He picks at his hand wraps. “Cooper can brief you.”

“Cooper only tells me what he wants me to hear.”

“Then go through the archives.”

“I need more.”

“Goddammit, Emma!”

He pivots and gives her his back, rests his forehead against the bag, holding the straps up high like a man readying himself to be whipped. The thought makes her wince. She steps closer, puts a hand on his shoulder—hot with fever, damp with sweat.

“Please,” she says softly. “Don’t do the interview with me. But please tell me what you know. And come with me to DC. If Gutmunsson’s as bad as you and Cooper say, I’m going to need the support.”

Her hand drops as he turns around. She realizes the dampness on his cheeks isn’t all perspiration, and it shames her enough that she opens her mouth to take it all back. But he speaks before she does, his voice very quiet.

“Okay.” He scrubs a wrapped hand over his face. “Okay.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

They’re in the car by nine the next day.

Cooper’s car, this time—a wide old Plymouth with sagging suspension. Emma sits in the front passenger seat and Bell commandeers the back, too still, gazing out the window. The trip takes less than an hour but seems longer, until Cooper starts going over all the details of the subject she’s about to interview.

“Simon Aron Gutmunsson, nineteen years old, white male, six-three. Has a twin sister, Kristin Margret Gutmunsson—”

“I’ve seen pictures of the sister,” Emma says.

They reviewed the information—everything Bell could stomach—last night. Simon Gutmunsson is not like the other subjects on the interview roster. He is a wholly different kind of beast. The file itself was the first clue: inches thick, the cardboard folder grubby from wear after passing through the hands of multiple agents and officers. Inside the beige folder, a set of Grand Guignol crime scene photos that Emma could barely stand to look at.

Simon Gutmunsson began killing people at fifteen. He not only started young, he was prolific, often killing more than one person at a time. Many of his victims were drawn from within his own social circle. The media made hay with the fact that he’d picked off the young darlings of the upper-class New England social set—and the horrifying detail that he had disemboweled his own friends.

The crime scene photos showed the elaborate arrangement of the bodies in meadows and wooded areas. Emma knows from her studies that outside displays mean the perpetrator is showing off. She also knows that victim-posing is not a common feature of serial homicide—that it’s a sign of a sophisticated fantasy, unusual in such a young offender.

“The family is of Icelandic, French, and English origin,” Cooper says. “That’s why they have the screwy names.”

“Old money.” Bell, from the back seat. His voice still has grit in it, but he looks more like himself now, out of his training gear and back in his suit.

“That’s true,” Cooper concedes. He seems antsy, his hands shifting away from the ten-two position on the steering wheel, shifting back again. “Gutmunsson’s father owned one of the largest manufacturing plants in New Hampshire, but the family originally made its money in textiles and cotton. Simon and his sister were sent to a private European boarding school until they were ten, and then they were schooled at home when Simon’s behavior became an issue.”