“So, I’m not too familiar with Mason’s case,” Ralph told me as we crossed down the hallway toward the apartment. “Fill me in.”
“He’s not a typical serial killer—if there even is such a thing. It’s not about a sexual thrill for him, or power or control.”
“What is it?”
“He’s a storyteller. Typically, he frames his crime sprees around literature or famous stories from history. He isn’t into seeing people suffer. That’s not his deal. It’s all about context.”
“Stories, huh? So a folktale or a myth about seven gods? But what about them using thirty-eight?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m hoping Angela and Lacey can dig something up. In any case, there’s a detachment to what he does. When I confronted him last year, I asked him why he did it, why he killed all those people, and he told me it was interesting to watch people die.”
“That’s cold.”
“Yes.” It still disturbed me to think about it. “It is. And when he said it there was no emotion, no regret, no empathy.”
“So, why did he call himself Giovanni?”
“It has to do with the stories he reenacts, the crimes he commits. It goes back to this book called The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. It was written in the 1300s and contains a hundred stories—ten stories told on ten consecutive days while a group of travelers is fleeing the black plague. Basically, the group passes the time telling stories. Well, on one of the days—day four—all the stories are about tragedy and love. He set about reenacting his version of those ten tales. It included some really brutal crimes, and he nearly got away with it. His stories always have a twist and they never have a happy ending.”
We arrived at the door. “And this is the guy who killed Werjonic?”
Last year Mason had attacked and poisoned my mentor. “Yes.”
Ralph cursed under his breath, then he showed his creds to the officers stationed outside the apartment, and we stepped inside.
* * *
Rarely do their lairs look like you’d expect.
Based on the violent or aberrant nature of some crimes, it’s easy to think that the people who commit them are somehow different from the rest of us, that the places they live in would reflect that deviancy. And, although that’s true in some isolated cases, it’s not the norm.
For every Jeffrey Dahmer storing bodies in vats in his bedroom, there are a hundred other killers who have relatively normal homes.
Normal lives.
At least on the surface.
So.
Now.
Mason’s apartment.
The place was dimly lit, the thick shades drawn shut, leaving only a few slits for sunlight to leak in. No bulbs in the overhead lights, just two amber floor lamps in opposite corners of the living room.
Typical furniture.
All so typical.
In truth, every one of us leads a double life. We act one way when the door is open, another when it’s closed. We have certain impressions we try to make on others, pretenses we strive to keep up.
In some branches of criminology, deviancy is considered anything you do in the dark. In other words, it’s any act that you try to hide from others. So, what kind of person are you when the shades are drawn? That’s really the question. “Integrity,” as Dr. Werjonic used to say, “has no private life.”
But, of course, no one has complete integrity because everyone has things to hide. All of us act differently when no one is watching.
We are, each of us, a contradiction in terms. We’re a species that’s puzzling to even the most astute philosophers and psychologists. Evil and good wrapped up in flesh and blood and hope and dreams.
We choose, we act, we live within the incongruity of our godlike desires and our animal instincts.
A double life.
And no matter how self-controlled we might be, we all do things we don’t want to do, that are antithetical to our beliefs.
And sometimes we enjoy them.
Yes. Sometimes we do.
You don’t always keep the demons at bay.
Sometimes you invite them in.
I pushed that thought aside.
No, it’s not hypocrisy to have high ideals and fail to live up to them—it’s called being human. Even saints have their imperfections and flaws. The only people who aren’t hypocrites are those whose morals are so twisted, whose consciences are so seared, that they don’t believe in any ideals higher than those they actually live out.
Like Mason.
Yes, when it comes right down to it, psychopaths are the only people you’ll ever meet who aren’t hypocrites.
There was a thought to carry you through the day.
With that at the forefront of my mind, I passed through this apartment where everything looked so normal.
Until we came to Kurt Mason’s bedroom.