'My ball, is it?' Becker asked.
'I'm really just a spectator here,' Gold said.
'Could we drop the sports analogy?' Karen asked.
'John, just say it.'
'Gold tells me that this Cooper is confessing to being responsible for half the national crime statistics. Has any of it checked out yet?'
'Some,' Karen said cautiously. 'There are a couple of unexplained deaths of migrant workers about ten years ago that match up pretty well with his story. There was a vicious assault on a homosexual in Spartanburg several years ago that was listed as an attempted murder. The man didn't actually die, but we can see why Cooper thought he did-that matches his story. There were the two girls in the coal mine. He had his facts right on those.'
'Anything else?'
'We're still checking. Most of them were quite a while ago. He's been in prison for the last five years. Why? Do you think there are more?'
'How did the migrant workers die?'
'One of them was stabbed. Disemboweled, according to the report. The other's head was bashed in with a blunt instrument, probably a rock, the autopsy said.'
'And the homosexual who wasn't killed? What happened to him?' John asked.
'He was beaten-kicked and beaten with fists and feet, I gather. He did not volunteer any information, said he didn't remember what happened.'
'And where were these things done, the workers and the homosexual?'
'Where were they done?'
'in a mine, in a basement, a closet, an abandoned warehouse?'
Karen paused. 'No,' she said warily. 'The homosexual was in a parking lot behind a bar. One of the migrant workers was apparently killed in an orchard but then dragged to a culvert. The other was found in an open field.
There was no suggestion in the report that he had been moved.'
'And what's on his sheet? What was he doing time for? I 'Armed robbery, assault with intent. His crimes were all violent, if that's what you're after. It is, isn't it?'
'Looking strange, Karen?' John asked her.
'So why would a man whose history is all open violence take two girls to a coal mine and torture them to death? Is that the thrust of all this?
It has occurred to us, you know. We are not completely blind just because we're actively involved in law enforcement,' she said.
'That inconsistency didn't trouble anybody?'
'Trouble? No. We noticed it. It's unusual for a serial killer to be impulsively violent as well-but it's not unknown. Harris Breitbart killed three police officers in New Jersey.'
'Not until they came to arrest him. After he had been discovered.'
'So? He doesn't fit the mold perfectly. We're constantly changing the profile, you know that.'
'What's the average intelligence.of a serial killer?'
Karen looked to Gold, deferring.
'Usually higher than average,' Gold said.
'It has to be or they wouldn't survive long enough to kill repeatedly.
If they kill once and get caught, they're a murderer. If they're smart enough to stay loose and do it repeatedly, they're a serial killer.
Ergo, they're smarter.
At least that's the assumption, correct?' Becker said.
'Correct,' said Karen. 'And Cooper is stupid. But you don't have to be a genius to go into an abandoned mine if you're in West Virginia. There are tons of them.
If you leave a body there, it's not going to be found for a long time, whether you did it by planning or just dumb luck. It's not as if he did anything clever, he just did it in the right place.'
'So then so far he's inconsistent and lucky.'
'Apparently. What are you driving at, John? Do you think he couldn't be both?'
'Somebody could be. I'm not sure Cooper could.'
'Look, we're not dealing in theory here. If we were, I'd agree, all right. It's not likely that a man who steals cars and drives them around for several days and assaults cops and gets in fights in bars is also going to slip away into the dark with young women and torture them for a week at a time. In theory. But we know he stole the car, raped a woman, snatched another in broad daylight with several witnesses, tried to drive the car over a gas station attendant. We know those things, they arr facts, not theory,' Karen said.
'I'm not questioning that side of him-the stupidly violent side has been his whole life.'
'You're not questioning the girls in the mine? That's the strongest part of his story. He remembers that better than any of the other things he did. Those we can verify a lot more concretely than the migrants or the homosexual or any of the other claims. He's got the details only he could know.'
'Except for one.'
Karen sighed. 'Go ahead.'
'He knew what he did and he knew when he did it and he knew how he did it-'
'And he knew why he did it,' Karen interjected. 'He likes to hurt people. You accept that, don't you?'
'Yes, he even knew why he did it. What he didn't know was what it felt like.'
'Wrong,' said Karen. 'I've seen the transcripts. He said it felt good.
Hurting those women made him feel good. That's not terribly articulate, I grant you, but it's good enough for me. You have to consider the source.'
'I realize it's good enough for you,' John said. 'It's good enough for practically anybody, I imagine. You've got enough on Cooper that you could get a conviction in any court in the land… But Gold played me a tape of Cooper's confession… I don't think he did the girls.'
'Why are you doing this, John?' She turned to Gold.
'Is this what you came for? What's the matter with you two? You think he's a von Munchausen, is that it? You think he's claiming he killed more people than he did?
We know that's possible. We'll find out, and maybe he killed only half of what he claims, or maybe a third, or maybe only two. But we know the two he did kill. We know.'
'You 'know' because he told you,' Gold said.
'He didn't make up that confession,' Karen said angrily.
'No, he didn't. I agree. But it isn't true, either.'
'Why not? Just tell me why in the hell not! What have you two geniuses spotted that nobody else could see?'
Gold put his hands in the air as if submitting. 'I didn't spot anything.
I just didn't quite understand.'
'What? What don't you understand?'
'Gold asked Cooper one question,' Becker said. 'He asked him what he felt when the girls died. Cooper said he didn't care.'
'He obviously doesn't.'
'No,' Becker said. His voice had become sad. 'Cooper was answering the question as honestly as he could think to do. He doesn't care when he kills someone because that's not why he does it. Men who are that violent are not concerned with the death of their victim, they just want to get rid of them because they are thwarting them in some way. Cooper didn't even bother to find out if half his corpses were even dead. He claimed the homosexual and the woman he raped and the girl he left in the swamp were all dead, and none of them were. He wasn't concerned about their deaths, he just wanted done with them.'
'And that's exactly how he reacted to the girls in the coal mine.'
'Yes. But that is not the reaction of a man who dragged them in there and tortured them for days and days. That required planning. He had to have light, he had to have food and water, he had to have the right clothes because it's cold that far underground, he had to have restraints of some kind to keep the girls there while he
