BLUE MERCY (37 page)

Inside, something else fell.

“Good Christ. Just
tell
me what you’re looking for and I can help.” His voice had risen in pitch.

“They’re almost done.” Kay felt sorry for him. The team had been working for an hour now, and as she’d suspected, nothing connected Arsenault with any of the dead women or even Eales.

“Don’t you think if I knew something, I’d give it to
you? Look at what they’re doing to my place.” He gestured through the doorway, and Kay turned him away.

“Then give me something, Scott. Help me out.”

“How?”

“Get inside this guy’s head. I know you can. What’s he doing?”

Arsenault stared at her for a moment, those
GQ
looks tight, his expression uncensored.

“These murders are getting closer to home, Scott. Why Patricia? What did she know? What was her association with this guy?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you think he’s targeting Eales?”

“How should I know?”

“You do, Scott. I know you do. All those books in there, the websites you design, you
know
how these guys think. Where they live in their heads. Help me out.”

He appeared to consider. Then: “Look into Bernard’s past.”

“We have.”

“Look harder. Killers aren’t born overnight, Kay. All this started years ago.”

“THERE HAVE TO BE OTHER VICTIMS,”
Kay said. “Ones we don’t know about. Bodies that haven’t been found.”

The afternoon sun slanted across Constance O’Donnell’s therapy room and touched the photos Kay had spread across the coffee table. There’d been plenty to do back at the office: prepping the boardroom, typing reports. But Kay
refused to miss her appointment. She needed Constance. Today more than ever.

From the moment she sat down, the case was the only subject on Kay’s agenda. She spent the next forty minutes filling Constance in on Patricia Hagen’s death, the Keystone house, and the slaughter of Jason Beckman. When the photos came out, Constance again warned Kay that whatever investigative directions she took, based on discussions in the therapy room, had to be taken carefully.

“It’s been fifteen months since the first three murders,” Kay said. “If there
aren’t
more victims, what’s he been doing all this time? And why start up again now?”

“It could be something simple, like maybe he was out of town.”

“No. We would have gotten a hit on VICAP.”

“Maybe he hid the bodies.”

“But that doesn’t fit his MO.”

“He could have been institutionalized or incarcerated. Or”—Constance worried her pen between her fingers— “maybe he was in remission.”

“You make it sound like it’s a disease he’s got.”

“In a way, it is. Often the urges these men experience aren’t controllable. He may have been able to
curb
those urges for the past year through counseling or medication. There are drugs to suppress those.”

The same ones Constance had tried to push on Kay a year ago. As soon as she’d heard “Prozac,” Kay had threatened to walk out.

“But why go on medication in the first place? He got away with three murders.”

“He might have sought professional help for depression, anxiety, or OCD. Without intending to, he may have suppressed his deviance with drugs. Or maybe something scared him. Maybe he almost got caught, so he decided he
needed to control his urges. Then, if he went off his medication, the inhibitor would be gone and the fantasy would be open to grow again.”

“And why go off the meds?” Kay asked.

“Usually with these kinds of killers there’s an inciting incident. A triggering factor. Something that pushes them over the edge, begins the cycle again. It could be any number of events: loss of a job, loss of a spouse, birth, death. It could have even been the murder of your witness. You already said you suspected there was more of a motive behind her murder. If you’re right, and her death served a purpose, killing her could have started up his fantasies again.”

Constance reached for her mug. The coffee had to be cold, but she didn’t seem to care.

“And what do you make of his killing so close to home?” Kay asked. “Patricia Hagen knew him.”

“She might have simply been an easy target. She came to him.”

Kay wanted a smoke. She needed the nicotine to fill her lungs and spark answers in her brain. “Who the hell
is
this guy?” The question was rhetorical, but Constance answered anyway.

“Organized offenders tend to be of average to above average intelligence, and socially competent. You’re looking at someone who’s probably, at the least, a skilled worker. He owns a car, maybe even his own house. And in spite of how it looks, he’s sexually competent, has probably had girlfriends. You already know he’s familiar with police procedures and forensics because of his diligence in obliterating evidence.”

Killers aren’t born overnight,
Scott had told her.
All this started years ago.

“So how does someone get to be like this?” Kay asked.

Constance’s face was hard lines now, not the usual soft, muted planes Kay had grown accustomed to. “Profiles start with generalizations. With killers like this you’re usually looking at a troubled childhood, often one involving sexual predators and abuse. Having suffered those traumas, the child craves control. You’ve heard the stereotypes: bed-wetting, animal abuse, setting fires. And then there’s the early preoccupation with death, from which the fantasy develops. Once they cross the line and begin acting on the fantasy, the control and power it awards them gradually convinces them that violence and killing are natural. Combine that with their damaged childhood, and they feel their violence and cruelty is justified.”

Kay let out a breath. Where was this supposed to take her?

Constance must have sensed her frustration. “If you look at the initial trauma,” she explained, “you can often understand the fantasy, or vice versa.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s in his childhood that the serial killer typically acquires the scars he will later inflict on his victims. And it’s this trauma that is often reenacted in the adult fantasy.”

The silence of the room swelled for a time. Kay sank back into the supple cushions of the couch. “So he’s not psychotic, right?”

“No. He’s psychopathic. A psychotic can’t maintain this level of control. Like a psychopath, your killer is amoral and asocial. He craves immediate satisfaction. His personality is characterized by irresponsibility, a lack of remorse, and impulsive or perverse behavior.
And
he feels no guilt for anything he’s done. The psychopath is like an infant, absorbed in himself and sating his needs. In fact, more likely he feels entitled to whatever he takes since he believes he lives in an unjust world. His fantasy is his escape
from that world, a place where he can express his emotions and his control over others.”

“So that’s why he uses the ketamine. For control?” Kay asked, needing something concrete to grab on to.

Constance nodded.

“Do you know much about the stuff?”

“Only that it’s used more as a tripping medium than a date-rape drug,” Constance explained. “With the right dose, users like it for its NDE properties.”

“NDE?”

“Near-death experience. Ketamine mimics the conditions which precipitate an NDE—low oxygen, low blood flow and blood sugars, temporal-lobe epilepsy. All of these release a flood of glutamate, which overactivates certain receptors in the brain, leading the user to an altered state of consciousness.”

“And people do this for fun?”

“There are worse things out there, Kay. With ketamine, a user can create the typical features of a classic NDE: the sense of timelessness, analgesia, clarity of thought, and feelings of calm. They may also undergo out-of-body experiences and hallucinations of anything from landscapes to people in their lives—alive or dead.”

“Sounds like a real trip.”

“For many it is. NDEs are classified on a five-stage continuum: feelings of peace, a sense of detachment from the body, then entering into a ‘tunnel experience,’ moving to a bright light, and finally entering that light. This final stage is called the K-hole, when the user feels completely free from themselves and their life.

“Some relive aspects of their lives, reevaluate things they’ve done, and simply let go of it all. That’s when the body is virtually paralyzed while the sense of self feels removed from the body. And when a user comes out of the
trip, they’ll usually refer to it as an alien birth or rebirth.”

“So you think his victims might have been conscious?”

Constance nodded. “It’s quite possible. If they were, they’d be aware of their bodies even though they don’t feel connected.”

Kay shuddered at the image that had already started to take hold the other night. “I think he wants them conscious,” she told Constance. “I think he wants them to witness their own deaths.”

“If that’s the case, then I’d say you’re dealing with someone who’s been fascinated with death for most of his life.”

When the session timer went off, Kay flinched, then gathered the photos into her briefcase.

“I know a lot of this doesn’t immediately help you,” Constance said, “but the more you can figure out
why
this guy does what he does, and where he truly comes from, the better chance you’re going to have of catching him. I promise you. Serial murderers aren’t born; they’re created,” Constance said, echoing Scott’s words. “This killer has a past. People know him.”

And then Kay knew where she had to go next.

After leaving Constance’s office in Towson, Kay had driven south into the city, with one thought on her mind:
Go back to the beginning
. The
very
beginning.

So she did.

Adele McClurkin had had the unfortunate responsibility of taking in her two nephews after their mother’s death. Children’s Services records indicated that Bernard and
William had gone to live with their aunt in the West Arlington neighborhood for a short period. With a little cross-referencing, Kay found out that McClurkin was a fifth-grade teacher at Liberty Elementary, had never been married, and had lived at the same address all her life.

As Kay took the stairs to the lit porch of the quaint, cedar-shingled, wood-framed home, she wondered if Finn had gone home yet, or if he was still at HQ preparing the boardroom.

“Whatever he’s done, I don’t want to hear about it,” McClurkin said the instant Kay pressed her shield against the screen door.

She was a small but ample woman, and Kay guessed it was his father’s genes that gave Eales his size. McClurkin wore an understated floral skirt and a prim blouse. She looked older than her fifty-two years, with glasses strung from a chain around her neck and a wild toss of black and silver hair.

Kay promised her questions would be brief, and in minutes she was seated at the woman’s kitchen table with a cup of herbal tea.

“So his trial starts tomorrow, does it?” McClurkin asked.

“Yes. Preliminary motions. Will you be going?”

“No.”

“You don’t visit Bernard, do you?”

“Honestly, Detective, I never liked the boy. And don’t give me that look either,” she said, her voice making Kay feel as if she were one of McClurkin’s pupils. “Just because he was my sister’s son doesn’t mean I have to like him. Bernard is trouble. Always was. I did what I could for the boy.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“From the time he started school,” she said, stirring honey into her bone-china cup, “there was bullying and
fights. Mary, his mother, God rest her soul, had her hands full with that one. Even had to move several times on account of the neighbors complaining.”

“Complaining about what?”

“Oh, you know, first it was childish pranks. Then vandalism. Rocks through windows. Cars broken into. Graffiti.”

Kay tried to imagine Eales’s creative side coming out on the side of a brick wall.

“The police had even been called once, when they lived down on Covington. Neighbors accused him of killing their dog. He was sixteen.” McClurkin sipped her tea. “Bernard was always in trouble at school too. Fights. Selling marijuana to other students. Then steroids. And that wasn’t his first suspension.”

“I thought he dropped out of school to work? To raise his brother?”

“Dropped out? No, he was suspended. But I’ll say this, raising his little brother was the one good thing he did in his life. I guess he made a promise to his mama, and he did right by it.”

“How old were they when their mother died?”

“Bernard had just turned seventeen. Billy was eight.”

“So the boys lived with you then?”

McClurkin nodded, a distant look in her dull eyes as she remembered days she’d clearly rather forget.

“Do you remember any of Bernard’s friends? What I’m trying to establish, Ms. McClurkin, is any connections from Bernard’s past to a recent homicide I’m investigating.” Kay didn’t want to alarm the woman with any more details than necessary.

“No. I never met any of his friends. Honestly, Bernard and I barely made it through three months together. He’s just like his daddy. A violent temper. He stole from me, lied
to me, even threatened me. I didn’t feel safe in my home.

“Billy, though, he was an angel. Sensitive, soft-spoken, bright. I offered to raise him, but Bernard wouldn’t hear of it. Billy was his family. And then one day I came home and they were both gone, along with every last cent I had hidden in the house.”

“You didn’t try to get custody of Billy?”

There was regret in McClurkin’s eyes. “I didn’t have the energy at the time, and I hate admitting it, but I was afraid of what Bernard might do if I did. I kept tabs on the boy. Worried about him, but he did fine with Bernard. Always well-dressed, went to school, had decent grades. And now he’s got a successful car dealership, a young wife, and a new baby.