There is more to the story, but I have no desire to relate it. You can find it easily enough online if you wish. I suggest that you don’t.
A group of buzzards is called a wake. I like that term as a description of what they were doing beside the road, better than what they were really doing. That’s how I choose to think of it: They were holding a wake for Katie.
The turkey buzzard is a type of vulture, of course. The scientific name for vultures is Cathartes aura, which is Latin for “cleansing breeze.” That’s another nice way of thinking of a bunch of homely birds who do a very ugly job. And a job that was, in this case, wholly unwarranted.
The discovery of the body prompted closer examination of the Home Depot surveillance footage and parking lot, which resulted in the discovery of Grayson Rath’s red Camaro parked three spaces from where Katie’s SUV had been.
Katie had been strangled to death after being struck on the head.
All she wanted was to have clean rugs for her daughter’s birthday party. Do you hear me, Grayson? You vile, contemptuous, despicable person. I hope you burn. I hope you sizzle and die.
* * *
Grayson Rath voice recording
I just now googled my name and came up with this dumbass blog some woman is writing about me! Before she started writing about me she wrote about some guy named Ian and how much she hated high heels and tampons and bras and other stupid stuff. She calls herself a neo-journalist. Called me despicable. Like she has the faintest idea who I am.
She seems to think she’s hot on my trail. Ha. Even talked to my grandmother. Bitch. You better stay away from my people if you know what’s good for you.
She’s not bad looking though. Maybe I should invite her to ride along with me. A blowjob every hundred miles or so would sure help me stay awake.
Mia Swain. Swain. Swain swain, it’s a funny name.
Seriously though. 89.5k followers. Now we’re talking. Maybe I should send her a note. See how she likes having me following her.
* * *
It’s funny how coming out of the gray room always changes things. It’s like I said earlier, like a good healthy sneeze or shooting your wad. The day just seems brighter and clearer afterward. Everything you look at, and the way everything sounds. Smells, tastes, every little thing is better afterward.
Fact is, I didn’t want to kill those two in the motel where I was staying, but I really didn’t have a choice in the matter. They had an older vehicle, a black Silverado truck that looked fairly beat-up, which meant it almost certainly didn’t have a tracking chip in it. And at the free breakfast in the morning, the guy said hello to me while I was waiting for my waffles, and asked if there was anybody else waiting to use the waffle maker after me. Then he invited me to sit at their table and they told me all about where they were going on their honeymoon. It was pretty pathetic, if you ask me. I mean Dollywood? Seriously? To them it was a big deal. She said this was the farthest either of them had ever been from home. I could almost smell the poverty on them, their miserable little lives. I actually felt sorry for them, and that’s what made me pick them. That and their vehicle.
It’s a 1999 Silverado truck. The guy, who called himself Richie by the way, said he and his brothers had put a new engine in it just a few days earlier, so it “should be good for another hundred thousand at least.” Plus it had those big knobby wheels on it. Thirty-four inchers, he called them, with three-inch lifts. “It could probably climb a tree if I wanted it to,” he said.
I was listening close to every word. He said they were packing a tent and two sleeping bags for when they got to Georgia, where his grandparents lived. He was carrying fishing gear and cooking stuff and everything they’d need for a week on Lake Lanier, which was a scant 11 miles from his grandparents’ cottage. That’s when the girl, Grace, leaned over and pretended to whisper to me. “He even brought his crossbow and two pistols, just in case I see me a better looking man and decide to cut this honeymoon short.” He never batted an eyelash. Just said, “It’s only one pistol. The nine millimeter. The .45 is a revolver.” That’s the kind of kids they were. They’d have told me anything. I probably could have asked him how long his pecker was, and he would have pulled it out and showed me.
So after breakfast we said goodbye, nice to meet you, and went back to our rooms. They still needed to get packed, they said, before checking out. I just needed to grab the lug wrench from the SUV. A couple of knocks and good old Richie opened the door right up and invited me in. He closed the door behind me, then turned around and said, “What are you carrying that lug wrench for?” And that’s when I laid him out. Grace was still in the bathroom, so I just sat there on the bed and waited for her. For a while I was thinking about taking her with me, but in the end I knew she would just be trouble.
I washed up in their bathroom afterward, put on some of Richie’s clean clothes and that was it. When I went back out onto the balcony afterward, it was such a pretty day. Everything was clean and bright. I don’t think people understand how easy it is to kill somebody. In fact I’m sure they don’t, or else there’d be a lot more people doing it.
* * *
from the blog And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You, by Mia Swain
I can’t believe it. I mean, I can, but I don’t want to. He did it again. Grayson Rath has killed again. A couple on their honeymoon. Seems like every time I close my eyes to sleep, he kills somebody else.
I wonder how many people die every time a person blinks. I need to look that up. I’ll be right back.
Turns out that the average person blinks approximately 28,800 times per day. And approximately 151,600 people die every day. That’s just over five deaths per blink.
And that was before Grayson Rath went to work, along with all the other natural and unnatural forces of destruction on this planet.
It’s a sobering statistic. Enough to make a compassionate woman want to never close her eyes again.
For those of you who aren’t going blind reading every news account available online, as I am, here’s the skinny on Rath’s latest:
I’m sorry, that sounds cavalier and insensitive. Here’s the skinny. How dare I?
I assure you that I am not feeling cavalier or insensitive in any way. I am appalled and sickened. So much so that I have chosen not to interview the couple’s families. I don’t think I could handle it. Plus, who am I to intrude upon their grief? Just writing this post makes me feel like something of a parasite. Journalism is parasitic, isn’t it? I am a dung beetle rolling my little ball of poop back home for the evening meal. I used to feed on the spoiled fruit of my own foibles and failures, but at least I could console myself with the notion that confessional writing is not only cathartic for the writer but also for the reader. I even had the likes of Phillip Lopate on my side. His The Art of the Personal Essay has been my Bible. “Through sharing thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, and whimsies,” he wrote, “the personal essayist sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue—a friendship, if you will,” based on “as much honesty as possible.”
So let me be 100% honest here: It was so safe and easy to write my blog back when all I wrote about was my own little life. I made such a big deal out of the petty annoyances of modern society. I feel like a fool for having been so self-absorbed as to believe that I was providing a service to other young women. Now I know that I was only stroking my own fragile ego. It took a monster like Grayson Rath to bring that fact into focus. Writing about him is so hard, so distasteful. So heartbreaking. I am not sure how long I can continue. I used to be funny. Now I just want to cry all the time.
But a promise is a promise, isn’t it? I will not let myself be another Ian. No matter how much it hurts. Neither will I feed the prurient interests of others. And that includes Grayson Rath himself. So nothing graphic. I will not be one of those parasites who shoves a microphone at the grieving family and asks, “How did you feel when the police told you that the semen in your daughter’s vagina was a DNA match wit
h Grayson Rath?”
I might do a drive-by of the honeymooning couple’s new home in Kentucky, but maybe I will skip that too. My aim is to have a look at the Tennessee hotel room where they died. God, that sounds ghoulish, doesn’t it? I wish I could explain why I feel the need, the compulsion, to go there. Right now, I don’t think I am in control of anything I do. I am being pulled on a leash, and I don’t have the strength to resist.
So, with that said, here’s what that monster did in Tennessee:
Somehow he tricked a young couple, the newlyweds Richie and Grace Stipes, into letting him into their hotel room. He then beat them to death with a blunt instrument, but not before having sex with Grace. Then he stole their money and their pickup truck. Grace’s mother told the police that her daughter was carrying over $1,000 in cash from their wedding money, which they were using to pay for their honeymoon. They were planning to visit Dollywood, the Tuckaleechee Caverns, Gatlinburg, and several other popular attractions in eastern Tennessee. Richie was 20, and Grace was 18. Richie was excited about going indoor skydiving in Pigeon Forge. Grace only wanted to see Dolly Parton in person, and maybe get her autograph.
Grayson Rath, you make me want to puke.
* * *
Grayson Rath voice recording
This pickup truck rides like a tank. Not that I’ve ever been in a tank or plan to be. I do like sitting up high like this though, looking down on everybody I pass. Except for the big rigs though; they get to look down on me. Or would if there were any of them on these boondock roads. All the twists and turns are making my neck stiff. I’m hoping to find a place to pull over soon, just some old logging road or ATV trail that hasn’t been used in a while. A place to stop and get my head straight.
What I need to do is to figure out what I want. I mean exactly what I want. All of this aimless driving is getting me nowhere, even if it does serve a purpose. I mean how can the police know where a vehicle is going when the guy behind the wheel doesn’t know? They might be able to know where I’ve been but they can’t even guess where I’m going. That’s all on purpose. I go west a while, then swing north, then for no reason at all cut south, and then maybe east a while. I just keep mixing it up. Right now I don’t even know what state I’m in. Oh wait a minute, yes I do. The state of confusion, ha!
Can’t last forever though, can it? They’ve got license plate readers all over the place. And not just in the cities and the major highways. They’re in small towns too and on poles out in the country and on some police cars. That’s how stolen cars get traced. So it doesn’t matter how many times I change cars. If that car gets reported stolen, sooner or later the police can pretty much tell where it is. Sooner or later some hick deputy is going to call the FBI and say, hey, that vehicle you’re looking for just went by here two minutes ago. And then what’s going to happen? Roadblocks, that’s what. Roadblocks in every possible direction.
The newer cars even have trackers inside them. Police can just shut a car engine down, just like that. So I’m still screwed to a certain degree. I need to find some way of moving around without a car. Which is going to be a pain in the ass but better than jail. And I need to be more careful about what I steal from people, cause you never know what has tracking software in it and what doesn’t. Freaking NSA is a menace to society, if you ask me.
So okay, first things first. What do you want to do with the rest of your life, Grayson? That’ll decide where you need to go. That’s what Al would say. First you state your goal, your endgame. Then you lay out your moves. Except that Al would also say, Assuming you get away with what you’ve already done.
And I’d say, Don’t you worry, I’ll get away with it.
So said every killer sitting on death row right now.
They aren’t me though, are they?
So said every killer sitting on death row right now.
You think you’re awfully smart, don’t you?
Smart enough to know that if you keep talking to yourself like you’re two different people, you’re going to end up in the loony bin.
Ha. Okay. Enough of that. So what do I want? I want to be left alone. That’s it, simple as that.
So how do you make that happen? Sooner or later you’re going to run out of money. How does a person live without money?
I need to be in a place where I can grow my own food. A place with good water. A place nobody would ever think of looking for me.
I’m thinking Idaho. Or North Dakota maybe. Way out in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe if I can find the right place, and can get rid of the people who already live there, I’ll just tell people I’m their nephew or cousin or whatever. And I’m watching the place for them while they’re traveling in Europe.
I don’t know but I think I could make that work. If I can find the right place. It has to be just the right place. Shouldn’t be hard to find online. Places for sale, places for rent—
Wait a minute. Can a laptop be traced? Am I dropping breadcrumbs every time I go online?
Damn. I might be royally screwed this time.
* * *
Okay, I’m feeling better now. I had to risk going online again but found out I’ve got nothing to worry about. Well, not nothing but not what I thought anyway. According to the stuff I read, a laptop’s exact location can’t be traced unless it has a special kind of software on it. So whew! That’s a relief.
I also need to pull over soon and catch a few winks. Also need to take inventory. Been spending a lot of cash on gas. I mean I know there’s still a good bit left, what with all I brought with me plus what Richie and Grace had on them, but I have to plan for the future too, right? Can’t get myself into a bad spot where I’m running out. It’s not like I can just dip into Al’s cookie jar anymore.
The family cookie jar, that’s what Al called it. It was just an old Bible he keeps on his dresser, always had six or more fifties in it. Al said he never himself carries less than a grand in his pocket, probably just so he can flash it around to the check-out girls when he buys a pack of Tic Tacs. But the cookie jar was for me and Mom, he said, though we’d better not take advantage of his generosity, he said, because he would know from minute to minute how much money is in there. But if we found ourselves short or needed some groceries or something, we could take a fifty but never under any circumstances more than two at a time. And we’d better have a damn good reason for it and be able to account for every penny or he would shut off the tap. I don’t know how many times I heard him say that. Once I said to him, I didn’t know cookie jars have taps, especially a cookie jar that’s a Bible, and he says, the problem with you is, you don’t even know how much you don’t know. And that got us into an argument with me saying nobody knows what they don’t know, or else they would already know it. And on and on like that until he started laughing and said boy you got a mouth on you, just like your mother. You might want to consider being a politician someday. And that made me smile too and all the anger just sort of washed out of me. Like he could see into who I really was and liked what he saw.
I wonder what he’s thinking of me now? I bet he’s thinking, you got to be pretty smart to slip the fuzz the way he’s doing. Got to give him credit for that.
* * *
So I’m just now getting ready to pull out from behind this little convenience store where I’ve been the last 30 minutes. Using their wi-fi. Apparently pretty little Mia Swain doesn’t like me much. So I sent her a little love note. Just to help her sleep tonight. Ha ha ha.
She will call the police of course, and they will track down the IP, and this place will be swarming with feds in an hour. Wish I could hang around, fellas, but I feel like moving on. Enjoy your clusterfuck!
* * *
from the blog And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You by Mia Swain
OH. MY. GOD! Grayson Rath left a comment on my last post. Grayson Rath! He signed it your friend and future lover, the Gray Man, so who else could it be? And now what should I do?
Well, I will tell y
ou what I did; I dialed 911. The dispatcher took my information and five minutes later I received a call from the FBI. I am not allowed to discuss our conversation with you, but they did say it was up to me whether I allowed the comment to stay posted or not. I decided to delete it. I simply don’t think I want to ever read it again. I’m sorry; I know how much you want to know what he said. So I will tell you this much and your imagination can fill in the rest. He said that he enjoyed reading my blog and is sorry that he makes me want to puke, but that while I am on my knees puking into the toilet, he would be happy to violate me in a particular way.
I cannot believe what I have gotten myself into. This all happened a couple of hours ago, and my heart is still pounding. I haven’t taken a full breath since I read the comment. I can’t drive anymore today, and I don’t want to write about Grayson Rath anymore. If I go silent for a while, please don’t worry about me; I’m in a safe place. But this is way more than I bargained for. Please pray for the FBI to stop him soon. Pray for all of us. And maybe ask God why an abomination like Grayson Rath is allowed to exist.
* * *
Grayson Rath voice recording
I remember Al telling me that you’ve got to be none too bright to be poor in this country. That was one of his life lessons, he called them. None too bright or filthy lazy, he said. Or a good bit of both.
He said that Mom was the latter. That with her ass and face she could reel in a whale and be living on sushi if she’d put her mind to it. And I said, Isn’t that what she did? He laughed at that and said, Guess you got me there, kid. But she’s going to blow it one of these days if she doesn’t mind her Ps and Qs. You don’t need to worry about that though, he told me. Now that I’m your legal guardian, you have nothing to worry about. Then he cocked his head a little and thought about that for a few seconds, and then he said, that doesn’t mean I won’t throw you out on your skinny ass if you don’t make something of yourself.
Incident on Ten-Right Road Page 22