The Killing Type (20 page)

“We are as shocked as any of
you,” he says, his voice wavering ever so slightly on
you
, “and we are
determined to find this killer so that,” the voice breaking,
creaking, cracking with some obviousness on
killer
, and there is nothing after
the
so that
but a
waving of his hands in front of his face as if he is trying to flag
down some taxi that is invisible to the rest of us, or hopelessly
throwing them in the air as some other invisible vehicle bears down
on him.

“Chief, chief,” the reporters call,
but he rushes away. I cannot be absolutely certain, and I will have
to corroborate this detail before I could include it in my book,
but it looked like the man was crying.

I have read about it in my
now voluminous research, and there is a rather common thing that
happens at about this stage in a string of unsolved serial
killings, that is, ironically about the same time that the anger is
at its highest pitch.
⁴
The town begins
to buckle, to lose its hope and even its will to ever find the
killer. Like that gazelle you may have seen on the nature programs
in the deathly clutches of a cheetah, at some point they just give
up, both gazelle and town. The cheetah’s intentions are obvious and
at first there is a self-righteous struggle by the gazelle, even a
sense of confidence that this assailant can be shaken off and life
can return to normal, can return at all.

A whole town can seem eerily subdued
when the temptation to quit wrests away independence and the will
to fight and live. There is a high degree of rationalization and
self-deception which accompany this capitulation. The theists, God
bless them, run around town—metaphorically, of course: I refer
chiefly to their appearances in the media—spouting something about
the citizens deserving this as punishment for a lack of moral
rectitude or some other sort of blather. They “stick by” their
“guns,” as they unfortunately phrase it, and then go on to
characterize the criticism they receive as the expected result of
their being the only people brave enough to tell the truth, and on
and on it goes, of course. Quite annoying, not to mention
outrageously bereft of logic, common sense, and even a hint of
sympathy.

And there are the crazy people, mostly
young men who had teetered on the brink of insanity during those
halcyon, murder-free days in Knosting anyway, ex-convicts, child
molesters, men who had not adjusted well to the breakup with their
girlfriends, men who still live with their mothers. One example … A
fellow at one of the downtown Tim Hortons is knocked to the floor
as he is halfway through his order, a boot pressed against his
throat, and the other patrons either flee or watch desultorily as
he is dragged from there to an awkward position strewn across one
of the tables near the door. In fact, I am about two metres from
the action, and witness in horror the inane “interrogation,” as in
one of those countries where the verdict is decided as soon as you
are arrested, and the judicial process—including, as the vanilla
terminology has it, “questioning”—is meant only to elicit a
confession which the poor man resorts to only to ease the physical
pain.

Here amid the smells of
donuts and coffee and the sweetest of sugars that are bad for you,
the questions are just shouts and no time is allowed for answers
anyway. It is all rather embarrassing, I find, and the only thing
that prevents me from intervening is that the same stupidity will
be unleashed upon the poor researcher who in their eyes must be a
sympathizer, an assistant,
a killer
too
! A police car shows up outside, the red
lights spinning, and the accusers decide in a lucid moment that
they don’t have much of a case after all, and they dash out the
door quickly, and then down a dark road behind the hotel before the
officers are even out of their cruiser. I have to say that I am
nearly as unimpressed with them as I am with the thugs, the latter
for their small-minded machismo but the former for their lethargic
attitude toward crime even in what should be a supercharged time
when, after all, people have been killed. One of them simply turns
around casually to watch the vigilantes make the final turn around
the corner and off into the night, and then—mirabile dictu!—walks
up to the counter and orders a double double and a cruller. His
fellow officer, no less incompetent, sits and waits at the table
where only minutes before a form of illegal justice, an
assault
, was being
perpetrated on a man who I presume is innocent.

The man demonstrates far
too little outrage for my taste, and I fear that it is this
attitude which pervades the Knosting police force and perhaps
explains the lack of success in apprehending the killer. Shouldn’t
all officers be hungry and angry now? Shouldn’t they be chasing
down anyone, be it killer or dough-headed vigilante, eschewing the
hat and (as the raver put it once) “going after the guy,” heading
towards that hotel, rounding the corner, jumping him when his
attention flags and he’s out of breath? Instead, he’s ever so calm,
sitting and waiting and waiting,
sighing
for God sake when the delay
for a donut is a few excruciating seconds longer than he requires,
peevish instead of enraged.

“What the fuck?” I hear a woman next
me say, not quite sotto voce but not loud enough that the officers
could hear her either. The question is not directed at me nor
anyone else in particular, I don’t think, but seems to be rather an
unconscious and incredulous verbal reaction to the situation, to
seeing the reverse of heroism. I look over at her as a gesture of
support and she just purses her lips and shakes her head at me, and
I feel sorry for the poor woman that the lack of police action has
bereft her of articulate means of protest.

I rotate in my seat a little for a
better view as the officers finally pair up at a table. There is a
symmetry of steaming paper cups and lumps of dough in front of them
and they begin to eat and drink in what appears almost as
choreographed alternation—sip, sip, eat, eat, sip, sip—like an old
couple whose connection has degraded to mere mimicry. The
conversation between consumptions is muted: I think I hear the
words “belly” and “suss,” but I can’t be sure.

I tire of the whole business and get
up to leave, but when I scan the place one more time I see the
woman signalling to me to come to her table. I check behind me to
confirm that her attention is not meant for anyone else (it’s not),
and so I semi-reluctantly walk over and sit right back down again,
at her table. A slight headache is depriving me, I think, of the
ability to make better decisions.

“Can you believe this
shit?” she asks. “I mean,
fuck
”—she lowers her voice—“are they
going to do
anything
?”

“I know what you mea—” I start before
she interrupts.

“I was in here like two
weeks ago, same fuckin thing. No cops that time, but two assholes,
different from these two just now, but these two guys razzing this
other guy who for all I know didn’t do anything, at least probably
didn’t
kill
anyone
for God sake.” She pauses, as if to catch her breath.

“Well,” I say a little hesitantly, “I
know that—some people are getting fed up with the whole thing.
Murders happening, the police not able to even identify any
suspects, the—”

“Yes, but that doesn’t give these
assholes the right to be harrassing people.”

“I agree with you, but it may explain
where all of this vigilante behaviour is coming from.”

She just shakes her head, for what
reason I am not quite sure.

“What’s your theory?” I
ask.

“Theory?”

“About who the killer is.”

“Oh. You know, I’m not sure. I mean, I
do believe that it’s someone right here in Knosting. I don’t think
the guy is from Toronto or New York state or anything like that.
Who knows? It’s sort of like a situation where every option seems,
you know seems—”

“Implausible,” I suggest.

She looks at me. “Well, if that means
that nothing seems like the right theory, then I agree with you.”
She laughs, and I do too, and I realize that I haven’t done so in
weeks.

We chat for a while, the conversation
eventually easing from criticism of the police to her unemployment
situation, the child she wishes she could see more. I stand up
abruptly and say that I have to go, even though strictly speaking I
do not. “Oh,” she says, but remains seated, and I tip a
non-existent hat on my head and leave precipitously.

The walk home is troubled. Nothing
happens, but at every sound, every shadow, I fear that the men will
come barrelling around the corner, or (worse) the police will
choose to do their job not on small-minded thugs but on a weak,
innocent scholar who happens to be out later than he should be. The
wind is gusting a little and I struggle with my key at the door (it
will not fit, it is upside down): spooked, I check behind me before
entering, confirm the absence of murderers or other monsters, and
enter into warmth and security.

Alas, the feeling doesn’t last long:
my heart is wrenched as I check my email and find this:

Well, things are churning
right along, aren’t they, old boy? “O-Please,” I hear you say, “let
there indeed be only the two remaining victims that have been
promised.” Crude, don’t you think, checking them off like that?
One, two, three, A, B, C. Eight, nine, ta-da! ...
ten
!

I have to admit that in
spite of my intensive research, hours spent poring over deathly
monographs, exposing myself to the worst that humanity is capable
of, I still have considerable difficulty stomaching this degree of
absolute lack of conscience. Or understanding it, as much as one
can hope to understand anything so antithetical to life itself. I
consider a reply, clack one out in anger and almost send it, but
fortunately I reconsider. I like the
idea
of replying, but haven’t a clue
how that idea could be realized. What, dear reader, could I
possibly say?

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.