The Killing Type (19 page)

“I’m kind of exhausted,” he says when
we are in the foyer. “I hate to be rude, but I really have to get
some sleep. Is it OK if we just catch up in the
morning?”

“Of course.”

I watch him as he pads down the hall
to his bedroom. He’s left his suitcase here and I can see that he
simply turns on the light, gets undressed, turns off the light, and
then gets into bed. I trace his steps to the entrance to his room
and gently close the door.

In the morning, we don’t have much
chance for catching up, as I have to head off to the airport and
Leonard is still not quite revived. I insist that he not drive me,
that I can take a cab, and he relinquishes my point easily. I hug
him with some affection as I head out the door and as we disengage
and I am still close to him, his wan pallor is striking.

In the cab on the way to the airport,
I review some of the fleeting memories of what I did: I see a pier,
I see a tiny car parked in a suburban driveway, I see a woman
running alone whom I asked for directions and who did not just slow
down and run on the spot, but simply stopped next to the car—an
image which arouses feelings in me that I have not experienced for
quite some time.

I wander in something of a daze when I
am in the airport, half-forgetting where I’ve come from and where I
am going. Victoria, yes, and, and—Knosting, yes, Knosting by way of
Toronto. The people seem to be not so much milling about waiting
for their own flights, but there to act as a skillfully
choreographed obstacle course. I read fitfully and finally plop
down in my seat, 19B, with relief. Why did I ever leave
home?

Chapter 19

Ullrich, Priscilla,
poisoned.

The police eventually
concluded that succinylcholine (one of the drugs that some American
states still administer in lethal injections) was used. My research
for the book has made me a regular feature at news conferences and
the like, and I do not think I merely flatter myself by saying that
I am a known and trusted presence by the police. One officer
confides this detail to me which had gone unreported (and, alas,
unasked) by the
Gazette
and other media: “You know, technically it is a poisoning—the
killer injected the stuff—but it’s suffocation, what we call
asphyxia, which kills the person. The drug paralyzes the whole
body, even the respiratory muscles, so that the person just can’t
breathe. It may sound simple and clean and peaceful, but it’s a
pretty horrific way to die.”

He also tells me some of
the other details about this death, preliminary conclusions which
they’ve reached in these early stages of the forensic
investigation. It appears that the murderer broke into the woman’s
apartment, or, rather, that he simply opened a door which had been
inadvertently left unlocked. “Priscilla,” the officer continues, in
a touching but somewhat pathetic conversion to the first name, “was
tied up, gagged, and, we think, injected while the bad guy sat at
the kitchen table and on a single sheet of paper, using a pen which
he brought with him and took away with him, wrote
PU #7
, a reference of
course to this being the seventh killing.”

There was a sense of genuine concern
in his voice and in his small actions (pursing of lips, bowing of
head, voice lilting and breaking ever so slightly as he described
some of the crude details) that surprised me, inured as I am after
about twenty more years of life experience than he has had, and a
full decade in academia. I do not consider myself jaded or
unsympathetic but rather, shall we say, practical, commonsensical,
realistic. The rigour and discipline demanded by the writing of a
book of the type I am engaged in also diminish my sentimentality
and any easy tendency toward overt emotion. It is perhaps unseemly
and selfish to mention at this juncture, but my treatment at
Toronto University by that execrable department head (and the other
assorted toadies under his control) also has hardened me slightly,
so that I can stand apart and intellectually appreciate the sorrow
of a situation, but not be so overcome that I stammer into
ineffectiveness.

But where was I?

Yes. Priscilla Ullrich. The
police officer. I note the killer’s heinous reference to “#7,” the
reduction of serial murder to a simple enumeration which is being
worked through like a list of goals, but I can’t take any solace in
the fact that there are “only” three more killings left, if one can
trust a madman’s email. The swath through this city is wide, “the
damage has been done,” as the raver ranted to me just last night.
Though not escaping the bonds of verbal cliché, he does, as he
would say himself (and with these words no doubt), “have a point.”
The town has changed. There are fewer people on Princess Street at
any time of the day, and along residential streets I have noticed
an increased circumspection, family members actually clustered
closer together on verandas, as if to fend off attack even from
humble academics out for an evening stroll. The media deal only in
extremes: interspersed among the column inches and live updates of
minutiae about who has been killed and where and when and how
(
lots of how
, but
alas no why or by whom), there are stories about puppies being born
or rescued or enhancing the residents’ lives in a seniors
home.

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
fuck
s 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.