by Wayne Jones
The family members were devastated by this death, as should not be surprising (I am surprised that any family holds up at all in such dark circumstances). Imprinted in my mind’s eye now is the image of the parents at the press conference, both a little unsteady at the microphone, and a large group of friends and more distant family members (cousins and the like) forming what looked like a powerful force behind them. The father’s voice cracked repeatedly as he ranged between sorrow and anger and apparent utter incomprehension during his brief statement. His wife, Priscilla’s bereft mother, remained silent during the whole two minutes or so, and I and the rest of this city will remember the boyfriend making his way up from the crowd behind the parents, raising his fist in a wordless threat or other gesture to the killer, still on the loose out there—or perhaps to the God who had not deigned to intervene while one of His creation was being savaged. (Apologies, reader, but I have been reading diatribes all evening.) The parents moved just as wordlessly aside as the boyfriend stepped up, the sea parting for him, and his mouth seemed to be working as his fist was in the air, as if he were a person who had never spoken but had steadfastly refused to gently accept his condition. But no sound came forth, and eventually his arm and his head sank down simultaneously and he simply turned around and disappeared again into the crowd behind the podium. The parents’ lawyer said something mercifully short into the microphone (“respect,” “all,” wishes,” “alone,” “thank you”) and the scene was over.
It is exactly an hour since the end of that press conference. I scurried away as the crowd did, and found a seat here on a bench by the lake. I could see that some of the reporters pressed to the front of the room, I suppose hoping to catch one of the family members in an impromptu answer to one of their insightful questions (“So, how do you feel?”), and I knew that my equanimity could not support such crassness. The light is just perfect, making absolutely everything beautiful here, and the breeze is just right. I do have a moment of hopeless, incredulous terror when I mentally remind myself that all these people have been killed and that there is no success in the apprehension of suspects. Two big young men, one without a shirt, are throwing around a football about a hundred metres in front of me, and I watch the simple sing-song movement, back and forth, back and forth. I recoil at one of the tosses, though, as the fully clothed one overthrows and the shirtless one, running back and concentrating on the descending ball, is on a collision course with a heedless jogger. I watch the horrible ballet move towards its bumpy conclusion, but at the last moment the jogger takes an abrupt turn and heads toward a companion seated on the grass. The football is caught, rather spectacularly, and the receiver also tumbles to the grass, rolls twice or thrice, and then comes to a victorious stop on his stomach. He gets up and walks back closer to his quarterback, while the jogger is now engaged in an animated conversation with a beautiful young woman. I have to say that this little bit of encouragement, harm averted, everything working out innocently well, is not quite enough to prevent me from despairing of those two doomed projects, one a poor scholar’s attempt to write a book and to solve a crime, and the other the project of humanity itself (forgive me, but I tend to fret more grandly when I am near water at this time of the early evening).
Last week, the Wednesday I think, I happened to bump into Rachel, the ever-helpful librarian, at a used bookstore. I was trolling among the murderous stuff as usual and as I exited my aisle there she was right there in front of me, seeming to proffer more humane fare, a book about Istanbul, an anthology of 20th-century-art criticism, a couple of Dickens. We conversed animatedly as I have always seemed to be able to do with this delightful woman, but eventually as our talk again turned to murder (and in particular these Knosting murders), her face sallowed somewhat and she looked at me dead on:
“Andrew, I find that these days all I have are the small things. I have sort of lost my fascination with the forensic side of the whole mess, and I find myself concentrating on hokey things like what the moon looks like on the water when I take a walk along the lake, or just having a good meal and a quiet, simple day at home, or—well, you know, just anything that’s as far away as possible from all the killing.”
She paused a moment, looked down at the ground and then up in the air, and then deadpanned me again.
“Still,” she continued, “you know what the worst of it is? Even the small things are starting not to work for me, like they’re not enough. My friend Jennifer and I were talking about it all the other night, late, very late, and we both ended up thinking that it—the murders and all of that—it’s like black water, this flood of black water that is just destroying everything. People are dead, yes, that’s for sure, and families, oh my God, I think the remaining families have it so much worse, but the whole thing is just spreading and spreading. I’m not making any sense now.”
I assured her that she was and the poor girl fairly fell into my arms. I was about to hold her more closely to try to provide some smidgen of solace, but suddenly she pulled away.
“I’m sorry, Andrew,” she said, and I tried to reassure her that there was no need for any apologizing. She wiped a tear from her eye, smiled awkwardly, and continued.
“I guess I just don’t know what to do, what can work apart from the police finding this guy and locking him up for a long time. But in the meantime, I hoped I could distract myself with a few things, like, take pleasure in a few things. But those are disappearing.”
I reached out to touch her on the arm and she seemed warmed and surprised by the contact. “Listen,” I said to her, “why don’t we get together some time this weekend if you are free. We can talk some more again.”
“That would be lovely. I’ll give you a call.” And with that I was happy that I could bring some semblance of happiness to at least one stricken person in this town.
The crowd is thinning. My own impotence to apparently do anything to help Rachel or anyone else is keeping me moored to this bench. I have an image of myself as an average man waving his arms in the air frantically here, driven to insanity by sheer frustration. I scream in this silent image but on the bench, in the sad inethereal heaviness of reality, I can do nothing except grunt myself to my feet. The sky has purples and pinks in it, a background of black with no classic blue at all. The walk home takes me past the patios along Ontario Street and I am simultaneously heartened and very sad to see so many people so oblivious to the threat. There was a report in the newspaper on the weekend about the effect that the murders have had on tourism: surprisingly little, it turns out. The exact decline escapes me now, but I believe it was in the range of 10 percent. I find this astounding. “Come to Knosting,” I can hear the website shouting. “There’s only been seven people killed and it’s highly unlikely that this psychopathic murderer is going to get little old you!!”
It’s chilly. I shake my head, hike up the collar of my shirt, and break into a run for no reason in particular. When I stop in front of the house, I am panting so hard that I worry that I won’t be able to catch my breath. I am bent over, wheezing like someone with lung cancer, and as I try to concentrate on the details in the sidewalk, I feel the urgency easing, the desperate grasps at air no longer necessary. I right myself slowly and go in.
Chapter 20
Ives, Victor, drowned at his own kitchen sink. This is a first for the killer, not only in method but in sheer callous audacity: the man was killed in the same building where Priscilla Ullrich lived, and on the next day. The citizens, those who are not scared witless, are livid now at the police for not doing anything. There is another demonstration in front of city hall, lines of people, placards. The reporters can hardly conceal their glee at the sound bites they are able to get now: people crying, threats of lawsuits on what seem to be thin premises to me. I meet the raver on Bagot and the punctuation of fucks completely obscures the sense of whatever sentence he is ranting at me. The police chief, strong up till now, determination written in the furrows across his brow, seems cowed among the gaggle
of microphones, weakened.
“We are as shocked as any of you,” he says, his voice wavering ever so slightly on you, “and we are determined to find this killer so that,” the voice breaking, creaking, cracking with some obviousness on killer, and there is nothing after the so that but a waving of his hands in front of his face as if he is trying to flag down some taxi that is invisible to the rest of us, or hopelessly throwing them in the air as some other invisible vehicle bears down on him.
“Chief, chief,” the reporters call, but he rushes away. I cannot be absolutely certain, and I will have to corroborate this detail before I could include it in my book, but it looked like the man was crying.
I have read about it in my now voluminous research, and there is a rather common thing that happens at about this stage in a string of unsolved serial killings, that is, ironically about the same time that the anger is at its highest pitch.4 The town begins to buckle, to lose its hope and even its will to ever find the killer. Like that gazelle you may have seen on the nature programs in the deathly clutches of a cheetah, at some point they just give up, both gazelle and town. The cheetah’s intentions are obvious and at first there is a self-righteous struggle by the gazelle, even a sense of confidence that this assailant can be shaken off and life can return to normal, can return at all.
A whole town can seem eerily subdued when the temptation to quit wrests away independence and the will to fight and live. There is a high degree of rationalization and self-deception which accompany this capitulation. The theists, God bless them, run around town—metaphorically, of course: I refer chiefly to their appearances in the media—spouting something about the citizens deserving this as punishment for a lack of moral rectitude or some other sort of blather. They “stick by” their “guns,” as they unfortunately phrase it, and then go on to characterize the criticism they receive as the expected result of their being the only people brave enough to tell the truth, and on and on it goes, of course. Quite annoying, not to mention outrageously bereft of logic, common sense, and even a hint of sympathy.
And there are the crazy people, mostly young men who had teetered on the brink of insanity during those halcyon, murder-free days in Knosting anyway, ex-convicts, child molesters, men who had not adjusted well to the breakup with their girlfriends, men who still live with their mothers. One example … A fellow at one of the downtown Tim Hortons is knocked to the floor as he is halfway through his order, a boot pressed against his throat, and the other patrons either flee or watch desultorily as he is dragged from there to an awkward position strewn across one of the tables near the door. In fact, I am about two metres from the action, and witness in horror the inane “interrogation,” as in one of those countries where the verdict is decided as soon as you are arrested, and the judicial process—including, as the vanilla terminology has it, “questioning”—is meant only to elicit a confession which the poor man resorts to only to ease the physical pain.
Here amid the smells of donuts and coffee and the sweetest of sugars that are bad for you, the questions are just shouts and no time is allowed for answers anyway. It is all rather embarrassing, I find, and the only thing that prevents me from intervening is that the same stupidity will be unleashed upon the poor researcher who in their eyes must be a sympathizer, an assistant, a killer too! A police car shows up outside, the red lights spinning, and the accusers decide in a lucid moment that they don’t have much of a case after all, and they dash out the door quickly, and then down a dark road behind the hotel before the officers are even out of their cruiser. I have to say that I am nearly as unimpressed with them as I am with the thugs, the latter for their small-minded machismo but the former for their lethargic attitude toward crime even in what should be a supercharged time when, after all, people have been killed. One of them simply turns around casually to watch the vigilantes make the final turn around the corner and off into the night, and then—mirabile dictu!—walks up to the counter and orders a double double and a cruller. His fellow officer, no less incompetent, sits and waits at the table where only minutes before a form of illegal justice, an assault, was being perpetrated on a man who I presume is innocent.
The man demonstrates far too little outrage for my taste, and I fear that it is this attitude which pervades the Knosting police force and perhaps explains the lack of success in apprehending the killer. Shouldn’t all officers be hungry and angry now? Shouldn’t they be chasing down anyone, be it killer or dough-headed vigilante, eschewing the hat and (as the raver put it once) “going after the guy,” heading towards that hotel, rounding the corner, jumping him when his attention flags and he’s out of breath? Instead, he’s ever so calm, sitting and waiting and waiting, sighing for God sake when the delay for a donut is a few excruciating seconds longer than he requires, peevish instead of enraged.
“What the fuck?” I hear a woman next me say, not quite sotto voce but not loud enough that the officers could hear her either. The question is not directed at me nor anyone else in particular, I don’t think, but seems to be rather an unconscious and incredulous verbal reaction to the situation, to seeing the reverse of heroism. I look over at her as a gesture of support and she just purses her lips and shakes her head at me, and I feel sorry for the poor woman that the lack of police action has bereft her of articulate means of protest.
I rotate in my seat a little for a better view as the officers finally pair up at a table. There is a symmetry of steaming paper cups and lumps of dough in front of them and they begin to eat and drink in what appears almost as choreographed alternation—sip, sip, eat, eat, sip, sip—like an old couple whose connection has degraded to mere mimicry. The conversation between consumptions is muted: I think I hear the words “belly” and “suss,” but I can’t be sure.
I tire of the whole business and get up to leave, but when I scan the place one more time I see the woman signalling to me to come to her table. I check behind me to confirm that her attention is not meant for anyone else (it’s not), and so I semi-reluctantly walk over and sit right back down again, at her table. A slight headache is depriving me, I think, of the ability to make better decisions.
“Can you believe this shit?” she asks. “I mean, fuck”—she lowers her voice—“are they going to do anything?”
“I know what you mea—” I start before she interrupts.
“I was in here like two weeks ago, same fuckin thing. No cops that time, but two assholes, different from these two just now, but these two guys razzing this other guy who for all I know didn’t do anything, at least probably didn’t kill anyone for God sake.” She pauses, as if to catch her breath.
“Well,” I say a little hesitantly, “I know that—some people are getting fed up with the whole thing. Murders happening, the police not able to even identify any suspects, the—”
“Yes, but that doesn’t give these assholes the right to be harrassing people.”
“I agree with you, but it may explain where all of this vigilante behaviour is coming from.”
She just shakes her head, for what reason I am not quite sure.
“What’s your theory?” I ask.
“Theory?”
“About who the killer is.”
“Oh. You know, I’m not sure. I mean, I do believe that it’s someone right here in Knosting. I don’t think the guy is from Toronto or New York state or anything like that. Who knows? It’s sort of like a situation where every option seems, you know seems—”
“Implausible,” I suggest.
She looks at me. “Well, if that means that nothing seems like the right theory, then I agree with you.” She laughs, and I do too, and I realize that I haven’t done so in weeks.
We chat for a while, the conversation eventually easing from criticism of the police to her unemployment situation, the child she wishes she could see more. I stand up abruptly and say that I have to go, even though strictly speaking I do not. “Oh,” she says, but remains seated, and I tip a non-existent hat on my head and leave precipitously
.
The walk home is troubled. Nothing happens, but at every sound, every shadow, I fear that the men will come barrelling around the corner, or (worse) the police will choose to do their job not on small-minded thugs but on a weak, innocent scholar who happens to be out later than he should be. The wind is gusting a little and I struggle with my key at the door (it will not fit, it is upside down): spooked, I check behind me before entering, confirm the absence of murderers or other monsters, and enter into warmth and security.
Alas, the feeling doesn’t last long: my heart is wrenched as I check my email and find this:
Well, things are churning right along, aren’t they, old boy? “O-Please,” I hear you say, “let there indeed be only the two remaining victims that have been promised.” Crude, don’t you think, checking them off like that? One, two, three, A, B, C. Eight, nine, ta-da! ... ten!
I have to admit that in spite of my intensive research, hours spent poring over deathly monographs, exposing myself to the worst that humanity is capable of, I still have considerable difficulty stomaching this degree of absolute lack of conscience. Or understanding it, as much as one can hope to understand anything so antithetical to life itself. I consider a reply, clack one out in anger and almost send it, but fortunately I reconsider. I like the idea of replying, but haven’t a clue how that idea could be realized. What, dear reader, could I possibly say?