The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [122]
A hand came up in back. It was an older detective who’d worked the task force two and a half years before. “With all due respect, Lieutenant, we can’t maintain this forever. Last time we also started out ultra alert and ultra ready. But six months later we were down to two men watching the house and no SWAT support. How’s this going to be any different? We got budgets, we got constraints. And Beckett knows it.”
Houlihan nodded. “Good question. We might as well cover it now. Special Agent Quincy . . .”
Houlihan stepped aside and Quincy walked up to the front of the room. He didn’t look at J.T. or Tess. In his dark blue suit he appeared composed and distant. Tess had spoken to him numerous times; now, as before, their lives were intimately intertwined. But he still refused to call her by her first name, and he rarely spoke to her about anything outside of business.
His job had taught him dispassion well. The things that horrified her were commonplace to him. The questions she found intrusive were merely business. His job took him outside the world of civilized people, and she didn’t think he could find his way back anymore. She respected him immensely and worried about him frequently.
He began as he always began, without preamble. “We don’t believe we’ll have to wait long for Beckett’s attack. We believe he is beginning to decompensate.”
“English, please,” Lieutenant Houlihan muttered. “We’re not the ones with the Ph.D.”
“Jim Beckett’s beginning to fall apart,” Quincy said bluntly.
Disagreeing murmurs broke out. The man had killed three officers in twenty-four hours. That didn’t fit their definition of someone falling apart.
Quincy held up a silencing hand. “Hear me out. A psychopath is a complex creature. In many ways, however, we can compare him to a particularly bad child.”
More grumbles. Quincy remained patient.
“You’ve heard the tapes. You know Jim Beckett considers himself to be a man of unprecedented control. ‘Discipline is the key,’ that’s what he likes to say. However, he’s wrong. He is driven by a compulsion that not even he can explain. On the one hand, he considers himself outside the boundaries of society—that is his neurosis. On the other hand, deep down, like any person, he has a need for limits. As he gets away with murder, he tries even more daring and dangerous stunts. Not just because of ego, but because some part of him wants to be caught. Like the child who evolves from petty tantrums to small crime to get a parent’s attention, Beckett will commit riskier and riskier murders seeking that barrier.
“That is the psychological component of his decompensating. Research also indicates there is a physiological component, but we don’t understand it as well. The act of murder appears to release chemicals in the brain. Murderers talk about a feeling of euphoria similar to a runner’s high. Before a murder they are tense, wound, overwrought. Afterward they are relaxed, calm, and settled. Over time, the desire, the need for this euphoria begins to drive the killer. We see shorter periods of time between killings, cycle times going from six months to six days to, in the current case of Jim Beckett, six hours.”
The room grew quiet.
“In most cases the organized serial killer begins to demonstrate more and more of the traits we associate with a drug addict. One, he’s no longer so composed or calm. Physical health deteriorates. The chemicals released in the brain and constant adrenaline rush interfere with his ability to function. Like someone mainlining cocaine, he stops sleeping, foregoes food, and neglects personal hygiene. Second, his murders become more rash and desperate, the junkie needing his fix. They also become more brutal; the killer goes from carefully orchestrated murders to a blitz style of attack—hit and run. Third, the use of alcohol and drugs generally increases as the killer seeks substitute highs.
“In short, the killer becomes thoughtless and vulnerable. We have seen the