It was early October—leaf-burning season. Fall was my favorite time of year, not because of school or harvest vegetables or anything mundane, but because the citizens of Clayton County would rake up their leaves and burn them, flames soaring high into the crisp autumn air. Our yard was small and treeless, but the old couple across the street had a large yard full of oaks and maples, and they had no children or grandchildren to take care of it for them. In the summer I mowed their lawn for five dollars a week; in the winter I shoveled their walks for cups of hot chocolate; and in the fall I raked their leaves for the pure thrill of watching them burn.
Fire is a brief, temporary thing—the very definition of impermanence. It comes suddenly, roaring into life when heat and fuel come together and ignite, and dances hungrily while everything around it blackens and curls. When there is nothing left to consume, it disappears, leaving nothing behind but the ash of its unused fuel—those bits of wood and leaf and paper that were too impure to burn, too unworthy to join the fire in its dance.
It seems to me that fire leaves nothing behind at all—the ash really isn’t part of the flame, it’s part of the fuel. Fire changes it from one thing to another, drawing off its energy and turning it into . . . well, into more fire. Fire doesn’t create anything new, it simply is. If other things must be destroyed in order for fire to exist, that’s all right with fire. As far as fire is concerned, that’s what those things are there for in the first place. When they’re gone, the fire goes, too, and though you may find evidence of its passing you’ll find nothing of the fire itself—no light, no heat, no tiny red fragments of cast-off flame. It disappears back to wherever it came from, and if it feels or remembers, we have no way of knowing if it feels or remembers us.
Sometimes, peering into the bright blue heart of a dancing flame, I ask if it remembers me. “We’ve seen each other before. We know each other. Remember me when I’m gone.”
Mr. Crowley, the old man whose leaves I burned, liked to sit on the porch and “watch the world go by,” as he called it. If I happened to be raking his yard while he was out, he would sit and tell me about his life. He had been a water-system engineer for the county for most of his life, until last year, when his health got too bad and he retired. He was old anyway. Today he ambled out slowly and painfully propped his leg up on a stool after sitting down.
“Afternoon to you, John,” he said. “Afternoon to you.” He was an old man but a large one, big-framed and powerful. His health was going, but he was far from feeble.
“You can leave these be, you know,” he said, gesturing at the leaf-covered lawn. “There’s plenty more to fall before we’re done, and you’ll just have to do it again.”
“It lasts longer this way,” I said, and he nodded contentedly.
“That it does, John, that it does.”
I raked for a while longer, pulling the leaves together with smooth, even strokes. The other reason I wanted to do his yard that afternoon was that it had been almost a month and the serial killer hadn’t struck again. The tension was making me nervous, and I needed to burn something. I hadn’t told anyone my suspicion that it was a serial killer, because who would believe me? I was obsessed with serial killers as it was, they’d say. Of course I’d think this would be one. I didn’t mind. It doesn’t matter what other people think when you’re right.
“Hey John, come here for a second,” said Mr. Crowley. He gestured me over to his chair. I grimaced at the interruption, but calmed myself and went over anyway. Talking was normal—it’s what normal people do together. I needed the practice. “What do you know about cell phones?” he asked, showing me his.
“I know a little,” I said.
“I want to send my wife a kiss.”
“You want to send a kiss?”
“Kay and I got these yesterday,” he said, fiddling awkwardly with the phone, “and we’re supposed to be able to take photos and send them to each other. So I want to send Kay a kiss.”
“You want to take a picture of yourself puckering up for a kiss and then send it to her?” Sometimes I didn’t understand people at all. Watching Mr. Crowley talk about love was like hearing him speak another language—I had no idea what was going on.
“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” he said, handing me the phone with a shaking hand. “Show me how it’s done.”
The camera button was pretty clearly labeled, so I showed him how to do it and he took a shaky picture of his lips. I showed him how to send the photo, and went back to my raking.
The idea that I might be sociopathic was nothing new to me—I’d known for a long time that I didn’t connect with other people. I didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand me, and whatever emotional language they spoke seemed beyond my capacity to learn. Antisocial personality disorder could not be officially diagnosed until you were eighteen years old—prior to that it was just “conduct disorder.” But let’s be honest: conduct disorder is just a nice way of telling parents their kids have antisocial personality disorder. I saw no reason to dance around the issue. I was a sociopath, and it was better to deal with it now.
I raked the leaf pile into a large fire pit around the side of the house. The Crowleys used the pit for bonfires and hot dog roasts in the summer, and invited the whole neighborhood. I came every time, ignoring the people and tending solely to the fire—if fire was a drug, Mr. Crowley was my best enabler.
“Johnny!” Mr. Crowley shouted from the porch, “she sent a kiss back! Come look!” I smiled at him, forcing myself to feign the absent emotional connection. I wanted to be a real boy.
The lack of emotional connection with other people has the odd effect of making you feel separate and alien—as if you were observing the human race from somewhere else, unattached and unwelcome. I’ve felt like that for years, long before I met Dr. Neblin and long before Mr. Crowley sent ridiculous love notes on his cell phone. People scurry around, doing their little jobs and raising their little families and shouting their meaningless emotions to the world, and all the while you just watch from the sidelines, bewildered. This drives some sociopaths to feel superior, as if the whole of humanity were simply animals to be hunted or put down; others feel a hot, jealous rage, desperate to have what they cannot. I simply felt alone, one leaf sitting miles away from a giant, communal pile.
I stacked some kindling carefully at the base of the leaf pile and lit a match in its heart. Flames caught and grew, sucking in air, and a moment later the pile was roaring with heat, the bright fire dancing wickedly above it.
When the fire burned out, what would be left?
That night the killer struck again.
I saw it on TV during breakfast; the first death had attracted a little out-of-town attention purely for its gory nature, but the second—just as gory as the first, and far more public—had caught the eye of a city reporter and his camera crew. They were there, much to the consternation of the Clayton County sheriff, broadcasting distant, blurred images of a disemboweled body all across the state. Someone must have managed to take the picture before the cops covered it up and pushed the bystanders back.
There was no question now. It was a serial killer. My mom came in from the other room, her makeup half done; I looked at her, and she looked back. Neither of us said a word.
“This is Ted Rask coming to you live from Clayton, a normally peaceful town that is today the scene of a truly gruesome murder—the second of this nature in less than a month. This is a Five Live News exclusive report. I’m here with Sheriff Meier. Tell me, Sheriff, what do we know about the victim?”
Sheriff Meier was frowning under his wide, gray mustache, and glanced up testily as the reporter stepped toward him. Rask was famous for sensationalist melodrama, and from the sheriff’s scowl, even I could tell he wasn’t pleased about the reporter’s presence.
“At this time we do not wish to cause undue distress to the victim’s family,” said the sheriff, “or needless fear in the people of this county. We appreciate the cooperation of everybody in remaining calm and not spreading rumors or misinformation about this incident.”
He had completely dodged the reporter’s question. At least he wasn’t rolling over for Rask without a fight.
“Do you know yet who the victim is?” asked the reporter.
“He was carrying ID, but we do not wish to release that information at this time, pending notification of the family.”
“And the killer,” said the reporter, “do you have any leads about who that might be?”
“We have no comment at this time.”
“With this incident coming so soon on the heels of the last one, and being so similar in nature, do you think the two might be connected?”
The sheriff closed his eyes briefly, a visual sigh, and paused a moment before speaking. “We do not wish to discuss the nature of this case at this time, to help preserve the integrity of our investigation. As I said before, we appreciate everybody’s discretion and calm attitude in not spreading rumors about this incident.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” said the reporter, and the camera swung back to the reporter’s face. “Again, if you’re just joining us, we’re in Clayton County, where a killer has just struck, possibly for the second time, leaving a dead body and a terrified town in his wake.”
“Stupid Ted Rask,” said Mom, stalking to the fridge. “The last thing this town needs is a panic about a mass murderer.”
Mass murder and serial killing are completely different things, but I didn’t especially want to start an argument about the distinction right then.
“I think the last thing we want are the killings,” I said carefully. “Panic about the killings would be next to last.”
“In a small town like this, a panic could be just as bad, or worse,” she said, pouring a glass of milk. “People get scared and leave, or they stay at home nights with their doors locked, and suddenly businesses start to fail and tensions go even higher.” She took a swig of milk. “All it takes then is one small-minded person to start looking for a scapegoat, and panic turns into chaos pretty quick.”
“We can’t show you the body in detail,” said Rask on TV, “because it truly is a gruesome, terrible sight, and the police won’t let us get close enough, but we do have some details. Nobody seems to have witnessed the actual murder, but those who have seen the body up close report that the scene of death is much more bloody than the previous killing. If it is the same killer, it may be that he is becoming more violent, which could be an ominous sign of things to come.”
“I can’t believe he’s saying this,” said Mom, folding her arms angrily. “I’m writing a letter to the station today.”
“There is a patch of oil or something similar on the ground near the body,” Rask continued, “possibly from a leaky engine in a getaway car. We’ll bring you more details as they come in. This is Ted Rask with a Five Live News exclusive report: Death Stalks America’s Heartland.”
I thought back to the stain I had seen behind the Wash-n-Dry—black and oily, like rancid mud. Was the patch of oil next to the new victim’s body the same thing? There were deep currents in this story, and I was determined to figure them all out.
“The central question of psychological profiling,” I said, staring intently at Max as he ate his lunch, “is not ‘what is the killer doing,’ but ‘what is the killer doing that he doesn’t have to do?’ ”
“Dude,” said Max, “I think it’s a werewolf.”
“It’s not a werewolf,” I said.
“You saw the news today, the killer has ‘the intelligence of a man and the ferocity of a beast.’ What else is it going to be?”
“Werewolves aren’t even real.”
“Tell that to Jeb Jolley and the dead guy on Route 12,” said Max, taking another bite and then continuing on with a mouth full of food. “Something tore them up pretty good, and it wasn’t some pansy serial killer.”
“The legends of werewolves were probably started because of serial killers,” I said. “Vampires, too—they’re men who hunt and kill other men, and that sounds like a serial killer to me. They didn’t have psychology back then, so they just made up some crazy monster to explain it away.”
“Where do you get this stuff?”
“Crimelibrary.com,” I said, “but I’m trying to make a point here. If you want to get into the mind of a serial killer, you have to ask ‘What is he doing that he doesn’t have to do?’ ”
“Why do I want to get into the mind of a serial killer?”
“What?” I asked. “Why would you not—okay, listen, we need to figure out why he does what he does.”
“No we don’t,” said Max, “that’s what police are for. We’re in high school, and what we need to figure out is what color Marci’s bra is.”
Why do I spend time with this kid?
“Think of it this way,” I said. “Let’s say that you are a big fan of . . . what are you a fan of?”
“Marci Jensen,” he said, “and Halo, and Green Lantern, and—”
“Green Lantern,” I said. “Comic books. You’re a big fan of comic books, so let’s say that a new comic-book author moves into town.”
“Cool,” said Max.
“Yeah,” I said, “and he’s working on a brand new comic book, and you want to find out what it is. Would that be cool?”
“I just said it was cool,” said Max.
“You’d think about it all the time, and try to guess what he’s doing, and compare your theories with other people’s theories, and you’d love it.”
“Sure.”
“That’s what this is like for me,” I said. “A new serial killer is like a new author, working on a new project, and he’s right here in town under our noses and I’m trying to figure him out.”
“You’re crazy, man,” said Max. “You’re really, head-on collision, insane-asylum crazy.”
“My therapist actually thinks I’m doing pretty well,” I said.
“So whatever,” said Max. “What’s our big question?”
“What is the killer doing that he doesn’t have to do?”
“How do we know what he has to do?”
“All he technically has to do,” I said, “assuming a basic goal of killing people, is shoot them. That’s the easiest way.”
“But he’s tearing them up,” said Max.
“Then that’s our first thing: he approaches them in person and attacks them hand-to-hand.” I pulled out a notebook and wrote it down. “That probably means that he wants to see his victims up close.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. What else?”
“He attacks them at night, in the dark,” said Max. He was getting into it now. “And he grabs them when there’s nobody else around.”
“That probably falls into the category of something he has to do,” I said, “especially if he wants to attack them personally—he doesn’t want anybody else to see him.”
“Doesn’t that count for our list?”
“I guess, but nobody who kills really wants to be seen, so it’s not a very unique trait.”
“Just put it on the list,” said Max, “it doesn’t always have to be just your ideas on the list.”
“Okay,” I said, writing it down, “it’s on the list: he doesn’t want to be seen; he doesn’t want anyone to know who he is.”
“Or what he is.”
“Or what he is,” I said, “whatever. Now let’s move on.”
“He pulls out his victim’s guts,” said Max, “and he stacks them in a pile. That’s pretty cool. We could call him the Gut Stacker.”
“Why would he stack their guts in a pile?” I asked. A girl walked by our table and gave us a weird look, so I lowered my voice. “Maybe he wants to take time with his victims, and enjoy the kill.”
“You think he takes out their guts while they’re still alive?” asked Max.
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I said. “What I mean is, maybe he wants to enjoy the kill after the fact. There’s a famous Ted Bundy quote—”
“Who?”
“Ted Bundy,” I said. “He killed thirty or so people around the country in the seventies—he’s the one they invented the term ‘serial killer’ for.”
“You know some weird crap, John.”
“Anyway,” I said, “in an interview before he was executed he said that after you killed someone, if you had enough time, they could be whoever you wanted them to be.”
Max was silent for a moment.
“I don’t know if I like talking about this anymore,” he said.
“What do you mean? It didn’t bother you a minute ago.”
“A minute ago we were talking about guts falling out,” said Max, “and that’s just gross, not scary. This stuff is kind of messed up, though.”
“But we just started,” I said. “We’re just getting into it. It’s a serial-killer profile, of course it’s going to be messed up.”
“It’s just kind of freaking me out, okay?” said Max. “I don’t know. I gotta go to the bathroom.” He got up and left, but left his food behind. At least he wasn’t leaving for good. Not that I cared if he did.
Why couldn’t I just have a normal conversation with someone? About something I wanted to talk about? Was I really that screwed up?
Yeah, I was.