by Ellie Marney
“Then we’re good.” He turns at the sound of keys in the door lock. “Okay, we’re on.”
Now here, the door is opening, and they are in the presence of their first juvenile serial killer. Clarence McMurtry is accompanied by a guard, a heavyset man who looks bored. McMurtry seems younger than seventeen in the orange prison jumpsuit, and he does not look bored. His bulgy eyes have a gleam. He seems to shiver with contained energy.
This boy is not Daniel Huxton. This boy isn’t in his forties; he’s barely old enough to drive. Physically, he’s a world away from Huxton’s paunchy brawn. But there is something about him that resonates in the same way, like a musk that Emma recognizes.
It’s a scent that hovers, always, in the back recesses of her mind. She breathes through her mouth. Giving in to it, falling into a memory of Huxton now, in this room, would be the end of everything. She needs instead a symbolic memory, and when she scrabbles inside herself and finds one, she latches on to it hard.
It is a memory of her mother in the barn, wearing rain boots and holding a stainless steel carving knife. Their farm has run dairy cows for longer than Emma has been alive, and it has always been her father’s practice to select a few young steers to butcher for the family. The carcasses are hung in a concrete-floored room in the barn for about a week to cure—the room is the perfect temperature and humidity for dry aging.
Her mother checked the carcasses daily, sometimes twice daily if there was a hot spell.
“Smell that,” she said to Emma, offering up a strip of backstrap. “That there’s done. And this one here is spoiled. Can you tell the difference?”
Emma learned to tell the difference. Now her nostrils flare again as McMurtry is set across from her at the table. She’s got it now; she knows what she’s dealing with. Confident her instinct still holds, she sits down.
The same instinct gives her a basis of approach: to sympathize, wheedle, compliment. Not too many compliments—McMurtry is a talker, he’ll pick up on obvious flattery. She’ll need to be direct. And let him brag.
Bell takes the chair to her right. As the guard leaves, Emma squares the manila folder in front of her. “Clarence McMurtry—thanks for meeting with us.”
“Who the hell’re you?” McMurtry barks out. He has pimples, skinny arms, a snappable neck. His head is too big for his body, like a baby chick.
“My name is Emma Lewis and this is Travis Bell. We’re—”
“You’re not a G-man.”
Emma registers a whole lot of Down in the Holler in McMurtry’s accent, which is something she figures she can work with. She allows more Apple Creek to slide into hers. “Actually we’re both with the FBI.”
“Now that ain’t right,” McMurtry scoffs.
“Pardon?”
“You’re a girl.”
“Indeed I am.”
“And there ain’t no girls in the FBI.”
“This girl is.” She shows her teeth.
McMurtry leans back in his chair, hands on his thighs. “Well, goddamn. Now I seen everything.” He squints at Bell. “That right? There’s girls in the FBI now? And Mexicans, too, by the look of it.”
Bell’s face darkens. “Mr. McMurtry—”
Emma cuts him off. “Clarence, we’re here to talk to you about the crimes you’re in prison for, if you’re willing.”
“Well, hell yeah, I’m willing.” McMurtry squints. “What’s with yer hair? You a dyke or somethin’? Why’d you cut yer hair like that?”
Emma has been made aware that the golden rule of interrogation is never to answer the subject’s questions. Now she leans over the table as if she’s sharing a confidence. Her expression does not change one iota. “Lice.”
“Ohhh,” McMurtry says. “Yeah, I get that. Well, I’m happy to talk, but you gotta know, they don’t treat me right in here.”
“Is that so.”
“Those fuckers in Unit Care, they don’t give a spit about folks in the cells. Why, last night I said to my bunkmate Roger, I said to Roger they don’t treat us right. They ration the food, the smokes—”
“The toilet paper?”
McMurtry slaps his knee. “Hell yes! They ration that, too!”
“Lord almighty.”
“I said to Roger, I’ve about had it up to here with this ration bullshit. It makes me just wanna—ugh. You know? It makes me wanna—”
“It makes you wanna strangle someone?” Emma suggests.
McMurtry’s expression turns sly. “Oh. You got all the details about that, do you?”
She cocks her head. “Clarence, you choked three old ladies to death in their beds. Those kinds of details we tend to take note of.”
There’s a heartbeat pause, then McMurtry’s bray of laughter ricochets into the silence. He slaps his knee some more and yucks hard. Bell stares. Emma waits.
McMurtry laughs so much he has to wipe his eyes. “Oh boy. Oh yeah. You’re a funny one, ain’tcha? What’s yer name again?”
“Emma Lewis.”
“You got a smoke on you, Emma Lewis?”
For the first time, Emma’s response is delayed. It’s Bell who takes a can of Bugler out of his jacket pocket and offers it to McMurtry.
“There’s one already rolled in there,” Bell says. “You can keep the can, but I need the matchbook back.”
“I do thank you.” McMurtry’s face lights at the sight of the tobacco, his pale tongue flashing out as he licks the paper before putting the end in his mouth. The match is a puff of red. “Now, what was I goin’ on about?”
Emma sits back in her chair and smiles. “You were telling us about the murders.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The interview takes nearly an hour. By the time they return to the world outside, it’s almost three thirty and there’s a long drive ahead. Clouds are coming in from the west. Bell looks at her all the way to the car.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He grins and scuffs the gravel as he walks. “Those kinds of details we tend to take note of. Jesus.”
Emma tips her head back. The sky looks very big, and the joy of release is keen. “You should wear that suit when we go to see Gesak. It seems to impress the prison staff.”
“McMurtry even filled out the blue subject forms.”
“The parts he could write.”
“That was a good day’s work.” Bell unlocks the pickup, looking satisfied.
Emma walks around to climb in the passenger side. The air in the cab is warmer. “You want to split the driving on the way back?”
“If I get tired, yeah.” Bell exhales, sets his shoulders. “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.”
He drives them back out the way they came in. Emma steadies herself against the bouncing of the Dodge as she examines the paperwork scrawled with McMurtry’s messy handwriting.
“How’s it looking?”
Emma flicks the pages. “Like it needs retyping.”
“That boy couldn’t spell worth a damn.”
“Bad at spelling, good at strangling women. He can put that on his résumé if he ever gets out of jail.” The adrenaline is wearing off and now her own comment sickens her. She looks away. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Bell says. He waits a beat. “Do you think he feels regret? He never really expressed anything like remorse.”
“These guys never do.” Emma’s surprised at the way her words lash out, but she can’t seem to stop herself. “They just keep protesting they’ve been hard done by. If they regret anything, it’s that now they’re stuck in a ten-by-ten-foot cell. McMurtry’s no different—he doesn’t really care about the things he’s done, the women he’s killed.…”
When the delayed reaction hits her, it’s as though all the blood leaves her upper body and pools in her feet. A sea of images and sensations rolls over her: the constant slow, circular motion of the vents stirring the air in the interview room; the pulse of her blood in her ears, like listening to the whoosh and rush inside a conch shell; the way McMur
try pinched his cigarette between finger and thumb.…
In the basement in Emma’s head, other fingers perform the same action: stubby digits with bitten nails, stained at the tips. She sees grease-dark overalls stitched in yellow; smells the scent of tobacco, of body odor and blood; hears the sound of screaming.…
She loses herself for a while, finally blinks herself out of it. Needing air, she fumbles the window crank, makes a gap for the breeze to rush in. The smell of the pines is restorative. They’re almost back on the interstate.
“Lewis?” Bell’s collar is loosened. He looks forward at the road but still somehow seems to be concentrating on her.
“How can some men hate so hard?” she whispers. But she’s not sure if it’s Bell she’s asking. She swallows against the thickness in the back of her throat. “Let’s get coffee. Can we get coffee?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bell says quietly.
He turns the pickup into the parking lot of a truck stop. The outside has been painted an unpleasant Pepto Bismol pink, but the inside of the place is clean-wholesome, and blessedly quiet. Bell orders while Emma finds a booth. She fiddles with the laminated menu until Bell slides in opposite her.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. You?” She’s feeling more herself now she’s out of the confines of the car. She suddenly remembers that she’s still wearing Bell’s shirt.
“That’s one down, anyway.” He shrugs, shucks off his jacket.
“I guess.”
“Something bothering you about it?”
Emma bites her lip. “What do you think will happen when we get back to Quantico?”
Bell rolls up his cuffs. “Cooper’ll probably want to debrief. He won’t expect a report before Sunday, but he’ll want to have a look at what we got. See how we managed. McMurtry is one of the easy ones, remember.”
“Who are the hard ones?”
“Have you looked at the other summaries?” When Emma shakes her head, Bell’s eyes drift in thought. “Rylan, maybe. Gesak, definitely—he’s refused all interviews.” He pauses as the server delivers two coffees and a grilled tomato-and-cheese sandwich. When the server leaves, he adds sugar to his coffee. “They won’t all be antagonistic, but they’ll all be hard.”
Emma looks at the sandwich—it smells good, but she’s not sure her stomach is up to much—and thinks about what she wants to express next. “Bell, why are we doing this?”
“Say again?”
“I don’t mean our personal reasons. Why are we doing this? Why create this unit? I don’t understand what’s in it for Cooper. What new things are we learning from these interviews?”
“We’re learning how that kind of mentality develops. How young it starts, and what kinds of triggers—”
“The FBI knows this stuff already.” She puts her coffee down. “They’ve interviewed thirty-five adult subjects, and most of them have provided extensive histories. They know it starts in childhood. They know the patterns of upbringing. They know the warning signs, like animal cruelty and arson and bed-wetting, and how the early fantasies develop. The psychopathology has been understood for nearly ten years—it’s on my damn course curriculum. Come on, Bell. What’s new about these subjects, except that they got caught early?”
Bell shakes his head. “Look, with these kinds of sex crimes—”
“These crimes are not about sex. The sex is just incidental.”
Bell frowns at his sandwich. “Everything I’ve read—”
“Are you talking about police investigation manuals? They’re focused on sexually motivated homicide, and they’re all based on Psychopathia Sexualis, which was written in the goddamn nineteenth century. So everything you’ve read is wrong, or out-of-date, or both. It’s not about sex. At all.”
Bell scowls. “So what’s it about, then? What would make a teenager like McMurtry kill three elderly women and jerk off over the bodies?”
“It’s about exerting power. McMurtry was browbeaten—and physically beaten—by his elderly aunt from early childhood. Instead of focusing his rage on her, he went out and murdered three other women of a similar age. He had no power with his aunt, so he exerted power over three proxies. Feeling that kind of power is thrilling, and he got turned on by it. End of story.”
“Every case is different,” Bell insists.
“No. Every case is the same.” She leans forward, because she wants him to understand. “Power. Domination. Control. Manipulating the people around you, fooling them into thinking you’re normal. The smarter ones cover their tracks better, and they’re better at the manipulation part, which makes catching them harder. That’s it. That’s all there is. So why are we doing this? With these interviews?”
“To be thorough? The FBI interviewed all the others. They want to see if there’s anything different in the younger ones.”
“And do you think there is?”
“Hard to tell from one sample.” He looks at her over the top of his cup. “But you don’t think there will be.”
“I’m expecting to see five guys who are either dumb or unlucky.”
“Which category does McMurtry fall into?” Bell snorts, shakes his head. “No, don’t answer.”
“Eat your sandwich,” Emma suggests. “It’s getting cold.”
Once Bell has finished demolishing his food, he goes out and gases up the truck while Emma pays. The light outside makes blue-gray shadows in the parking lot, and the smell of exhaust off the interstate is strong. Emma feels like she’s a thousand years old. She turns, searching out the last rays of the sun, before she climbs back into the cab.
She buckles up. “I signed on to this because I told myself we’d be gathering new information, that we’d be learning something.”
“We are,” Bell insists.
“I don’t know. And I don’t understand Cooper’s motivation. Why now, when he’s so busy with whatever’s happening in Pennsylvania? You said that case is a big deal, right?”
Bell’s voice is stiff. “They’re talking on the news about curfews for teenagers, so yeah, it’s a big deal.”
“And Cooper is heading up that investigation unit. He’s right in the thick of it. So again, I’m wondering why he’s suddenly so interested in all of this.”
Bell doesn’t seem to have an answer. They merge onto the main road before he speaks further. “If you don’t think we’re doing anything useful with these interviews, why’d you join up?”
Emma hedges. “I didn’t say it’s not useful. Every piece of information is useful.”
“But?”
She picks at the knee of her jeans. “It would be better if there was a specific goal. Beyond just… making a bigger graph.”
He eyes her. “You wanna be putting this information into service? That’s active cases. You must want to sign on with the bureau, because that’s the only way you’re getting on active cases.”
“No, Jesus. I just…” She keeps returning to the questions, and the questions are Why this? Why us? Why now? She doesn’t know the answers.
And this focus on the perpetrators sticks in her throat. It’s like the victims get forgotten. Why is it always about the killers?
Emma stares out the window. McMurtry’s offender behaviors and thought patterns—what is there to take away from that? Is it just anticipating the behaviors and thought patterns of more men coming after him? Is that all they’re doing now, shoring up the ramparts?
The atmosphere in the cab of the truck is subdued. But the rumble of the engine is soothing, and after a while Emma finds herself allowing her head to lean back, closing her eyes.
She wakes from her doze with a mild startle—she’s slumped across the bench seat, almost drooling on Bell’s shoulder.
“Lewis.” He nudges her.
She wakes up fully. “How… how long have we been going?”
“About two hours.”
It’s black outside. She pushes herself more upright, rubs her face. When was the last time she felt easy enough in a new acquaintan
ce’s presence that she could fall asleep beside them? She can’t remember.
“I was going to give you a break from driving.”
“I’m good.” Bell’s intently focused on the white lines flashing on the road. “You knew, didn’t you? When McMurtry came into the interview room, you felt it in him. I saw you, when he came in, and something changed in your face.”
Emma frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“It was like… something twigged in you. You knew he was a killer.”
“I’d already read McMurtry’s file.”
He gives her a sidelong glance. “I don’t think you believe it was just that.”
She rubs her head. “I don’t know, what do you want me to say? It’s a learned behavior. I recognize stuff now.”
“Can we teach that somehow? That recognition?”
Emma looks at him, her face drawn. “You don’t want to teach people the kinds of things that are in my head.”
“I get that,” Bell says quickly. “I understand. But I think maybe that’s the bigger goal. That’s the purpose of these interviews.”
“What’s that?”
“How to pick these guys out fast.” Bell stares off down the road. “McMurtry was caught because one guy from the Ripley sheriff’s department followed up on him. That cop—he must’ve noticed something. And that’s what the FBI wants. They want people out in the field who can follow their instincts on this.”
“Well, they’re using the information collected in interviews to teach agents and cops about new profiling techniques. Maybe some of it is rubbing off.” Emma watches the oncoming headlights, considering. “Maybe it even feeds into something they need to know about Pennsylvania.”
“So… should we be interviewing the arresting officers as well? Finding out what they noticed?”
“It’s an idea.” A good one. It would make what they’re doing make sense. “Would Cooper let us expand the study?”
“I have a feeling Cooper is already dodging low-flying shit just trying to keep this unit running,” Bell admits.
“Well, if he’s already in the glue, he hasn’t got anything to lose, right?”
Bell grins. “I guess you’d have to ask him that.”