Page 24 of The Grave Between Us
Cole trailed behind Hillary and Pressman into the observation room. Michael stayed on the line, still listening to the live feed.
He was listening as Cole and the rest of the agents watched Ingram stare right where the camera was embedded, the tiny bead of its eye glinting in the expanse of beige blandness, and say, “Bring Cole back in here. Now.”
* * *
This time,Ingram spoke first. “Hello, Cole.” He smiled. His eyes fixed on Cole’s and never wavered.
Cole sank into the chair he’d just left and sighed. He arched his eyebrows, holding on to his bored pretense. He crossed his legs, closing his body posture, angling his chest away from Ingram as he folded his arms. “Why am I here?”
“Am I boring you?”
Cole closed his eyes. He hummed.
“You know all about serial killers?”
“Do you want to hear about different serial killers’ signatures broken down by pie chart or bar chart? Degree of incidence? Percentage of commonality?” Sighing, Cole opened his eyes as he rattled down the list, counting off lazily on his fingers. “Psychosexual bondage restraints tied with right-hand-facing knots are more common than left. Hands tied behind the back are more common than front, as is hog-tying. Facedown victim positioning is more common than faceup. There’s a sequence to assault. Anal, oral, anal again is most common. Something about the degradation of the sequence. Antemortem mutilation is far more common than postmortem. Posing a body is uncommon, despite Hollywood. Anthropophagy is way more common than necrophilia.”
He saw Ingram’s eyes narrow just a bit at his last statement. “Anthropophagy. Cannibalism. Eating flesh, drinking blood,” he clarified. “Much, much more common than necrophilia.”
Silence. Ingram’s smile slowly spread. “Guess I’m not that common after all, am I?”
Cole let a single eyebrow rise. “You’re really not unique.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I make my living understanding psychology based on evidence. Sorry to tell you, but we’re slaves to our personalities and peccadilloes, and whatever quirks you have and have tried to conceal, you’ve left neon signs littered behind you. As I said before, manual strangulation: common. Drano on your victim’s body: common.”
“Fucking them as their bodies cool?”
Bodies. Plural.Cole’s pulse leaped. Somewhere, pens and pencils were flying. Hillary probably was cursing his name. He gave another half shrug. “I’ve seen necrophilia before.”
Another smile from Ingram. Silence stretched between them, filling the interrogation room.
“Why did I do it?” Ingram asked. His voice was like a river running over rocks, steady and rumbling and smooth. Seductive, even. “Why do what I do?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Ingram tipped his head back and laughed. It was a hearty laugh, full throated. His eyes crinkled, and a small dimple appeared on his stubbled cheeks. “Nice try, Cole. But I’m not that easy.”
Cole shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t really care. You’re not interesting to me. You do what you do for the same reason any other serial murderer kills. You do it because you love it.”
Ingram’s eyes flashed, emotions warring in his dark gaze. There was the shine of agreement, acknowledgment: he did love to kill. And there was also the knee-jerk reflex to fight, to insist he was different, superior, above all the other killers out there. He was more, greater than.
“The FBI is overflowing with killers who left no trace for over a decade? Sounds like shitty police work to me. You just let murderers run wild? Are they too boring for you to pay attention to?”
“No, we catch killers pretty quickly. We caught you.”
“Not quickly.”
“I’ve seen nothing that convinces me you have any victims beyond, possibly, the DNA profiles we found in your truck. The body in your truck bed, the blood pool on your jump seat. There’s a fingerprint under your passenger headrest, and I think you fucked a guy or two in the front seat of your truck. Did you kill them, or just fuck them? We’ll find out, don’t worry. Maybe,maybeyou killed three men, all in that truck, which you’ve had for nine months. I’d say we caught you pretty quickly.” He screwed up his expression. “Kind of amateur to let that foot fall out of your tailgate, frankly. That doesn’t sound like the work of a long-term, seasoned killer.”
Actually, it did. Decompensation, disintegration. Long-term serial killers eventually succumbed to their internal mental fraying, destabilizing bit by bit as each murder failed to live up to their fantasy. There was no perfect victim performing according to the script. The hunger inside every serial murderer's bones could never be sated and would eventually destabilize them.
Eventually.
Was Ian Ingram at the beginning of his destabilization? Had black ice and a state trooper who turned left instead of right that day managed to stop a seasoned hunter in his tracks? Was there something different about Nelson Miller that led Ingram to be more careless? Why was Ingram here, now?
“You know exactly who you have sitting across from you,” Ingram purred. “You know. They know.” He nodded to the wall with the embedded camera. “Everyone is interested in me.”
