Inside the Mind of BTK

266 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
“Pretty sharp,” he said, but the words came out faint, almost in a
whisper.
It was still early in the party, but the guest of honor had begun to
show signs of wear. So Morton decided to keep at it for just a bit
longer. He’d hit him with a few more jabs, then give him a chance to
catch his breath.
“So what do you think the motivation would be for all of this?”
Morton asked.
A forced smile appeared on Rader’s face, and he nodded as if lost
in thought. “Motivation?” he asked, slowly rolling the word over and
over inside in his brain. “Well, what’s the motivation for a serial killer?
I don’t know what causes them to do what it is they do.”
“I’d be curious to know what you think,” Morton told him.
Rader flashed a serious, professorial look at his inquisitors. “I
think it’s a . . .” He paused to organize the thoughts that I was sure he’d
been mulling over for decades. “I don’t know too much about the
genetics, but I think they have one of those off genes....I think that
BTK guy said he had a ‘Factor X’ inside him, so I think they must have
an extra chromosome or something. Somewhere along the line, if that
gets out of kilter, they are going to go. It’s like an alcoholic or something.
They sooner or later just want to go. They can’t stop. They can’t
stop. They might try to control it, but it’s still there. That impulse is
always still there. They are always planning, or thinking, or dreaming,
or something. To me, it’s a disease. You know, you’ve got your jails full
of people who are hardened criminals. You let them out and they go
right back to what they did. A few of them straighten out. They tell
themselves, ‘Oh, I’ll never do it again.’ But basically it’s inside them
and they are set.”
Landwehr and Morton sat there and listened to Rader ramble. It
was all beginning to bubble to the surface, just the way they hoped it
would. Just a matter of time, they told themselves, before everything
began to gush out of him like vomit. All they needed to do was sit
there, keep spoon-feeding his ego, and let him continue talking.
“So what do you think they are dreaming about?” Morton asked.
“You said ‘It’s in their dreams.’ ”
Rader nodded his head, pleased with the agent’s question. He’d
grown so intoxicated with all this attention that it never occurred to
him that Morton already knew the answer to his question, that all he
was doing was tossing bait into the water in order to keep Rader swimming
near the surface.