Chapter 26

Muse had faxed me a three-page summary on Wayne Steubens.

Count on Muse. She didn't send me the entire file. She had read it herself and given me the main points. Most of it I knew. I remember that when Wayne was arrested, many wondered why he decided to kill campers. Did he have a bad experience at a summer camp? One psychiatrist explained that while Steubens hadn't talked, he believed that he had been sexually molested at a summer camp during his childhood. An other psychiatrist, however, surmised that it was just the ease of the kill: Steubens had slaughtered his first four victims at Camp PLUS and got ten away with it. He associated that rush, that thrill, with summer camps and thus continued the pattern.

Wayne hadn’t worked at the other camps. That would have been too obvious, of course. But circumstances had been his undoing. A top FBI profiler named Geoff Bedford had nailed him that way. Wayne had been under moderate suspicion for those first four murders. By the time the boy was slaughtered in Indiana, Bedford started to look at anyone who could have been in all those spots at the same time. The most obvious place to start was with the counselors at the camp.

Including, I knew, me.

Originally Bedford found nothing in Indiana, the site of the second murder, but there had been an ATM withdrawal in Wayne Steubens's name two towns away from the murder of the boy in Virginia. That was the big break. So Bedford did more serious digging. Wayne Steubens hadn't made any ATM withdrawals in Indiana, but there was one in Everett, Pennsylvania, and another in Columbus, Ohio, in a pattern that suggested that he had driven his car from his home in New York out that way. He had no alibi and eventually they found a small motel owner near Muncie who positively identified him. Bedford dug some more and got a warrant.

They found souvenirs buried in Steubens's yard.

There were no souvenirs from that first group of murders. But those, the theory went, were probably his first killings and he either had no time for souvenirs or didn't think to collect them. Wayne refused to talk. He claimed innocence. He said that he'd been set up.

They convicted him of the Virginia and Indiana murders. That was where the most evidence was. They didn't have enough for the camp. And there were problems with that case. Head only used a knife. How had he managed to kill four of them? How had he gotten them into the woods? How had he disposed of two of the bodies? They could all be explained-he only had time to get rid of two bodies, he chased them deep in the woods-but the case wasn't neat. With the murders in Indiana and Virginia, it was open and shut.

Lucy called at near midnight.

"How did it go with Jorge Perez?" she asked.

"You're right. They're lying. But he wouldn't talk either."

"So what's the next step?"

"I meet with Wayne Steubens."

"For real?"

"Yep."

"When?"

"Tomorrow morning."

Silence.

"Lucy?"

"Yeah."

"When he was first arrested, what did you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"Wayne was, what, twenty years old that summer?"

"Yes."

"I was a counselor in the red cabin," I said. "He was two down at the yellow. I saw him every day. We worked that basketball court for a week straight, just the two of us. And, yeah, I thought he was off. But a killer?"

"It's not like there's a tattoo or something. You work with criminals. You know that."

"I guess. You knew him too, right?"

"I did."

"What did you think?"

"I thought he was a dickhead."

I smiled in spite of myself. "Did you think he was capable of this?"

"Of what, slitting throats and burying people alive? No, Cope. I didn't think that."

"He didn't kill Gil Perez."

"But he killed those other people. You know that." 1 guess.

"And come on, you know he had to be the one who killed Margot and Doug. I mean, what other theory is there-he happened to be a counselor at a camp where murders took place and then took up killing himself?"

"Its not impossible," I said.

"Huh?"

"Maybe those murders set Wayne off somehow. Maybe he had that potential and that summer, being a counselor at a camp where throats were slit, maybe that was the catalyst."

"You really buy that?"

"Guess not, but who knows?"

"One other thing I remember about him," she said.

"What?"

"Wayne was a pathological liar. I mean, now that I have that big-time psychology degree I know the technical term for it. But even then. Do you remember that at all? He would lie about anything. Just to lie. It was his natural reaction. He'd lie about what he had for breakfast."

I thought about it. "Yeah, I do remember. Part of it was normal camp boasting. He was this rich kid and he'd try to fit in with us wrong-siders. He was a drug dealer, he said. He was in a gang. He had this girl friend from home who posed in Playboy. Everything he said was crap."

"Remember that," she said, "when you talk to him."

"I will."

Silence. The sleeping snake was gone. Now I felt other dormant feelings stir. There was still something there, with Lucy. I don't know if it was real or nostalgia or a result of all this stress, but I felt it and I didn't want to ignore it and I knew I'd have to.

"You still there?" she said.

"I am."

"This is still weird, isn't it? Us, I mean."

"Yes, it is."

"Just so you know," Lucy said, "you're not alone. I'm there too, okay?"

"Okay."

"Does that help?"

"Yes. Does it help you?"

"It does. It would suck if I was the only one feeling this way."

I smiled.

"Good night, Cope."

"Good night, Luce."

Serial killing-or at least, having a severely compromised conscience- must be pretty stress free, because Wayne Steubens had barely aged in twenty years. He had been a good-looking guy back when I knew him. He still was. He had a buzz cut now as opposed to those wavy, out-sailing-with-Mummy locks, but it looked good on him. I knew that he only got out of his cell an hour a day, but he must have spent it in the sun because he had none of that typical prison pallor.

Wayne Steubens gave me a winning, near-perfect smile. "Are you here to invite me to a camp reunion?" "We're having it in the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. Gosh, I hope you can attend."

He howled with laughter as if I had just cracked the gem of gems. It wasn't, of course, but this interrogation was going to be a dance. He had been questioned by the best federal officers in the land. He had been probed by psychiatrists who knew every trick in The Psychopath's Hand book. Normal venues wouldn't work here. We had a past. We had even been somewhat friendly. I needed to use that.

His laughter segued into a chuckle and then the smile slipped away. "They still call you Cope?"

"Yes."

"So how are you, Cope?"

"Groovy," I said.

"Groovy," Wayne repeated. "You sound like Uncle Ira."

At camp we used to call the elders Uncle and Aunt.

"Ira was one crazy dude, wasn't he, Cope?"

"He was out there."

"That he was." Wayne looked off. I tried to focus in on his powder blue eyes, but they kept darting around. He seemed a bit manic. I wondered if he was medicated-probably-and then I wondered why I hadn't checked on that.

"So," Wayne said, "are you going to tell me why you're really here?" And then, before I could answer, he held up his palm. "Wait, no, don't tell me. Not yet."

I had expected something different. I don't know what exactly. I expected him to be more outwardly crazy or obvious. By crazy, I meant like the raving lunatics you conjure up when you think of serial killers- the piercing gaze, the scenery chewing, the intensity, the lip smacking, the hands clenching and unclenching, the rage right under the surface. But I didn't feel any of that with Wayne. By obvious, I meant the type of sociopaths we stumble across every day, the smooth guys you know are lying and capable of horrible things. I wasn't getting that vibe either.