"Sometimes."
"Tell us how you feel when you hurt someone."
"I feel good."
"Do you feel better when you hurt men, or women?"
"Yeah," said Cooper.
There was a puzzled silence@ "Do you like to hurt men more than you like hurting women?"
"I like it all," said Cooper. "I like to pull their heads off."
"Why do you like to pull their heads off, Darnell?":'Don't call me Darnell." 'What would you like me to call you?"
"Call me Coop."
"All right, Coop. Why do you like to pull their heads off?"
"You could call me ol' Coop. I like that."
"Tell us about pulling their heads off."
"That's how strong I am."
Becker switched off the machine. Gold let him sit in silence for a time.
"What did he do when he was released?" Becker asked at last.
"He raped a young woman, stole her car. Tried to drive the car over a filling station attendant, kidnapped another young woman, battered a local cop pretty good, hit the young woman in the head a couple of times, tried to strangle her, left her in a swamp."
"Did he kill either one of the women?"
"No. But he thinks he did. He left them for dead, let's put it that way." '-'What did they say? Were they conscious or unconscious when he left them?"
"The first one, the one whose car he stole, said she played dead and he lost interest in her. The second one was really unconscious. She had severe bruising on her throat and some damage to her neck. It looks as if he really did try to pull her head off."
Becker rose and turned off the heat under the pot of beans.
"So what do you want from me?" he asked.
"I don't understand the disparity… You heard it, right?"
"Let me get Karen," Becker said. "I don't want to have to go through it twice."
"Are you sure you want her in on it?"
"How else? Do you think I'm the Lone Ranger-I'm going to go riding in by myself? I don't have the authority to do anything on my own, even if I wanted to, which I emphatically do not."
Becker summoned Jack and Karen and the adults ate beans while Jack dined on spaghetti with butter and broccoli. Jack was excused from the table and Becker served coffee.
"We could go into the living room," Karen said.
"We'll stay here," Becker said, closing the kitchen door. "I don't want Jack to hear any of this."
"Meaning I'm to be let in on the big secret?" Karen asked.
"Don't be too happy about it," Becker said. "You're not going to like it."
"Somehow I guessed that. Okay, let's hear it."
Becker looked at Gold, offering him the chance to speak first.
"I'm not the expert," Gold said defensively. "I just thought I noticed something odd and came for advice. I haven't reached any conclusions myself"
"My ball, is it?" Becker asked.
"I'm really just a spectator here," Gold said.
"Could we drop the sports analogy?" Karen asked.
"John, just say it."
"Gold tells me that this Cooper is confessing to being responsible for half the national crime statistics. Has any of it checked out yet?"
"Some," Karen said cautiously. "There are a couple of unexplained deaths of migrant workers about ten years ago that match up pretty well with his story. There was a vicious assault on a homosexual in Spartanburg several years ago that was listed as an attempted murder. The man didn't actually die, but we can see why Cooper thought he did-that matches his story. There were the two girls in the coal mine. He had his facts right on those."
"Anything else?"
"We're still checking. Most of them were quite a while ago. He's been in prison for the last five years. Why? Do you think there are more?"
"How did the migrant workers die?"
"One of them was stabbed. Disemboweled, according to the report. The other's head was bashed in with a blunt instrument, probably a rock, the autopsy said."
"And the homosexual who wasn't killed? What happened to him?" John asked.
"He was beaten-kicked and beaten with fists and feet, I gather. He did not volunteer any information, said he didn't remember what happened."
"And where were these things done, the workers and the homosexual?"
"Where were they done?"
"in a mine, in a basement, a closet, an abandoned warehouse?"
Karen paused. "No," she said warily. "The homosexual was in a parking lot behind a bar. One of the migrant workers was apparently killed in an orchard but then dragged to a culvert. The other was found in an open field.
There was no suggestion in the report that he had been moved."
"And what's on his sheet? What was he doing time for? I "Armed robbery, assault with intent. His crimes were all violent, if that's what you're after. It is, isn't it?"
"Looking strange, Karen?" John asked her.
"So why would a man whose history is all open violence take two girls to a coal mine and torture them to death? Is that the thrust of all this?
It has occurred to us, you know. We are not completely blind just because we're actively involved in law enforcement," she said.
"That inconsistency didn't trouble anybody?"
"Trouble? No. We noticed it. It's unusual for a serial killer to be impulsively violent as well-but it's not unknown. Harris Breitbart killed three police officers in New Jersey."
"Not until they came to arrest him. After he had been discovered."
"So? He doesn't fit the mold perfectly. We're constantly changing the profile, you know that."
"What's the average intelligence.of a serial killer?"
Karen looked to Gold, deferring.
"Usually higher than average," Gold said.
"It has to be or they wouldn't survive long enough to kill repeatedly.
If they kill once and get caught, they're a murderer. If they're smart enough to stay loose and do it repeatedly, they're a serial killer.
Ergo, they're smarter.
At least that's the assumption, correct?" Becker said.
"Correct," said Karen. "And Cooper is stupid. But you don't have to be a genius to go into an abandoned mine if you're in West Virginia. There are tons of them.
If you leave a body there, it's not going to be found for a long time, whether you did it by planning or just dumb luck. It's not as if he did anything clever, he just did it in the right place."
"So then so far he's inconsistent and lucky."
"Apparently. What are you driving at, John? Do you think he couldn't be both?"
"Somebody could be. I'm not sure Cooper could."
"Look, we're not dealing in theory here. If we were, I'd agree, all right. It's not likely that a man who steals cars and drives them around for several days and assaults cops and gets in fights in bars is also going to slip away into the dark with young women and torture them for a week at a time. In theory. But we know he stole the car, raped a woman, snatched another in broad daylight with several witnesses, tried to drive the car over a gas station attendant. We know those things, they arr facts, not theory," Karen said.
"I'm not questioning that side of him-the stupidly violent side has been his whole life."
"You're not questioning the girls in the mine? That's the strongest part of his story. He remembers that better than any of the other things he did. Those we can verify a lot more concretely than the migrants or the homosexual or any of the other claims. He's got the details only he could know."
"Except for one."
Karen sighed. "Go ahead."
"He knew what he did and he knew when he did it and he knew how he did it-"
"And he knew why he did it," Karen interjected. "He likes to hurt people. You accept that, don't you?"
"Yes, he even knew why he did it. What he didn't know was what it felt like."
"Wrong," said Karen. "I've seen the transcripts. He said it felt good.
Hurting those women made him feel good. That's not terribly articulate, I grant you, but it's good enough for me. You have to consider the source."