Splintered by SJD Peterson Page A

him. “I’m always thinking of ways to fill your ass.”
    “You think about my ass all the time?” Hutch asked with one brow raised. The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. “You realize if you admit that, no one is going to believe you’re straight. Hell, I’m beginning to question it.” Hutch stepped into the elevator.
    “I’m only gay for you, baby,” Granite said slyly and waggled his brows.
    “Oh good Lord.” Hutch chuckled. “Here,” he said and handed Granite Noah’s address. “Plug this—”
    “You want me to plug you?”
    The elevator door opened on the ground floor, and Hutch whapped Granite on the back of the head before stepping out. “How about concentrating on something other than my ass for a minute?”
    Granite gave a wolf whistle. “Kind of hard to concentrate when you have such a fine ass like that.”
    Hutch pulled his jacket down over his ass and flipped Granite off. Granite laughed good-naturedly, but Hutch had no doubt Granite was just teasing him and was already thinking of plugging the address into his phone rather than plugging Hutch’s ass.

Chapter 9

    D EAR M R . Jensen,
How are you today? My name is Noah, I’m sixteen, and in the tenth grade. I’m doing a research paper on the conditions of the prison system and hope you can tell me what it’s like. I’ve never been to a prison, but I hear it really sucks. I hope you can answer my questions. I really need an A on this stupid paper, or I’m going to get kicked off the swim team. I hope I hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Noah
     
    Noah folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope. It was utter and complete bullshit, except for his name. Charles Jensen was a death-row inmate who had been convicted of killing seven teenage boys. The authorities suspected more but couldn’t prove it, and Jensen wasn’t talking. All of Jensen’s victims were lean and athletic. What Noah hoped to get out of the deception was an honest view into the killer’s mind.
    By setting himself up as a potential victim, he hoped to do what numerous officers, attorneys, and various others had tried to do but failed: get Jensen to talk. He wanted to get a better understanding of Jensen based on how he seduced and manipulated his prey. How he was able to go undetected for so long, how he learned from his mistakes, how he evolved from disorganized to organized. Jensen’s ability to elude the police for ten years was awe-inspiring. Noah also hoped to find the answers to the unanswerable. Why he killed. Was it genetics? Nurture? Both? What made a boy from a small Midwestern town—the only child of two loving and involved parents—become a sadistic killer? There had to be a reason. Something. People didn’t just wake up one day and start raping and killing people.
    Noah addressed the letter to Jensen care of the Texas Department of Corrections and added his own name and P.O. Box in the upper left corner. He blew a wayward curl out of his eyes, placed a stamp on the envelope, and stuffed it into his backpack. He’d mail it in the morning.
    He’d set up the postal box years ago when he’d first started corresponding with killers while he was in junior high. Mr. Jensen would be his twenty-third murderer, his fifteenth serial killer. Sometimes he pretended to be a disciple, as he had with Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker. Noah had claimed he was a member of the Church of Satan and wished to sit next to Ramirez in his chair next to Satan. He’d also assumed roles as an admirer or lawyer, but the guise that seemed to garner the most honest knowledge was when he portrayed himself as the perfect victim.
    The information he’d gather would be valuable in his chosen field of study: a doctorate in psychology. Not that he could technically use the information he obtained using deceptive tactics, at least not officially. There was a whole set of rules and regulations he had to abide by if he wanted to use Jensen as an official case study.