When the delayed reaction hits her, it’s as though all the blood leaves her upper body and pools in her feet. A sea of images and sensations rolls over her: the constant slow, circular motion of the vents stirring the air in the interview room; the pulse of her blood in her ears, like listening to the whoosh and rush inside a conch shell; the way McMurtry pinched his cigarette between finger and thumb.…
In the basement in Emma’s head, other fingers perform the same action: stubby digits with bitten nails, stained at the tips. She sees grease-dark overalls stitched in yellow; smells the scent of tobacco, of body odor and blood; hears the sound of screaming.…
She loses herself for a while, finally blinks herself out of it. Needing air, she fumbles the window crank, makes a gap for the breeze to rush in. The smell of the pines is restorative. They’re almost back on the interstate.
“Lewis?” Bell’s collar is loosened. He looks forward at the road but still somehow seems to be concentrating on her.
“How can some men hate so hard?” she whispers. But she’s not sure if it’s Bell she’s asking. She swallows against the thickness in the back of her throat. “Let’s get coffee. Can we get coffee?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bell says quietly.
He turns the pickup into the parking lot of a truck stop. The outside has been painted an unpleasant Pepto Bismol pink, but the inside of the place is clean-wholesome, and blessedly quiet. Bell orders while Emma finds a booth. She fiddles with the laminated menu until Bell slides in opposite her.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. You?” She’s feeling more herself now she’s out of the confines of the car. She suddenly remembers that she’s still wearing Bell’s shirt.
“That’s one down, anyway.” He shrugs, shucks off his jacket.
“I guess.”
“Something bothering you about it?”
Emma bites her lip. “What do you think will happen when we get back to Quantico?”
Bell rolls up his cuffs. “Cooper’ll probably want to debrief. He won’t expect a report before Sunday, but he’ll want to have a look at what we got. See how we managed. McMurtry is one of the easy ones, remember.”
“Who are the hard ones?”
“Have you looked at the other summaries?” When Emma shakes her head, Bell’s eyes drift in thought. “Rylan, maybe. Gesak, definitely—he’s refused all interviews.” He pauses as the server delivers two coffees and a grilled tomato-and-cheese sandwich. When the server leaves, he adds sugar to his coffee. “They won’t all be antagonistic, but they’ll all be hard.”
Emma looks at the sandwich—it smells good, but she’s not sure her stomach is up to much—and thinks about what she wants to express next. “Bell, why are we doing this?”
“Say again?”
“I don’t mean our personal reasons. Why are we doing this? Why create this unit? I don’t understand what’s in it for Cooper. What new things are we learning from these interviews?”
“We’re learning how that kind of mentality develops. How young it starts, and what kinds of triggers—”
“The FBI knows this stuff already.” She puts her coffee down. “They’ve interviewed thirty-five adult subjects, and most of them have provided extensive histories. They know it starts in childhood. They know the patterns of upbringing. They know the warning signs, like animal cruelty and arson and bed-wetting, and how the early fantasies develop. The psychopathology has been understood for nearly ten years—it’s on my damn course curriculum. Come on, Bell. What’s new about these subjects, except that they got caught early?”
Bell shakes his head. “Look, with these kinds of sex crimes—”
“These crimes are not about sex. The sex is just incidental.”
Bell frowns at his sandwich. “Everything I’ve read—”
“Are you talking about police investigation manuals? They’re focused on sexually motivated homicide, and they’re all based on Psychopathia Sexualis, which was written in the goddamn nineteenth century. So everything you’ve read is wrong, or out-of-date, or both. It’s not about sex. At all.”
Bell scowls. “So what’s it about, then? What would make a teenager like McMurtry kill three elderly women and jerk off over the bodies?”
“It’s about exerting power. McMurtry was browbeaten—and physically beaten—by his elderly aunt from early childhood. Instead of focusing his rage on her, he went out and murdered three other women of a similar age. He had no power with his aunt, so he exerted power over three proxies. Feeling that kind of power is thrilling, and he got turned on by it. End of story.”
“Every case is different,” Bell insists.
“No. Every case is the same.” She leans forward, because she wants him to understand. “Power. Domination. Control. Manipulating the people around you, fooling them into thinking you’re normal. The smarter ones cover their tracks better, and they’re better at the manipulation part, which makes catching them harder. That’s it. That’s all there is. So why are we doing this? With these interviews?”
“To be thorough? The FBI interviewed all the others. They want to see if there’s anything different in the younger ones.”
“And do you think there is?”
“Hard to tell from one sample.” He looks at her over the top of his cup. “But you don’t think there will be.”
“I’m expecting to see five guys who are either dumb or unlucky.”
“Which category does McMurtry fall into?” Bell snorts, shakes his head. “No, don’t answer.”
“Eat your sandwich,” Emma suggests. “It’s getting cold.”
Once Bell has finished demolishing his food, he goes out and gases up the truck while Emma pays. The light outside makes blue-gray shadows in the parking lot, and the smell of exhaust off the interstate is strong. Emma feels like she’s a thousand years old. She turns, searching out the last rays of the sun, before she climbs back into the cab.
She buckles up. “I signed on to this because I told myself we’d be gathering new information, that we’d be learning something.”
“We are,” Bell insists.
“I don’t know. And I don’t understand Cooper’s motivation. Why now, when he’s so busy with whatever’s happening in Pennsylvania? You said that case is a big deal, right?”
Bell’s voice is stiff. “They’re talking on the news about curfews for teenagers, so yeah, it’s a big deal.”
“And Cooper is heading up that investigation unit. He’s right in the thick of it. So again, I’m wondering why he’s suddenly so interested in all of this.”
Bell doesn’t seem to have an answer. They merge onto the main road before he speaks further. “If you don’t think we’re doing anything useful with these interviews, why’d you join up?”
Emma hedges. “I didn’t say it’s not useful. Every piece of information is useful.”
“But?”
She picks at the knee of her jeans. “It would be better if there was a specific goal. Beyond just… making a bigger graph.”