Incident on Ten-Right Road

by Randall Silvis

  He cocked his head. “You sure about that?”

  “I am.”

  “Huh. I guess we got that wrong. We were messed up a lot back then.” He crossed to the door, opened it and strode away. He has a peculiar way of walking, so that each shoulder dips in synchronicity with the matching foot; it is a sad, resigned gait, as of someone who knows there is no escape from the past, and nothing but futility ahead.

  The links between sociopathy and maternal drug and alcohol abuse are clear. But so are the links between sociopathy and early neglect/emotional rejection. Early exposure to violence. Abuse. Poor nutrition. There is also the possibility of biological dysfunction, a faulty wiring of the brain.

  Not that any of that information is of much value now in regards to Grayson Rath. But thanks to all of the shootings and bombings going on these days, nearly everyone is hysterical about how to prevent such incidents, as if knowing what makes a person a sociopath or a psychopath would put an end to violence. I really do not believe that it will. Good people will do their best to do good, no matter what. Only in moments of true desperation will they resort to doing bad. Bad people will almost always do what’s easiest, and what is easiest is often something bad. Does it help knowing what makes people bad? I suppose there is some value in it, but only in a Minority Report kind of way. In most cases a bad person cannot be stopped from doing bad. He can only be stopped from doing bad again.

  That’s called non-teleological thinking. It means dealing not with what might be or should be, but with what is. And in my honest opinion, that’s what we have to deal with first: what is. Right now. Today. This minute.

  In all likelihood, Grayson Rath was born with the potential to become a killer. The signs of sociopathic behavior began to show themselves at least by his teens, if not much earlier. Though his mother’s promiscuity is the easy answer to what finally tripped Grayson’s trigger on a sunny October afternoon when he was 19 years old, the definitive answer is far less clear, and will probably never be ascertained. The truth is, if that trigger hadn’t been pulled when he was 19, it would have been pulled when he was 29, 49, or whatever—unless he had been locked up or lobotomized before he did anything wrong. Is that the kind of society we want? I’m not sure. Is it better to lock up ten percent of humanity so that the other ninety percent will feel safe?

  In the meantime, I and a small army of law enforcement personnel continue to trace our way through the carnage left in Grayson Rath’s wake, while praying, as I hope you are too, that he does not kill again.

  * * *

  Grayson Rath voice recording

  What I miss about home is two things. No, make that three things. I might think of some more later on but for now let’s settle on three. I never gave any of them much thought until just now, sitting here in another scummy hotel face-to-face with the fact of never going back home again, not even to get any more of my stuff. It’s a situation that does make a person think.

  Most of all I guess I miss the food. Mom was never much of a cook, and stopped doing it at all back when I was still in grade school. Al didn’t have the patience for cooking. Fact is, anything we ate that was home cooked, it was because I made it. Anything with pasta, I was good at. Primavera. Lasagna. Alfredo. Spaghetti with spinach and mushroom sauce was my favorite. I also made a mean pot of soup when I had the time and inclination. The trick is to always use broth, not water, and to reduce it down to half what you started with. Plus I liked to experiment with the ingredients. Add spinach and tomatoes to chicken noodle soup, for example. Use a pork loin instead of chicken. Add mushrooms to French onion. I miss food like that. And now I’m wondering if I’ll ever have a nice kitchen to cook in again.

  Second thing I miss is having my own room. You might say that the road is my room now, but if that isn’t a depressing thought, I don’t know what is. What I need to do is to find a big house out in the woods somewhere, with people living in it who don’t go out much and wouldn’t be missed. Maybe I could settle in for a while in a place like that if I can find one.

  That would take care of the other thing I miss too, which is the quiet. I hate the noise people make. Which probably comes from spending my first few years with just Mom. Most times she was quiet as a corpse. That was because she never had much ambition. Was happy to sit around and wait for her life to get a little better. Even if it meant living on food stamps and welfare and whatever change she could find in Grandma’s purse.

  One of the few things I remember from being a kid was the day she met Al. First time I saw her take any initiative. I remember she and Grandma picked me up at school one afternoon when I was in third grade, and on the ride home we’re passing the bank, and Al’s standing out on the sidewalk laughing and talking with a couple other men. Those two men are both in jeans and work shirts but there’s Al in one of those dark blue suits of his that sort of sparkles when the sun hits it. The men are all scruffy and dirty like they’re construction workers or something, and Al’s so slick and polished, it’s hard not to notice him. And Mom, who’s sitting on the passenger side in front of me, she says, who is that man? Grandma doesn’t even ask which one, she just says, that’s Mr. Allen Murcko. Owns the car dealership out across from the Agway plus two or three others. And Mom says, Looks to me like he thinks he owns the world. And Grandma says, He could probably buy a good piece of it if he wanted to. So Mom says, Take me out there to that dealership. And Grandma says, What for? You can’t afford a car. You don’t even know how to drive. And Mom says, I know how to do some things. Take me out there. I want to see it.

  So that’s where we go. Then she makes us sit there in that hot car for I don’t know how long. Felt like forever. I even fell asleep a while. I’m pretty sure what woke me up was Mom saying, there he is, and then popping open the car door. I want to go inside with her since it’s probably going to be air-conditioned, so she lets me tag along but sends me back to this lounge place where customers can get hot dogs and coffee and juice and cookies, all of it for free. Doesn’t bother me a bit being left alone. A couple of hot dogs and a dozen or so cookies later, she comes to get me, and we go back to the car and wake up Grandma, and Grandma says, Well? Did you get what you came for? And Mom says, I start tonight. Right after closing. I say, Start what? And she says, I’m the new cleaning lady. Four hundred a week, tax free. And that’s how we met the great Al Murcko, a legend in his own mind.

  * * *

  from the blog And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You by Mia Swain

  Grayson Rath’s grandmother lives in a small doublewide trailer a stone’s throw from an old frame house that has no roof and only three remaining walls. The dismantled boards and trusses are stacked along the far side of the building, along with all the windows and doors. My knock on the door of the trailer was answered by a man in his late 60s or so. When I asked if he was Grayson’s grandfather, he shook his head no and came down from the trailer, walked past me and grabbed a lawn chair from the yard and carried it over to where the old lumber was stacked. He sat there and took out a pack of cigarettes and began to smoke.

  He had left the door to the mobile home open, so I went up the three metal steps and peered inside and saw a small white-haired woman seated at the kitchen table with her hands folded in her lap. She turned to look at me and said, “Who you with?”

  I didn’t think my blog would carry much weight with her, so I answered, “I’m an online journalist. I have almost 90,000 subscribers.”

  Her eyes widened just a bit. “That seems like a lot,” she said.

  I stepped inside. “And more every day.”

  “And they all know about us?”

  “I won’t mention you at all if you don’t want me to.”

  She gave a little shrug, then said, “I’m not saying nothing about Grayson. Good or bad, it’s not for me to say.”

  I crossed into the kitchen. “May I sit?”

  A tiny nod. All of her movements were small and required close attention just to see them. I sat in the chair o
pposite her. “I wanted to ask you about Alaine. She was your daughter, correct?”

  Another tiny nod. “She didn’t deserve what was done to her. Nobody does.”

  “What was she like?” I asked.

  She brought her hands up onto the table. Held her hands interlocked, all five fingers of her right hand cupped in her left. The thumb of her left hand kept rubbing back and forth over the knuckles of her right. “It’s too easy for young people to get in trouble these days. It’s all they see on TV is sex and drugs and destroying things. You can’t stick them in a closet their entire lives, can you? That’s no way to raise a child. So what’s a person to do?”

  We talked a while longer, but it was more of the same. As I was standing to leave, she asked, “Are these people you work for going to pay me anything for talking to you? She don’t even have a headstone yet.”

  I took two twenties from my bag and laid them on the table. “I wish I could give you more. But I’m paying m own expenses.”

  She nodded and covered the bills with her hand.

  As I drove away, the man outside stood and picked up his lawn chair and carried it back to the trailer.

  * * *

  The man Grayson Rath discovered in bed with his mother was 46 years old. He was married to his second wife, with whom he had two children, aged nine and seven. He had a son, aged 16, with his first wife. I am not going to include any of their names here, even though other sources have already identified them. My first inclination is to label that man and all other men like him a philandering asshole, but we need to remember that for every cheating man there is a woman who lets him cheat, who enables his cheating, and who, as often as not, encourages him to cheat. It takes two to tango.

  The truth is that women cheat just as frequently as men, and, according to some studies, more frequently. So maybe the problem here is not that both genders like to have sex out of wedlock; maybe the problem here is the way our society looks at sex, which is, after all—surprise! surprise!—the most basic and elemental urge on the planet. So thanks a bunch, Puritans. Thanks a bunch for spoiling a really good thing for all of us.

  Driving gives a person a lot of time to think, you know? Especially if you turn off the radio. When I was younger and not nearly as wise as I am now ;) I used my car as a sanctuary more times than I like to remember. I did the same thing when I was living with good old Ian. Although I loved him madly back then, he could be a pain in the ass. When he wasn’t singing or humming to himself, he was on the phone with one or more of his buds, chattering away about March Madness or the AFC North or the latest version of Halo or some other testosterone-soaked banality. He wasn’t loud, but loudness is not a requisite of annoying. I couldn’t hear myself think when he was around! Maybe it’s just an introvert thing, but sometimes I wanted to hold a pillow over his face and smother him. I mean literally. I really wanted to smother him.

  So yes, I sort of understand the attraction of violence. Thing is, I always suppressed the urge. That’s what most of us do. I would grab my laptop and jump in the car and head for the nearest piece of quiet. And I would write. Writing, I think, is a kind of moveable therapist. We use ourselves to take the talking cure. I’m still doing it. Every day. Costs a hell of a lot less than a shrink, and, if you’re lucky, you can find a way to monetize it.

  Anyway, friends, what I’m wondering is this: Who did Grayson Rath have to talk to? I know it is très grossier of me to feel empathy for a murderer, but honestly, what if somebody had just listened to him once in a while?

  Why can’t we all just shut up, grow up and start listening to each other? Instead we curse and vilify and castigate everyone who says something we don’t like. If somebody posts on Facebook, “I hate my life. I feel like offing somebody,” where are the individuals close to that person? Why aren’t they paying attention? Where are his friends and siblings and parents and grandparents? Did nobody ever say to Grayson Rath, “Hey, man, write a blog. Do like what’s-her-name. Let it all out, brother.”

  Not that I am absolving Grayson Rath or anybody else of responsibility for their own behavior. But sometimes people are allowed to sink so deep into their own demented reality that they can no longer distinguish right from rite and wrong from won-ton. You know what I mean.

  We make people get a driver’s license to drive a car. We make them show an ID to get a beer. Most states require a background check before issuing a teaching certificate or gun permit. We require couples to obtain a license before getting married.

  Would it be so terrible to make potential parents pass a basic competency test before they create another human being?

  Unethical, you say? A violation of your civil liberties? Then how about this:

  Hey, drug companies. You want to do something really useful for a change? Invent a contraceptive to be administered at birth that won’t shut off until intentionally deactivated. By somebody with the mental competency to do so.

  Eugenics! you scream? Sexual totalitarianism!

  You’d rather we keep churning out killers and sexual predators and lonely, unwanted babies by the millions? No? Then you come up with a better idea. I’m all out.

  * * *

  Grayson Rath voice recording

  Ever notice how dumb sportscasters are? I bet most people on television are below average intelligence, but sportscasters are outright dumb. I’m sitting here now talking to my little recorder, had every intention of talking about that rug cleaner woman, when what do I see on TV but that Troy guy wearing a blue checkered sport coat that looks like some kind of clown suit. I can’t even describe the shade of blue it is. I’ve seen little girl’s dresses that shade of blue, but never a man’s jacket. The only thing I can compare it to is those little flowers on spindly stems that grow along the road sometimes. But with a shine to it. Neon almost. And the little guy beside him, he’s wearing a gray checkered coat that isn’t a whole lot better. I thought these people had other people who dress them for the camera. People who are supposed to know what they’re doing.

  And how come there’s always the big stupid former athlete and the little guy who looks like the most athletic thing he ever did was to push a chess piece around? Are they supposed to balance each other out somehow? All they do is to make each other look even more ridiculous.

  That ESPN channel, it was just about the only thing Al ever watched. That and the sports themselves, I mean. These sportscaster people get paid good money to say stuff the average person would get laughed at for saying. The team that gets the ball down the field, that’s the team that’s going to win today. The team that wants it the most. The team that makes the fewest mistakes. The team that puts the most points on the scoreboard. Idiotic shit like that.

  I’m pretty sure that the only time Al cared enough to be disappointed in me was when I told him I didn’t like sports. But you’re a natural athlete, he said. Just like I was. I know an athlete when I see one.

  What I didn’t like was playing on a team. If my school had had just one sport that was for individuals and not teams, I would have kicked ass. In gym class I was the fastest kid in my class. But playing on a team is putting your fate in the hands of a lot of people who are at best mediocre. The more people on a team, the greater the chances of losing. That’s a statistical fact.

  Anyway, none of that is what I wanted to talk about. The only reason I turned on the TV was to see if anybody found that lady with the rug cleaner. I dumped both of them in a ditch along a gravel road about 10 miles from the Home Depot. I was thinking it shouldn’t take long before somebody spots that rug cleaner handle I left sticking up in the weeds. People are always so freaking happy to get something for free. What do you want to bet that the first person to come along and spot that rug cleaning machine grabbed it and skedaddled? He’d be like, Sorry, lady, but you’re not going to need this anymore. I’ll just take it off your hands for you. Have a nice day.

  Okay, nothing on the news. I guess what happens in Virginia stays in Virginia. What I need to do
now is to get some Tennessee barbecue and switch out the SUV, which I’m going to miss. There’s nothing like Sirius radio to make the miles fly by. That Howard Stern, man he makes me howl. And Joe Rogan, I like the way that guy thinks. That’s a couple of guys I could see myself hanging out with. And oh yeah, I need to check out the spare tire space in the cargo area. I’m thinking there’s probably something in there I can use. I’m hoping for a heavy-duty lug wrench. I mean, who drives around without one of those?

  * * *

  from the blog And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You by Mia Swain

  As you might already know, if you are following this case, the body of a woman who disappeared from a Home Depot in southwestern Virginia has been found. She is Katie Bohman, 37, mother of a boy and a girl, both under 10 years old. She had gone to Home Depot to rent a rug shampooer so that she could clean her carpets prior to her daughter’s birthday party.

  Initially, Virginia law enforcement did not tie Ms. Bohman’s disappearance to the murders in Ohio. Unfortunately, the Home Depot lot’s surveillance footage, because of her vehicle’s distance from the nearest cameras, only showed the vehicle arriving and leaving the lot.

  Two days later, Katie’s body was discovered by a trucker along a side road south of Dunlow in the southwestern part of the state. Eighteen-wheelers usually don’t run on that road, which is a narrow tar-and-chip lane leading to a scattering of modest homes, but the driver was headed home for the day. He slowed when he saw a group of four or five turkey buzzards standing alongside the road. He said they were reluctant to fly, even as his truck approached. Instead they moved closer to something in a drainage ditch, something they appeared to be guarding.

  At first he didn’t recognize the body of the woman who was to host a birthday party his own daughter was scheduled to attend—a birthday party that had been canceled because of Katie’s disappearance.