Carter & Lovecraft

The United States had a disproportionately high number of serial killings compared to other developed countries, a result of wide spaces, ease of procuring weapons, and -- just maybe -- it looking so damn cool on TV and in the movies. Want your fifteen minutes? Here`s how you do it, sport. Just be sure to score at least five victims. You`re not a real serial killer unless you`ve got at least five kills, just like a World War I fighter ace. Five`s the trick, sport.
Not all at once, either. That makes you a mass killer, not a serial killer, and mass killers are just douches. Those Columbine kids? That dickwad in Norway? Fuck `em. Delayed gratification is the mark of the intelligent mind. That`s how you get into the forensic pathology books. That`s how you get a movie made about you. Mass killers, the movie gets made about the victims. Fuck that.

Questioning was a different skill now.
When he was still a cop, you flashed the badge and people started talking. Even if they were lying, or evasive, at least their lips were moving and you could get something out of them. Of course, there were always the idiots who got their cues from TV and the movies, echoing, “You won’t get nuthin’ from me, copper,” since Jimmy Cagney first sneered into a camera, or its modern counterpart, “I want a lawyer.” They always said, “I know my rights,” but usually they didn’t. They panicked and gabbled, or they shut up about the wrong things and talked more than they realized. The last generation of gang members he’d had to deal with before resigning, the “fuck the po-po” people, they were so focused on posing for their mug shot that it occupied most of their attention budget for the day and then they’d talk without even realizing it. It’s a truism that the vast majority of criminals are not too bright. For every Moriarty, there’s an army of guys who use Velcro shoes because laces are too challenging.