My phone conversation with Mr. Crowley ran through my head over and over for the next three days, to the exclusion of all else. Mom came home Christmas night crying and shouting that they'd spent the whole day looking for me, and where had I gone, and she was so glad I was safe, and a thousand other things that I didn't listen to because I was too busy thinking about Mr. Crowley. The day after Christmas, Margaret came back and the three of us went out to a steakhouse, but I ignored them and my food, deep in thought. I'm sure they thought I was despondent because of Dad's Christmas present, but I'd practically forgotten about that—all I could think about were Mr. Crowley's hints and confessions, and there was no room in my head for anything else. By Wednesday, Mom had stopped trying to cheer me up, though I sometimes caught her staring at me from across the room. I was grateful to finally have some peace and quiet.
Mr. Crowley had all but admitted to me that he used to steal entire bodies, but that now he was only stealing pieces. It made sense in some ways—it explained why the DNA from the sludge kept showing up as the same person, because the whole body had come from Emmett Openshaw. It also explained why he was so good at killing, but so poor at hiding the evidence. He probably killed Jeb Jolley out of desperation, dying for lack of a good kidney, and simply didn't think ahead about what to do with the body—he'd never had to do anything with it before. As the year went on and he killed more people, he got better at it, and even started looking for anonymous victims, like the lone drifter he took to Freak Lake. Even now, a month, later, nobody knew that man was missing, and that the Clayton Killer had claimed another victim just before Thanksgiving. Nobody knew about the one he'd killed just before Christmas, either—the one I'd missed— so I assumed that was a drifter as well. There could be others that even I didn't know about.
It also gave me a pretty good idea of why he never took more than one piece of each victim. If taking the whole body also gave him that body's appearance, he was probably worried that talcing too many pieces from one corpse would start to overwhelm the appearance he was trying to maintain. His body could deal with an arm here and a kidney there, but if too much of that victim started to creep in, he might lose the Bill Crowley identity he was fighting so hard to keep.
So yes, he was getting better at killing this way, instead of the old way, but the question remained: why had he changed?
And why was there a forty-year gap with no killing at all? I tried to put myself into his place—a demon, wandering the Earth, killing someone and stealing his body and starting n new life. If I could do anything I wanted, why would I be here in Clayton County? If I could be as young and as strong as I wanted, why would I be old—so old I was falling apart? If I could kill one person and disappear without a trace, why would I hang around, killing a dozen people, and leaving more and more evidence that the cops could use to find me? ".
I tried to build another psychological profile, starting with the same key question: what did the killer do that he didn't have to do? He stayed in one place. He maintained one identity. He got old. And he killed, over and over—that had to mean something. Did he enjoy it? He didn't seem to. But if I'd managed to figure out how he worked, then killing this many people was definitely something he didn't have to do.
He had another option. So why was he doing it?
If he didn't have to do something, that meant he wanted to do it. Why did he want to get old? Why did he want to stay in this godforsaken town in the middle of this icy nowhere? What did Clayton have that the demon couldn't find anywhere else?
I couldn't figure it out on my own; I needed Dr. Neblin. I had an appointment with him on Thursday, which gave me one day to plan my strategy—how to get the answers I needed without giving anything away.
Mom reminded me about my appointment over breakfast the next morning, and seemed genuinely surprised that afternoon when I actually left without prompting and rode my bike downtown. I suppose, from her point of view, it was the first active thing I'd done since running out on Christmas day; for me, it was just a chance to talk to someone I trusted.
"How was Christmas?" asked Neblin, cocking his head to the side. He did that when he was trying to hide something— probably the fact that he'd already heard all about Christmas from Mom. Dr. Neblin was a terrible liar; someday I'd have to play poker with him.
"I have a scenario for you," I said. "I want your opinion."
"What kind of scenario?"
"A fake psych profile," I said. "I've been doing them for fun over Christmas break, and I've got one that I'm kind of hung up on."
"Okay," he said. "Fire away."
"Let's say you're a shape-shifter," I said. "You can change your face, and go anywhere you want, and be anyone you want to be. You can be any age, any size, any nationality, and do anything you want. Now imagine that you're in a bad situation, forced to do things you don't like. If you had this kind of freedom, why would you choose to stay?"
"So it's question of risk and reward," he said. "I stay me and live with hardship, or I escape the hardship at the cost of losing myself."
"You're not yourself," I said, and winced at how exposed I felt—I was opening myself to a lot of uncomfortable questions, especially if he thought I was obliquely referring to myself.
"You lost yourself a long time ago, and you've been a string of somebody elses for who knows how long."