by David Wiltse
"But we're not exactly social friends, are we?"
"Would you prefer it as a doctor-patient visit?"
"You make house calls now?"
"Under certain circumstances."
"Why didn't you just get in your car and drive out here yourself, why bring Karen into it at all?"
"One, I don't have a car. I live in New York-who needs a car?"
"Try again."
"I was hoping that if I came in under Karen's auspices you'd at least give me a hearing."
"Well, there you go, finally. Confession is good for the soul, right, Doc?"
"I'm sneaking around like this because Hatcher would have my ass if he knew about it. If he knew what I was about to do, he would probably consider it highly disloyal."
"I realize I'm being suckered-but I'm all ears," said Becker. "Anyone disloyal to Hatcher has earned my attention."
"I know that," Gold said, "but I didn't just say it for effect."
Gold placed a pocket tape recorder on the table and positioned two minicassettes beside it.
"You know they caught this man Cooper, the cellmate of the prisoner who wrote to you and warned you about him."
"Yeah."
"The Behavioral Sciences people are having a field day with him. He's told them about killings that go back years.
We're going to have local cops cleaning up their records all over the place. The Bureau's national crime statistics are going to go down. I mean, this person is a one-man crime wave. He's stuffed bodies in culverts and tossed them out of moving cars and left them for dead right and left, mostly marginal types, migrant workers, drifters, the kind of people who wind up dead in the parking lot of some roadside tavern in Tennessee and are never investigated very heavily."
"So you've got him-what's the problem?"
"As far as the Behavioral people are concerned, no problem at all.
They're delighted to talk to him and to adjust their profile of serial killers. And of course Director Hatcher has been able to deliver the guy who kidnapped and killed the niece of Congressman Beggs. Cooper has become a sort of Golden Boy amongst villains."
"As long as Hatcher is pleased."
"Everybody is pleased. Cooper is talking like a guest on 'Oprah." He can't say enough bad things about himself.
He's a little vague on the details, sometimes, but he's sure as hell willing. Prompt him a bit and he can remember most of it, at least enough to fry himself several dozen times over."
"You've been in on the questioning?"
"John, everybody's been in on the questioning. This is the prize bull, they're walking him around the ring for everyone to have a look. I mean, there's a cachet involved in being in on it; if you get a chance to watch it, you take it. Cooper's like tickets to the Super Bowl. You can't pass them up even if you don't like football. I was invited to watch an interrogation session. Somebody thought it would improve my understanding, I guess, give me more insight into what our agents have to deal with, something like that. I was just pleased someone thought I was important enough to invite."
"He confessed to the two girls in the coal mine?"
"Absolutely. Told us where he snatched them and when and how he tortured them with cigarettes and matches until they finally died. That was a revelation in itself They only found skeletal remains of the girls and no indication of how they died. They found a number of cigarettes and candle wax on the site but assumed they were being used just so the girls, or someone, could see.
He had a lot of details like that, stuff that only the killer would have known."
"So Hatcher has an easy conviction, gets national headlines-and you know that somehow they'll be his headlines-and gets in tight with the head of the Oversight Committee, all at the same time. Gosh, I'm glad you paid me this visit, Gold. Just what I need to hear."
"John, I'm not on the law enforcement side of things, you know that. I spend my time trying to help you agents adjust to what you have to deal with. Once in a while I make a contribution to a psychological profile of some unknown perp. You tell me I'm usually wrong with those."
"Only in the important details."
"Thank you. So I'm no expert on the criminal mind, granted. But I'm not an idiot, either. I know a deeply violent, dangerous man when I see one, and Cooper is a deeply violent, dangerous man. A very stupid man, too.
Plus he's got a system of values that he picked up from being in and out of penal institutions from the age of fifteen on. He makes my blood run cold. He uses his strength-and the guy's as big as a gorilla-to get his way. He's got a frustration level of practically zero, cross him and he'll throw you through a window because he can't figure out a better way. Of all the guys I've heard about in the years I've been in the Bureau, this one is at the head of my list of people I wouldn't want to be stuck in a blind alley with. His violence quotient is enormous.
He even dreams about pulling people's heads off. I mean literally pulling their heads off their shoulders."
Becker sat quietly, listening attentively while keeping his eyes on the tape recorder. He knew that Gold had not yet come to the point. He also knew that when he did, Becker was not going to like it.
"There are a lot of very nasty men I wouldn't put on that dark alley list, by the way. Dyce, the one who took men home and drained their blood because he liked to look at corpses..
"I remember Dyce," Becker said almost inaudibly. He had captured Dyce himself and come within a breath of killing him. Becker's restraint was considered by Gold to be a signal mark of improvement. Becker was far less certain.
"Of course you do. I'm sorry if that's a painful allusion, but my point is, I wouldn't be afraid to be in a dark alley with Dyce. I wouldn't feel comfortable about it, mind, but I wouldn't feel in immediate danger because Dyce was not randomly violent. He was basically a very passive man. When he acted out his awful fantasies, he did it with a purpose, he didn't just lash out at the nearest male. He had something very specific in mind. So do all serial killers… Am I right about that?"
Becker nodded slowly.
"If you saw Dyce on the street, you wouldn't even notice him. If you saw Cooper coming, believe me, you'd step aside to get out of his way."
"Just play the tape," Becker said.
"Right. Cut to the chase."
"With respect, Gold, I don't need a primer on serial killers."
"Sorry. I need to convince myself, I think. It helps to hear my arguments aloud. Not that they're arguments. I just don't quite understand."
"Play it."
"Right. Okay, this is what I consider the relevant part of the session I sat in on. He's already told us what and when and where about the girls in the coal mine, very specific as I said. The voice you recognize is mine. I only asked the one question. They looked pretty annoyed that I spoke at all."
Becker nodded and Gold started the recorder. A deep voice came from the machine. Even in this form and despite the masculine timbre, there was a quality of childishness in the speaker that came through clearly "I took her into the cave so we could be alone," Cooper said.
"Why did you want to be alone with her, Darnell?"
Becker did not recognize the voice of the interrogator.
"So I could hurt her," Cooper said.
"You could hurt her anywhere. Why did you take her into the cave?"
"So I could hurt her for a long time," Cooper said.
There was a pause, and then Becker recognized Gold's voice.
"What did it feel like when she died?"
"What did it feel like?" Becker could almost see the shrug of shoulders implicit in Cooper's tone. "I didn't care. She didn't mean anything to me."
"Do you like to hurt people, Darnell?" another voice asked.
"Yeah," said Cooper.
"Does it excite you to hurt other people?"
"Sometimes."
"Tell us how you feel when you hurt someone."
"I feel good."
"Do you feel better when you hurt men, or women?"
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"Yeah," said Cooper.
There was a puzzled silence@ "Do you like to hurt men more than you like hurting women?"
"I like it all," said Cooper. "I like to pull their heads off."
"Why do you like to pull their heads off, Darnell?":'Don't call me Darnell." 'What would you like me to call you?"
"Call me Coop."
"All right, Coop. Why do you like to pull their heads off?"
"You could call me ol' Coop. I like that."
"Tell us about pulling their heads off."
"That's how strong I am."
Becker switched off the machine. Gold let him sit in silence for a time.
"What did he do when he was released?" Becker asked at last.
"He raped a young woman, stole her car. Tried to drive the car over a filling station attendant, kidnapped another young woman, battered a local cop pretty good, hit the young woman in the head a couple of times, tried to strangle her, left her in a swamp."
"Did he kill either one of the women?"
"No. But he thinks he did. He left them for dead, let's put it that way." '-'What did they say? Were they conscious or unconscious when he left them?"
"The first one, the one whose car he stole, said she played dead and he lost interest in her. The second one was really unconscious. She had severe bruising on her throat and some damage to her neck. It looks as if he really did try to pull her head off."
Becker rose and turned off the heat under the pot of beans.
"So what do you want from me?" he asked.
"I don't understand the disparity… You heard it, right?"
"Let me get Karen," Becker said. "I don't want to have to go through it twice."
"Are you sure you want her in on it?"
"How else? Do you think I'm the Lone Ranger-I'm going to go riding in by myself? I don't have the authority to do anything on my own, even if I wanted to, which I emphatically do not."
Becker summoned Jack and Karen and the adults ate beans while Jack dined on spaghetti with butter and broccoli. Jack was excused from the table and Becker served coffee.
"We could go into the living room," Karen said.
"We'll stay here," Becker said, closing the kitchen door. "I don't want Jack to hear any of this."
"Meaning I'm to be let in on the big secret?" Karen asked.
"Don't be too happy about it," Becker said. "You're not going to like it."
"Somehow I guessed that. Okay, let's hear it."
Becker looked at Gold, offering him the chance to speak first.
"I'm not the expert," Gold said defensively. "I just thought I noticed something odd and came for advice. I haven't reached any conclusions myself"
"My ball, is it?" Becker asked.
"I'm really just a spectator here," Gold said.
"Could we drop the sports analogy?" Karen asked.
"John, just say it."
"Gold tells me that this Cooper is confessing to being responsible for half the national crime statistics. Has any of it checked out yet?"
"Some," Karen said cautiously. "There are a couple of unexplained deaths of migrant workers about ten years ago that match up pretty well with his story. There was a vicious assault on a homosexual in Spartanburg several years ago that was listed as an attempted murder. The man didn't actually die, but we can see why Cooper thought he did-that matches his story. There were the two girls in the coal mine. He had his facts right on those."
"Anything else?"
"We're still checking. Most of them were quite a while ago. He's been in prison for the last five years. Why? Do you think there are more?"
"How did the migrant workers die?"
"One of them was stabbed. Disemboweled, according to the report. The other's head was bashed in with a blunt instrument, probably a rock, the autopsy said."
"And the homosexual who wasn't killed? What happened to him?" John asked.
"He was beaten-kicked and beaten with fists and feet, I gather. He did not volunteer any information, said he didn't remember what happened."
"And where were these things done, the workers and the homosexual?"
"Where were they done?"
"in a mine, in a basement, a closet, an abandoned warehouse?"
Karen paused. "No," she said warily. "The homosexual was in a parking lot behind a bar. One of the migrant workers was apparently killed in an orchard but then dragged to a culvert. The other was found in an open field.
There was no suggestion in the report that he had been moved."
"And what's on his sheet? What was he doing time for? I "Armed robbery, assault with intent. His crimes were all violent, if that's what you're after. It is, isn't it?"
"Looking strange, Karen?" John asked her.
"So why would a man whose history is all open violence take two girls to a coal mine and torture them to death? Is that the thrust of all this?
It has occurred to us, you know. We are not completely blind just because we're actively involved in law enforcement," she said.
"That inconsistency didn't trouble anybody?"
"Trouble? No. We noticed it. It's unusual for a serial killer to be impulsively violent as well-but it's not unknown. Harris Breitbart killed three police officers in New Jersey."
"Not until they came to arrest him. After he had been discovered."
"So? He doesn't fit the mold perfectly. We're constantly changing the profile, you know that."
"What's the average intelligence.of a serial killer?"
Karen looked to Gold, deferring.
"Usually higher than average," Gold said.
"It has to be or they wouldn't survive long enough to kill repeatedly.
If they kill once and get caught, they're a murderer. If they're smart enough to stay loose and do it repeatedly, they're a serial killer.
Ergo, they're smarter.
At least that's the assumption, correct?" Becker said.
"Correct," said Karen. "And Cooper is stupid. But you don't have to be a genius to go into an abandoned mine if you're in West Virginia. There are tons of them.
If you leave a body there, it's not going to be found for a long time, whether you did it by planning or just dumb luck. It's not as if he did anything clever, he just did it in the right place."
"So then so far he's inconsistent and lucky."
"Apparently. What are you driving at, John? Do you think he couldn't be both?"
"Somebody could be. I'm not sure Cooper could."
"Look, we're not dealing in theory here. If we were, I'd agree, all right. It's not likely that a man who steals cars and drives them around for several days and assaults cops and gets in fights in bars is also going to slip away into the dark with young women and torture them for a week at a time. In theory. But we know he stole the car, raped a woman, snatched another in broad daylight with several witnesses, tried to drive the car over a gas station attendant. We know those things, they arr facts, not theory," Karen said.
"I'm not questioning that side of him-the stupidly violent side has been his whole life."
"You're not questioning the girls in the mine? That's the strongest part of his story. He remembers that better than any of the other things he did. Those we can verify a lot more concretely than the migrants or the homosexual or any of the other claims. He's got the details only he could know."
"Except for one."
Karen sighed. "Go ahead."
"He knew what he did and he knew when he did it and he knew how he did it-"
"And he knew why he did it," Karen interjected. "He likes to hurt people. You accept that, don't you?"
"Yes, he even knew why he did it. What he didn't know was what it felt like."
"Wrong," said Karen. "I've seen the transcripts. He said it felt good.
Hurting those women made him feel good. That's not terribly articulate, I grant you, but it's good enough for me. You have to consider the source."
"I realize it's good enough for you," John said. "It's good enough
for practically anybody, I imagine. You've got enough on Cooper that you could get a conviction in any court in the land… But Gold played me a tape of Cooper's confession… I don't think he did the girls."
"Why are you doing this, John?" She turned to Gold.
"Is this what you came for? What's the matter with you two? You think he's a von Munchausen, is that it? You think he's claiming he killed more people than he did?
We know that's possible. We'll find out, and maybe he killed only half of what he claims, or maybe a third, or maybe only two. But we know the two he did kill. We know."
"You 'know' because he told you," Gold said.
"He didn't make up that confession," Karen said angrily.
"No, he didn't. I agree. But it isn't true, either."
"Why not? Just tell me why in the hell not! What have you two geniuses spotted that nobody else could see?"
Gold put his hands in the air as if submitting. "I didn't spot anything.
I just didn't quite understand."
"What? What don't you understand?"
"Gold asked Cooper one question," Becker said. "He asked him what he felt when the girls died. Cooper said he didn't care."
"He obviously doesn't."
"No," Becker said. His voice had become sad. "Cooper was answering the question as honestly as he could think to do. He doesn't care when he kills someone because that's not why he does it. Men who are that violent are not concerned with the death of their victim, they just want to get rid of them because they are thwarting them in some way. Cooper didn't even bother to find out if half his corpses were even dead. He claimed the homosexual and the woman he raped and the girl he left in the swamp were all dead, and none of them were. He wasn't concerned about their deaths, he just wanted done with them."
"And that's exactly how he reacted to the girls in the coal mine."
"Yes. But that is not the reaction of a man who dragged them in there and tortured them for days and days. That required planning. He had to have light, he had to have food and water, he had to have the right clothes because it's cold that far underground, he had to have restraints of some kind to keep the girls there while he slept… he had to have cigarettes. I'm saying he planned it, kept at it for days, because, as he said, he liked it. It made him feel good. But the best part of the whole thing for a man who is obsessed enough to do it in the first place is not the torture… it's the death. The actual dying is the final payoff, the largest orgasm of all. 'I didn't care' is an impossible response."