His eyes lock onto mine through the lenses. Cold blue. Like an ocean. Drowning me in place.
I freeze.
Whatever speech I practiced last night evaporates from my throat. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t look away. It feels like being unwrapped, layer by layer, by a man who hasn’t spoken in months but understands everything just by watching.
I swallow the lump forming in my throat and walk closer to the table. I pull the chair out and sit. His eyes never leave mine. Not for a single second. It feels like he is studying me, memorizing every move I make.
I open my mouth to speak, but the door flies open and slams shut again. My shoulders jump before dropping, a sharp gasp escaping me.
A detective walks in, already raising his voice.
“You’re late.”
My head turns toward him as he drags a chair to the table. The metal scrapes across the floor with a harsh screech that crawls up my spine.
He sits down beside me.
“I am never late,” I say. “You came early.”
He lets out a breath, almost a laugh. “Right, right.” Then he looks straight at Zayne Mercer. “Butcher of Eureka Springs.” His gaze shifts back to me. “And he’s mute.”
Zayne turns his attention to him. His lips twitch, like he is holding something back, and then he starts to laugh directly in the detective’s face.
The detective shoots to his feet, anger flaring so fast the air feels charged. He slams his fist on the table. But Zayne doesn’t blink. Not even once.
The detective reaches into the file, pulls out a stack of photographs, and shoves them across the table. Zayne lowers his eyes and scans them slowly, almost calmly, like he recognizes each one.
His laughter grows louder. His eyes lock onto the detective now.
He is a psychopath. The signs are unmistakable. No empathy. No guilt. The uncontrollable laughter points to poor behavioral control. He is precisely what every psychology textbook describes, impossible to miss. This man is insane, but that is not what unsettles me. What bothers me is how calm he remains as the detective loses control. I understand the reaction. A case this heavy, with evidence stacked so clearly against one man, would break almost anyone. But the question of why keeps clawing at him.
It claws at me, too.
Every victim was different from the last. There was no evident pattern, except one. They were all women. That alone suggests a deep-rooted hatred. Perhaps his mother was absent. Maybe she was present in the worst way. The women he targeted held positions of authority, figures of power. Whoever raised him did not just fail him. They damaged him.
The puzzle pieces he laid on the victim’s back were another sign. A clear break from reality. This was a game to him. A constructed fantasy that gave him control and excitement. It thrilled him.
He is a monster, one of the worst kind.
When I look at the whole picture, it is obvious he was shaped into this. Monsters like him are rarely born. They are made. Andoften, they never had a choice in becoming exactly what they were molded to be.
The detective reaches for the file of the first victim found in May 2008. He pulls out the photograph and places it on the table.
“You know what I think?” he says. “I think you couldn’t get your dick to work, so you had to kill her just to be able to jerk off.”
He sits back down, laughing bitterly, then leans forward and turns his face toward me. “Probably would have done it with you, too.”
I exhale slowly and study the detective. Deep purple shadows mix with dark brown beneath his eyes. His hair is overgrown, curling over his ears, streaked with gray at the ends. Signs of exhaustion. Signs of time that has been stolen. On his right hand, a pale line marks where a ring once was.
This case took his marriage too.
“Do you want coffee?” I ask.
He looks at me, confused at first, then almost hopeful, like he wants me to get it for him.
I smile instead. “I could use one too.”
Despite everything, he is still a gentleman. He stands and nods. “I’ll grab it from the cafeteria.”
