His nickname was ‘Bulldog’, and there was good reason for that.
CHAPTER FOUR
- October 1988 -
For Kenny, three years passed by reasonably uneventfully.
He and Grandma attended the monthly sessions with the psychologist religiously. He had managed to become less of a target in the schoolyard, had grown a few inches and lost some weight.
He still did not seek out or have any real friends, but he was no longer simply shunned out of hand by his classmates. He remained quiet, kept his thoughts to himself and still spent a lot of time at home playing games in his bedroom.
Both Grandma and Grandpa had worked at keeping him wrapped in love and attention, a little of his self-confidence had returned and the nightmares had lessened over time.
Unfortunately, any gains he had made during that period were about to be reversed with a vengeance.
In October of nineteen eighty-eight, a few days after Kenny’s ninth birthday party, his grandfather, Gordon, passed away. The death, very traumatic for a boy of Kenny’s tender years, was compounded by where and how suddenly it had occurred.
Gordon and the boy had been doing what they enjoyed best, spreading chips and cuttings with the excavator out in the bush. By this time Kenny had graduated to operating the machine while Grandpa sat to one side and supervised.
It was late in the day that Gordon suffered the massive heart attack. When the old man cried out, put his right hand over his heart and slumped against him, Kenny knew something was seriously wrong.
He managed to move the bulk of his grandfather off himself so that he could shut off the machine, but when he tried to help the old man it didn’t take long for him to realize that there was nothing he could do.
He found himself immobile, staring down at the inert form for some time, studying it with growing interest.
The sight was somehow peaceful. The situation seemed to empower him. Out here suddenly alone, he felt in control of everything. He didn’t want to leave Grandpa, but he knew he should go for help.
Light rain had been falling for a couple of hours and they were a long way from the house. Dusk was settling in.
Eventually Kenny climbed down out of the machine and called old Sam to his side. The two of them then headed back to the yard along the tracks made earlier by the heavy machine, piled into the little Ford pickup that Grandpa had recently allowed Kenny to drive, and meandered down the long driveway toward the house.
When the got there, Kenny shut the truck off, and leaving the door wide open for old Sam, went to find his grandmother.
After he’d told her what had happened, everything was kind of a blur to him.
Grandma had called for an ambulance and all three of them had got into the little truck and headed back to the road to wait for the ambulance so Kenny could lead them back to the machine.
When it arrived, the ambulance driver said they couldn’t go out of the paved area of the yard with the ambulance because it would get stuck, so the two ambulance guys grabbed a bunch of stuff and the four of them hurried off into the bush with Sam on their heels.
Once the excavator came into view, Grandma made Kenny stay back, telling him that he would have to hold old Sam while the ambulance guys saw to Grandpa. He watched from a distance and when he saw Grandma raise her hand to her face and sink to her knees to the dirt, he knew that he wouldn’t be seeing Grandpa again.
He dropped dejectedly down on a fallen log and threw his arms around Sam’s neck.
He didn’t cry, but he did do a lot of thinking, the reoccurring theme being, ‘everyone who tells me they love me always dies.’
Once the ambulance had gone, Kenny and his grandmother answered some questions for the policeman who had been at the storage lot waiting for them when they came out of the bush. The policeman wrote down the stuff in a notebook and then got back in his car and left. Then he, Grandma and old Sam drove slowly back to the house, Kenny behind the wheel and Grandma crunched down in the seat beside him, crying her eyes out.
When they got back inside Kenny allowed Grandma to hug him for a few minutes and then asked if he could go to his room for awhile. The old woman stepped back from him, did her best to stop her tears and then nodded. Gordon’s passing had hit her very hard, but Kenny figured that she would probably come out of her funk eventually. She seemed like she had changed, to have lost much of her self-confidence.
He left her standing forlornly in the kitchen and made his way back to his room, closed his door and fired up the Atari VCS.
Several hours later he heard the doorbell and paused his game, then got up off his bed to walk over to his closed door to listen.
He heard his grandmother speaking to someone, he thought it was a lady, and a few seconds later there was a knock on his door and he heard his Grandma.
“Kenny would you like to come out? There is a social worker here, she’s come to help us.”
Kenny had no desire to meet some stranger but he knew a refusal would simply make matters worse. He let out a deep sigh and opened his door.
The lady stayed for over an hour and Kenny sat sullenly through the whole thing, answering a question if asked but volunteering nothing. The gist of the conversation between her and his grandmother was something she called ‘bereavement counselling’.
Kenny closed his mind to most of the gibberish.
By the time the woman left he had a headache.
Grandma had stopped her crying by then and she was obviously concerned about him. She said she was going to make them dinner and he nodded and headed back to his room. She was moving around kind of zombie-like and seemed to have lost her zest for life, quite incapable of making any major decisions.
The next morning Kenny ignored his alarm clock when it went off to get him up for school. When his grandmother knocked and then opened his door a few minutes later, he told her that he was not feeling well and asked if he could stay home from school.
His grandmother appeared to be somewhat back to her normal self. She nodded her head and told him that he needn’t go until he felt up to it.
Kenny managed to cocoon himself in his room, except for meals, over the next four days. After that Grandma told him that they both had to get their lives back on track. He would have to go back to school and they would be going to his regular session with the psychologist the next week.
The night out had brought about enough of a change in Dave to encourage Ed to push forward with his plan.
Ed took a week’s leave and, with a little help from Dave’s parents arrived with a truck full of camping gear and fishing equipment and all but kidnapped Dave.
As they pulled out of the driveway Ed grinned over at his astonished friend.
“Ever been ice fishing?”
Nine hours later they were well into northern British Columbia at a desolate lake that had taken more than a little ‘four-by-fouring’ to reach. The tent was up and a hearty fire was flickering below a slung coffee pot.
Slowly, in increments over the next five days, Ed laid out his plan for Dave’s future.
Everyone knows that time and time alone is the best healer, but Dave needed to help the grieving process to work its way though. He needed to get his mind on other things.
In the department, there was an opening for a cop of detective level to be paired up with a social worker in a new car that was going to be an experiment in dealing with a recent dramatic rise in domestic calls.
The department was looking for volunteers
Over the past couple of weeks Dave had repeatedly said that he didn’t want to go back to what he had been doing.
He’d said that he needed to put the past behind him and take on new things. Well, he had to admit that this was something entirely new.
Dave’s first response to the suggestion was,
“A social worker for a partner! You’ve got to be kidding man, a cop and a social worker, teamed up…no way.”
At the time, Ed had left it at that, but ove
r the following days he’d kept enthusiastically nibbling away at Dave’s doubts.
“Look, No one has volunteered so far and they are working with a short time frame here.”
“This new car is supposed to roll out in two weeks and the media have been all over the idea with positive response.”
“It would be very embarrassing for the chief if it fell apart before it even got started. It never hurts to make the chief happy. They say he has a long memory. A move like this sure as hell can’t but help your career man! You said you wanted something new and completely different. You’ve got to admit that it can’t get much different than this.”
“Besides it’s only going to run for a six-month trial. That’s all you have to commit to.”
There was no one within a hundred miles of them and Ed, as planned, had the opportunity to bluntly use Dave as a captive audience.
The surroundings were magnificently pristine. The quiet and isolation was restful. The companionship was strong. The food was simple, but cooked over an open fire, delicious.
They even caught some fish!
It took almost the whole week, but by the time they had started the drive out, Ed had worn Dave down with his never-ending keenness about the whole idea.
Two weeks later Dave arrived at the chief’s office to be briefed on the experimental unit and to meet his new partner. An official press conference was to be held later in the day.
Dave was a little anxious about the whole thing, but the idea behind the emergency response car had taken hold of him. He thought it had merit and it was certainly going to be completely different from everything else he done in the department before.
He was committed to the idea and becoming absorbed with it.
His grief had not disappeared, far from it, but he now had other things to think about as well. He had been a little surprised, but pleased, to find that he could, albeit briefly, push those feelings of loss to the back of his mind if required to respond to outside influences.
The meeting went well, as he’d figured it would.
There was one exception however. His new partner, the social worker provided by the provincial government ministry, which was co-sponsoring the experimental project, was not what he’d been picturing at all.
He had been excepting it to be a guy.
Instead it was a woman. She was introduced as to him as Linda Carnarvon, and she smiled broadly as she firmly shook his hand.
Linda was young, he guessed in her early twenties. She was also gorgeous.
Tall and slim, about five-ten. An athletic build, but very nicely rounded out in all the right places. Thick, shiny dark hair, worn long, to just past the shoulders. Big brown eyes that seemed to sparkle and miss nothing. A bright smile that you couldn’t ignore.
During the next hour, he also found out she was very well educated, smart, confident, outgoing and in general terms, a pleasure to be around.
The next six months went very quickly for Dave and then, when the project came to an end, and he and Linda were quietly married in a civil ceremony, much to the surprise of everyone, including him and Linda.
CHAPTER FIVE
- July 1989 -
For nine months Kenny and Grandma had been living alone in the big house. During that time, Kenny, had slipped into the habit of calling her Granny instead of Grandma. Granny seemed more fitting somehow.
The psychologist told Granny that Kenny’s progress had taken a backward step due to Gordon’s death. Kenny was not responding well during their sessions. He tended to remain aloof and withdrawn, not only when in the session, but pretty well all the time.
At home Kenny, without Gordon around to get him out working on the property, seemed to be living in his bedroom. At school, he had become sullen and uncooperative.
Granny was at her wits end as to what to do to bring the boy out of his shell, to be more active. She was unsure of herself for the first time in her life and seemed to second guess every thought she had.
In July of eighty-nine she sat Kenny down one night and then read him a letter that had come from Gordon’s younger brother, Bob, asking if he might come and visit them.
She seemed to think it was a good idea to let him come.
At first Kenny didn’t say anything one way or the other, but in his own mind he didn’t think it would be a good idea at all.
Granny then went on to explain to him that she had good reason to allow the visit. His other grandmother, Edith was trying to get custody of Kenny. And that would mean that she and Kenny might be separated. And he would have to go and live with her instead.
Kenny didn’t completely understand it all, but apparently Edith had hired a lawyer and was going to go to court. Granny told him that his other Grandmother was saying that Kenny should stay with her instead because she had the staff to help look after him and Edith was on her own.
Granny figured that if Bob did visit them, then she would have a better chance of keeping Kenny with her. Besides that, Bob was an ex -priest who had had a breakdown and had been unable to continue in his field. Together she and Kenny could maybe help him get better and he could spend a lot of time with Kenny, which would be a good thing. She said it would be a positive to have a man around the house who Kenny could learn from.
Kenny didn’t like the idea of someone new coming into his life. It seemed to him that everyone who had cared for him, his parents and his sister and Gordon, had all died and left him. He could see no advantage to having this Bob character visit. He certainly didn’t give a damn about trying to help some stranger.
On the other hand, he did not want to be uprooted and forced to endure a new environment. He was reasonably comfortable with the way things were with Granny.
Granny obviously wanted him to agree with the idea though, and he figured he should probably do that, if he wanted things to stay the way they were.
So, he said that he thought it might be a good idea to let Bob at least come and visit. If he was anything like grandpa Gordon, it might be OK.
A week after they’d had that little talk, Granny got called to go to the school on the Wednesday. When she got there, she found Kenny waiting in the principal’s office and was told that he had been stealing things from the other kids in the class and had been caught red-handed.
Kenny would neither admit nor deny the thefts, nor would he agree to return items that had gone missing but had not been recovered.
Instead, he refused to speak, sitting mute throughout the entire session.
As a result, he was suspended from school until he was prepared to admit to the thefts and had also returned any articles that were still in his possession.
As they drove home in the little red Ford pickup, Granny tried to start a conversation with Kenny but he simply sat silently in the passenger seat and stared out the window.
Two weeks later, when Bob arrived for his visit, Kenny was still suspended.
Bob, who look very much like his brother Gordon, presented agreeably. He was well-groomed and neatly dressed in a suit and tie, and sported highly polished oxfords. Granny was obviously impressed.
To Kenny, who over the past few years had spent a good deal of time assessing others, Bob did not seem to be a person who had suffered a breakdown. He appeared to be confident, caring and very much in control of himself. Initially growling at the intruder, Old Sam had uncharacteristically made it clear that he didn’t like him from the get go and Kenny thought the dog probably had the right of it.
Bob had arrived with a single suitcase only, but Granny had later explained that away to Kenny, saying priests lived a very simple life.
It was apparent to Kenny that Granny was very taken with the man. He figured that was probably because he looked like Gordon and gave the appearance of an upright, caring and amiable individual.
Kenny wasn’t so sure about that. Nobody was that good.
He fleetingly wondered what might be beneath that polished surface. That said, he knew he would need more than this br
ief initial meeting to come to any serious conclusion about the newcomer.
As was his way, Kenny kept his thoughts to himself.
Within a few days, Bob had fully ingratiated himself with Granny.
Comfortably ensconced in living quarters located in the secluded far wing of the rambling house, Kenny and Granny saw little of him in the evenings, but during the day, he seemed to have all but stepped directly into Gordon’s shoes.
Kenny didn’t particularly enjoy this interruption of his earlier environment. He kept his thoughts to himself and while outwardly pleasant enough to the man, he figured he was losing even more of his life as Bob worked slowly but surely toward gaining the old woman’s complete confidence.
Bob seemed to be no end of help and advice, fixing little things that needed doing, helping here, there and everywhere.
Two weeks into the visit the advice was coming in a flow. Bob advised granny that Kenny didn’t need to go back to school if he didn’t want to. He and Granny could easily home-school him, whatever that entailed.
Granny readily agreed.
When he and Granny went to the next session with the psychologist, Bob drove them in the Ford and waited for them outside. At the end, when granny went in for her short talk with the psychologist, he told her that Kenny was no longer responding to the sessions and that he felt Kenny needed to begin seeing a psychiatrist.
On the way home, they went to McDonalds for a burger, Granny having told Bob that Gordon had always taken them there. While they ate, Granny told Bob what the psychologist had said. Bob nodded solemnly and then said that he had had some experience along that line and wasn’t overly supportive of the idea.
Kind of talking over Kenny’s head, Bob suggested that Kenny probably only needed to build a little self-confidence and just needed some firm male bonding. He felt that between him and Granny they could provide all the help Kenny needed to bring him out of his shell.
Granny seemed a little unsure of that, but she put the suggestion to Kenny directly, asking him if he wanted to do as the psychologist had suggested and begin sessions with a psychiatrist or instead try having just the three of them work it all out.
Kenny the Making of a Serial Killer 1 Page 4