Gallery of the Dead

Twenty

After their meeting with Captain Blake and the conference call with Dr. Hove, Hunter and Garcia decided to return to Linda Parker’s house. Both of them wanted to have a second look at the crime scene, but this time they would do it undisturbed and by themselves.

‘So,’ Garcia said as he pulled into the driveway. ‘What was this other possibility you were talking about?’

‘Excuse me?’ Hunter looked back at his partner, a little unsure.

‘Back in the office,’ Garcia said, his head tilting slightly to his left. ‘When it was suggested that we are probably dealing with a psychopath who is off the scale when it comes to emotional detachment, you said that there was another possibility, but you never got to tell us what.’

They got out of the car and began making their way toward the house.

‘The most disturbing of them all,’ Hunter said. ‘That this killer isn’t really as heartless and emotionless as he appears to be, but he’s mentally strong enough to be able to consciously break through that threshold whenever he wants to.’

Garcia paused by the house’s front lawn. ‘For what reason?’

Hunter shrugged. ‘Maybe just to prove to us or, even worse, to himself, that he is capable of doing it if he wants to.’

‘Prove it to himself?’

Hunter nodded. ‘Some human minds are funny like that, Carlos. Some people will push themselves to the limits of just about anything, including savagery, for no better reason than to prove to themselves that they can do it. That they have it in them. Like a self-dare.’

Garcia pointed to Linda Parker’s house. ‘Someone could self-dare himself to do that?’

‘Even worse,’ Hunter said. ‘You’ve heard of the Chessboard Killer, right?’

‘Yes, of course. Russian guy. Alexander... something?’

‘Pichushkin,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Yes, that’s him. Do you remember his story?’

Garcia took a moment. ‘From what I remember he was an absolute freak. He gained that nickname because he wanted to kill as many people as there were squares on a chessboard, right? Sixty-four?’

Hunter nodded. ‘He didn’t actually gain the nickname. He gave it to himself. And you’re right — he wanted to kill as many people as there are squares on a chessboard. The problem with him was that, unlike most serial killers in history, Pichushkin wasn’t driven by some crazy monster inside of him that he couldn’t control. He wasn’t fighting an uncontrollable urge that slowly overwhelmed him over time. He simply one day decided that he would be a serial killer, just like you and I decided a long time ago that we wanted to be cops. To him it was a conscious choice, not the consequence of an internal battle.’

‘Like a career choice?’

‘One can put it that way, yes, but it gets stranger still. There was a reason why he wanted to become a serial killer.’

‘Which was?’

‘A very simple one. He wanted to follow in his hero’s footsteps.’

They reached the house’s front door.

‘Hero?’

Hunter nodded. ‘His biggest idol was a murderer. One of Russia’s most infamous and prolific serial killers, actually — Andrei Chikatilo.’

‘The Butcher of Rostov?’ Garcia said.

‘One and the same,’ Hunter agreed. ‘After he got caught, Chikatilo confessed to murdering fifty-six people between 1978 and 1990.’

‘Yes, I remember his story. Very sadistic, pedophile, necrophiliac predator, right? He only raped his victims after mutilating their bodies, including several children.’

‘Yes, that’s him,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘Now here’s the thing about the Chessboard Killer: when the Russian police finally arrested Pichushkin, they asked him why he had done it, why he had killed all those people.’ Hunter paused just to emphasize the lack of logic in what he was about to say. ‘He told them that it had been because he wanted to beat Chikatilo’s record of fifty-six murders. Alexander Pichushkin’s big desire in life was to be remembered as the most prolific serial killer in Russian history. That was the reason he started killing. His victims were whoever was around at the time — men, women, old, young, black, white — it didn’t matter. He was never driven by a compulsion to kill based on the kind of victim or the level of violence. What he was doing was number crunching. That was his motivation.’

All Garcia could do was shake his head at how unbelievable that story was. ‘That’s just a whole lot of crazy inside one small head.’

Hunter used a penknife to break the police seal at Linda Parker’s front door. ‘Indeed. And because all he wanted was to beat the record, Pichushkin simply picked a number. Any number would do, as long as it was higher than fifty-six. A very good chess player, Pichushkin decided on the number sixty-four, because it would also allow him to pick a great nickname for himself. A nickname that would surely get the attention of the press, not only in Russia, but worldwide.’

‘The Chessboard Killer,’ Garcia agreed. ‘It was quite an intriguing name, I must admit.’

‘It certainly worked for him.’

‘So... did he?’ Garcia asked.

‘Kill sixty-four people?’

‘Yes, or beat Chikatilo’s record?’

‘Well, that’s where the story gets even more ironic. Pichushkin told the police that he had killed sixty people. Not a whole chessboard, but it would’ve beaten Chikatilo’s record, making him the most prolific serial killer in Russia’s history until then. The problem was, despite what he told the police, the police could only confirm forty-nine murders, which fell a little short of Chikatilo’s mark. The icing on the cake was that that was only revealed in court, not before. So, inside the courtroom, when Pichushkin heard that information for the first time and realized that officially he did not beat the record and he would not be known as “most prolific serial killer in Russian history”, he went absolutely ballistic.’

‘What, really?’

‘I kid you not,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘The trial wasn’t that long ago — 2007. If you search the internet, you’ll find several videos of him, in court, inside a sealed glass defendant cage, going absolutely mental, screaming at everyone, punching the glass, the works. But he wasn’t protesting the guilty verdict. He was protesting the number of murders. He kept on yelling at the judge that he had committed more than fifty-six murders. That the record was his and not Chikatilo’s.’

‘That’s just insane. I will have to check that out.’

‘Alexander Pichushkin is a prime example of the kind of evil a man can do when guided by nothing but sheer determination. His psychopathy wasn’t inherent, it was induced. He didn’t start life as an emotionally detached person, he forced himself to become one just so he could achieve a goal. And if this is the kind of killer we’re dealing with here...’ Hunter allowed his thought to go unfinished.

Garcia shook his head once again. ‘Do you know what, Robert? I just don’t think I understand this crazy world anymore.’

Hunter finally unlocked the door and pushed it open. ‘I never did.’