by Ellie Marney
“Please,” she says softly. “Don’t do the interview with me. But please tell me what you know. And come with me to DC. If Gutmunsson’s as bad as you and Cooper say, I’m going to need the support.”
Her hand drops as he turns around. She realizes the dampness on his cheeks isn’t all perspiration, and it shames her enough that she opens her mouth to take it all back. But he speaks before she does, his voice very quiet.
“Okay.” He scrubs a wrapped hand over his face. “Okay.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
They’re in the car by nine the next day.
Cooper’s car, this time—a wide old Plymouth with sagging suspension. Emma sits in the front passenger seat and Bell commandeers the back, too still, gazing out the window. The trip takes less than an hour but seems longer, until Cooper starts going over all the details of the subject she’s about to interview.
“Simon Aron Gutmunsson, nineteen years old, white male, six-three. Has a twin sister, Kristin Margret Gutmunsson—”
“I’ve seen pictures of the sister,” Emma says.
They reviewed the information—everything Bell could stomach—last night. Simon Gutmunsson is not like the other subjects on the interview roster. He is a wholly different kind of beast. The file itself was the first clue: inches thick, the cardboard folder grubby from wear after passing through the hands of multiple agents and officers. Inside the beige folder, a set of Grand Guignol crime scene photos that Emma could barely stand to look at.
Simon Gutmunsson began killing people at fifteen. He not only started young, he was prolific, often killing more than one person at a time. Many of his victims were drawn from within his own social circle. The media made hay with the fact that he’d picked off the young darlings of the upper-class New England social set—and the horrifying detail that he had disemboweled his own friends.
The crime scene photos showed the elaborate arrangement of the bodies in meadows and wooded areas. Emma knows from her studies that outside displays mean the perpetrator is showing off. She also knows that victim-posing is not a common feature of serial homicide—that it’s a sign of a sophisticated fantasy, unusual in such a young offender.
“The family is of Icelandic, French, and English origin,” Cooper says. “That’s why they have the screwy names.”
“Old money.” Bell, from the back seat. His voice still has grit in it, but he looks more like himself now, out of his training gear and back in his suit.
“That’s true,” Cooper concedes. He seems antsy, his hands shifting away from the ten-two position on the steering wheel, shifting back again. “Gutmunsson’s father owned one of the largest manufacturing plants in New Hampshire, but the family originally made its money in textiles and cotton. Simon and his sister were sent to a private European boarding school until they were ten, and then they were schooled at home when Simon’s behavior became an issue.”
Emma catches the scent. “What kind of behavior?”
“Pretty much what you’d expect, at first. Bullying of younger students, small acts of cruelty. Then the teachers noticed that the school cat had gone missing.”
“I don’t need to hear the details of that,” Emma says quickly.
“Well, you can imagine without me telling you. The final straw was in 1973, when a number of children at the school were hospitalized with food poisoning. Simon turned out to be the culprit. The family hushed it up, but Simon came home after that.”
“It’s good to know the background,” Emma says.
“You read the file?”
“Last night, yes. You don’t need to tell me about the murders.” She doesn’t want to go over that stuff in the car with Bell. Going through it with him last night was disturbing enough.
She particularly recalls a mug shot from the file: Against a stark background, Gutmunsson gazed into the camera with flat affect. One of his eyebrows was raised.
“Is there anything else I need to know before I go in?”
“The hospital superintendent will cover procedures with you before your visit.” Cooper glances over. “I don’t think I need to remind you that you shouldn’t turn your back on this guy. He is not someone you should ever feel relaxed around. He’s about your age, and he presents very well, but it’s a mask—inside, he’s uglier than anyone you’ve ever met. Do you understand?”
Emma nods. “I get it.”
“Here’s the turn,” Cooper says, and suddenly St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Criminally Insane rises up before them.
The front of the building is like a castle: red-brown brick towers, crenelated in the old style. Emma almost expects to see archer’s slits, but instead there are rows of windows, each one covered with bars. East and west wings stretch out to the right and left of the center edifice for a block on either side. The parking area is out front, a grassy lawn nearby, almost pleasant-looking. But this building is not trying to be anything other than what it is: a gothic structure full of bedlam ghosts and old horrors.
Emma gets out of the car and gazes up, wonders if Simon Gutmunsson can see them from a window. Wind whistles through the parking area. Someone touches her shoulder and she startles, but it’s only Bell.
“Lewis, if this gets hairy, back off,” he says in a low voice. “There’s nothing keeping you in there. Cooper can’t complain if you don’t complete the whole interview—just do what you can do.”
“Okay.” Emma watches Cooper approach the front door. “Does Cooper seem nervous to you?”
“Damned if I know.” Bell’s color isn’t great, but he’s holding on. “Look, Simon Gutmunsson is a step up from McMurtry. A thousand steps up. Stay alert.”
She looks again at the asylum, her senses prickling. “There’s something off about this.”
Bell frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s everything. Cooper springing it on us, the timing… Gutmunsson seems like he’s well above our pay grade. Why is he the next subject? I’ve got this feeling like… I don’t know. Something is off.”
“Forget that now. Lewis—Emma. Look at me.” Bell’s eyes are intent. “Remember the rules. Don’t answer personal questions. Don’t make physical contact. And don’t forget what this guy is. You know what he is, don’t you?”
She nods, exhaling.
“Fuck.” Bell’s hair and the tails of his jacket whip in the breeze as he looks away. “I wish I could make myself go in there with you.”
She bumps his arm gently. “Don’t. I wouldn’t wish that on you.”
“Okay. Then I’ll be waiting for you when you’re done.” He turns and walks over toward the grass.
Emma watches him go. She wants a moment to calm herself and she knows she’s not going to get it. Cooper is gesturing to her from the doorway, so she walks across the gravel and steps over the threshold.
Reception is a large wooden desk plonked in the middle of a capacious entryway with a dark parquet floor and a wide, dramatic staircase. Emma smells dust and Lysol. A woman is coming down the stairs, extending a hand to Cooper.
“Special Agent Cooper, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Thank you for admitting us, Dr. Scott.” Cooper angles to make the introductions. “Emma Lewis, this is Dr. Evelyn Scott. She’s been running St. Elizabeths for nearly ten years.”
Dr. Evelyn Scott is a black woman of about fifty, with glasses and stylish short hair. Her clothes are in dark, severe colors but with textures that Emma finds interesting.
“Miss Lewis, nice to meet you. Please come this way, we can chat as we walk.” Scott leads them to the left and under the stairs, toward a tall wooden door. “Simon doesn’t have contact with his family and he’s been requesting other visitors for a while, so your arrival is well timed. Are you aware of the nature of Simon’s condition, Miss Lewis?”
Emma is confused by the question. Is the compulsion to commit serial murder a condition? “Uh, I’ve read Mr. Gutmunsson’s case file. I’m familiar with the circumstances.”
“She knows how to proceed, Dr. Scott,” Cooper says. “Miss Lewis is here to conduct a formal interview and request that Simon complete a questionnaire.”
“That’s fine. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to cooperate.” Scott uses a long, ornate iron key to open the door.
“Anything to report?” Cooper asks. “After his last escape attempt, we—”
“Oh no, we haven’t had further problems on that front. But we’ve taken some new safety measures, with alternative arrangements for Simon’s accommodation within the unit. We’ve moved him out of Secure General into the big room. This whole center section is now specially reinforced.”
Scott escorts them through the foyer door into a wide hallway with huge turn-of-the-century columns, and this is where the nature of the facility changes. They have left the realm of parquet floors and entered a new kingdom, one of electronic locks and clanging gates. Emma’s breaths start to come in short and shallow. She can hear someone crying, far away.
The grand old hall is cut into two sections by a floor-to-ceiling wall of welded steel bars. Cooper grunts approvingly. Scott raises a hand to an unobtrusive CCTV camera before the bars, and the gate unlocks and slides open, then slides closed behind them automatically. They walk the long remaining expanse of dark hall, their footsteps echoing. Finally they come to a stout oak door, reinforced with steel, with a slot cut into it. Dr. Scott taps on the slot. When it opens, she says, “One visitor for Simon Gutmunsson, please,” and the slot snaps shut again. Locks are being opened on the other side.
Scott smiles at Cooper. “As you can see, we’ve created some safeguards.”
Emma isn’t concentrating on the exchange between Scott and Cooper. She’s working to control her breathing. She can do this, she reminds herself. Confronting McMurtry has stiffened her spine.
She finds that Dr. Scott has taken her hand.
“Now,” Scott says, “there is an exclusion zone around his cell—under no circumstances should you enter or reach over it. Don’t take anything he offers you, and don’t step inside the barricade. It’s just a precaution, of course.”
“Of course.” Emma fights hard against the sense that she is falling, rights herself in her mind.
Scott pats her hand. “Go in there with a cheerful outlook. He’ll appreciate that. But take everything he says to you with a grain of salt—Simon can be prone to exaggeration.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll be right here when you come out. Remember my instructions.”
“I will,” Emma says. “Thank you.”
Scott smiles at her kindly. Scott is scared of Gutmunsson, Emma realizes with a jolt. She looks to Cooper one last time, but he is looking at the floor. Coward, she thinks.
Emma feels the fear in her chest like a raven tapping at a window. It’s too late for misgivings, though. The door is open. A large male orderly stands sentry, securing her passage to the place beyond sanity, and Emma steps inside.
CHAPTER NINE
Scott referred to this as “the big room”—Emma discovers that it is, in fact, a former chapel. The space is large, and there are high, buttressed ceilings. Decommissioned pews are stacked together against the walls. Light enters through a set of charming stained-glass windows at the far end of the room, in the apse; their charm is offset to some extent by the high-security steel bars covering them.
Moth-eaten velvet curtains are drawn back on either side to frame the chancel; by some irony, Simon Gutmunsson’s cell sits exactly where the altar should be. The cell is a large box made of metal bars, surrounded by wooden police barricade sawhorses, and it stands like an island in the room. The aesthetic clash between the cell and the chapel’s old-world solemnity is jarring, like seeing an actor wearing a digital watch in a period film.
The large orderly is a Sikh man with a name tag that reads PRADEEP. At a desk beside the door, he notes Emma’s name and checks her manila folder of paperwork for contraband staples and paper clips before she’s allowed to proceed to the cell.
“Mr. Gutmunsson is reading, at present.” Pradeep’s voice is deep, his vowels rounded. “Dr. Scott told you about the barricade? Then you may go now—you will be all right.”
There is no way to approach the cell without its occupant seeing her coming. Emma straightens her shoulders and walks across the burnished wooden floor until she is immediately before the cell. The barricade prohibits her from coming within six feet of the bars. Finally, she looks up.
Simon Gutmunsson has fashioned his cell into something like a salon, with the bed set beside a small desk on the left, both draped with linens, as if awaiting a servant to whip the dustcovers aside upon the lord’s return. The pillows have been liberally arranged. Another sheet has been suspended halfway up the bars behind the bed, to create the illusion of a partial wall. A privacy screen cordons off a commode on the far right. Piles of books stand on the desk, on the floor by the bed, by the front wall of bars, by the privacy screen. Also on the desk is a roll of butcher paper, writing implements, and a wooden bowl with a selection of seasonal fruit.
Gutmunsson himself is sitting in a louche posture on the floor, leaning against the end of his bed, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, reading an antique volume of poetry. The white sheets and pillows, the jeweled tones of the old books, the colors of the fruit… the whole diorama has the rich, resonant smack of a Renaissance still life.
“Simon Gutmunsson?” Emma’s relieved her voice comes out measured rather than hesitant. “Mr. Gutmunsson?”
When Gutmunsson sets his book aside and stands up, Emma can see that he is very tall. She is reminded of a cobra rising, hood spread.
“Well, hello,” Gutmunsson says.
He is slender, with wide shoulders and long limbs and fine pianist’s hands. His eyes shine arctic blue beneath dark brows. He is wearing white, and his hair is glaringly white. It must be a family trait; Emma remembers the pictures of his sister. On Kristin Gutmunsson, the effect is like a drift of snow; on Simon, it looks like shards off a glacier.
He is an ice angel. If he ripped out your heart and held it up to the light, the colors would bleed together beautifully. Emma blinks the thought back.
His smile is wide as an eel’s. “Did you expect me not to answer when you called my name? Or maybe you thought I wouldn’t be here.”
“I wasn’t sure if you were busy,” Emma says evenly. “Thank you for agreeing to talk with me.”
“I’m never too busy for visitors. Can I ask who you are?”
“My name is Emma Lewis. I’m involved in a study with the FBI. I’m conducting a series of interviews, and I was hoping—”
“We’ll get to hopes and dreams later,” Gutmunsson says, still smiling. He has a raised twist of pale scar tissue above his right collarbone. “Has my faithful guard dog taken your measure?”
“Pardon?”
“Your name. Has Pradeep recorded your name?”
“Uh, yes. I’ve been checked off by Dr. Scott and at the door.”
“Wonderful. Then we’ll add you to the list for further conversations. Would you like an apple?”
He plucks a green apple from the fruit bowl and extends it out through the bars.
“Thank you, no,” Emma says.
“It’s because you can’t reach over the barricade, isn’t it? I can throw it to you if you like.”
“Thank you, but I’ve already eaten.”
“Have you? You’ll excuse me for saying this, but you actually don’t look as if you’ve had a decent meal for years. It’s a bit gamine chic, isn’t it, with the hair.” He tosses the apple once, returns it to the bowl. “Have you left Ohio just to visit me? I’m flattered.”
His eyes flash like blue diamonds. It’s only when she looks down that Emma realizes she’s wearing her college T-shirt, with the small Buckeyes logo over her heart. So he’s not psychic—just observant. It’s still disconcerting, knowing that her personal details are now part of Simon Gutmunsson’s gestalt awareness.
She plants her feet. “Mr. Gutmunsson, I have a questionnaire here about the nature and process of your—”
“Mr. Gutmunsson, Mr. Gutmunsson—you don’t have to stand on ceremony in a madhouse, you know. Call me Simon. And I’ll call you Emma. Emma, have we met before? You seem familiar somehow.”
“We haven’t met before,” Emma says. Too quickly? She can sense him sniffing around the outskirts of her mind, like a truffling pig.
“No, you’re right. I think I’d remember.” Gutmunsson steeples his hands and taps his forefingers against his bottom lip. “Maybe it’s generational simpatico. We’re close in age, aren’t we? You’re what, eighteen, nineteen?”
His guess is accurate. She’ll allow it. “I’m eighteen years old.”
“That’s very young to be working for the FBI. I didn’t realize the bureau was recruiting juveniles these days—Hoover will be turning in his grave. And how is Special Agent Cooper?”
He communicates with me. She’s glad Cooper warned her about that. “He’s doing fine.”
“I doubt that’s true, although I don’t imagine he confides in you.” Gutmunsson raises one eyebrow, like an echo of his mug shot. “Cooper will be running himself ragged with the business in Pennsylvania. I’ve been wondering when he’d come to visit me about it, but he’s sent you instead. It’s a bit lily-livered of him, if you ask me—you should call him on that.”
“I will,” Emma says without thinking, then stops herself, changes tack. “You know about the Pennsylvania case?”
“I get my news the same way everybody else does. Dr. Scott tried to have my newspapers clipped to prevent me from gaining access to ‘stimulating material,’ but that just reduced the broadsheets to rags—I had my lawyer obtain an injunction. I suspect Dr. Scott is one of those earnest people who believe that murder is the consequence of too much violent television.”
Emma thinks of her own experience with therapists. “Dr. Scott is a behaviorist?”