Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [189]
The articles that frightened Maggie more than the ones with missing body parts were the ones of women who had disappeared. Women like her missing neighbor, Rachel Endicott. Intelligent, successful women, some with families, all attractive, and all described as women who would not suddenly leave their lives without telling a soul. Maggie couldn’t help wondering if any of them had become part of Stucky’s collection. By now he had surely found somewhere isolated, somewhere to start all over again. He had the money and the means. All he needed was time.
She knew Cunningham and his defunct task force, and now his new profiler, were waiting for a body. But if, and when, the bodies did start showing up, they were the ones Stucky killed only for fun. No, the ones they should be looking for were the women he collected. These were the women he tortured—who ended up in remote graves deep in the woods, only after he was completely finished playing his sick games with them. Games that would drag on for days, maybe weeks. The women Stucky chose were never young or naive. No, Stucky enjoyed a challenge. He carefully chose intelligent, mature women. Women who would fight back, not those easily broken. Women he could torture psychologically as well as physically.
Maggie rubbed her eyes. She wanted another Scotch. The two earlier, added to the beer, were already making her head buzz and her vision blur. Though she had brewed a pot of coffee earlier for Gwen, she hated the stuff and stayed away from it. Now she wished she had something to help her stay alert. Something like the Scotch, which she knew was becoming a dangerous anesthetic.
She lifted another file folder and a page fell out. Seeing his handwriting still sent chills down her spine. She picked it up by its corner as though its evil would contaminate her. It had been the first of many notes in the sick game Albert Stucky had played with her. He had written in careful script:
What challenge is there in breaking a horse without spirit? The challenge is to replace that spirit with fear, raw animal fear that makes one feel alive. Are you ready to feel alive, Margaret O’Dell?
It had been their first insight into the intellect of Albert Stucky, a man whose father had been a prominent doctor. A man who had been afforded all the best schools, all the privileges money could buy. Yet he was thrown out of Yale for almost burning down a women’s dormitory. There were other offenses: attempted rape, assault, petty theft. All charges had been either dropped or were never pressed, due to lack of evidence. Stucky had been questioned in the accidental death of his father, a freak boating accident though the man had supposedly been an expert yachtsman.
Then, about six or seven years ago, Albert Stucky took up a business partner, and the two of them succeeded in creating one of the Internet’s first stock-market trading sites. Stucky became a respectable businessman, and a multimillionaire.
Despite all of Maggie’s research, she never felt certain about what had set Stucky off in the first place. What had been the event, the precursor? Usually with serial killers, their crimes were precipitated by some stressor. An event, a death, a rejection, an abuse that one day made them decide to kill. She didn’t know what that had been for Stucky. Perhaps evil simply couldn’t be harnessed. And Stucky’s evil was especially terrifying.
Most serial killers murdered because it gave them pleasure, some form of gratification. It was a choice, not necessarily a sickness of the mind. But for Albert Stucky, the kill was not enough. His pleasure came from psychologically breaking down his victims, turning them into sniveling, pleading wretches—owning them body, mind and soul. He enjoyed breaking their spirit, turning it into fear. Then he rewarded his victims with a slow, torturous death. Ironically, those he killed immediately, those whose throats he slashed and whose bodies he discarded