by Chris Carter
Kennedy’s head bobbed down once. ‘I understand, but just to be on the safe side, I think you’d better wait for official confirmation before contacting her parents.’
Hunter nodded slowly before using the towel on his face and arms again. Bringing the news to Susan’s parents was one job he wasn’t looking forward to. ‘I’ve got to take a shower.’
‘Come up to my office when you’re done,’ Kennedy said. ‘There’s something else I need to show you.’
Fifty-Five
Twenty minutes later, Hunter, his hair still wet from his shower, was back inside Director Kennedy’s office. Special Agent Taylor was also there. She had lost the ponytail. Her blonde hair was loose and wavy, falling naturally over her shoulders. She was wearing a dark pencil skirt with a tucked-in blue blouse, black nylon stockings, and black strappy court shoes. She was sitting in one of the armchairs in front of Kennedy’s desk. In her hands, the same photographs Hunter had looked at down in the gym, the ones of Susan Richards’ remains.
Kennedy got up from behind his desk.
‘You still drink Scotch?’ he asked Hunter.
Single-malt Scotch whisky was Hunter’s biggest passion. Unlike so many, he knew how to appreciate its palate instead of just getting drunk on it. Though sometimes getting drunk worked just fine.
Hunter nodded. ‘Do you?’
‘When at all possible.’ Kennedy walked over to the cabinet to his left, opened it and retrieved three tumblers and a bottle of Tomatin 25-year-old.
‘Not for me, sir, thank you,’ Taylor said, placing the photographs back inside the envelope.
‘Relax, Agent Taylor,’ Kennedy said in a reassuring tone. ‘This is an informal meeting, and after what we’ve all been through today, I’d say a drink is more than appropriate.’ A hesitant pause. ‘Unless you don’t drink Scotch. In that case I can get you something else.’
‘Scotch is fine, sir,’ Taylor replied confidently.
‘Ice?’
Hunter shook his head. ‘Just a drop of water, please.’
‘Same here,’ Taylor said.
Kennedy smiled. ‘Looks like I’ve got a couple of true Scotch drinkers in my office.’
He poured the three of them a healthy dose, added a splash of water, and handed a glass to Hunter and one to Taylor.
‘I need to ask you something, Robert,’ Kennedy said in a more serious tone.
Hunter sipped his Scotch. It was pleasantly rich without being overpowering, with notes of citrus and fruit. A complex but very smooth palate. He enjoyed the taste for a moment.
Taylor did the same.
‘Do you think Lucien was lying about the cannibalism?’ Kennedy asked. ‘That’s something that we have no way of proving.’
‘I can’t see what he would achieve by lying about that,’ Hunter replied.
‘Maybe he was going for the “shock” effect, Robert,’ Kennedy said. ‘People with a “God” complex thrive on the attention. You both know that.’
Hunter shook his head. ‘Not Lucien. He doesn’t want notoriety. At least not yet. As sickening as it sounds, I don’t think he’s lying about what he’s done . . . about eating some of Susan’s flesh or organs . . . or about feeding it to her parents.’
Kennedy paused, doubt bubbling in his eyes. ‘You know I don’t come from a psychology background, Robert, so let me ask you the same question Lucien asked Agent Taylor.’ His head jerked in her direction. ‘Why would he do that? Lucien drove across state lines with parts of her cooked into a dish just to offer it to her parents, for chrissakes. That’s beyond deranged, beyond evil, beyond immoral, beyond anything I’ve ever seen or heard. And I’ve seen and heard a lot in my life. What kind of evil mind drives anyone to do such a thing?’ He had another mouthful of Scotch.
Taylor looked at Hunter curiously.
He shrugged and looked away.
‘I’ve read studies, books, papers, theses . . . you name it, about cannibal killers, serial or not,’ Kennedy added. ‘God knows, we’ve had many of them down in those same cells over the years. And I understand that a good number of them believe that they do it because to them their victims are special, and the act of eating them solidifies their bond with their victims. They feel that if they eat even a small part of them, the victims will stay with them forever and all that crap.’ He gave Hunter and Taylor a subtle headshake. ‘I guess everyone deludes in their own way. But feeding it to others . . .? That’s just pure sadism and psychosis. What else can explain it?’
Hunter said nothing.
Kennedy pushed it.
‘So if you have anything that could throw any sort of light on the “whys” of this madness, Robert, please humor me, because I can’t figure it out. Why did he feed her to her parents? Was it pure sadism?’
Hunter sipped his drink again and leaned against the bookcase. ‘No, I don’t think it was sadism. I think he did it because he felt guilty.’
Fifty-Six
Kennedy’s doubtful look bounced between Hunter and Taylor. The FBI Agent didn’t look at all surprised.
‘Could you please elaborate, Robert,’ he said in his whispering voice. ‘Because to me, feeding someone to her own parents doesn’t quite sound like the actions of a person stricken by guilt.’
Hunter looked around him, as if searching for an answer that might’ve been floating around in the air.
‘We could theorize as much as we like here, Adrian, but the only one who really knows what was going on inside his head is Lucien himself.’
‘I understand that,’ Kennedy agreed. ‘But I still would like to know your thoughts on why you think guilt had anything to do with it.’
‘If Lucien is being truthful about Susan being his first ever victim,’ Hunter said, ‘and right now we have no reason to doubt that, then, as you know, guilt and remorse are the first two common psychological emotions that usually torment a first-time killer.’
Kennedy and Taylor both did know that. According to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, ‘serial murder’ is defined as: a series of three or more killings, committed on three or more separate occasions, with a ‘cooling-off’ period between murders. These murders must also have common characteristics such as to suggest the reasonable possibility that the crimes had been committed by the same person or persons.
That cooling-off period, Kennedy knew, especially between the initial killings of a series, was almost always due to the perpetrator or perpetrators experiencing intense feelings of guilt and/or remorse directly after committing the crime.
That was easily understandable. Most aggressors who eventually become serial murderers struggle with fantasies, urges, destructive impulses and even rage attacks for a long time, sometimes years, finding them harder and harder to resist until the urges finally win the battle. The simple fact that they struggle with these impulses for such a long time clearly indicates that they know that killing another human being is wrong. It then becomes a simple psychological human response.
Most people usually experience some level of guilt if they do something they know to be wrong – cheat in an exam, steal the paper from the neighbor’s door, cheat on a partner, tell a lie, or whatever. That sense of guilt is directly proportional to how wrong they believe their actions were – the worse the actions, the bigger the guilt trip. And bad actions don’t come much worse than murder. For that reason, many first-time murderers will be thrown into the depths of dark depression and experience a tremendous feeling of guilt directly after killing someone. With that in mind, it stood to reason that Lucien had also experienced enormous lows, and was overwhelmed by incredible feelings of guilt after his first ever murder.
‘OK, I agree that Lucien must’ve struggled with different stages of guilt in the aftermath of murdering Susan,’ Kennedy admitted. ‘But I still can see no reason why, overwhelmed by guilt or not, he would’ve fed parts of her body to her own parents, Robert.’
‘I can see two possible reasons,’ Hunter said, with a hand gesture. ‘The first one you
mentioned just a moment ago.’
Kennedy’s eyes squinted a fraction. ‘And what was that?’
‘The belief that by consuming the flesh of their victims, the victims will then stay with them forever. They will become part of them,’ Taylor said in a half whisper. ‘Or whoever eats them.’ She allowed Kennedy a few seconds to reanalyze that statement.
Kennedy caught on quickly. ‘Jesus! Third-party transference.’ He looked at Hunter for confirmation but proceeded anyway. ‘So Lucien believed that if her parents consumed some of her flesh, then Susan would stay with them forever?’
‘As Lucien said,’ Taylor commented, ‘she was never meant to be a victim, and he also thought that her parents were nice people. So Robert could be right. He might’ve done it because he felt guilty at taking their daughter away from them.’
Kennedy considered that for a long, silent moment.
‘And the second possible reason?’ he finally asked.
‘The second reason links to the first,’ Hunter said. ‘Lucien told us that he used to hunt with his father, right?’
‘Yes, I remember that.’ Kennedy said.
‘He also said that his father was a great hunter.’
‘Yes, I remember that too.’
‘OK, many hunters inherit a belief that’s been passed down through generations and generations of Native Americans,’ Hunter explained.
Kennedy’s eyebrows arched curiously.
‘Native Americans never hunted for fun or sport. They hunted exclusively for food, and they believed that they must eat whatever they killed, always, because to eat their prey was to honor them. They believed that it kept their spirit alive in this world. It showed respect. To let their flesh go to waste, that would be a dishonor.’
Kennedy didn’t know that, but his memory and his eyes instantly flashed back to Susan Richards’ file sitting on his desk. Her mother was second-generation Shoshone, a Native American tribe, mostly from the area that became the state of Nevada. Her family name was Tuari, which meant ‘young eagle’. Kennedy was well aware that Lucien knew that too.
Taylor looked at Hunter intriguingly.
‘I read a lot,’ Hunter offered before she was able to ask the question.
‘So you think that, in his mind at least, Lucien was redeeming himself, even if only a little bit,’ Kennedy stated rather than asked. ‘He was being compassionate, by feeding her flesh to her own parents, he was trying to keep Susan’s spirit alive for them, even without their knowledge.
‘Everyone deludes in their own way.’ Hunter repeated Kennedy’s words from a little earlier. ‘But like I said, we can theorize as much as we like here, but the only one who really knows what was going on inside his head is Lucien himself.’
‘So in that case, let me ask you this,’ Kennedy said. ‘Why do you think he took part? Lucien said that he did sit down to have dinner with them that night.’
‘Because Lucien was experimenting.’
Kennedy pinched the bridge of his nose as if he could feel an oncoming headache.
‘In college, Lucien didn’t exactly doubt any of the theories behind these sadistic acts,’ he said. ‘He knew they were based on true accounts from apprehended offenders, but he was on the verge of almost obsessing with the feelings and emotions described by such offenders.’
Kennedy remembered something Lucien had said during one of the interviews. ‘He wanted to experience them for himself.’
‘Back then, he never said so in so many words,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But now we know that that was exactly what he wanted, to experiment. And that’s what makes Lucien so different from most psychopaths I’ve ever come up against.’
Kennedy’s eyebrows moved up inquisitively.
‘We know that he killed Susan, his first victim, by strangulation,’ Hunter elaborated. ‘But if we compare her murder to his latest one, the two victims in his trunk . . . the MO, the level of violence, everything has skyrocketed. I’m willing to bet that the violence in every murder he’d committed in between moved up a step at a time. But Lucien escalates not because he’s being guided by uncontrollable urges inside of him.’
‘He does it consciously,’ Taylor said, picking up Hunter’s thread of thought. ‘He does it because he wants to know how he would feel as he becomes more and more violent.’
‘That’s a frightening thought,’ Kennedy said. ‘The level of determination and self-discipline one needs to carry on escalating murder after murder for twenty-five years is mindboggling. And you think he did it just so he could experience the feeling?’
Hunter had paused, his memory digging out something long forgotten. ‘I’ll be damned!’ He finally exclaimed.
‘What?’ Kennedy asked.
‘I can’t believe he’s really doing it,’ Hunter murmured.
‘Doing what?’
‘I think Lucien might’ve been writing an encyclopedia.’
Fifty-Seven
Kennedy’s shoulder’s stiffened as he felt an awkward shiver grab hold of his whole body, something that didn’t happen very often when it came to BSU investigations. He waited for Hunter to continue.
‘I remember this discussion we had once.’ Hunter’s memory searched the past. ‘I think it was during our second year in college. We were discussing emotional triggers and drives in extreme violent murders – what psychological factors could drive an individual to sadistically and brutally offend and reoffend.’
‘OK,’ Kennedy said, still intrigued.
‘Back then, all we had were a bunch of theories put together by several psychologists and psychiatrists, and a handful of accounts by apprehended killers. Now bear in mind that notorious cannibal killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Armin Meiwes, or Andrej Chikatilo hadn’t been caught yet. Their interviews, accounts and thoughts weren’t on file.’
Kennedy and Taylor both nodded together.
‘As I’ve said,’ Hunter moved on, ‘Lucien didn’t doubt the veracity of the accounts we had then, but he wasn’t quite convinced by many of the psychological theories. What I remember he used to say a lot was: “How can they know for sure?”’
‘They couldn’t,’ Taylor said. ‘That’s why it was a theory, not a fact.’
‘Precisely,’ Hunter agreed. ‘And Lucien understood that.’
‘But he wasn’t satisfied,’ Kennedy concluded.
‘No, he wasn’t. And that day he suggested something so far-fetched, I had completely forgotten about it.’
‘And that was?’
Hunter took a deep breath while trying to remember the details.
‘The surreal possibility of someone becoming a killer solely to experiment,’ he finally said. ‘Lucien argued how ground-breaking it would be for criminal behavior psychology if a fully mentally capable individual went on a killing rampage, escalating his or her way through different levels of violence, and experimenting with different methods and fantasies, while at the same time taking comprehensive notes of everything, including feelings and psychological state of mind at the time, and in the aftermath of each murder. Some sort of in-depth psychological study of the mind of a killer, written by the killer himself.’
Kennedy’s body tensed just a little, fighting the same awkward shiver that had run deep inside him just moments ago.
‘He believed that a notebook, or even a series of notebooks, filled with such true accounts would become an encyclopedia of knowledge, a bible of sorts to criminal behavioral scientists.’
Kennedy scratched his left cheek. He couldn’t help thinking that, as absurd as it sounded, Lucien was right. If such a book, or books, existed, they’d prove invaluable and probably become one of the most referred-to works by criminologists, psychologists and law enforcement officials and agents all around the world. Such a book, especially if written by someone with a criminal psychology degree, someone who understood the importance of such information and knew exactly what to add, would no doubt become some sort of holy book in the never-ending fight against violent predators.
‘I think that might be what he was doing,’ Hunter said, his thoughts beginning to turn his stomach. ‘Jumping from murder to murder, escalating the violence with each one, trying different things, different methods . . . and keeping a diary of how he felt, especially emotionally.’ In his mind, that would give him the excuse he wanted.’
Kennedy’s forehead creased as he looked at Hunter. ‘Excuse?’
‘Lucien is a sociopath, no doubt about that, we know it and he knows it. The difference is: he’s known it for a long time. He told us that, remember?’
Taylor nodded. ‘He started fantasizing while still in school.’
‘That’s right, and I think that that knowledge hurt him. A regular kid shouldn’t be fantasizing about killing people. Maybe it all made him feel like something inside his brain was broken, that he didn’t belong. He even told us that the reason why he decided to study criminal behavior psychology was to understand himself.’
‘But that backfired,’ Kennedy said.
‘No, it didn’t,’ Hunter replied. ‘If anything, it pushed his imagination further. It made him come up with what to him sounded like a plausible motive.’
‘What better excuse to commit atrocious acts of violence than to fool yourself into believing that you’re doing it for a noble cause,’ Taylor said, following Hunter’s line of thought. ‘All in the name of research.’
‘That false belief would’ve eased his internal pain,’ Hunter added. ‘Lucien could then start feeding his hunger because in his mind, he wasn’t a sociopath anymore . . . he was a scientist, a researcher. Everyone deludes in their own way, remember?’
Kennedy broke eye contact.
‘Is there something else?’ Hunter asked. ‘Something you’re not telling us?’
Kennedy shrugged and pursed his lips in reply. He walked over to his desk, opened the top right-hand drawer and pulled out a notebook. It was the same notebook Special Agent Chris Welch had handed him in the holding cells’ observation room earlier.