Free A Deadly Compulsion by Michael Kerr Page A

put Jim in a class of his own in this field had been his uncanny ability to understand what motivated a particular killer; to almost be in his head and be able to enter his sick world of fantasy and depravity.
    It had been stop-go work.  After a positive start, his brain had started to rebel against the sickening input; kept trying to shut off from the loathsome details.  For a while he had thought that he may have lost the ability to make the jumps and feel his way into a case.  It had been impersonal at the outset, just printed words and images of total strangers.  And then he had started to see beyond the evidence, extrapolate and enter the psychopath’s mind, to think his way into the maniac’s way of reasoning.
    Tossing a holdall into the rear and placing his briefcase on the passenger seat of his Jeep Cherokee, Jim set off. He had not let Laura know that he had studied the faxes she had sent, or forewarned her of his intention to just turn up on her doorstep.  He felt exactly as he had done at fourteen; the memory of his first real date popping out of the mists of time as he remembered taking Cindy Lopez to the movies on a sultry summer evening in Glendale, back in Arizona.  He had spent over an hour plucking up the courage to put his arm around her shoulders, and followed up that triumph by kissing her lightly on the lips, just once and only minutes before the show ended and they were once more back outside, where further inroads could not be made.  The sensation of the thousand gossamer butterfly wings that had fluttered around his stomach in that dark movie theatre was with him now as he envisioned being face to face with Laura again.  He had cleared his appointments for four days.  If anything crucial came up, then his secretary, Diane, could reach him on his mobile.
    He drove the few minutes north from Windsor to the M4, then headed east to pick up the M25.  It was six a.m., and the traffic was relatively light as he left what Chris Rea had christened The Road to Hell , to join the M1.  Keeping up a steady seventy, he anticipated being in York a little after nine o’clock.
    As he sped north, Jim reflected on the night, now so long ago, that in part had changed his life.  It had been as leader of an armed assault team that he had entered a brownstone house in Georgetown to take down Gary Meeker, who to their knowledge had ritually murdered at least ten young men, and probably twice that number.
    Meeker had preyed on the homosexual community, frequenting many of the gay clubs and bars in and around Washington D.C.  His victims had all been young males aged between eighteen and twenty-five.  His killing spree had lasted for over two years, up until they got a lead, due to his last intended target surviving.
    Meeker used Rohypnol, a strong sedative that in the right dosage produced a compliant, almost hypnotic state in those who it was administered to.  This was one of the many drugs used by date rapists, though in Gary’s case it went beyond that, and was date murder.
    Gary Meeker was a slim, good looking thirty-five year old with an engaging personality and the clothes, money and top of the range Porsche that could not fail to impress.  He would select a lone punter and strike up a conversation, buying drinks and making it blatantly apparent that he was not only interested in, but was happy to pay handsomely for discreet sex.  At a point later in the evening, usually having settled in a booth or at a secluded table, he would introduce the sedative to the mark’s drink, and as it began to take effect, would suggest going back to his house, stroking the guy’s thigh and crotch under the table as he made the invitation.  Once in the safety of his home – and the sacrificial temple that was his bedroom – he sated his craving, and then in disgust at his weakness, bludgeoned to death the living tool he had needed and employed for gratification.
    On what would prove to be the last occasion he would