“And what was his response?”
The man held his chin between his thumb and forefinger, thinking. “Many serials we get, they blame people. Blame their over-worrisome mother, an aggressive father, the system. They blame because they feel guilt, remorse. At least they know what they have done is wrong, in society’s eyes. Therefore, they want to crawl out from under the shame, displace it onto something, someone else.” Cat read concern in Stall’s face as he spoke.
“What was Carl’s response?”
“With Carl, we never got any of that. No voices, no bad childhood, no abuse. When I asked him the question, he simply said he did not understand how he did it. But he knows he did. And he makes no apologies for that. Given the chance, I have no doubt he would do it again.”
“I understand.” Cat had heard enough. She wanted to speak to Carl herself. “Does he know I am coming?”
“We told him he would have a visitor, but we have not told him your identity. We did not want him to get keyed up.”
“Yes. By the way, do you have a photo of Eric? It might be something that we could age progress to see what he would look like today.”
Dr. Stall shook his head and looked a little guilty. “I’m sorry to say the only photo we had of him as a boy burned up in a fire about seventeen years ago. Those were before the days of laptop computers and everything being digitized like they are now.”
“I understand. Thank you for your time.” Cat rose and offered a handshake to the doctor.
Stall looked her in the eye over his frames, his pupils tight, constricted. “I do not want to promise you anything, doctor. He may provide you no information at all. At times he is impervious to any line of questioning. There are other times that he will speak, but it is all lies.”
“I have had sufficient experience to be able to tell the difference.”
“I hope so.”
Behind her, Cat heard a maximum security steel door slam home with a resounding clang. Behind it, over her shoulder, two similar doors, both operated remotely as well as by keyless entry, stood as testament to the monsters housed here. Holding a tiny tape recorder, a steno pad, and a pencil, she walked past what appeared to be glass cases, though Cat knew them to be reinforced multi-inch-thick plastic. Inside, displayed like bugs in a case, were society’s most horrific killers.
Each cell contained steel bars about two feet back from the clear partition. A small flap, six small holes, was the only way she and Carl Stearbourne shared the same air. Behind the barriers, men were in various stages of daily routine. Some sleeping, reading, playing cards. In here, they almost looked normal. Partitions and bars reminded her they were not.
Cat had always been fascinated that there were no women here. It seemed only the male of the species harbored enough rage and frustration to rape, murder, and maim. Or perhaps it was society’s notion that women were still the weaker sex, that somehow they were not to blame for terrible crimes they committed. Therefore, they were never sent to a place like this.
She thought of what she knew of Carl Stearbourne as she walked. The case had been taught regularly at Quantico. She knew all the facts but didn’t have any idea about what made this guy click.
Carl Stearbourne was born in 1934 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the only son of a widowed music teacher, Kathleen Stearbourne. His early childhood was marked by signs of genius. Before he could walk, he was reading the classics, Homer, Aristotle, the works of Emerson. An accomplished violinist by age five, he had an uncanny ear for music. The boy’s mother was an overbearing perfectionist. Perhaps seeing a child with this much natural talent only brought out the worst in her. She forced him to practice for hours on end, pawning him off to school only when she had to. She had a mean, sadistic streak. Conceivably in an effort to gain more control over the boy, she dressed Carl in bright clothing and sent him off to school, challenging him to be “the man of the house.”
By the time he was six, Carl had been expelled, a ripe candidate for Kathleen’s particular brand of “homeschooling.” His young adult life was marked by the all-consuming affection and attention of Kathleen, yet when he did not play to perfection, she poured hot oil over his hands.
From what Cat had read, he’d never called her mother. Rather he addressed her only by her first name, which he sometimes pronounced with a lisp. At the age of twenty-five, Carl Stearbourne had had enough. On the night of August 12, 1959, he broke into his mother’s bedroom and slaughtered her with her tree-pruning shears. When he was finished, he left her intestines coiled neatly beside her body.
When asked by police why he did it, he only answered, “I just wondered what it would feel like to stab her.” The fact that he had done nothing to hide the body indicated to police that he had no inkling that what he did was wrong. That reality still persisted in Carl Stearbourne’s mind today. He had never taken responsibility for his acts; therefore, he had never been freed.
Cat calls and whistles increased as Catherine got closer to Carl’s cell. “Hey, Carl, looks like you’ve got yourself a visitor, pretty one too. You gonna cut out her vocal cords, or play nice and have a conversation?” She looked at a strapping guard standing at the hallway’s end. His eyes flashed white. His forefinger massaged the weapon strapped on his shoulder.
Cat nodded to him, acknowledging his protection.
Apparently, with Carl Stearbourne they had taken extra precautions. Behind the see-through partition was another one, twice as thick as the first. In front of her, a single folding chair sat waiting for her audience. At first she was angry about it. She had wanted to surprise him, catch him off guard. Cat thought about it and resigned herself to these arrangements. There was really no chance of surprise. He knew she was coming. She drew in a breath and stopped in front of his cell.
Carl Stearbourne appeared to be reading at a bolted-down desk. The book, Jean Cocteau’s Le Rappel à l’ordre. He spoke to her without lowering it from his face.
“This book speaks of Barabbas. Are you familiar with him?”
Cat’s hair bristled. “Yes.”
He read from the book, his voice a controlled, deep baritone. “If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.”
Silence followed as Cat tried to figure out where he was going with this.
Carl slowly lowered the book so that only sharp tiny pupils showed, his eyes focused on her. “Do you believe I am Barabbas?”
He was, of course, referring to the biblical character freed by Roman governor Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus—who was crucified. Cat wondered if he considered himself a savior, like Christ.
“Do you believe you are, Carl?”
“What I believe is not your concern, is it, doctor?”
“Oh, but I believe it is.” Taking a seat, careful to keep her distance, she hit the record button. “Do you mind if I tape?”
He waved his hand in the air. “You may. Every day I am taped, every hour.” He looked up to a recessed video camera artfully tucked in a back corner, protected by plexiglass. Cat hadn’t noticed it. “I do not understand what they hope to gain.”
“Perhaps to understand,” she said, feeling her palms sweating.
Carl put down the book, stood and came closer. He sat on a chair that was bolted to the floor two feet back from the metal bars, looking her square in the eye for the first time. His eyes were unlike anything she’d ever seen. Black pupils and black irises melted into one. It was as if his eyes were an abyss. “I have been waiting for you, Catherine,” he said. “How do you spell that? With a C or a K?”
He leaned into her. Cat involuntarily felt her body move back a half inch. He sensed it, enjoying the game.
“How did you know I was coming?” Her words were quick, carefully chosen.
“I have been following your career for some time. It was inevitable that you would come to see me. To speak with me. To be with me.” He placed one finger over his pursed lips. “It is a pity we could not have met on the outside.” His face was bl
ank as he said it, but she understood the implication.
“Yes.”
He looked at her, his eyes traveling from her Ferragamo shoes to the conservative Anne Klein pearl earrings and back. Cat forced herself not to squirm.
“You are quite beautiful, doctor. The photographs in the paper. They do you little justice.”
She did not smile. “Thank you. You have been following the case?”
“Yes. A daily paper is one of the few luxuries they allow me. When your case went national, I began to follow it.”
“Really?”
“But I have been following you for quite some time.” His emphasis on the word you gave her the creeps.
Cat felt he was staring through her, as if she were not even sitting there. Yet his eyes seemed to swallow her up. Consume her.
“Yesss.” He let the “s” sound purr like a kitten off his lips. “I knew you would come eventually to ask me about Eric. He was quite an unusual boy.”
“How so?” She asked open-ended questions to elicit the most information from him. Occasionally she glanced down at the recorder to be sure the tape was still moving.
“Do you really think I would tell without some sort of arrangement?”
Cat was surprised he wished to bargain. From what she had heard, Carl Stearbourne considered himself an elitist, on a much higher social strata than the others she had studied. This lack of bravado was out of character for him. But it could also be a ploy of some kind.
“You may do as you please, Carl. I am not here to make any promises.”
“Understood. And I am not here to provide you any answers.”
“I do not believe you are in a position to bargain, Carl,” Cat said, listening as her voice got tenser.
“I have something you want, which I do not have to divulge. I am in a far superior bargaining position.”
“And if I do not bargain with you?” Cat’s stomach somersaulted as she asked.
“Then more girls die, don’t they, Cat?” He said it with a crooked smirk, his black eyes focused intently on her for any reaction at all. She refused to give it.
“What is it you want, Carl?”
“I would like music. Mozart. Perhaps some Rachmaninoff. It would drown out the constant sound of that video camera zooming in and out.” Cat could not hear it, but she assumed Carl’s acute senses picked up everything around him, from the smell of her hair to the weave of the tights she wore.
“I believe that can be arranged.”
He sat back in the chair for the first time. “When I saw you for the first time, doctor, there was one word that came to mind.”
“What was that?”
“Passion.” He sucked in a deep breath. “You are a most passionate woman.”
“How do you gather that?”
“The way you look at me, the photographs, your press statements. We share that.” He studied her response. “Don’t we?”
“We share nothing, Carl.”
“Oh, but I think you are wrong. We share many interests. Music, the arts, an innate perception of evil. I also share that perception of evil with Eric.”
He said nothing for a minute, his eyes bearing down on her.
“Tell me about Eric,” she said.
Carl thought for a moment. “Eric was unlike the others I had known, unlike my other acquaintances. He was capable of such raw emotion, yet such a quiet boy, really. He would be forty-six years old now. Blending quite nicely into society, I assume.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Eric was that way. He had a kind, genteel face. Clean cut, invoked visions of mom, apple pie. You know the type?”
Cat nodded.
“And they believed he took responsibility. Once you take responsibility, you can write your ticket out of this place. Eric did what he needed to do to survive. Do you do what you need to survive, doctor?”
He peered at her with his black eyes, jawbone set, jutting forward.
“No.”
“Then what do you want from me?” He lowered his chin and looked away. It was obvious she had angered him.
“I have some photographs to show you. Would you step back please?”
He did so. He knew the routine, had been following it for most of his adult life. Cat put forty-eight horrific crime scene and autopsy photos on the sliding tray, twelve of each girl. Gingerly, she pushed the tray through then sat and waited. Carl put his hands through the bars, then the plexiglass holes, and retrieved them. As he got closer, he inhaled deeply.
“You are wearing Je Reviens. It’s a very subtle fragrance. My mother used to wear that. How long have you been using it?”
Cat did not answer.
He took another deep breath which seemed to infuse his whole body with the fragrance, then turned and walked back to the chair. “It is no matter,” he said softly.
“Can we get down to business?”
“Give me a moment with them will you?” As he asked, he closed his eyes and ran his fingers across the photo on top. It was as if these death photos gave him life. Cat watched rosiness flush his cheeks. “Yes, yes,” he breathed in deeply, “this may be Eric’s work. Shy boy. He was quite an introvert, isolated. But we became soul mates over time. Eric likes to take his time, doesn’t he? When he burns them, cuts them, it is not a quick process is it, doctor? It is a painful, arduous way to die.”
“Yes.”
“And he enjoys watching them die in the night. Watching their blood spill, isn’t that right?”
Silence.
“He takes them away, isolates them, just as he was isolated when he was a boy. The cutting is deliberate, slow, excruciatingly painful. And he is good at it, good at cutting the flesh. You are good at cutting flesh too, aren’t you, doctor?”
Cat wanted to scream at his questions, but she kept still.
“Flesh in moonlight can be disarming, can’t it, doctor? You know about flesh.” He leaned into her again, took a deep breath. “Roses, a hint of lavender, peonies… flesh and moonlight.”
“Why does he do it?”
“Why do any of us do it? We are all just children of our needs. Eric, more than most of us, realized his needs at an early age. And now he is making up for all those years he was unable to nurture and feed those needs. He is only making up for lost time.”
“What about the cutting?”
“Yes, I have read about it. Extremely precise in the placement. Worries you, doesn’t it? Strikes too close to home. What if it is one of our own, you think. One in the profession?”
“Did Eric have any medical training? Did he display any extraordinary skill with instruments?”
“Not that I recall.” He flipped to the second photo, closing his eyes again. “This one, her name was Nancy, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think she screamed?”
Cat steeled herself against his mind games. She wanted to get away from him. Far away. “I do not know, Carl. Perhaps you can tell me.”
“I think she did. I definitely think she did.”
“If he enjoys listening to them scream, then why did he crush the throat of the third one?”
He paused. “Give me a moment. I have not reached her photos yet.” From the looks of it, Carl was still on Nancy Marsh, immensely enjoying the inhuman way she had been torn apart, displayed as if she were an animal.
“Do you think less of Eric because of these?” His black eyes met hers in a flash, then immersed in the photos again.
“I do.”
“You should not. A man capable of this is far superior to many men. Not to me, but to you, of course. He is capable of living a double life. And I mean that in the broadest sense. Not only is he able to look the part, he is able to live the part. At an early age, Eric developed a detailed fantasy involving the interplay between death and sex. As he got older, that fantasy evolved into what I have before me.” He glanced at the photos, visibly taking the brutality in. “You see, for Eric, having the partner alive is
not good enough. There has been so much muck fed to him that he is unworthy of their love, that he does not believe a normal boy-girl relationship is possible for him. But when his fantasy escalates to death, dismemberment, mutilation…then that is an entirely different story. Possessing his partner’s life makes up for his sexual and social inadequacies. To Eric, it is the ultimate form of foreplay.”
He paused for a moment, taking in more of her perfume. Then started speaking again, his black eyes had a distant, faraway look. “And he leaves their faces alone, so he can see what they feel for him. How much they love him.”
He flipped to the seventh photo. “I am sure Dr. Stall told you of Eric’s episodes with his sister’s dolls, with the family cats.”
“No.” In spite of herself, Cat leaned forward.
“At the age of seven, Eric told me, he loved more than anything else to play with his sister’s dolls. His mother caught him at it one day and beat the daylights out of the poor boy. Eric directed the anger he had for his mother onto the dolls, cutting off their heads, appendages. It appears…” he flipped again to a new, probably more grotesque photo “…that he was practicing his craft.”
“What about the cats?”
“Eventually the dolls were not good enough. You see, they did not bleed. He escalated to dismembering the two cats, leaving them hanging in a broom closet, waiting for his grandmother to discover them.”
“He was not institutionalized at that point?”
“No. Eric came from a very private family. Eric’s mother, who raised him, was a domineering, abusive woman. She refused to have it spoken of. His entire killing fantasy…” He flipped again to another photo. By now Cat had lost count, but she could see by the look on his face that he was enjoying himself immensely. “…revolves around women. He told me at times he went into her bedroom with a kitchen knife, just standing there watching the blade reflect the moonlight, willing himself to bring it down into her skull. He could not. That is where he and I are different.”
The Burning Man Page 17