‘I guess he liked moody lighting,’ Taylor commented.

There were four doors down the hallway – two on the left, one on the right, and one down the far end. The two on the left and the one at the far end were wide open. Even with the lights off, Hunter and Taylor could tell that they led into two bedrooms and a bathroom. The thick and heavy door on the right side of the corridor, on the other hand, was securely locked with a large padlock.

‘This has got to be the door to the basement,’ Taylor said.

Hunter agreed, checking the padlock, which surprised him. It was a military-grade padlock, made by Sargent and Greenleaf – supposedly resistant to every form of attack, including liquid nitrogen. Lucien certainly didn’t want anyone going down into that basement uninvited.

‘And we’re back to the key roulette,’ Taylor said, retrieving Lucien’s keychain once again.

As she started going through the keys, Hunter quickly checked the first room on the left – the bathroom. It was small, tiled all in white, with a heavy musty and wet smell. There was nothing interesting in there.

Click.

Hunter heard the metal noise coming from the corridor and stepped out of the bathroom.

‘Got it,’ Taylor said, letting the padlock drop to the floor. ‘Took me twelve tries this time.’ She twisted the door handle and pushed the door open.

There was a light cord hanging from the ceiling on the inside of the door. Taylor clicked it on. A yellowish fluorescent tube flickered on and off a couple of times before finally engaging, revealing a narrow cement staircase that bent right at the bottom.

‘Do you want to go first?’ Taylor asked, taking a step back.

Hunter shrugged. ‘Sure.’

They both took the steps down slowly and carefully. At the bottom, another two yellowish fluorescent light bulbs lit a space about the same size as the living room upstairs, with a crude cement floor and tired white walls. Furniture wise, it could also be compared to the sparsely decorated living room upstairs. A tall wooden bookcase overflowing with books hugged the north wall. A large rug, together with a flowery sofa, centered the room. Directly in front of it, there was a beech-wood module with an old tube TV on it. To the left of the module was a chest of drawers and a small beer fridge. A few framed drawings adorned the walls. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust.

‘The diary must be there,’ Taylor said, nodding at the bookcase.

Hunter was still looking around the room, taking everything in.

Taylor stepped forward toward the bookcase; she paused before it, and let her eyes quickly browse through all the titles. Several of them looked to be on psychology, a few on engineering, a few on cooking, a few on mechanics, several paperback thrillers, and a few on self-motivation and how to overcome adversity. In one corner, a small collection of books looked a little different from all the others. The main difference was – they had no title. They weren’t printed books. They were hardcover notebooks, the kind easily found in any stationery store.

‘It looks like we’ve got more than one diary here,’ Taylor announced, reaching for the first book.

She got no reply from Hunter.

Without looking at him she flipped the book open, and as she started flicking through it, she frowned. There was nothing written on any of the pages. They were all covered by hand drawings and sketches.

‘Robert, come have a look at this.’

Still no reply from Hunter.

‘Robert, can you hear me?’ Taylor finally turned to face him.

Hunter was standing in the middle of the room, immobile, staring at the wall straight in front of him. The look on his face had changed to something Taylor couldn’t quite recognize.

‘Robert, what’s going on?’

Silence.

She followed his stare toward one of the framed drawings.

‘Wait a second,’ she said, squinting at it and moving a little closer. It took her several seconds to understand what she was looking at, and as she did, her whole body was suddenly covered in gooseflesh.

‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered. ‘Is that . . . human skin?’

Hunter finally nodded slowly.

Taylor breathed out, took a step back, and looked around the room again.

‘Jesus Christ . . .’ Her throat went completely dry and she felt as if she was being choked by a pair of invisible hands.

There were five different frames adorning the walls.

Hunter still hadn’t moved. His stare was still locked onto the frame directly in front of him. But the fact that what seemed to be framed drawings, were actually framed human skin, wasn’t what had shocked him the most. What had frozen Hunter to the spot was what was drawn onto the human skin in the frame he was staring at. A very unique tattoo. One that Hunter remembered well, because he had been there when it was done. And so was Lucien. A tattoo of a red rose, where its thorny stem wrapped itself around a bleeding heart, giving the impression that it was strangling it.

Susan’s tattoo.

Part Two

The Right Man

Twenty-Five

This time, Lucien Folter was already sitting at the metal table inside the interrogation room when the door buzzed open and Hunter and Taylor walked in. Just like before, his hands were cuffed, linked together by a metal chain. His feet were also shackled, with the ankle chain already securely fastened to the thick metal loop on the floor by his chair. Standing right behind him were two armed US Marines. They both nodded at Hunter and Taylor before exiting the room without saying a word.

Lucien was leaning forward on his chair. His hands were resting on the table with his fingers interlaced together. He was very slowly and calmly tapping his thumbs against each other in a steady rhythm, as if he was doing it to the beat of some song that only he could hear. His head and his eyes were low. His stare was fixed on his hands.

Taylor deliberately allowed the door to slam shut behind her, but the loud bang didn’t seem to reach Lucien’s ears. He didn’t flinch, didn’t look up, didn’t stop with the thumbs tapping. It was like he was in a world of his own.

Hunter stepped forward and stopped across the table from him, his arms loose and relaxed by the side of his body. He didn’t take a seat. He didn’t say a thing. He simply waited.

Taylor stood by the door, anger burning inside her eyes. On their trip back to Quantico, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t let that anger show, that she would be pragmatic . . . professional . . . detached. But seeing Lucien again, sitting in that room seemingly unperturbed, made her blood boil inside her veins.

‘You sick sonofabitch,’ she finally blurted out. ‘How many have you actually killed?’

Lucien just kept staring at his thumbs, following the beat that no one else could hear.

‘Did you skin them all?’ Taylor carried on.

No reply.

‘Did you make one of those sick trophies out of every victim?’

Still no reply, but this time Lucien stopped with the thumbs tapping, slowly lifted his head, and locked eyes with Hunter. Neither of them said anything for a very long moment. They simply studied each other like two complete strangers who were about to go into battle. The first thing Hunter noticed was that Lucien’s demeanor had totally changed from their previous interview. The emotional Lucien, the one who seemed scared that a huge injustice was being done to him, the one who needed help, that Lucien was all but gone. The new Lucien sitting before Hunter now looked stronger . . . more confident . . . fearless. Even his face looked tougher, like a fighter who wouldn’t walk away from any sort of confrontation – someone who was ready for come what may. There was also something very different about the look in his dark brown eyes. Something very cold and disconnected, void of any emotion. It was an empty look that Hunter had seen several times before, but never in Lucien’s eyes. It was a psychopathic look.