Christopher nodded. ‘This …thing… in my head, that makes me … well, it has nothing to do with you. When we first started dating, I did get a buzz from doing it behind your back, not just my girlfriend’s back, but a police officer’s back. But the more I got to know you, the deeper I fell and the less of a thrill it became.Believe me, I could feel myself becoming someone else the longer we were together.’
Amy stopped turning the key and paused. ‘Then why did you keep killing if you didn’t get a thrill from it anymore?’
‘Sorry?’
‘If I made you a better person, why did you need to keep killing?’
‘Because my goal was always to reach thirty people.’
‘So it wasn’t that you felt a compulsion to do it any more, you just made a choice to do it? It was a conscious decision and nothing to do with what you are?’
‘I guess so.’
‘And then, what? You were just going to stop?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you hope to get out of it? Recognition? Would you have turned yourself in to the police? Or to me?’
‘No. It was enough knowing that nobody would ever have any idea who I was, why I started and why I stopped just as suddenly.’
‘And what if you didn’t reach thirty? What if you’d put our relationship first and quit? Then what would’ve happened?’
‘I don’t know. I did consider it, but I feared I might grow to resent you for coming between me and what I had planned and that I might—’
‘—kill me too?’
Christopher nodded and something in Amy’s eyes shifted. In a moment of clarity, she removed the key from the still locked handcuffs and rose to her feet. ‘There are so many things I want to ask you, but I don’t know where to begin and I’m afraid of what I’ll hear.’
‘Try me.’
‘Were you born this way?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you always been a killer?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you hate women?’
‘I don’t. They’re just easier to overpower than men.’
‘Why did you start killing?’
‘To see if I could get away with it.’
‘Why? You’re an intelligent man – that’s one of the things I love about you. Why not put your efforts into something that helps people?’
‘That’s not how my brain works. I don’t care about people. I only care about you.’
‘Why did you take me for dinner at the restaurant where the young waitress with the pierced nose worked?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You do know, Chris. It was to get some perverse kick from having her serve us, knowing that later you were going to murder her. It was like a cat leaving a mouse at its owner’s feet. You were showing off.’
Christopher averted his gaze from Amy’s.
