Linderman regarded Crutch with an almost clinical detachment. This was evil in its purest form, the apple being offered filled with poisonous worms. He would be selling his soul in order to find out what had happened to the person he loved. And, he’d be betraying the bureau and all the people he’d worked with.
The price was too much. He shook his head.
“No?” Crutch acted astonished.
“Never,” Linderman said.
“But this is Danni…”
“I’ll find her some other way. Thanks for the tips.”
Crutch went stiff in his chair. Linderman sensed that he was about to be attacked. Walking backward, he reached behind his back and grabbed the door knob, not taking his eyes off Crutch for a second. The serial killer shot him a murderous look.
“You’ll let your daughter suffer?” Crutch asked.
“Shut up,” Linderman said.
“I failed to mention something about her arrangement. Perhaps this will change your mind. During the day, Danni cooks and cleans. At night, she becomes a fuck-doll.”
“A what?”
“A sex slave. You know what that is, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Your daughter fucked Skell, and she is also fucking this rich foreigner. You don’t want that to keep going on, do you?”
It was Linderman’s worst nightmare. Six years of rage boiled to the surface, and he felt the walls of the chaplain’s study close around him, the room’s furniture shifting as if on quicksand. He fixed his gaze on the painting of the Virgin Mary, hoping her divine grace would give him ballast. Her patient smile had turned into a hideous grin.
The next thing he knew, his hands were around Crutch’s throat, squeezing so hard that the inmate’s eyeballs popped out of his head like a cartoon character. Lifting Crutch out of his chair, he snapped his head against the desk, his blood flying across the room in a glorious splash of red. He did not stop until the corpse was mangled beyond recognition.
“Deal, or no deal?” Crutch asked.
Linderman blinked. Crutch was back in his chair, looking no worse for wear. Nothing had happened. His mind was playing tricks on him like it had earlier in the day. His killing Crutch had been an hallucination.
Only Linderman knew that this time was different. He had seen the blackness that had invaded his soul, and would allow him to kill a man with his bare hands.
He’d fallen into the abyss.
Chapter 30
Grabbing the knob, Linderman jerked the door open.
“Get this son-of-a-bitch out of here,” he said.
The pair of guards rushed into the study. Within seconds, they had Crutch out of his chair, and were hustling him out the door. Linderman avoided making eye contact with Crutch as he flew past.
“Skell told me how lovely her snatch was,” Crutch called over his shoulder.
A guard smacked Crutch in the back of the head.
“Shut your filthy mouth,” the guard warned.
Jenkins was waiting in the hall with a concerned look on his face. Linderman left the chapel with the warden glued to his side. He was trying to make sense of what had happened. The images of him killing Crutch had been too real.
“What did he want?” Jenkins asked.
“He tried to blackmail me,” Linderman said.
“With what?”
“My daughter was abducted six years ago by Simon Skell. Crutch knows what happened to her. He offered to give me the information at a later date if I backed off.”
“I didn’t know that about your daughter. I’m sorry. What did you tell him?”
Linderman stopped and gave Jenkins a look that left no doubt in the warden’s mind what his response had been.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Jenkins said.
They walked to the visitor’s parking lot. The sun was blinding, and Linderman squinted to find his rental among the vast landscape of cars.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to nail the bastard,” Linderman said.
“How? You said he hadn’t broken any laws.”
“There are twenty-four murders that the FBI believes Crutch is responsible for. I should be able to link at least one of them to him. Once I do, I’ll come back here, and put the screws to him. That should make him talk.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Jenkins asked.
The offer was sincere. Linderman didn’t believe what Crutch had said about Jenkins not having a spine. If anything, Jenkins had impressed him as someone who followed the law, no matter where it took him.
“Yes, there is. You can make Crutch’s life living hell. If he starts feeling the pressure, he might start talking.”
“How would you suggest I do that?” Jenkins asked.
“Ostracize him. Let the other inmates know what kind of animal he is. That sort of thing.”
“I can do that,” Jenkins said.
They shook hands. Linderman had a feeling he’d be seeing Jenkins soon.
Linderman drove into the town of Starke. He turned on the radio, and listened to country music while replaying what had happened in the chaplain’s study.
He hadn’t blacked out or fainted. He’d had an episode in which his imagination had eclipsed the rational part of his brain. His fantasy of killing Crutch had seemed real because to his brain it was real.
Murderous fantasies were a topic that he was familiar with. They were what drove serial killers to seek out their victims, and snuff out their lives. They started when a serial killer was young, and grew as the killer’s anger with society grew. At some point during the process, the fantasy became more real than reality.
He thought of Ed Kemper, a highly intelligent giant who’d killed his grandparents when he was fourteen, then killed eight more women after being released from prison. He’d once interviewed Kemper in a room filled with guards, knowing Kemper’s stated desire to screw the head off an FBI agent, and leave it on a table.
“Tell me about your fantasies,” he’d said.
“I sorry to sound so cold about this,” Kemper had apologized, “but what I needed to have was a particular experience with a person, and to possess them in a way that I wanted to. I had to evict them from their human bodies.”
“Could the fantasy have worked without evicting them?” he’d asked.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Kemper had stated.
Linderman thought back to his own murderous fantasy. Strangling Crutch had been the starting point, not the end. He’d needed to evict Crutch from his body before his fantasy of smashing his head against the desk could begin. It disturbed him to think that his fantasy had matched someone like Kemper.
Linderman knew what he had to do. Check himself into a hospital and get help. He was a danger to himself and the people around him. His mind was poisoned.
Only going into a hospital would mean quitting the case, and he wasn’t going to do that. People were depending on him, and he could not let them down. He owed it to them, and to himself, to see the case through.
He made a promise to himself. He would seek medical treatment once the investigation was finished. By staying focused on his work, he could get through this. His dedication to his job had saved him from going crazy during the past six years, and it would save him now.
Soon he was sitting in the restaurant where he’d eaten breakfast. His table was near the electric chair behind the velvet cord. A little boy was getting his picture taken in the chair, his father snapping endless photos. It seemed ghoulish, and he reminded himself that the chair was a spare from the prison, and had never been used.
A big-haired waitress swooped down on his table. He let himself be talked into the lunch special. When she was gone, he booted up his laptop, and opened a folder containing Crutch’s index cards. He found the card devoted to Killer X, and studied it.