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TEN

BLACK ROCK FALLS

Behavioral analyst and Special Agent Jo Wells had spent the last fifteen years studying the criminal mind. These ranged from petty thieves to gang members influenced by peer pressure to commit crimes they wouldn’t normally do if left to their own devices. The next class of criminal behavior was born from greed. These people came from all walks of life and didn’t exhibit a typical type, other than the need to improve their lot in life by stealing from somebody else. Many of these started by stealing old women’s purses, vehicles, or by holding up convenience stores and ended up running cartels and accumulating great wealth from the suffering of others mainly by fentanyl distribution, sex slavery, or child exploitation.

The next group of criminals she’d studied had been murderers. People killed for a variety of reasons and there was always an excuse for a sane person to murder someone. These motives included jealousy, hate, covering up a crime, greed, self-defense, power, passion, and obsession. This group of people usually had normal upbringings, and the murders usually stopped with one or two.

During her time with the FBI, Jo had dealt with all these types, but the criminals that intrigued her the most were psychopathic serial killers. These people were in a class of their own. They came from every economic background and both sexes, although men outweighed women by five to one. She discovered a large portion of them had a psychopathic parent, and having a parent with no empathy can trigger psychopathy in a child. Their parent or parents may not have been pushed to murder and managed to live reasonably normal lives, but a parent who raises a child without love and affection causes an instability that can emerge later in life in many different ways. From a child being cruel to animals, to bullies needing to exert power over others, to the quiet withdrawn kid who suddenly explodes into a serial killer. It’s not an exact science, as so many variables and different psychoses or personality traits go into the mix to create a serial killer.

After interviewing many convicted serial killers, she’d concluded that once they’d stepped over the line and begun their murderous spree, none of them could be rehabilitated. Even those who had spent a long time in prison began killing again the moment they were released. After interviewing some of the most notorious serial killers at various state prisons, she’d written a series of books on the subject using the actual serial killers as a reference. Surprisingly, all she’d interviewed had been enthusiastic to be listed in her books. All wanted to be remembered for their crimes. Their egos being such as they were, the frightening fact she discovered was that they all wanted to be the best.

Jo grabbed a pen, went to the whiteboard, and turned to Jenna. “Eduardo Souza isn’t a psychopath in the normal sense of the word. He kills for power and removes anyone who stands in his way. His fortune is endless, and from our recent investigations, so is the army of people he has behind him. The chances of taking them all down is about as possible as counting the stars in the sky.”

“So we will never be free of him?” Jenna ran a hand down her face and sighed. “I can’t believe he’s gotten out of prison.”

Jo fully understood the ramifications of having Eduardo Souza running loose again. “You can be assured the DEA is moving on him as we speak. One thing is for sure, Souza isn’t running around Stanton Forest. We detected an unauthorized helicopter in the area around the time of the bus wreck. From the direction of the gunshot wound found in the driver of the prison bus, the shot could only have come from above. This would indicate that Souza escaped in a chopper and he would be long gone by now.”

“Okay, so we’ve got three serial killers wandering around Stanton Forest.” Jenna glanced at the notes on her tablet. “The warden gave me the names I sent you. What do you know about them?”

Jo wrote the three names on the whiteboard. “We have Mason Margos, known as Ice Pick. I figure his name is pretty explanatory. He is a good-looking charismatic man, tall and muscular. He picked up women in bars, drove them to a secluded place, and hacked them to death with an ice pick. When I spoke to him, he said the reason he killed them was because he took offense at the way a woman looked at him.”

“So how did you manage to conduct the interview? You had to look at him?” Jenna stood, went to the counter, and poured them both a cup of coffee. “Did he become aggressive with you?”

After adding Margos’ characteristics to the whiteboard, Jo sat down and sipped her coffee. “As you are aware, psychopaths always need an excuse in their minds for murdering someone. His excuse was that, when he picked them up in bars, they all looked at him with appreciation and chatted as if he were their best friend, but when he got them alone in his vehicle and drove them somewhere to be intimate, they became afraid of him. He didn’t like women looking at him as if he’d frightened them.”

“So he murdered them with an ice pick?” Jenna turned her cup around in the tips of her fingers. “What a horrible way to die.”

Vividly recalling the interview with Margos, Jo shuddered. “The crime scene photographs were gruesome. Because he didn’t like the way they were looking at him, he attacked their eyes. Most of them were outside the vehicle at the time, so he managed to convince them to go with him into a secluded place. We discovered the bodies in forests and in parkland, behind buildings and in alleyways.” She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “We’re talking about multiple murders. I believe he murdered well over twenty women that we know about. He is very well respected in the prison by the other psychopaths. It’s unusual for psychopaths to follow anyone—all are individuals and they don’t like to share kills—but I guess even in a prison someone has to be the boss. So Margos would be in charge of the other two prisoners who are missing, both of whom are equally as dangerous as he is.”

“Who else have we got?” Jenna sipped her coffee.

Jo stood and added notes to the whiteboard. “The information that the warden gave you about these men is accurate. Sebastian Callahan, known as the Silent Strangler, is more of a stalker. He puts the blame on the women he kills by saying that they dissed him. Being rejected is a reason many psychopaths will kill. It often stems from childhood, when they were humiliated at one time or had a parent who made a habit of embarrassing them in public.” She glanced at Jenna. “Then we have Carl Romero, known as the Blue Man. His excuse was that if a woman invited him into her home, he had the right to rape and murder her. So he showed up at the front door of his victims dressed in blue coveralls and we believe told them there’d been a gas leak in the building.” She sat down and lifted her coffee cup and sighed. “When I did a background check on him, I discovered his mother was a sex worker. So he often saw men coming in the house wearing coveralls. For a small child, he probably witnessed things he couldn’t understand and it triggered his psychopathy.”

“What chance has the prison guard of surviving these men?” Jenna peered at her over the rim of her cup. “She is only small and in her early twenties.”

Just the thought of a woman being alone with these three men churned Jo’s stomach. “I’d say she has a ten percent chance of survival. It will depend how long she is useful to them and how much power Margos can exert over the other men. Any one of them could flip out and kill her. The good thing is that they’ve been in prison for a long time and will be in some type of control. In prison, they couldn’t just kill anyone at their leisure like they used to. It’s as if while in prison they go into some type of remission due to being confined and away from the triggers. The problem is we have no idea how long it will last because usually when psychopaths are released from custody they kill again.” She sighed. “Her only hope is that she doesn’t cause friction between them or accidently trigger one of them. If she does and they kill her, just witnessing the murder will set them all off. It will be a bloodbath.”