An Evil Mind (30 page)

At the top, a hose was attached to the nozzle of each tank. Lucien placed the tanks about five feet in front of Karen’s chair before returning to the shadows. Seconds later, he resurfaced, bringing with him a telescopic boom microphone stand that had been specially adapted. The alteration was that the stand had two boom arms instead of one.

He placed the stand in between Karen and the tanks before adjusting the two boom arms – one up, one down. The up one was leveled at Karen’s chest, the down one at her waist.

Karen’s eyes were following every movement with anticipation and an enormous sense of dread. She could almost feel her organs trembling inside her.

Lucien proceeded to hook a tank hose to each of the boom arms, so both hoses were now pointing directly at Karen.

‘I have a question for you, Karen.’

There was nothing Karen could do but just stare at him.

‘Have you ever heard of a LIN charge?’

He twisted both tanks so that their labels were facing Karen. As she read them and understood what their contents were, her heart froze.

Sixty-Seven

Taylor had frowned at Lucien’s question, but Hunter knew exactly what he was talking about.

LN
₂
, LIN and LN are all known abbreviations used for liquid nitrogen. A LIN charge is a supercooled liquid nitrogen blast. It became known as a LIN charge because the military had created liquid nitrogen grenades and explosive charges that could be magnetically attached to structures like doors, walkways, bridges and so on. Their main purpose was to hyper-freeze anything – alloys, metal, plastic, wood – making them extremely vulnerable and easy to breach. The real problem comes when a LIN charge hits human skin.

Liquid nitrogen grenades differ from all other known types of grenade in one simple way. Their charge doesn’t need to break or penetrate the skin of the target in order to kill them.

The premise behind their effectiveness is based on the special chemical properties of the most abundant mineral on earth – water.

Water is the only naturally occurring substance on the planet that expands when cooled. If a human body is struck by a blast of supercooled liquid nitrogen, it will become very cold, very fast. When that happens, blood cells will freeze instantly in what is known as a ‘shock freeze’. The real messy part comes because blood cells are made of approximately 70 percent water, and the water in the blood cells will begin to expand very, very rapidly. The result of all those water molecules in one’s bloodstream expanding so quickly is total body hemorrhage. The subject will bleed from just about everywhere – eyes, ears, mouth, nose, nails, sexual organs
and
through the skin.

Because of the supercooled charge, the molecules’ expansion doesn’t stop, and in consequence every single blood cell in the human body eventually explodes. It’s an excruciating death, and a totally horrifying sight.

For Taylor’s sake, Lucien briefly explained the entire process.

‘I’ll tell you this,’ Lucien said to Hunter and Taylor. ‘What happened to her body once I blasted it with liquid nitrogen was hell-scary, even for me. It was like everything inside her exploded, and all that blood came pouring out through . . .’ He sighed deeply and scratched his beard, sweeping his eyes over his barren cell. ‘Everywhere, really. I spent four days just cleaning and disinfecting that shack so wild animals wouldn’t take over once I was gone.’ Lucien paused, remembering. ‘My friend back at Yale told me that they were performing this experiment on a live frog in one of the labs. It involved liquid nitrogen. When he told me what had happened, I just tried to imagine how a human body would react. But even my fertile imagination didn’t reach as far as reality.’

If Hunter or Taylor had any doubts that they were sitting before pure evil, those doubts had just vanished in the last few minutes. Neither of them wanted to hear any more details.

‘The location, Lucien?’ Hunter asked. His voice was steady and reasonable. ‘Did you bury her around Lake Saltonstall?’

Lucien ran a finger around the grooves surrounding one of the cinder blocks on the wall to his left. ‘That I did. And I have a surprise for you. I revisited that site four more times after Karen, if you know what I mean.’ He pursed his lips in a ‘What can I do?’ way and followed it with a careless shrug. ‘It was a good site, well hidden.’

‘Are you saying we’ll find five bodies at the site, instead of only one?’ Taylor asked.

Lucien held the suspense up for a moment longer before nodding. ‘Uh-huh. Would you like their names?’

Taylor glared at him.

Lucien laughed. ‘But of course you would.’ He closed his eyes and breathed in as if his memory needed an extra burst of oxygen. When he reopened them again, they looked dead, emotionless. He began.

‘Emily Evans, thirty-three years old, from New York City. Owen Miller, twenty-six years old, from Cleveland, Ohio. Rafaela Gomez, thirty-nine years old, from Lancaster in Pennsylvania. And Leslie Jenkins, twenty-two years old, from Toronto, Canada. She was an international student back at Yale.’

Lucien paused and drew in another deep breath.

‘Would you like me to tell you how they died as well?’ His lips smirked, but his eyes didn’t.

Hunter had no intentions of sitting in that basement and listening to Lucien boost about how he had tortured and killed every one of his victims.

‘The location, Lucien, nothing more,’ Hunter said.

‘Really?’ Lucien pulled a disappointed face. ‘But it was just starting to get fun. Karen was only my second victim. I got better with each new one, believe me.’ He winked at Taylor suggestively. ‘Much better.’

‘You’re a fucking psycho,’ Taylor couldn’t contain herself anymore. She felt disgusted just looking at him.

Hunter matter-of-factly turned his head to look at her, silently pleading with Taylor not to engage.

‘You think so?’ Lucien seized the moment.

Taylor disregarded Hunter’s look. ‘I know so.’

Lucien looked like he was considering that statement for a moment. ‘You know, Agent Taylor, you really do have a problem with naivety. If you think I’m unique in the urges I have, then you’re unmistakably in the wrong profession.’ He threw a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Every single day thousands, millions of people out there have murderous thoughts. Some start having them very, very young. Every day there are people out there who in their own way consider killing their spouses, their partners, their neighbors, their bosses, their bank managers, the asshole bullies who torment their lives . . . the list goes on and on.’

Taylor glanced at Lucien as if his argument didn’t have a leg to stand on.

‘What you’re talking about are spur of the moment, heated
thoughts
,’ she returned calmly, emphasizing the word ‘thoughts’. ‘They are understandable, angry psychological reactions to a particular action. It doesn’t mean that any of it will ever materialize.’

‘The location, Lucien,’ Hunter intervened. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why Taylor was still feeding the fire. ‘Where are Karen’s remains?’

Lucien ignored him. Right then, he was more interested in pushing Taylor a little further.

‘Naive, naive, naive, Agent Taylor,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘With every human thought, spur of the moment or not, there’s always a risk that the thought might one day – fed by anger, hurt, disillusion, jealousy . . . there are a thousand factors that could help it grow – become much more than just a thought. It’s called the
law of probability
. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Your databases are overflowing with such examples. And it happens because anyone, and I mean
anyone
, independent of upbringing, gender, class, race, beliefs, status or anything else, could, under the right circumstances, become a killer.’

Let it go, Courtney
, Hunter pleaded in his head.

Taylor didn’t. ‘You
are
delusional,’ she replied without thinking.

Her response only amused Lucien more.

‘I don’t think that I’m the one who’s delusional here, Agent Taylor. You see? It’s very easy for anyone to say that he or she will never cross a certain line, when that line is never presented to them.’

Lucien allowed his words to float in the air, giving Taylor a moment to digest them before moving on.

‘If one day they come face to face with such a line, they’ll sing a very different tune. Trust me on this, Agent Taylor. It was one of my experiments – presenting that line to someone who swore she could never take a life.’ Lucien looked at his nails as if considering if they needed trimming or not. ‘And, boy, did she cross it.’

Taylor choked on her own breath.

Hunter stared at him in disbelief.

‘Are you saying that you forced someone to commit murder as an experiment? To prove a point?’ Taylor asked.

Hunter had no doubt that Lucien was very capable of such an act. He was very capable of much more. But Hunter had heard enough, and despite Taylor being the lead agent in this investigation, he lifted a stop hand at her and took over.

‘The location, Lucien. Where in New Haven are those bodies?’

Lucien scratched his beard again while studying Hunter.

‘Of course I’ll tell you, Robert. I promised I would, didn’t I? But I’ve been telling you things for far too long now, and it’s my turn to ask a question again. That was the deal.’

Hunter could feel that coming. ‘Tell us where the bodies are first, then, while the FBI verifies the site, you can ask your question.’

Lucien agreed with an eye movement. ‘I can see your logic, but I’m sure that the FBI is already verifying the four names I’ve just given you.’ He looked up at the CCTV camera on the corner of the ceiling inside his cell and smiled at it. ‘Which means that I’ve already given you something to keep you busy. So now it’s my turn.’

Lucien gathered himself before staring deep into Hunter’s eyes.

‘Tell me about Jessica, Robert.’

Sixty-Eight

Back in the holding cells’ control room, once Director Kennedy heard the four names Lucien had given Hunter and Taylor, he immediately got on the phone to one of his research teams.

‘I need proof that these people are real,’ he said to the lead agent. ‘Social security numbers, driving licenses, whatever.’ He dictated the first three names with the respective ages and home towns, just as Lucien had mentioned. ‘The fourth person – Leslie Jenkins – is from Toronto in Canada. She was an international student at Yale, probably in the early 90s. Check with Yale, and if need be check with the Canadian Embassy in Washington. I also need to know if these people have been reported missing. Get back to me ASAP.’ He quickly put the phone down.

Kennedy remembered once having a conversation with a military weapons expert who had joined the FBI. They had discussed LIN grenades and charges. The weapons expert had showed him actual footage of what happens to a human body when it’s exposed to a blast of supercooled liquid nitrogen. Kennedy had probably seen more dead bodies and attended more violent crime scenes than most people in the entire FBI, but he’d never seen anything quite like that footage.

Kennedy was ready to contact the FBI field office in New Haven, Connecticut, and ask them to dispatch a team to whatever set of directions Lucien was about to give them, when Lucien changed the game and asked Hunter about Jessica.

‘Who’s Jessica?’ Doctor Lambert asked, looking at Kennedy.

Kennedy gave him a delicate headshake. ‘I have no idea.’

Sixty-Nine

While Lucien’s question resonated against the walls, Hunter felt the air being sucked out of his lungs as if somebody had just hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat. He looked at Lucien with narrow eyes, half doubting his ears.

Taylor couldn’t help but let her gaze wander over toward Hunter.

‘I’m sorry?’ Hunter said. No amount of poker face could mask his surprise.

‘Jessica Petersen,’ Lucien repeated, clearly enjoying Hunter’s reaction. The name traveled through the air slowly, like smoke. ‘Tell me about Jessica Petersen, Robert. Who was she?’

Hunter couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lucien, his brain trying hard to understand what was happening.

Police or medical records
, he concluded.
That’s the only possible way. Somehow Lucien gained access to either police or medical records, or both.
Hunter then remembered the feeling he had when Lucien kept on asking him about his mother. Hunter felt as if Lucien already knew all the answers, and he would have, if he’d gotten his hands on police or medical records. The medical examiner’s report would’ve stated that Hunter’s mother had died of a pain-killers’ overdose, and put the time of death sometime in the middle of the night. Finding out that Hunter’s father worked nights, and therefore wasn’t at home, wouldn’t have been very difficult. The only other person in that household at that time was a seven-year-old Robert Hunter. Lucien would’ve had no problem putting together most of what had really happened that night. He just needed Hunter to fill in the gaps.

‘Who was she?’ Lucien asked again, coolly.

Hunter blinked the blur of confusion away. ‘Someone I knew years ago,’ he finally replied in the same tone.

‘C’mon, Robert,’ Lucien shot back. ‘I know you can do better than that. And you know you can’t lie to me.’

Their stares battled for a moment.

‘She’s someone I used to date when I was young,’ Hunter said.

‘How young?’

‘Very. I met her just after I finished my PhD.’

Lucien sat back on his bed and stretched his legs in front of him, getting as comfortable as he could. ‘How long did you date her for?’

‘Two years.’

‘Were you in love?’ Lucien asked, tilting his head slightly to one side.

Hunter hesitated. ‘Lucien, what does this have to do with—’

‘Just answer the question, Robert.’ Lucien cut him short. ‘I can ask whatever I like, relevant or not, that was the deal, and right now I would like you to tell me more about Jessica Petersen. Were you in love with her?’