She didn’t answer.
“Why do you keep glancing out the window?” he asked.
“It’s the sense of nothingness that I get when I look at the horizon. The reality is, there is no horizon here. The grayness seems to have no end and no purpose. Is that how you felt when you stalked your victims?”
He wrinkled his forehead, craning around, the chain on his waist tinkling. “I think that stuff you’re talking about comes from Samuel Beckett. I read him in my literature class. I think his work is crap.”
“What did you feel after you killed your victims?”
“I didn’t feel anything.”
“Nothing?”
“What’s to feel? They’re dead, you’re not. One day I’ll be dead. So will you.”
“How about the misery you caused them in their last moments? The suffering their loved ones will undergo the rest of their lives?”
“Maybe I’m sorry about that.”
“You felt remorse?”
“Maybe I felt it later. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to think about things in sequence. People’s emotions don’t happen in sequence.” His wrist chain clinked as he tried to raise his hands in order to make the point.
“You haven’t answered the question, have you? What did you feel after you killed your victims?”
He straightened his back against the chair, breathing through his nose, his expression composed, his gaze roving over her features. He lifted his eyes toward the ceiling. “I thought about how I had stopped time and changed all the events that would have happened. I tore the hands off the clock.”
She felt her eyes moisten. “Did they beg?”
“What?”
“For their lives? For the lives of their children? What did they say to you when they knew they were going to die?”
“I already talked about all that.”
“No, you didn’t. You told the court only what you chose for them to hear. Do the voices of your victims visit you in your sleep?”
“I know what you’re trying to do.”
“No, you don’t. I have no interest in statements about your behavior or your motivations. You’re a psychopath, and nothing you say is reliable. That means the book I write about you will be unreliable. You’ve had an enormous influence on me, Mr. Surrette.”
“Oh?” he said, the corner of his mouth wrinkling.
“I’ve always opposed capital punishment. Now I’m not so sure.”
His eyes dulled over in the same way they had during the first interview, as though he had gone to a place inside himself where no one could follow. “I don’t think I want to do this anymore.”
“You didn’t stop killing people in 1994, did you? There were other victims, in other towns or other states, weren’t there?”
“No.”
“People like you can’t shut down the mechanism. It’s always there. It’s like a craving for morphine or pornography or booze or any other addiction, except much worse. How do you give up tearing the hands off the clock and changing history?”
“You’re not going to write the book, are you?”
“No. You’re not only untrustworthy as a source, you’re too depressing a subject. I’m going to do something else, though. I’m going to publish an article or a series of articles stating my belief that you never stopped killing. That if anyone ever deserved the death penalty, it’s you.”
The room was sour with his smell. He was slumped in his chair, his head tilted forward, his eyes glowering under his brows. His unshaved cheeks looked smeared with soot. “You came here acting like an intellectual. You’re nothing but a cunt and not worth my time. On the gate, boss man!” he said.