by Chris Carter
One Hundred and Ten
Hunter came to a sudden stop as he returned to Madeleine’s bedroom. All the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Madeleine was still lying flat and still, but her eyes were open, or semi-open, her eyelids struggling with their own weight.
Hunter rushed to her bedside.
‘Madeleine?’
She blinked hazily.
Hunter gently touched her hand. ‘Madeleine, remember me?’
She blinked again and her eyes finally found his face. She didn’t say a word, but her lips stretched into a thin, but very truthful smile.
Hunter smiled back. ‘I knew you’d beat this,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to go get a doctor. I’ll be right back.’
She gave his hand the faintest of squeezes.
Hunter rushed out of the room, and in less than a minute was back with a short and plump doctor who walked as if carrying his body weight was an everyday penance. As the doctor approached Madeleine’s bed, Hunter felt his cellphone vibrate in his chest pocket again. He excused himself and quickly left the room.
‘Robert,’ Kennedy said as Hunter answered it, ‘the second list, the idea you came up with?’
‘Yes, what about it?’
‘You’re not going to believe this.’
One Hundred and Eleven
Seven hours later.
John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York.
‘Would you like a drink while we wait for the rest of the passengers to board, Mr Tailor-Cotton?’ the young stewardess asked with a bright smile. Her blonde hair was pulled back and styled into a perfect bun, and her carefully applied makeup accentuated her facial features perfectly. ‘Perhaps champagne, or maybe a cocktail?’ she offered.
Champagne and cocktails were some of the many perks of flying first class.
The passenger’s eyes broke away from the window and found her pretty face. The nametag on her blouse read KATE. He smiled back.
‘Champagne would be perfect.’ His voice was soft, with a gentle Canadian accent. His dark green eyes had an intense, but knowledgeable look in them.
The smile never left the stewardess’s lips. She found Mr Tailor-Cotton mysteriously charming, and she liked that.
‘Great choice,’ she said in reply. ‘I’ll be right back with a glass.’
‘Excuse me, Kate?’ he called, as she was turning away. ‘How long before we take off?’
‘We have a full flight tonight,’ she replied. ‘And we just started boarding all the other classes. If no one is late, we should start taxiing toward the runway in no more than twenty to thirty minutes.’
‘Oh, that’s great. Thank you.’
‘But if there’s anything I can do to make this short wait more comfortable for you, just let me know.’ Her smile gained a flirtatious sparkle.
Mr Tailor-Cotton nodded, with a flirtatious smile of his own. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
His gaze followed her as she started down the aisle. When she disappeared past the dividing curtain, his attention returned to the window. He’d never been to Brazil before, but he’d heard great things about it, and he was really looking forward to spending time there. It would be a nice change.
‘I’ve heard that the beaches in Brazil are simply breathtaking,’ the passenger sitting directly behind Mr Tailor-Cotton said, leaning forward. ‘I’ve never been there before, but I’ve heard that they’re like paradise on earth.’
For a split second Mr Tailor-Cotton’s heart almost froze, then he smiled at his own reflection staring back at him from the airplane window. He would recognize that voice anywhere.
The passenger behind him stood up, moved forward, and casually leaned against the armrest of the single seat across the aisle from Mr Tailor-Cotton.
‘Hello, Robert,’ Mr Tailor-Cotton said, turning his head to look at Hunter.
‘Hello, Lucien,’ Hunter replied calmly.
‘You look awful,’ Lucien commented.
‘I know,’ Hunter admitted. ‘You, on the other hand, have done a great job on the look. Different hair color, contact lenses, the beard is gone, even the scar is gone. All that in the space of just a few hours.’
Lucien looked like he was accepting a compliment.
‘You can do wonders with makeup and a little prosthetics if you know what you’re doing.’
‘And you have mastered that Canadian accent to perfection,’ Hunter admitted. ‘Nova Scotia, right?’
Lucien smiled. ‘You still have a great ear, Robert. That’s right. Halifax. But I do have a collection of accents I’ve mastered. Would you like to hear some of them?’
That last sentence was delivered with a perfect Midwestern accent – Minnesota to be precise.
‘Not just right now,’ Hunter replied.
Lucien looked at his nails, unconcerned. ‘How’s Madeleine?’
‘She’s alive. She’ll make a full recovery.’
Lucien looked back at Hunter. ‘You mean physically, right? Because mentally, she’s probably fucked-up for life.’
Hunter’s stare became even harder. He knew Lucien was right again. The trauma Madeleine had experienced would stay with her for the rest of her life. The true extent of its consequences wouldn’t be known for many years. Neither would the lasting psychological effects.
There was a long, silent break.
‘How did you find me?’ Lucien finally asked.
‘Your notebooks,’ Hunter explained. ‘Your lifelong project. Your “gift” to us, as you put it. Or, better yet, your encyclopedia.’
Lucien looked at Hunter, curiously.
‘Yes,’ Hunter said, ‘I still remember the day you mentioned the idea to me back in Stanford.’
Lucien smiled. ‘You thought it was a crazy idea.’
Hunter nodded. ‘I still do.’
‘Well, the crazy idea became a reality, Robert. And the information inside those books will forever change the way the FBI, the NCAVC, the BAU, and every law-enforcement agency in this country, maybe in the world, look at violent and sadistic repeat offenders. It will make you understand things that up to know no one ever did, and otherwise the world never would. Intimate things and thoughts that have never been explained. Things that will exponentially better your chances of capturing those offenders. That’s my gift to you, and to this fucked-up world. My work and those books will be studied and referenced for generations to come.’ He shrugged. ‘So what if I took a few lives in the name of research? Knowledge comes at a price, Robert. Some much higher than others.’
Hunter nodded as his eyebrows arched. ‘All that knowledge about psychology and criminal behavior, and you failed to see your own psychosis. You’re not a researcher, Lucien, much less a scientist. You’re just another run-of-the-mill killer, who, to justify your actions and feed the sociopath inside you, deluded yourself into believing that what you were doing was for a noble cause. It’s pathetic, really, because it’s not even original. It’s been done so many times before.’
‘Nothing I’ve done has been done before, Robert,’ Lucien shot back.
Hunter shrugged carelessly. ‘I’m not your therapist, Lucien. I’m not here to help you and this isn’t a session, so you can carry on deluding yourself as much as you like. No one cares, but the good thing was that in your books, you were kind enough to note absolutely everything concerning your experiments – locations, methods used, victims’ names, and much more. I spent the night going through some of them.’
‘You read through fifty-three books in one night?’
‘No, but I managed to skim through eight of them. And that’s where I got lucky, and you didn’t.’
Lucien’s expression showed interest.
‘While skimming through one of them, I came across the name of one of your victims that I knew I’d heard somewhere before – Liam Shaw.’
Lucien’s eyes went cold.
‘It took me a little while to place it,’ Hunter said, ‘but I did eventually remember. That was the name you were using w
hen you were first arrested in Wyoming.’
Lucien stayed quiet.
‘You were also kind enough to very thoroughly describe all your victims,’ Hunter continued. ‘And that was when I realized that Liam Shaw shared several physical characteristics with you – same height, same body type, same skin complexion, same facial shape, including the shapes of his eyes, nose and mouth. You were also of similar age.’
Still silence from Lucien.
‘Then I remembered something else you’d said in one of our interviews. You told Courtney that the reason you were caught wasn’t merited to the FBI. They weren’t investigating any of your murders, or any of the aliases you used.’
Lucien shifted on his chair.
‘Well, that got me thinking, so I went back and checked for all other male victims you described in the books. There weren’t that many, but all of them shared those same physical characteristics with you.’
Lucien scratched his chin.
Hunter tucked his hands inside his trouser pockets. ‘And that was why you picked them. Not because you wanted them to be part of your encyclopedia of torture and death, but because you were creating a list of identities you could steal at the drop of a dime.’
Lucien’s gaze moved back to the window and the darkness outside.
‘Some of your male victims were prostitutes,’ Hunter moved on. ‘Some were people who were down and out on their luck, but all of them had one major thing in common – they were all lone souls. People who were misunderstood and probably cast aside by their family and friends somewhere else. People who had left their lives behind to start something new in a new city. People with no attachments to anyone. The ones who’d never get reported as missing. The forgettables. The ones no one would miss.’
‘They’ve always made the best victims.’ Lucien still sounded unconcerned.
‘Because of their natural physical resemblance to you, taking their place was never a hard thing to do – a little makeup, some hair dye, maybe some contact lenses, a new accent, and, “Goodbye Lucien Folter, hello new identity.” In this case, Anthony Tailor-Cotton, from Halifax in Canada.’
Lucien finally caught up with Hunter. ‘So you and the FBI spent the night flying through those books, looking for every male victim’s name you could find.’
Hunter nodded. ‘A nationwide APB was put out for every name in the list we came up with. But I’ll admit that our hopes were very, very low. The best we were hoping for was that maybe, if we were very lucky, a few years from now one of those names would show up in a credit card transaction somewhere. Just a sniff of a clue to where you could be. Now, you can imagine our surprise when within a couple of hours we got word that Anthony Tailor-Cotton, holder of a Canadian passport, just like one of the victims described in one of your notebooks, had purchased a ticket for a flight to Brazil tonight.’
‘I guess I should’ve taken an earlier flight,’ Lucien commented.
Hunter could easily see Lucien’s logic. Initially he had two options. One was to stay in the USA and lay low for a while . . . a long while, and while doing so, he would probably have to live under the shroud of a disguise. His name would’ve made the list of the top ten most wanted by the FBI, and his picture would’ve been circulated to every police department and sheriff’s office in the country. Lucien Folter wasn’t the unknown ghost of a killer he used to be anymore.
Option number two was to disappear quickly, preferably somewhere outside the USA. Hunter knew that Lucien didn’t underestimate the FBI. He knew that his encyclopedia would be scrutinized to the tiniest detail, because that was exactly what he wanted. He was counting on the Bureau linking the name of one of his victims to the same name he was using when he was arrested, and then making the physical connection between all of his male victims and himself. So, if Lucien disappeared quickly and to somewhere outside the USA, then when all those connections were made it wouldn’t matter, because the FBI wouldn’t be able to get their hands on him anyway. He just never imagined that the Bureau would’ve managed to connect everything in a matter of hours.
‘Maybe you should’ve,’ Hunter said. ‘Like I said, this time I got lucky and you didn’t, because the name “Liam Shaw” so happened to be in one of the eight books I had with me. If I hadn’t come across that name, it would’ve probably taken the FBI a few months to connect the dots, by which time you would’ve been long gone.’
Hunter’s eyes finally left Lucien’s face and moved down the aisle toward the dividing curtain at the front. All of a sudden the curtain was pulled aside and Director Adrian Kennedy, together with four FBI agents, began making their way toward Hunter. At the opposite end of the aisle, four armed NYPD SWAT officers had appeared, and were also making their way toward them.
For the first time, Lucien showed real surprise.
‘You’re going to hand me over to the FBI?’
Hunter said nothing.
‘That’s very disappointing, Robert. I thought you were a man of your word. I thought that you had promised not only yourself, but also the memory of your murdered fiancée, that you’d find who’d so violently taken Jessica from your life, and kill him. That’s what you’ve been searching for for twenty years, isn’t it? To avenge Jessica’s death. Well, here I am, old friend. All you have to do is put a bullet through my head and your twenty-year-long search is over. You can be proud of yourself.’ Lucien quickly checked the aisles. ‘So c’mon, Robert. Here I am, a sitting duck. I promise you I won’t react. It’ll be an easy shot.’
Hunter shifted on his feet.
Kennedy and everyone else were getting closer.
‘I thought you’d said that more than anything else, Jessica deserved justice. Are you telling me that you’re going to betray that promise, Robert? You’re going to betray the memory of the only person you ever loved? The woman who you wanted for your wife? The woman who was carrying your baby?’
Hunter froze.
Lucien saw the hurt in his face. He pushed.
‘Yes, I knew she was pregnant. She told me when she begged me not to kill her, but I did it anyway. And did you know that yours was the last name that came out of her lips before I cut her throat open? Before I murdered her and your child?’
Hunter saw red as his blood began to boil. The thoughts inside his head made no sense anymore. His actions were no longer guided by sense and logic, but by pure rage. His hand was shaking with devastating anger when he reached for his gun holster.
Kennedy saw the look on Hunter’s eyes, but he was still several steps away from him.
‘ROBERT, DON’T DO IT!’ he shouted down the aisle.
Too late.
One Hundred and Twelve
Hunter had acted so fast that his hand had moved onto his gun holster and then back in Lucien’s direction in just a split second.
Lucien flinched and Hunter saw his body go rigid, but not from fear – from expectation – from satisfaction in his accomplishment. That satisfaction was short-lived.
Hunter dropped a pair of handcuffs on Lucien’s lap.
Lucien looked up at him, confused. Hunter was holding no gun.
‘You’re right,’ Hunter said. ‘Jessica deserves justice. Her parents deserve justice. My unborn child deserves justice. And I deserve justice for what you’ve done. Nothing would please me more than to put a bullet in your head right here, right now. But we’re not the only ones who deserve justice for what you’ve done, Lucien. The parents, the families, and the friends of every single victim you tortured and killed over so many years deserve justice too. They deserve to know what really happened to the people who most of them still believe and hope are just missing. They deserve to know where the remains of their loved ones are. They deserve to be able to give them a proper burial according to their beliefs. And most of all, they deserve to know that the monster who killed those loved ones will never kill again.’
Hunter looked at Kennedy, who was now just a couple of feet away, and then back at Lucien.
‘For th
at reason, yes, I’ll betray my promise to myself and to Jessica. And this time, there will be no more interviews, no more talks, Lucien. You have no more bargaining power, because we have your books, and everything we need to know is in those pages, including the location to the remains of every one of your victims. This really is where it ends for you.’
Hunter nodded at the SWAT agents to his left. ‘You can take him now.’
One Hundred and Thirteen
Despite his insomnia and the carnival of thoughts dancing around in his head, Hunter was so exhausted that he finally managed to sleep for a total of four hours.
After Lucien’s arrest, he had flown back to Quantico. As Kennedy had put it before, he was still officially ‘on loan’ to the FBI and, as such, he needed to fill in his last report. That was done late last night.
Hunter had woken up before dawn. Kennedy had arranged for an FBI jet to fly him back to Los Angeles early in the morning, and Hunter couldn’t wait to get out of that place. Everything still felt too surreal in his mind. Only a few days ago, he was supposed to be boarding a plane to Hawaii, his first vacation in so long, he couldn’t even remember the last time he had one. Instead, he was whisked away to the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, and into something that could only be described as a hellish nightmare. So much was revealed in so little time, his head seemed like it would never stop spinning.
Hunter was all ready to go. His few belongings were already packed into his rucksack, and he had nothing else to do but wait for the driver to come pick him up. He walked over to the window on the east wall and placed his cup of coffee on the ledge. Outside, still under the cover of the night, several FBI recruits had already started their grueling exercise and running routines.
Hunter looked up at the star-filled sky as he reached for his wallet. From it he retrieved a twenty-year-old photograph. The colors had partially faded, but other than that, the picture was still in pretty good condition.