by Wayne Jones
Chapter 21
Oh, but I do tire of recounting, and counting, these murders. Let me pretend to a temporary memory lapse and say that I believe this is the ninth person killed. I do believe, truly and fully and absolutely—I believe and I know that this is the ninth horror visited upon this town. “WTF,” I saw scrawled on a limestone wall in the west end of town, the full version of which Wilson the raver has spat into my face many times.
“What the fuck.” Sometimes a question and sometimes a howl of anger.
I shall dispense quickly with the details of this one, and in fact the killer seems to be degrading to the most primal level: poor Eugene Olquin was simply beaten to death, his face (and I revert to non-technical terminology now) smashed in, the upper part of his skull (ditto) crushed. He was a well-muscled man, six feet tall and weighing about 225 pounds. These facts surprise me. I would have imagined a lazy killer by now, less self-assured, practicing the time-honoured tradition of picking on the little guy in the school yard. But evidently even after so much death and so much study I still do not quite understand the mentality. Let me consult one of the borrowed monographs which I have here:
The serial killer is emboldened with every murder, and particularly so with his continued success in eluding capture. Some criminologists maintain that the killer wants to be caught, and will often taunt the police or even leave clues, but this only adds to his enjoyment and cockiness. The typical serial killer is also unlikely to slacken his pace: he will kill with the same (or increased) frequency, and also with the same degree of “imagination” and brutality.5
One wonders why they stop at all, or why at five or ten instead of a thousand. I imagine two scenarios. In the first, a man with the potential (some say there’s a gene,6 though I am skeptical of that research) to be a serial killer is so disgusted with the results as demonstrated in his first victim that he desists immediately, and—in cases of a strong conscience—turns himself in to the police in order to rid society of his scourge. The second scenario is the polar, killer opposite of this: an animal made only more ravenous by the taste of the blood, perhaps even going out of his way to ensure that there is absolutely no motive for the killings other than the killings themselves, a “purist,” so to speak. He is absolutely conscious of exactly what he is doing at all times; he is not crazy or out of control; he is not, no, he is not the “monster” in the sense of a mere animal doing his sloppy primal deeds, though those deeds are of course monstrous. On the contrary: he has calculated all of this. He is a meticulous planner. Picture, reader, picture the celebrated crocodile stalking the zebra trying to cross a river. The event does not occur in a flurry of unbridled passion, but very carefully, patiently, waiting and waiting until the time is right and then all the energy that had been conserved, pent up, is released in a savage flurry: the lunge and then the inevitable capture.
All sectors of the town seem to be outraged in unison at this latest installment. The Gazette publishes a special afternoon edition of the paper, with the front page devoted entirely to an editorial entitled “Stop It Now.” It’s a very thin issue, just the one section, with some updates on national and international events but demonstrating its purpose on that front page and in fact wearing it rather proudly. I like the ambiguity of the plea, simultaneously a quiet command directly to the killer, as well as a call for the police to marshal whatever investigative abilities they have to solve the case. The tone betrays the mix of emotions which evidently and understandably inspired it, though heavily dominated by anger, and hence there is a lack of care to the actual writing that proves to be rather an embarrassment, even for a local small-town paper. I say that as a careful academic, of course, a man trained in rhetorical control, not meaning to disparage. However, I cringe particularly at the sinking to colloquialisms (“this guy,” “what’s going on?”) and the pock-marking with what I hope are not the manifestations of general editorial standards, but rather typographical and grammatical errors brought on by the hasty production. Overall it’s fairly impossible to dispute the basic sentiment: “This town of 120,000 people has seen nine of our own brutally murdered, and with the police department not being able to capitalize on a single lead which has come it’s [sic] way. Whoever it is that calls in extra forces—the OPP, the RCMP, the guy in Diehard—needs to call them in now and solve this before we see the tenth person go down.” “Go down” is not quite the right tone, of course, but perhaps I quibble and do not allow enough for the anger and frustration of the editors.
I am sitting at my favourite pub, the name based on one legend or other which I cannot quite remember. The waiter, bless him, is on his way to bring me my usual before I am even settled in my seat.
“Hey, Andrew.”
“Hi.”
The range of sentiment is visible around the room, as I’ve found it has been in this room several times over the past months. What’s changed is that it is narrower: I am not sure whether this is the influence of the editorial, or whether both are symptoms of a malaise afflicting the whole town. There’s shouting over near the pool table, and I do fear for the end result because the topic doesn’t appear to be pool. There’s a bona fide debate in the corner at the big table, less raucous than the pool combatants but also threatening to heat itself up (or down) to stupidity.
A man who appears to know me, but whom I can’t place, plops himself down in the spare chair at my table.
“What a mess,” he says and my irritation with being imposed on blinds me for an instant to what he is referring to.
“Yes,” I say, putting my faith in minimalism.
“Can I ask you something?” he says. “I mean, some of the other guys have been saying that you’re smart and that you’ve even been investigating this shit.” He pauses as if expecting me to affirm the veracity of his inane chatter.
“Go on,” I manage.
“Well, it’s like this. We’re just at the end of our goddamn rope and we don’t know what to make of all this.” I note the tiniest pinpoint of spittle forming at the intersection of his lips on the left side, and fear the worst for myself. “Nine people killed, no arrests, no leads, not a fuckin thing from the police. There’s some of the dumber guys here that suspect—you know, that have conspiracy theories, like the police are in on it or something. But most of us don’t buy that.”
He takes a long sip of his beer, as if preparing himself for the point of all this.
“It’s like this,” he says again, and I genuinely worry that he is going to repeat everything, that I may be the victim of a loop of drivel. “We think you may have the answer, and are just sitting on the big reveal for some reason.”
I take a sip of my own beer, languidly, lovingly, as I see that he really is finished talking and is content to sit back and wait for me to opine, to (if I must) reveal. “Listen, Ralph—is it OK if I call you Ralph?”
“My name is Frank.”
“Listen, Ralph, I think you may have been partially misinformed. I am not really investigating these murders. I am writing a book and so trying to do some research, some in libraries and some on the street, so to speak, but it would be derelict and simply inaccurate to call it an investigation.”
“OK, sure, but do you have any, like, hunches or anything?” A sigh from me, a bigger sip by him, spittle now disappeared and hopefully not transferred. I find myself searching on the table in front of him for the deposit.
“Do you want me to be honest?”
“Yes, sure, of course.”
“It’s like this,” I say, just for the pleasure of noticing that he does not notice. “I may myself have been critical of what the police have done, or not done, in the past. I may have said a few things to people right here in this bar, perhaps even to you even though I don’t specifically recall ever having met you before. But, I’ve truly come to the conclusion, at this juncture now anyway, that the killer is just damn good, that even a more competent police force still would not have been able to track him down by now.”
&nbs
p; I’m lying, but I think this is the shortest path to get him to go away satisfied: better something explicit and semi-logical than the messy realistic truth. He sits back in his chair, playing with a coaster and seeming to ponder the ridiculous howler I have told him, mulling it, considering its non-existent intricacies.
“You may have a point there,” he says. “Like some super killer.”
I can’t conceal a smile at the summation that I would not have expected outside of bad 24-hour news updates on the television. I have to feign a need to go to the bathroom, and so I get up and for a moment it seems like he is going to follow me there, like a mopey teenager trailing his same-sex idol. But no: he has quickly and rather rudely posted himself at another table, and I hear another “It’s like this” as I round the corner.
So, the reader may be inquiring, what do I really think? If this ultimate town menace has not swallowed some potion, not had an exposed forearm bitten by a wily insect, not been laid prostrate by an ur-ogre and arisen with a murderous mission—if not, then why has he been able to persist not only without being captured, but also with the police not being able to come within a micron of even identifying a half-plausible suspect? I am afraid the truth, or at least the truth that is available to my own humble proddings, is not a mess I have concealed from my recent interlocutor but rather a simple admission: I do not know.
I was being somewhat modest with him in quibbling over “investigation,” mostly to deflect annoying attention from the forensically illiterate, armed with only anger and good will and the dull recitations from one or other walk down the hall in CSI. Though it might sound defensive or insincerely insistent, I do feel that I have been carrying on an investigation—a journalistic one, with perhaps not enough muck being raked, but an investigation nonetheless. And in between my outings for gumshoeing I have made a true effort to allow myself time for reflection and analysis. Ralph/Frank, whom I have met before (now that I think of it), in an earlier fit of desperation around murder 5 or so, asked me then to “stand back.” A crude and well-worn metaphor just a smidge from hackneyed, but the old boy had a point. That’s what my time alone has been for. I’ve spent many evenings in utter silence, just me on the couch with a precariously perched glass of Courvoisier on my knee, reviewing the days and weeks and months, sifting the bad leads out of good evidence, trying to see a pattern in a series of bloody events which have defied such reification (you can always count on a scholar for a fancy prose style).
Most of those evenings I’ve just gotten up stiffly after literal hours have passed, made as much noise raising myself as I generally make getting myself seated anywhere these days. I’ve had flashes, eureka moments when I’ve thought I made a connection which I hadn’t seen before, but by the time I’ve made it to the refrigerator for a beer or a virgin colada, it had all collapsed under the weight of its own illogicality. Of course, I have not been a complete dolt. I have pieced a few things together, connections even, but they amount in total to not much more than the basic edges around the jigsaw puzzle, the frame of jagged facts with a maw of emptiness gaping, yawning, fairly yelling at the dark centre of it all.
Chapter 22
It occurs to me only as Tony is scouring my bookshelves, her back turned to me in a lovely innocence that makes me ashamed of my previous suspicions of her, that this is the first time that anyone else has been in my room since I’ve been living here. I’ve insisted to my landlady that she not clean the room, and she has been trusting enough to leave those domestic niceties to me (I know because without her knowledge I’ve changed the lock to my door, and she’s never mentioned that). And now here is Tony, turning to me with a book in her hand, walking towards me, her mouth open and a question about to come, and here am I nervous as a schoolboy.
I turn around abruptly and head to the bathroom before she reaches me. I look back for a second, part of my feverish head worried that she might follow me in here, and, no, I see her look at the book, then at me, and then sit down at my dining table.
The cold water feels good on my face. I splash it carefully from forehead to chin and cheek to cheek, and then along the back of my neck where I feel a nice cool calm activated, and a droplet then making its way down my back. I verify the results in the mirror: I’m ready.
Tony is sitting in the wing chair when I emerge.
“Funny place you have here,” she says.
“Funny? Funny how?”
“Kind of controlled clutter. Too much stuff in it for such a small room, but it’s all kind of fanatically organized.”
I laugh lightly. “That’s not a bad way to put it.”
“You’re a collector, I see.” She motions vaguely with her left hand. “The books, I mean.”
“Yes, I—listen, can I get you something, you know, to drink? I have some red wine left, I think. Or water. Or—”
“Wine sounds great.”
As I walk past her on the way to get the glasses, she sinks back in the chair with an insouciant comfort that I sadly realize I have never been able to manage in this place. Or, perhaps, any place. A sliver of her midriff is showing. Her hair is everywhere. A shoe, her slip-on shoe, dangles from the foot which seems to be pointing me the way to the wine. Her sock is deep red.
“You don’t keep any murder books here though. Why’s that?”
She uprights herself as I approach with the wine, takes the glass, and then sinks back down carefully to her former position, the wine glass placed carefully atop her breastbone. Whenever she wants to sip, she sits up, and then sinks down again in a choreography of glass and liquid and body which I find both funny and alluring. I am not used to these feelings. I am not used to what I want to do.
I sit down opposite her, bent forward and with my elbows on my knees until this becomes uncomfortable. I sit back and try to relax.
“I think I have a select few here somewhere,” I say, motioning vaguely toward my trunk. “But, yes, you’re right, for someone who is doing the kind of research I am, I don’t have a comprehensive collection. The libraries have lots, though, and I’m amazed what you can find online as well.”
She sips and, damn her, she has the confidence and security of person to be able to just remain silent and stare straight at me, not in defiance but apparently just savouring this moment, this wine, this other person.
“How is the book coming along?”
“Well, the final two or three chapters have yet to be written—I mean, the police haven’t caught anyone and so we have to conclude that this rampage is not over yet. Nine people dead, can you really believe that?”
The question just sits there while Tony swirls her wine, the caps of the waves she is producing rising higher and higher, sometimes threatening to spill out onto her pristine white T-shirt.
“I have a new theory,” she says finally. “I don’t think this killer actually lives here in Knosting. I don’t think he’s anywhere near here. I just can’t believe that someone here in town has done these murders, and then gone home and then a few weeks later does it all over again. And all without the police being able to track him down at all. I think he’s in Toronto or somewhere—shit, maybe even over in New York state and just coming up every now and then to kill.”
She sips and looks over at me.
“Wow,” I manage.
She stands up suddenly, puts down her wine glass, and takes a long exaggerated bow.
“Think about it while I go to the bathroom.”
And with that she is gone and I relax. I slouch back into my chair, the wine making the world and me feel very, very good, and I close my eyes and tilt my head back to shut out the present and the past and to concentrate on the future. Time passing, flowing, floating, all in silence, but—
A sound.
Of course, she is wearing very little when she emerges from the bathroom, and I do feel sorry that she has to clear her throat as if in some bad joke in order to get my attention.
“Oh,” I say, my eloquence perfect and perfectly absent.
>
Gentle reader, I will spare you the details of our impromptu tryst. The mechanics were handled with panache on both sides, if I may say so, there were expressions of attraction and “like,” and no love was allowed to sully what turned out to be a terrific evening. I am not sure what led the girl to such boldness, perhaps merely the red wine loosening up inhibitions, perhaps a native tendency which I, careful observer though I may be, did not notice in her. I have had few lovers but they have all demonstrated and nurtured a sexual generosity. Tony was the same. Still, as always, it is the rawness of the après-amour, lying there staring at nothing more inspiring than a ceiling that could use a coat of paint, it is that intimacy which overwhelms me, leaves me literally, illiterately, speechless.
“I hate the cliché,” she says, “but do you have a cigarette?”
“Really?”
“Yes, afraid so.”
“I’m sorry I don’t, but I think my landlady keeps a pack down on that little table in the foyer, for some reason. Stay put and I’ll go filch one.”
I get up, happy for the diversion, and throw on the tattered bathrobe that I should not be wearing in the presence of others. I creak down the stairs to the foyer: the pack is nearly full, and I take five of them.
“You’re an angel,” Tony says when I proffer my loot. I get matches from the kitchen and light up the one she already has in her mouth when I return to the bed. She takes a long drag and exhales noisily.