Find Me (Inland Empire #1)

by Anne Frasier

People wondered what it was about California that produced so many serial killers. It had the inauspicious distinction of having more serial kills than any other state, and also some of the most notorious killers. Maybe it was just a numbers thing—California was a big state and had the highest population. Or maybe earthquake tremors and fault lines had people subconsciously on edge. It was especially perplexing considering how much sunlight the state got; it was sold and embraced as the land of happy people. Maybe in gloomier states people were too cold and depressed to act upon their violent obsessions and fantasies.

“You don’t look like you’ve really experienced life or dealt with people like me,” Fisher said. His words were an example of how narcissists, with their lack of empathy, didn’t think others were impacted by life in the same way.

“Here’s an interesting thing about prison,” Fisher said. “When people come in from the outside, you can smell the world on them.” He inhaled deeply.

Physical abuse, often fueled by drink and drugs, tended to happen after dark.

“Darkness isn’t a reason to stay inside. Darkness isn’t anything to be afraid of.”

You couldn’t expect a psychopath to play by the rules. Psychopaths made the rules, or at least that’s what they thought.

Gut instinct could blow up in your face when confronted with pure evil. People like Ben Fisher hid their true nature because—and this was the crux of it—some psychopaths were empathetic. That gave them a distinct advantage because they understood their victims and the people they manipulated.

He theorized three things were necessary for a subject to become a serial killer. One, an aggressive gene he called the warrior gene. Two, inactivity or damage or malfunctioning of the temporal and frontal lobes, which could be determined in a functional MRI. And three, early abuse that took place right after birth.

“Inherited.” The very thing Daniel had danced around yesterday when talking about Reni’s grandmother. Psychopathy could carry through generations. The more severe the psychopathy, the more likely it was to be inherited. And a recent study had suggested mothers were the stronger carrier of the gene, though Daniel wasn’t yet convinced of that.

Logic should never be ignored, and gut instinct can turn on a person. Say you have a perpetrator who’s handsome and glib. Maybe posing as a repairman, standing in your doorway, one hundred percent charm, while scanning your home for signs that you’re alone. You see the scan, but you ignore it because of his charming smile. Oh, he’s just curious. If you ask for ID, he’ll smile sweetly, maybe even tell you to call his company if you’re worried. He might even give you the number. You don’t call because he’s so smooth and seems so genuine. It’s human nature to want to trust people. But logic, logic is going to be your friend in that scenario. Look at the bait tactic my father used. Logic would tell the victim that something was off. But he played on the victims’ emotions. He used emotions and empathy to his advantage.”

Abuse came wrapped in different packages, and indifference to a partner’s pain was one of them.

He understood love and how it could twist you, how it could make you do things you’d normally never do. Just for love, expecting nothing in return.

There was no starting over for most people. That was a misconception. Unless a person’s memory could be erased, there were no fresh starts, only progression. Even if you burned down a house where bad things had happened, the house would still be there in your mind, regardless.

But bravery was a funny thing. It could fluctuate and vanish if you looked away too long.