. ‘What do you mean? That’s exactly what he said: “The house is at the end of a wood’s edge.” Unless you’ve got this riddle wrong, and we came to the wrong place.’
‘I didn’t,’ Hunter assured her. ‘We came to the right place.’
‘OK then, so Lucien is playing games. Just look at that map, Robert.’ She nodded at her laptop. ‘“The house is at the end of a wood’s edge,”’ she repeated. ‘Those were his words. I’ve got the recording here with me if you want to listen to it again.’
‘I don’t have to,’ Hunter replied, turning the laptop to face him. ‘Because that’s not exactly what he said.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He said that the house was at the end of the wood’s edge, not a wood’s edge. And there’s a big difference. Can you get us a searchable map of Murphy? Locations, street names, things like that?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
A few keystrokes later and the bird’s-eye-view map on the screen was substituted by an up-to-date satellite street map of the city of Murphy.
‘Here we go,’ she said, passing the laptop over to Hunter, who quickly typed something into the search feature. The map panned out, rotated left, and then zoomed in on a narrow dirt road located between two woodland hills on the south side of the city. The road’s name was – Woods Edge.
Even Hunter was a little surprised. He was expecting that perhaps one of the woodlands, or maybe even a park, carried the name “Woods Edge”, but not a road.
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ he said.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Taylor breathed out.
The road seemed to carry on for about half a mile. There was nothing on either side of it, except woodland, until the very end, where a single house stood – the house at the end of the Woods Edge.
Twenty-Four
Taylor took the wheel, and the drive from the airport to the south side of Murphy took her just under twenty-five minutes. The entire journey was punctuated by hills, fields and woodlands. As they approached the city of Murphy, a few small ranches sprang up by the side of the road, with horses and cattle moving lazily around the yard. The typical smell of farm manure coated the air, but neither Hunter nor Taylor complained. Hunter, for one, couldn’t remember ever being in a place where everywhere he looked was painted by trees and green fields. It was striking scenery, they both had to admit.
As Taylor exited Creek Road and veered right into Woods Edge, the road got bumpier by the yard, forcing Taylor to slow down to almost a snail’s crawl.
‘Jesus, there’s absolutely nothing here,’ she said, looking around. ‘Did you notice that we haven’t seen a lamppost for way over a mile?’
Hunter nodded.
‘I’m glad we still have daylight to guide us,’ Taylor commented. ‘There’s no doubt Lucien was hiding from something, or someone. Who in their sane mind would want to live down here?’
She tried her best to avoid the larger potholes and bumps, but no matter how carefully she swerved, or how slowly she drove, it still felt as if they were driving through a warzone.
‘This is like a minefield,’ she said. ‘Car companies should bring their vehicles down here for a suspension test.’
A couple of slow and very bouncy minutes later, they finally reached the house at the end of the Woods Edge.
The place looked like a single-story ranch house, but on a much smaller scale. A low wooden fence, in desperate need of repair and a new paint job, surrounded the front of the property. The grass beyond the fence looked like it hadn’t been cropped in months. Most of the cement slabs that made up the crooked pathway that led from the gates to the house were cracked, with weed growing through the cracks and all around the slabs. An old and full-of-holes Stars and Stripes fluttered from a rusty flagpole on the right. The house was once white fronted, with pale blue windows and doors, but the colors had faded drastically, and the paint was peeling off from just about everywhere. The hipped roof also looked like it could do with a few new tiles.
Hunter and Taylor stepped out of the car. A cool breeze started blowing from the west, bringing with it the smell of damp soil. Hunter looked up and saw a couple of darker clouds starting to close in.
‘He certainly didn’t take very good care of this place,’ Taylor said, closing the car door behind her. ‘Not really the best of tenants.’
Hunter checked the dirt road around him and all the way up to the wooden fence. Except for their own, there were no other tire tracks. The house had no car garage, so Hunter looked for a place where a car could park by the house. In places like this, people tend to always park in the same spot. That would’ve undoubtedly left some sort of lasting impression on the ground, maybe even some oil marks or residues. He saw none. If Lucien Folter really lived here, it didn’t look like he owned a car.
Hunter also checked the postbox by the fence. Empty.
As they both moved toward the house, Hunter paused a second, allowing Taylor to take the lead. As it had been pointed out to him more than once, this wasn’t his investigation.
The single wooden step that led up to the porch creaked liked a warning signal under Taylor’s weight. Hunter, who was right behind her, decided to skip it, stepping straight up onto the porch instead.
They checked the windows on both sides of the front door. They were all locked, with their curtains drawn shut. The heavy door on the right of the house that led to its backyard was also locked. The wall above it was high enough to dissuade anyone who might’ve been thinking about climbing over.
‘OK, let’s try these,’ Taylor said.
Lucien’s keychain could’ve belonged to a building supervisor – a single, thick metal loop, packed with similar-looking keys. There were seventeen in total.
Taylor pulled open the mesh-screen door and tried the first key. It didn’t even go into the lock. The second, third, fourth and fifth keys all slid in easily, but none of them turned. Taylor just kept on calmly going through them.
The smell of damp soil became stronger and the air cooler as the first drops of rain came down. Taylor paused a second and looked up, wondering how many holes would reveal themselves on the porch’s roof once the rain got stronger.
Keys number six and seven were a repeat of the first one – wrong fit. Key number eight, on the other
hand, slid into the lock with tremendous ease, and as Taylor turned it, the lock came undone with a muffled clunk.
‘Bingo,’ she said. ‘I wonder what all these other keys are for.’
Hunter said nothing.
Taylor turned the handle and pushed the door open. Surprisingly, there was no creaking or squeaking noise, as if the hinges had been well oiled recently.
Even before stepping into the house, they were both hit by a disinfectant, mothball sort of smell that came from inside. Instinctively, Taylor brought a hand to her nose.
The smell didn’t bother Hunter.
Taylor found a light switch on the inside wall to the right of the door and flicked it on.
The front door led into a very small and completely bare, white-walled anteroom. They quickly moved past it and to the next room along – the living room.
Once again, Taylor found the light switch by the door and flicked it on, activating a single light bulb that hung from the center of the ceiling. The thick red and black shade around it dimmed its already weak strength considerably, throwing the room into a penumbra.
It wasn’t the most spacious of living rooms, but with almost no furniture to speak of, it also didn’t feel cramped. The disinfectant, mothball smell was much stronger in this room, making Taylor cringe and look like she was about to heave.
‘You OK?’ Hunter asked.
Taylor nodded unconvincingly. ‘I hate the smell of mothballs. It messes my stomach up.’
Hunter gave her a few seconds, and allowed his eyes to slowly scan the room. There was nothing to indicate that the house was home to anyone, no pictures, no paintings on the walls, no decorative items anywhere, no personal touches, nothing. It was like Lucien was hiding even from himself.
The open door on the west wall led into a dark kitchen. Across from where they’d entered the living room, a corridor led deeper into the house.
‘Do you want to check the kitchen?’ Hunter asked with a head gesture.
‘Not particularly,’ Taylor said. ‘I just want to find this diary, and go get some fresh air.’
Hunter nodded his agreement.
They crossed the living room and entered the corridor on the other side. The light here was just as weak as the one in the living room.
‘I guess he liked moody lighting,’ Taylor commented.
There were four doors down the hallway – two on the left, one on the right, and one down the far end. The two on the left and the one at the far end were wide open. Even with the lights off, Hunter and Taylor could tell that they led into two bedrooms and a bathroom. The thick and heavy door on the right side of the corridor, on the other hand, was securely locked with a large padlock.
‘This has got to be the door to the basement,’ Taylor said.
Hunter agreed, checking the padlock, which surprised him. It was a military-grade padlock, made by Sargent and Greenleaf – supposedly resistant to every form of attack, including liquid nitrogen. Lucien certainly didn’t want anyone going down into that basement uninvited.
‘And we’re back to the key roulette,’ Taylor said, retrieving Lucien’s keychain once again.
As she started going through the keys, Hunter quickly checked the first room on the left – the bathroom. It was small, tiled all in white, with a heavy musty and wet smell. There was nothing interesting in there.
Click.
Hunter heard the metal noise coming from the corridor and stepped out of the bathroom.
‘Got it,’ Taylor said, letting the padlock drop to the floor. ‘Took me twelve tries this time.’ She twisted the door handle and pushed the door open.
There was a light cord hanging from the ceiling on the inside of the door. Taylor clicked it on. A yellowish fluorescent tube flickered on and off a couple of times before finally engaging, revealing a narrow cement staircase that bent right at the bottom.
‘Do you want to go first?’ Taylor asked, taking a step back.
Hunter shrugged. ‘Sure.’
They both took the steps down slowly and carefully. At the bottom, another two yellowish fluorescent light bulbs lit a space about the same size as the living room upstairs, with a crude cement floor and tired white walls. Furniture wise, it could also be compared to the sparsely decorated living room upstairs. A tall wooden bookcase overflowing with books hugged the north wall. A large rug, together with a flowery sofa, centered the room. Directly in front of it, there was a beech-wood module with an old tube TV on it. To the left of the module was a chest of drawers and a small beer fridge. A few framed drawings adorned the walls. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust.
‘The diary must be there,’ Taylor said, nodding at the bookcase.
Hunter was still looking around the room, taking everything in.
Taylor stepped forward toward the bookcase; she paused before it, and let her eyes quickly browse through all the titles. Several of them looked to be on psychology, a few on engineering, a few on cooking, a few on mechanics, several paperback thrillers, and a few on self-motivation and how to overcome adversity. In one corner, a small collection of books looked a little different from all the others. The main difference was – they had no title. They weren’t printed books. They were hardcover notebooks, the kind easily found in any stationery store.
‘It looks like we’ve got more than one diary here,’ Taylor announced, reaching for the first book.
She got no reply from Hunter.
Without looking at him she flipped the book open, and as she started flicking through it, she frowned. There was nothing written on any of the pages. They were all covered by hand drawings and sketches.
‘Robert, come have a look at this.’
Still no reply from Hunter.
‘Robert, can you hear me?’ Taylor finally turned to face him.
Hunter was standing in the middle of the room, immobile, staring at the wall straight in front of him. The look on his face had changed to something Taylor couldn’t quite recognize.
‘Robert, what’s going on?’
Silence.
She followed his stare toward one of the framed drawings.
‘Wait a second,’ she said, squinting at it and moving a little closer. It took her several seconds to understand what she was looking at, and as she did, her whole body was suddenly covered in gooseflesh.
‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered. ‘Is that . . . human skin?’
Hunter finally nodded slowly.
Taylor breathed out, took a step back, and looked around the room again.
‘Jesus Christ . . .’ Her throat went completely dry and she felt as if she was being choked by a pair of invisible hands.
There were five different frames adorning the walls.
Hunter still hadn’t moved. His stare was still locked onto the frame directly in front of him. But the fact that what seemed to be framed drawings, were actually framed human skin, wasn’t what had shocked him the most. What had frozen Hunter to the spot was what was drawn onto the human skin in the frame he was staring at. A very unique tattoo. One that Hunter remembered well, because he had been there when it was done. And so was Lucien. A tattoo of a red rose, where its thorny stem wrapped itself around a bleeding heart, giving the impression that it was strangling it.
Susan’s tattoo.
Part Two
The Right Man
Twenty-Five
This time, Lucien Folter was already sitting at the metal table inside the interrogation room when the door buzzed open and Hunter and Taylor walked in. Just like before, his hands were cuffed, linked together by a metal chain. His feet were also shackled, with the ankle chain already securely fastened to the thick metal loop on the floor by his chair. Standing right behind him were two armed US Marines. They both nodded at Hunter and Taylor before exiting the room without saying a word.
Lucien was leaning forward on his chair. His hands were resting on the table with his fingers interlaced together. He was very slowly and calmly tapping his thumbs against each other
in a steady rhythm, as if he was doing it to the beat of some song that only he could hear. His head and his eyes were low. His stare was fixed on his hands.
Taylor deliberately allowed the door to slam shut behind her, but the loud bang didn’t seem to reach Lucien’s ears. He didn’t flinch, didn’t look up, didn’t stop with the thumbs tapping. It was like he was in a world of his own.
Hunter stepped forward and stopped across the table from him, his arms loose and relaxed by the side of his body. He didn’t take a seat. He didn’t say a thing. He simply waited.
Taylor stood by the door, anger burning inside her eyes. On their trip back to Quantico, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t let that anger show, that she would be pragmatic . . . professional . . . detached. But seeing Lucien again, sitting in that room seemingly unperturbed, made her blood boil inside her veins.
‘You sick sonofabitch,’ she finally blurted out. ‘How many have you actually killed?’
Lucien just kept staring at his thumbs, following the beat that no one else could hear.
‘Did you skin them all?’ Taylor carried on.
No reply.
‘Did you make one of those sick trophies out of every victim?’
Still no reply, but this time Lucien stopped with the thumbs tapping, slowly lifted his head, and locked eyes with Hunter. Neither of them said anything for a very long moment. They simply studied each other like two complete strangers who were about to go into battle. The first thing Hunter noticed was that Lucien’s demeanor had totally changed from their previous interview. The emotional Lucien, the one who seemed scared that a huge injustice was being done to him, the one who needed help, that Lucien was all but gone. The new Lucien sitting before Hunter now looked stronger . . . more confident . . . fearless. Even his face looked tougher, like a fighter who wouldn’t walk away from any sort of confrontation – someone who was ready for come what may. There was also something very different about the look in his dark brown eyes. Something very cold and disconnected, void of any emotion. It was an empty look that Hunter had seen several times before, but never in Lucien’s eyes. It was a psychopathic look.