GRACE NOTES
Journal Entry #439
BARNES AND I HAD AN INTERESTING INSTANT MESSAGE CHAT ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE LOVELORN KILLER. I saved it … because I have it on the record that he’s finally agreed to go out with me!
Grace: On YouTube, I found an old unsolved-cases show about the Lovelorn Killer from about fifteen years ago. I’ll send you the link so you can check it out, because parts of it are hilarious. It has super cheesy reenactments with big-haired models screaming and clutching their faces like that Home Alone kid while someone off-screen waves a piece of rope at them. But they interviewed a real FBI profiler about the case. She said the usual stuff about how he probably had a fractured family with either an absent or domineering father and a weak-willed mother whom he blamed for the father’s misdeeds. I just can’t believe these people get paid to say this crap. Okay, so he had shitty parents. So did a lot of people, and they didn’t become murderers. This guy, if he ever gets caught, he’s going to end up in books with BTK and Bundy and Dahmer. A rarefied crowd. Don’t try to make him seem like the ordinary victim of a boo-hoo sad divorce.
Barnes: I agree with you. It’s like studying Einstein and trying to use his brain to explain how the rest of humanity understands physics. Still, it’s irresistible to imagine, isn’t it? What makes one human hunt and kill another just for the sport of it?
Grace: They say they have to try to think like him to be able to catch him. It hasn’t worked out great so far.
Barnes: Maybe we should give it a whirl.
Grace: Think like the killer?
Barnes: We’re trying to find him, aren’t we?
Grace: Sure, but if you think like him you’ll only see what he sees. The point is to find his mistakes.
Barnes: Okay, so start there. Name one of his mistakes.
Grace: Jeez, I don’t know. Katie Duffy, I guess. Something went wrong there because he never sent the letter after he killed her.
Barnes: Never sent it or never wrote it?
Grace: We can’t answer that because we don’t know one way or the other. Maybe he sent it and it just wasn’t received.
Barnes: Wouldn’t he just send another?
Grace: Huh. That’s a good point. There’s definitely a reason why no letter surfaced after Katie Duffy’s murder. So … what? He didn’t love her like the others?
Barnes: Or he didn’t pick her. At least not for the same reasons.
Grace: She was a cop’s wife at one time, living in a neighborhood full of them. Maybe she was a message victim.
Barnes: Ah, who the hell knows? Maybe his domineering father tore up the letter.
Grace: LOL! See, the profilers were right all along!
Barnes: They could be on to something. Maybe the killer’s father hit his mother and hit the boy when he was a child. It made him feel … what? Humiliated? Powerless?
Grace: Sure. Who wouldn’t be?
Barnes: But then one day the boy takes his humiliation and pain outside the house. Maybe the most recent whipping is still stinging on his body when he finds some creature in the yard. A chipmunk or maybe a frog. He catches the thing and watches it struggle in his grasp. He sees its frantic beating heart, which is just like his own racing heart when his father took the switch to him. He takes a rock and crushes the creature. All the life goes out of it, and now he’s got just a dead thing he can split open and examine. He forgets his pain.
Grace: Animal abuse is common among serial offenders. A lot of them start there.
Barnes: Until one day it isn’t enough. Killing a cat or a squirrel doesn’t take the edge off anymore. He starts having fantasies about snuffing the life out of humans. A girl with long dark hair catches his eye in the school hallways.
Grace: She won’t talk to him. Doesn’t pay him any attention.
Barnes: No, I don’t think that’s right. She sees him but dismisses him. He’s a nobody. He’s the guy she’ll ask to borrow a pencil when she forgets hers, the guy she asks to pass on her love note—the one she wrote to the guy she really likes. She trusts he’ll do it because he seems so nice. She can’t see the thoughts in his head when he takes the note or gives her the pencil. She thinks he’s harmless.
Grace: That’s part of his power. He likes that he’s standing in front of her and she has no idea what he is. He thinks about the moment he’ll reveal himself and how sorry she will be. How humiliated and ashamed that she should’ve seen it coming.
Barnes: Yes, yes. Exactly. He wants to transfer all his rage and embarrassment onto these girls and then choke it out of them. He wants to love them but they won’t let him. They disappoint him every time.
Grace: I hope they spit in his face. That’s what I’d do. I hope they let him know he’s still nothing but a loser outside in the real world, where you can’t rope a woman like cattle. All this theorizing is fun, but we still have the same problem as the profilers. We can sit around and pontificate about how he probably wet the bed as a teenager and feels insecure about the size of his penis. The cops can’t go checking everybody’s pants. We need something that we can use.
Barnes: I agree. But what?
Grace: I’m working on a theory. I’ve been to the places he’s been and I’ve read all the stories. I have an idea about how he’s choosing the women, how he was present at all these scenes and nobody saw him or noticed anyone unusual. The newspapers had the answer all along, only it wasn’t on page one with the big headlines. You have to go back a couple of days beforehand to see it.
Barnes: What? Don’t hold back, woman. Reveal your mysteries!
Grace: I will. Say, over dinner at Sacco’s on Saturday night? I’m buying.
Barnes: Grace, we’ve been over this. I like you, but …
Grace: It’s just a dinner. I won’t jump your bones in the alley afterward. Not unless you want me to.
Barnes: Okay, we’ll have dinner. But can I at least get a hint about your theory?
Grace: I’ll say this much: You’d better go close your windows. There’s a storm rolling in.