Decker was still frowning at all the tubs, but Figueroa had a much more concerned look on his face.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he finally said in a deflated breath, reaching for one of the tubs. He picked up a strawberry one.

Hughes and Decker were now frowning at him.

Holding the opaque white ice-cream tub with his left hand, Figueroa slowly pulled the lid undone.

Hughes’ eyes went wide as she saw what was inside it. A second later, she vomited.

Thirty-Eight

Hunter and Taylor were called into Director Adrian Kennedy’s office fifty-five minutes after Kennedy had left them with the report on Megan Lowe and Kate Barker.

The office, which was located on the third floor of the BSU building, was spacious and nicely decorated, without being too imposing. There was an old-fashioned mahogany desk, two dark brown Chesterfield leather armchairs, a furry rug that looked comfortable enough to sleep on, and a huge bookcase with at least one hundred leather-bound volumes. The walls were mostly adorned with framed diplomas, awards and photographs of Kennedy posing next to political and government notables.

Kennedy was sitting behind his desk, his reading glasses high up on his nose, staring at his 27-inch computer screen. ‘Come in,’ he called in response to the door knock.

Taylor pushed the door open and stepped inside. Hunter was just a couple of paces behind her.

‘Don’t sit down,’ Kennedy said, motioning them to come closer and nodding at his screen. ‘We got word from Seattle. Come have a look at this.’

Hunter and Taylor moved past the armchairs and positioned themselves behind Kennedy’s desk. Hunter was to his left, Taylor to his right. The screen showed only Kennedy’s desktop. He had minimized the application he was looking at.

‘About forty minutes ago,’ Kennedy began, ‘two of our agents and a US federal marshal breached the padlock on the storage unit’s door in Seattle. This is what they found inside.’

Kennedy clicked his mouse and brought back the application he had minimized seconds earlier. It was a regular image-viewing program.

‘I received these photographs about five minutes ago,’ he explained.

The first picture on the screen was taken from just outside storage unit 325’s open door. It was a standard, wide-angle ‘crime-scene’ photograph, depicting the whole room. It gave everyone a good idea of the size of the unit. It also indicated how unsuspicious the space looked. Pushed up against the back wall, they could all see the large chest freezer.

Kennedy clicked the mouse again.

The second picture showed the freezer by itself, with its lid closed. Again, nothing suspicious there either.

Another click.

The third photograph was taken from an up/down view angle, showing what the agents saw as they lifted the freezer’s lid.

For a moment, Taylor frowned at all the ice-cream tubs.

‘From now on it gets sick,’ Kennedy said, clicking his mouse again.

The image on the screen was substituted by a close-up snapshot of an agent holding one of the ice-cream tubs in his left hand. Its lid had been pulled open.

Taylor hesitated for a split second while squinting, trying hard to understand what exactly she was looking at . . . and then she finally saw it.

‘Oh, Christ,’ she whispered, bringing a hand to her mouth.

Hunter’s stare stayed on the screen.

Frozen inside the ice-cream tub were two pairs of human eyeballs and a pair of human tongues.

It was easy to see why Taylor had struggled to understand the image at first. Due to dehydration and lack of blood, everything had shrunk in size. The eyeballs were on the left of the picture, stuck together like a bunch of grapes. The tongues sat to their right, also stuck together, one on top of the other, creating an odd X shape.

Kennedy gave Hunter and Taylor a few more seconds to study the picture before clicking his mouse again. The next image showed a second ice-cream tub. Inside it was a frozen human hand, severed at the wrist. No fingers. They had all been cut off.

Another click.

A second frozen hand inside an ice-cream tub.

One more click.

A different severed and frozen body part.

Kennedy stopped clicking.

‘It carries on,’ he said. ‘There were sixty-eight ice-cream tubs inside that freezer. Every single one of them holding a frozen body part. Some of them held internal organs too, or parts of it . . . heart, liver, stomach . . . you get the picture, right?’

Hunter nodded.

‘That section of the self-storage facility in Seattle has been locked down for the time being,’ Kennedy explained. ‘They guaranteed me two, three hours max, just so our forensics team can go over the entire unit and collect the freezer with all the ice-cream tubs. The lab will do a DNA analysis and compare it to the one we’ve got from the severed heads in Lucien’s trunk. Not that I have too much doubt they’ll match.’

Neither Hunter nor Taylor seemed to have any doubt either.

‘The clerk working at the storage facility helped the agents breach the unit’s door earlier, but he had no idea what was kept inside,’ Kennedy moved on. ‘We’re keeping this as under wraps as we can. The press has got no word of it yet, and we’ll try to keep it that way for as long as possible but, as we all know, Lucien Folter will have to be tried by a US court of law, so this story will eventually break. And when it does, it’ll break big, because now I have no doubt that what we have locked up downstairs is a fucking monster, and this really is only the beginning.’

Thirty-Nine

Lucien Folter had just finished the last set of his exercise routine when he heard the heavy metal door at the end of the corridor unlock, followed shortly by the sound of footsteps. He got up from the floor, used the sleeve of his orange jumpsuit to wipe the sweat from his forehead, took a seat at the edge of his bed, and calmly waited. When Hunter and Taylor appeared before him and took the seats in front of his cell, Lucien had a proud smirk on his lips.

‘I’m guessing you had confirmation from Seattle,’ he said, his eyes slowly moving from Hunter to Taylor. Both of their faces carried nothing more than a blank expression. ‘Too bad you didn’t go there to see it for yourself. I think that I can safely say that my dismembering and chopping skills have become very polished over the years.’

‘Have you disposed of all the bodies in the exact same way?’ Taylor asked. She didn’t seem affected by Lucien’s bragging. ‘By dismembering them?’

Lucien and Taylor held each other’s stare for several seconds.

‘No, not all of them,’ he replied matter-of-factly. ‘You see, Agent Taylor, at first, like all the scientists in your BSU, I was curious. I really wanted to understand what drives a person to kill without emotion or remorse. The big question in my head was – are all psychopaths born that way, or can one be created out of sheer will? I read everything on the subject I could get my hands on, and I found that none of it had any of the answers I was looking for. There’s nothing out there, Agent Taylor, no book, no thesis paper, no detailed work of any kind that will tell you what really goes on in here.’ He tapped his index finger against his right temple a couple of times. ‘Inside the mind of someone who became a senseless killer, someone who taught himself to be a psychopath.’ Lucien smiled cryptically. ‘But you never know. Maybe one day that will change. But allow me to give you a little preview.’

Calmly Taylor crossed her right leg over her left one and waited.