Stephen B King and The Beautiful Deaths

Today Stephen B King, and Patricia Holmes, return to talk about The Beautiful Deaths, Book 2 in the Glimpse trilogy:

Rick McCoy of the Major Crime Squad is trying to repair his marriage when he is sent to the South of Western Australia. A young girl's body has been found in a cave, with flowers on her chest. A search finds five more bodies. 
Beautiful criminal psychologist, Patricia Holmes, has recovered from her stab wounds inflicted by the serial killer PPP, and is brought in. Pat believes they are hunting a man who is addicted to beauty. When another schoolgirl goes missing, they have only days before she too will die. 
As their desire for each other grows and the pressure on their marriages increase, they close in on the man responsible for the beautiful deaths. Meanwhile, in the high-security wing of the mental health hospital, PPP plans his revenge on Rick.

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Where did the idea for this story come from?

SBK: Someone I once thought of as a friend once asked me a riddle, which struck some inner chord in me. She asked, “when is a serial killer not a serial killer?” I confess I couldn’t get it. She explained it was when the murderer doesn’t actually kill the victims, but still causes their deaths. From that spark I constructed the story of a man who has had such a hideous life from childhood all the way through to adulthood, he becomes addicted to beautiful things and people, to the point of becoming psychotic.

Pat, had you overcome the trauma of your confrontation with PPP when you were asked to consult in this case?

PH: Physically, yes. Mentally? Ask my analyst. It’s true to say I still have nightmares about him. Rick, bless him, knew I was languishing and yearning for another opportunity to work with him again. I found investigating like a drug, and I was addicted. When they found the bodies of six young girls in a cave system, he sought permission to bring me back into the fold as a consultant because clearly, it was not going to be a normal hunt.

How was your relationship with Rick during your second consultation?

PH: I was flown down to the caves by helicopter, so I felt very special. My husband forbade me to go. Forbade, can you imagine? Of course, I ignored him and went anyway. Between the two cases I had become very friendly with Juliet, Rick’s wife, and daughter Amy. They too had been through a very bad time at the hands of PPP and I tried to help them through it. The moment I climbed out of the helicopter; I felt a rush of emotion the likes of which I had never felt before. I was glad to be working again in my dream job, excited to be with Rick and away from my controlling husband, and so, yes, my desire for him climbed several notches. You have to understand, not only was I stimulated mentally; challenged by the job at hand, but I was also in a motel, miles from home, with a man three rooms away who I knew wanted me as much as I wanted him.

It sounds complicated.

PH: Oh yeah, it was complicated all right. I will admit I wanted to do something about it, and it was pretty bloody obvious he did too. But I was friends with his wife and was very close to their daughter. I had no desire to be Rick’s ‘bit on the side’ and there was also a husband waiting at home for me. True he wasn’t talking to me, but it was a situation that needed to be resolved, and the last thing that could resolve it was me sleeping with Rick, no matter how much the idea appealed. Once again, we also were working a very serious murder investigation and it seemed like the whole world was watching us. There was a man who had abducted and killed six young women, a seventh one was missing, and we knew if he had taken her, she only had days left before she too would die.

Was it a happy working relationship?

PH: Between Rick and I? yes it was divine. I also enjoyed working with the other detectives, they respected my opinions, and the investigation was running along lines I was suggesting. It was a heady time for me, miserable at home, and ecstatic at work, and Rick was a large part of that excitement. Then out of the blue, during our investigation, PPP contacted me from the asylum he was locked up in. He wanted me to interview him and even write a book about his murders, all to feed his ego, which was unnerving. While working with Rick was a dream come true again, between the pressure of finding the killer, my husband being a moron, Rick looking at me as if he wanted to ravish me, and PPP wanting me to consult with him……well, let’s just say it wasn’t easy.

What of your profile of the killer?

PH: Well, the first thing to understand is this was no normal murderer. For a start, he wasn’t murdering the girls, he was neglecting them until they died of starvation and dehydration. I deduced that he was collecting them for their beauty, but once he had them, they ceased being beautiful, so he lost interest. I knew he would have had a miserable life to that point. Because his past was so ugly, he now sought beauty as an escape. I nicknamed him Gordon to the detectives to illustrate this man was no master criminal, if anything he was boringly normal, so I thought Gordon was a nice everyday name to illustrate that. Because he didn’t actually murder the girls there was some fear what he could be found guilty of without a confession.

Why were they called The Beautiful Deaths?

They girls themselves were each in their own way, staggeringly beautiful. While they didn’t resemble each other, each one could have been a model. Then there were the flowers left with each corpse and what they symbolised. The bodies were fully clothed, so they weren’t sexual abductions. Each was laid out in the caves with obvious love, not the ‘couldn’t care a less’ dumping of a body. Finally, the caves themselves in the Karinglily National Park, near the Blue Lake, was a staggeringly breathtaking location. All these factors, and the timing of around a year between abductions pointed me in the right direction for the profile.

Glimpse, The Tender Killer is released on September 11^th as an eBook, paperback and audio. For the month of September Glimpse 1, Glimpse Memoir of a Serial Killer is on Sale for 99c

To learn more about Stephen B King, go to

www.stephen-b-king.com

twitter: @stephenBKing1

Facebook: @stephenbkingauthor

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