For the first time, Aiden broke eye contact, gaze floating somewhere over Thomas’s shoulder. “He’s been in a coma for months.”
“Months?” Thomas repeated.
“With what he did to him, they said they’re lucky there’s any brain activity at all,” he muttered. “Considering what the guy did to his body, I think I’d prefer to be brain dead.”
“Why didn’t you just tell the police?” Thomas asked.
Aiden looked at him as if he was stupid. “I did. They didn’t care. They said it’s a gay thing. High risk lifestyle. The kid was from a poor family. There was hardly any evidence since he used a…since he used an object to rape him. My description was vague at best. It was dark. We were on a street with broken lights. It’s not like Brett can tell anybody what that piece of shit did to him. The cops tried to imply it was some kind of romance gone wrong. Not even Brett’s parents wanted to pursue it. They were too humiliated.”
“Brett?” Thomas questioned.
“The victim.” Aiden shook his head. “What that guy did to him wasn’t romance. It was rage. He… I’ve never seen someone do that to a person before. It was brutal.”
Thomas felt something unknot in his chest. It was interesting that Aiden had named the victim but refused to call the man he’d murdered anything but ‘that guy.’
Aiden definitely wasn’t lacking in empathy. His face was pale, his eyes haunted. What he’d seen had scarred him for life. The human part of Thomas wanted to hug the boy, but the scientist in him wanted to pick his brain. How did Aiden differentiate the horrors that happened to Brett from what he’d wanted to do to his abuser?
Thomas sat up a bit straighter. “How did you find him?”
Aiden shrugged. “I took the police sketch and showed it around. Went to gay clubs. Places close to where he’d attacked Brett.”
“Why gay clubs? You think Brett was targeted because he was gay?” Thomas asked.
Aiden’s gaze darted upwards, and once more, that arc of electricity jolted through Thomas’s whole body. “It seemed like the best place to start. Like I said, what he did to him…it was meant to hurt, to inflict as much pain as possible. He wanted him to suffer. That level of rage and evil usually comes from some kind of self-hatred. No?”
Thomas blinked in surprise. Clearly, he had been reading up on psychopathy as more than just a passing fancy. “Seems likely.”
“Brett was small, frail. There were rumors he was gay, but who fucking knows. It’s high school. It’s not like the rumors have to be true for anybody to believe them or spread them. I asked his friends, but they said he didn’t really have prospects from any gender. That he was kind of a weirdo.”
“How did you know you had the right guy?” Thomas asked. “How can you be sure the kid you killed was the same one who hurt Brett?”
“Because I watched him stalking his next victim for weeks. Luckily, he never had the opportunity to act on whatever he wanted to do. But he was definitely ready. I was ready, too. If he’d tried to hurt someone, I would have done what I had to do.”
Thomas didn’t ask him to clarify. “How did he end up in your garage?”
“I followed him, started hanging at the same pool hall he did, played a few games with him, overheard him saying he was looking to buy a Playstation 2. I introduced myself and told him I had one for sale. I gave a ridiculously low price, and told him I was getting a Gamecube instead. Gave him my number. When he called, I invited him over.”
“But your parents were home,” Thomas said.
Aiden shrugged again. “Yeah, that was unfortunate.”
Unfortunate.“Did you plan to kill him?”
“Yeah. Eventually. I was hoping to have more time with him. But he knew something was up. I don’t know what I did that gave it away. I’ve been thinking about it since it happened, but I can’t figure out where I went wrong.”
“Why?”
Aiden frowned in confusion as if the answer was obvious. “So I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“You do know that you’d be in jail right now if not for your father, right?” Thomas asked.
Aiden scoffed. “Please, if you believe my father’s ego would ever allow him to have a murderer for a son, you’re not as smart as he thinks you are.”
“Do you know what I do, Aiden?” Thomas asked.
“You train psychopaths to kill bad people,” Aiden said.
“Did you know that before you killed that boy?” Thomas asked.
