Berrocal looked dubious. ‘So, when will your report be ready?’
‘I should finish it today.’
‘Good. Then I can distribute it among the investigation team. First thing tomorrow, I’d like you to attend a briefing with them to answer any questions and deal with any objections?’
Fiona nodded. ‘I’d be happy to.’
Berrocal got to his feet. ‘And then I presume you will want to return to England?’
Fiona smiled. ‘You presume correctly. There’s nothing more I can usefully do for you right now, so I may as well go home.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll let you get on with your report,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said absently, her mind already on the next task. The sooner she finished this, the sooner she could start to think seriously about going home.
He never knew how long it would last. That was why he had to savor every moment of it, like a kid opening Christmas presents, unsure which garishly wrapped parcel held the gift that really mattered. The trick was to arrange it so that everything built to a climax. But sometimes it didn’t, and he hated that loss of absolute control, hated the rage that boiled through him when those sluts let him down, when they failed to hold out long enough for him to extract each single possible drop of pleasure from their pain. Death should be the final moment in the crescendo, not a sad diminuendo leaving the spirit dissatisfied.
That was why he worked with such dedication towards perfection. Experience had taught him that every stage released its own particular flavor, from the first moment he chose her to the final moment when he abandoned her. The secret was to plan. The taste of anticipation was almost as good as the spectrum of sensuality supplied by the execution of his perfect scheme. So too was the satisfaction of watching the small minds pitted against him as they struggled through their skirmishes with his handiwork into ultimate failure.
At first, his opponents had been as insignificant as the crickets that chirped the night away outside this safest of safe houses. Dumb sheriff’s officers who’d never investigated anything more complicated than a fucked-up raid on the local Seven Eleven had no chance of coming anywhere near him. He knew the chances of them even managing to complete a VICAP report and file it with the FBI were remote. All that paperwork, interfering with the consumption of Dairy Queen hamburgers and brewskis—no chance.
So puny a challenge couldn’t last forever. He’d known that. He’d bargained on that. He’d set himself up right from the start to beat the finest, so there was no real satisfaction in running rings round the morons who’d gone into small-town law enforcement because they didn’t have the stones to make something of their lives. They thought they knew their turf so well, but that hadn’t stopped him moving into their territory and stealing a woman from under their noses. His greatest triumph this far had come with number five. La Quinta was the daughter of the local sheriff in a small Nebraska town.
As usual, he’d removed her from her own home. Saturday night, and her parents had gone out to a benefit dinner for the local Republican candidate for the Senate race. The girl had opened the front door without a second thought as soon as she saw the Highway Patrol uniform. It had been laughably easy to knock her to the floor with a single blow to the face. Hog-tied, she’d spent the night in the trunk while he drove the interstate, fueled by adrenaline and nicotine.
By mid-morning, he’d been home. Surrounded by dense woodland, away from the possibility of prying eyes, he’d carried her indoors and gotten down to making her his slave. Shackled to a bench in his workroom, La Quinta had learned that pain takes many shapes and forms. The delayed sting of the razor cut. The blossoming of a burn from a smart to a roar of pain that spread inwards as the smell of barbecued flesh drifted outwards. The searing agony of flesh forced to accommodate more than it has room for. The sickening pain of a broken bone never allowed time to knit. The dull distress of a blow strategically aimed at the organs nestling beneath the skin. It took her days to die.
He’d enjoyed every waking moment.
Then he’d taken her back home. Not all the way home, of course. That would have been reckless. He drove her as far as the first bend over the county line on a quiet back road, then left her body sprawled across the blacktop for the next passing driver to crush beneath his unsuspecting wheels.
La Quinta had made them sit up and pay attention at last. He’d read enough to know what would have happened next. An urgent request to the Feebies, then a computerized search of the country to find matches. As soon as they realized he meant business, the machine would have kicked in. True to his prediction, the suits had arrived. And then, finally, she had flown in to face a flurry of cameras at the airport.
Now at last, the game was on.
Jay Schumann was in town. Dr Jay Schumann, the forensic psychologist who had turned her back on a lucrative private practice to become the FBI’s celebrity mindhunter. Jay Schumann, who had single-handedly restored the tarnished image of psychological profiling with a string of spectacular successes. Jay Schumann with those intense dark eyes that contrasted so sharply with her bright blonde hair, a photo opportunity who gave the suits a human face. Jay Schumann, whose glamor had persuaded her bosses that they should use her skills on the media as well as on the criminals.
In the twenty years since she’d so heedlessly and needlessly humiliated him on the night of the senior prom, they’d both traveled a long way from the small New England town. But he had never forgotten nor forgiven the whiplash of her scorn that had branded him and distorted his life forever.
The first five had been his apprenticeship. The next fifteen would perfect his art. One for every wasted year. And then, only then, would he allow Jay Schumann to come face to face with her personal and professional nemesis.
There was a long way to go before then. But now Jay Schumann was on the case. At last the revenge proper could begin.
Fiona gave a final glance at her notes then looked out across the half-empty lecture theatre. ‘To sum up. That dreadful old misogynist St Paul says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” As do most of us.
‘But the sociopath is different. Most of us come to comprehend that we are not the centre of the universe, and that other people can share centre stage in the narrative of our lives. The sociopathic personality never makes that adjustment. In his limited world view, others exist at a less than human level. Their only valuable function is to meet the needs and satisfy the desires of the sociopath himself.’ She gave a sly grin. ‘That’s why they make such good captains of industry.’ Depressingly few answering smiles, she thought ruefully. Probably because half of them had their hearts already set on such a career. So serious, the modern student.
‘So if we are to develop any sort of empathetic understanding of the criminal psychopath,’ Fiona continued, ‘we must learn to step back in time. I leave you with this thought, also from that fascinating psychological text, the Bible. “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Or, as we so often find in our line of work, the kingdom of hell.’ She gave a brief, courteous nod. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Same time, next week.’
Head down, Fiona gathered her papers together as the students shuffled out, their muted mumblings drifting back towards her. She wondered how much she disappointed them. She was certain a significant