by Chris Carter
Kennedy handed a copy of the report to Hunter and one to Taylor. The reports each carried a mugshot of their subjects. Both women, Megan Lowe and Kate Barker, had been arrested a couple of times for prostitution. Despite the mugshots, it was impossible for anyone to match the photographs to the two heads found inside Lucien’s trunk, such was the brutality of the wounds inflicted on them.
‘If Lucien wasn’t lying about their identities,’ Kennedy said, as he was leaving the room, ‘chances are, he isn’t lying about Seattle either.’
Thirty-Seven
The inside of the storage facility was just as brightly lit as the reception office, with extra-wide corridors and rounded corners for ease of movement with wheeled carts and pallet trucks. The resin floor had been painted in light green. The storage unit doors were all white with their respective numbers painted in black at the center of it, and again on the wall to the right of the door. It took Billy about two minutes to guide them through all the turns and hallways until they reached corridor F. Unit 325 was the third door on the left.
‘Here we are,’ Billy said, indicating the unit.
Just as he’d explained earlier, centered on the right-hand edge of the rolling door was a metal bolt, locked in place by a thick, brass-colored padlock.
Figueroa and Decker moved forward to have a better look at it.
Unlike the military-grade padlock that Lucien had used to secure the door to the basement in the house in Murphy, this one was a Master ProSeries, shrouded padlock, not as impenetrable, but still formidable.
‘This is a pretty heavy duty padlock,’ Figueroa said, looking at Decker and then at Billy. ‘Do you think you can breach it with that bolt cutter?’
Billy had already assumed that he’d have to breach the padlock to the unit, and had brought with him a red and yellow forty-two-inch bolt cutter.
‘No problem,’ Billy said, stepping forward. ‘We had to cut through a similar one a few weeks ago. I’m pretty sure this one will be no different.’
‘So go right ahead and do your thing, Billy,’ Figueroa said, stepping out of the way.
Billy moved closer, opened the jaws of the cutter as wide as it would go and carefully positioned them around one of the shrouded ends of the padlock’s shackle. He put most of his weight behind the cutter, and gave it a firm squeeze.
Clank.
The cutter slid off the padlock as if nothing had happened, but they all saw something bounce onto the floor and slide away a couple of yards down the corridor. Billy had managed to cut off part of the protective shroud. Now the shackle was exposed on one side.
‘I told you,’ Billy said, nodding at the cutter. ‘This bad boy is the shit. Now comes the easy part.’ He placed the cutter jaws around the exposed shackle and gave it one more firm squeeze.
Click.
This time the cutter didn’t slide off the padlock. Its jaws simply cut through the shackle as if slicing through wet clay.
Everyone looked impressed.
‘I need to cut it again,’ Billy explained. ‘The shackle is too thick and too sturdy for us to be able to twist it out of place and free the lock. I need to cut a chunk off the shackle.’
‘Knock yourself out, Billy,’ Decker said.
Billy repeated the same steps as seconds earlier, this time placing the cutter’s jaws about three centimeters up the shackle from where he’d cut through the first time.
Click.
As the cutters sliced through the metal again, a small piece fell to the ground, leaving a sizable gap on the padlock’s shackle.
‘And Bob’s your uncle,’ Billy announced triumphantly, removing the padlock from the door bolt.
‘Great work, Billy,’ Figueroa said.
Billy stepped away and Figueroa slid the door bolt back and rolled the metal door up. All four of them stood still for a moment, staring into the almost empty, ten feet by ten feet, storage unit. There was nothing there, except a large industrial chest freezer pushed up against the back wall.
‘Thanks, Billy,’ Decker said, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. Figueroa did the same. ‘You can go back now. We’ll call you if we need anything else.’
Billy looked disappointed. ‘Can’t I stay and have a look?’
‘Not this time, Billy.’
They all waited until Billy had rounded the corner before entering the storage unit. Hughes stayed a couple of paces behind both agents.
A low hum that came from the freezer’s motor provided a very unnerving and creepy background soundtrack. There was no padlock or lock on the freezer’s lid.
Figueroa moved closer and studied the freezer for several seconds, checking underneath and behind it as well.
‘Looks OK,’ he said at last.
‘So let’s check inside,’ Decker replied.
Figueroa nodded and lifted the lid open.
They all frowned in almost perfect synchronization as Figueroa, Decker and Hughes looked inside.
‘What exactly are we looking for here, guys?’ Hughes asked in a semi-sarcastic tone. ‘Supplies for an ice-cream parlor?’
All they could see inside the large freezer were stacks of two-liter plastic tubs of ice cream. In fact, they were about three layers high. From the labels they could see on the top layer, they had a rainbow of flavors: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, pistachio, cookies and cream, apple cinnamon, and banana choc-chip.
Decker was still frowning at all the tubs, but Figueroa had a much more concerned look on his face.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he finally said in a deflated breath, reaching for one of the tubs. He picked up a strawberry one.
Hughes and Decker were now frowning at him.
Holding the opaque white ice-cream tub with his left hand, Figueroa slowly pulled the lid undone.
Hughes’ eyes went wide as she saw what was inside it. A second later, she vomited.
Thirty-Eight
Hunter and Taylor were called into Director Adrian Kennedy’s office fifty-five minutes after Kennedy had left them with the report on Megan Lowe and Kate Barker.
The office, which was located on the third floor of the BSU building, was spacious and nicely decorated, without being too imposing. There was an old-fashioned mahogany desk, two dark brown Chesterfield leather armchairs, a furry rug that looked comfortable enough to sleep on, and a huge bookcase with at least one hundred leather-bound volumes. The walls were mostly adorned with framed diplomas, awards and photographs of Kennedy posing next to political and government notables.
Kennedy was sitting behind his desk, his reading glasses high up on his nose, staring at his 27-inch computer screen. ‘Come in,’ he called in response to the door knock.
Taylor pushed the door open and stepped inside. Hunter was just a couple of paces behind her.
‘Don’t sit down,’ Kennedy said, motioning them to come closer and nodding at his screen. ‘We got word from Seattle. Come have a look at this.’
Hunter and Taylor moved past the armchairs and positioned themselves behind Kennedy’s desk. Hunter was to his left, Taylor to his right. The screen showed only Kennedy’s desktop. He had minimized the application he was looking at.
‘About forty minutes ago,’ Kennedy began, ‘two of our agents and a US federal marshal breached the padlock on the storage unit’s door in Seattle. This is what they found inside.’
Kennedy clicked his mouse and brought back the application he had minimized seconds earlier. It was a regular image-viewing program.
‘I received these photographs about five minutes ago,’ he explained.
The first picture on the screen was taken from just outside storage unit 325’s open door. It was a standard, wide-angle ‘crime-scene’ photograph, depicting the whole room. It gave everyone a good idea of the size of the unit. It also indicated how unsuspicious the space looked. Pushed up against the back wall, they could all see the large chest freezer.
Kennedy clicked the mouse again.
The second picture showed the freezer by itself, wit
h its lid closed. Again, nothing suspicious there either.
Another click.
The third photograph was taken from an up/down view angle, showing what the agents saw as they lifted the freezer’s lid.
For a moment, Taylor frowned at all the ice-cream tubs.
‘From now on it gets sick,’ Kennedy said, clicking his mouse again.
The image on the screen was substituted by a close-up snapshot of an agent holding one of the ice-cream tubs in his left hand. Its lid had been pulled open.
Taylor hesitated for a split second while squinting, trying hard to understand what exactly she was looking at . . . and then she finally saw it.
‘Oh, Christ,’ she whispered, bringing a hand to her mouth.
Hunter’s stare stayed on the screen.
Frozen inside the ice-cream tub were two pairs of human eyeballs and a pair of human tongues.
It was easy to see why Taylor had struggled to understand the image at first. Due to dehydration and lack of blood, everything had shrunk in size. The eyeballs were on the left of the picture, stuck together like a bunch of grapes. The tongues sat to their right, also stuck together, one on top of the other, creating an odd X shape.
Kennedy gave Hunter and Taylor a few more seconds to study the picture before clicking his mouse again. The next image showed a second ice-cream tub. Inside it was a frozen human hand, severed at the wrist. No fingers. They had all been cut off.
Another click.
A second frozen hand inside an ice-cream tub.
One more click.
A different severed and frozen body part.
Kennedy stopped clicking.
‘It carries on,’ he said. ‘There were sixty-eight ice-cream tubs inside that freezer. Every single one of them holding a frozen body part. Some of them held internal organs too, or parts of it . . . heart, liver, stomach . . . you get the picture, right?’
Hunter nodded.
‘That section of the self-storage facility in Seattle has been locked down for the time being,’ Kennedy explained. ‘They guaranteed me two, three hours max, just so our forensics team can go over the entire unit and collect the freezer with all the ice-cream tubs. The lab will do a DNA analysis and compare it to the one we’ve got from the severed heads in Lucien’s trunk. Not that I have too much doubt they’ll match.’
Neither Hunter nor Taylor seemed to have any doubt either.
‘The clerk working at the storage facility helped the agents breach the unit’s door earlier, but he had no idea what was kept inside,’ Kennedy moved on. ‘We’re keeping this as under wraps as we can. The press has got no word of it yet, and we’ll try to keep it that way for as long as possible but, as we all know, Lucien Folter will have to be tried by a US court of law, so this story will eventually break. And when it does, it’ll break big, because now I have no doubt that what we have locked up downstairs is a fucking monster, and this really is only the beginning.’
Thirty-Nine
Lucien Folter had just finished the last set of his exercise routine when he heard the heavy metal door at the end of the corridor unlock, followed shortly by the sound of footsteps. He got up from the floor, used the sleeve of his orange jumpsuit to wipe the sweat from his forehead, took a seat at the edge of his bed, and calmly waited. When Hunter and Taylor appeared before him and took the seats in front of his cell, Lucien had a proud smirk on his lips.
‘I’m guessing you had confirmation from Seattle,’ he said, his eyes slowly moving from Hunter to Taylor. Both of their faces carried nothing more than a blank expression. ‘Too bad you didn’t go there to see it for yourself. I think that I can safely say that my dismembering and chopping skills have become very polished over the years.’
‘Have you disposed of all the bodies in the exact same way?’ Taylor asked. She didn’t seem affected by Lucien’s bragging. ‘By dismembering them?’
Lucien and Taylor held each other’s stare for several seconds.
‘No, not all of them,’ he replied matter-of-factly. ‘You see, Agent Taylor, at first, like all the scientists in your BSU, I was curious. I really wanted to understand what drives a person to kill without emotion or remorse. The big question in my head was – are all psychopaths born that way, or can one be created out of sheer will? I read everything on the subject I could get my hands on, and I found that none of it had any of the answers I was looking for. There’s nothing out there, Agent Taylor, no book, no thesis paper, no detailed work of any kind that will tell you what really goes on in here.’ He tapped his index finger against his right temple a couple of times. ‘Inside the mind of someone who became a senseless killer, someone who taught himself to be a psychopath.’ Lucien smiled cryptically. ‘But you never know. Maybe one day that will change. But allow me to give you a little preview.’
Calmly Taylor crossed her right leg over her left one and waited.
Lucien began.
‘What so many seem to fail to understand, Agent Taylor, is that there’s a huge learning curve when it comes to becoming a man like me. I’ve had to evolve, adapt, improvise and become more resourceful throughout the years.’ He gave them a quick shrug. ‘But I always knew I would have to. Right from the start I wanted to try different things . . . different methods . . . different approaches, and though death is universal, essentially every victim has to be handled differently.’ Lucien made it sound as if killing was nothing more than a simple lab experiment. ‘But someone like me will always face one huge problem.’
‘And that is?’ Taylor asked, her interest measured.
Lucien smiled at her humorlessly.
‘Well, while you have countless resources and teams of agents and officers working around the clock to catch criminals, Agent Taylor, people like me are lone souls. My resources were very limited. Everything I had to rely on was in my head.’ He stared Taylor down coldly, still ignoring Hunter’s gaze. ‘I’m sure you are aware that not so long ago, the FBI published a study showing that at any one time there are at least five hundred serial killers loose in the USA.’ He chuckled. ‘Astonishing, isn’t it? People like me are a lot less rare than what many might believe. I’ve encountered several other murderers throughout the years. People who want to torture and kill for no reason other than pure pleasure. People who hear voices, or think they do, telling them to go out and kill. People who believe they are doing some divine work on earth, ridding God’s creation from sinners, or whatever. Or people who simply want to give their darkest desires wings. Some of them want to learn. They want to find someone who’d teach them. Someone like me.’
Lucien gave Hunter and Taylor a few seconds to fully savor the implications of what he’d said.
‘If I wanted to take on an apprentice, do you really think it would take me long to find one? All I would have to do is search the streets of any major city in this great country of ours.’ He spread his arms wide as if wanting to embrace the world. ‘The streets of America are overflowing with the next Ted Bundy, the next John Wayne Gacy, the next Lucien Folter.’
As outrageous as the boastful claim sounded, Hunter knew Lucien was right.
‘We could even have a talent show to search for America’s next Superstar Serial Killer.’ Lucien pulled a face as if he were seriously considering it. ‘I should actually suggest that to some cable TV channels. And it wouldn’t surprise me if one did consider such a show, because one thing is for sure – they would have a bigger audience than most of their other shit.’
Memories of Hunter’s latest investigation with the LAPD exploded in his mind like fireworks – a serial killer who had created his own reality Internet murder show. And just like Lucien had suggested, the audience logged in to watch it in droves.
Lucien stood up, grabbed the plastic cup from the small metal table, walked over to the washing basin in the corner, and poured himself some water before returning to the edge of the bed.
‘But returning to your question, Agent Taylor,’ Lucien continued. ‘I didn’t always disposed of my b
odies in the same way.’ He had a sip of his water.
‘Susan,’ Hunter said, breaking his silence. ‘You said she was your first victim.’
Lucien’s attention turned to Hunter.
‘I knew you’d want to start with her, Robert. Not only because she was a friend, but also because you’re right. I did tell you that she was my first one. And that really is the perfect place to start, isn’t it?’ He took a deep breath and the look in his eyes changed, as if he weren’t bound by the walls around him anymore. As if the memory and the images were so vivid he could touch them. ‘So let me tell you how it all began.’
Forty
Palo Alto, California.
Twenty-five years earlier.
‘So, are you really going to go traveling?’ Lucien asked, placing a new round of drinks on the table.
Susan Richards nodded. ‘I sure am.’
Lucien and Susan had both graduated in psychology from Stanford University just a week ago, and were still flying high on their achievement. They’d been celebrating every night since.
‘Before I have to start job-hunting,’ Susan said, reaching for her drink – a double Jack Daniel’s and Coke. ‘I want to take a little time for myself, you know? Visit some different places. Maybe even take a trip to Europe. I always wanted to go there.’
Lucien laughed. ‘Job hunting? Have you gone mad? We just graduated from Stanford, Susan, which is the top psychology university in the country. If you decide not to start your own, practices from all over will be hunting you.’