Cat and Mouse

Smith finished her song, and the Doors immediately came on. “People Are Strange.” The moldy oldie was wonderful mood music as well.
    Smith let his gaze wander around the country kitchen. One entire wall was a stone fireplace. Another wall was white tile, with antique shelves that held copper pots, white cafi au lait bowls, antique jam jars, or
confitures fines
, as they were called here. He knew that, knew just about everything about everything. There was an antique black cast-iron stove with brass knobs. And a large white porcelain sink. Adjacent to the sink, just above a butcher-block worktable, hung an impressive array of kitchen knives. The knives were beautiful, absolutely perfect in every way.
    He was avoiding looking at the victim, wasn’t he?
    He knew that he was. He always did.
    Finally, he lowered his eyes and looked into the victim’s.
    So this was Abel Sante.
    This was lucky number nineteen.

Chapter 92

    T HE VICTIM was a very successful thirty-five-year-old surgeon. He was good-looking in a Gallic sort of way, in excellent shape even without very much meat left on his bones. He seemed a nice person, an “honorable” man, a “good” doctor.
    What was human? What exactly, was human-ness?
Mr. Smith wondered. That was the fundamental question he still had, after physical exams like this, in nearly a dozen countries around the world.
    What was human? What, exactly, did the word mean?
    Could he finally find an answer here in this French country kitchen? The philosopher Heidegger believed the
self is revealed
by what we truly care about. Was Heidegger onto something? What was it that Mr. Smith truly cared about? That was a fair question to ask.
    The French surgeon’s hands were tightly tied behind his back. The ankles were bound to the hands; the knees were bent back toward the head. The remaining length of rope was attached to the neck in a noose.
    Abel Sante had already realized that any struggling, any thrashing about, created intense strangulation pressure. As the legs eventually tired, they would become numb and painful. The urge to straighten them would be overpowering. If he did this, it would induce self-strangulation.
    Mr. Smith was ready. He was on a schedule. The autopsy would start at the top of the body, then work its way down. The correct order: neck, spine, chest. Then abdomen, pelvic organs, genitalia. The head and brain would be examined last, in order to allow the blood to drain as much as possible —
for maximum viewing
.
    Dr. Sante screamed, but no one could hear him out here. It was an ungodly sound and almost made Smith scream, too.
    He entered the chest via a classic “Y” incision. The first cut went across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, continued over the breasts, then traveled from the tip of the sternum. He cut down the entire length of the abdomen to the pubic area.
    The brutal murder of an innocent surgeon named Abel Sante.
    Absolutely inhuman,
he thought to himself.
    Abel Sante
— he was the key to everything, and none of the police masterminds could figure it out. None of them were worth shit as detectives, as investigators, as anything. It was so simple, if only they would use their minds.
    Abel Sante.
    Abel Sante.
    Abel Sante.
    The autopsy finished, Mr. Smith lay down on the kitchen floor with what was left of poor Dr. Sante. He did this with every victim. Mr. Smith hugged the bleeding corpse against his own body. He whispered and sighed, whispered and sighed. It was always like this.
    And then, Smith sobbed loudly. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Somebody forgive me,” he moaned in the deserted farmhouse.
    Abel Sante.
    Abel Sante.
    Abel Sante.
    Didn’t anyone get it?

Chapter 93

    O N THE American Airlines flight to Europe, I noticed that mine was the only overhead lamp glaring as the flight droned over the Atlantic.
    Occasionally, one of the stewardesses stopped to offer coffee or liquor. But for the most part, I just stared into the blackness of the night.
    There had never been a mass killer to match Mr. Smith’s unique approach to violence, not from a scientific vantage point anyway. That was one thing the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico and I agreed on. Even the contrarians at Interpol, the international clearinghouse for police information, agreed with us.
    In point of fact, the community of forensic psychologists is, or at least had been, in relative agreement about the different repeat- or pattern-murderer types; and