from.”
“What’s this got to do with Wolf?”
It had everything to do with Wolf. I was growing increasingly convinced that my attempt to incinerate the bastard had failed, that the most prolific killer I had ever encountered—and the one who most needed to die—somehow had walked away from Armageddon.
The essential nature of the psychopath is the power to play the shell game on a person’s mind. When thereare too many intrusions, too much abuse from too many fathers—most of them made mad from their own sense of power and mission—something snaps inside. Then, it is up to each of us to watch out for the sleight of mind game
.
When I did not answer Lane, she left the room.
I walked to the kitchen counter, retrieved my copy of Peterson’s
Field Guide to the Birds,
and returned to the table. I placed the book next to my stone gorilla, sat, and stared, and waited. In five minutes, Lane was back.
She looked at me and quietly asked, “What’s he gonna say, Pop?”
She was playing a game that we had played since she was a child.
“Lincoln,” I said. “This has everything to do with John Wolf.”
I had traveled inside other people’s minds. They had wandered into mine. I knew what they thought and felt and what they were going to say before they said it. When they did not want anyone to know who they were, when
they
didn’t want to know who they were, I pushed their faces and their souls in front of a mirror. I exposed the fallacies in their thinking, and now, I feared, the fallacies in my own thinking were about to be put on display. I had made a monstrous mistake.
Lane stood in the doorway with a fax in her hand. “Right again, Pop,” she said, according to the script for our game.
“Charles S. Weathers
of Lincoln,
Nebraska,” I said, experiencing just a twinge of twisted admiration. “Charlie Starkweather? We have a killer with a sense of humor.”
Starkweather, like Peter Kurten, operated according to a retribution- or vengeance-based system. With his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Fúgate, in tow,Starkweather set out from Lincoln in 1957—killing eleven times before he was finished. Every injustice that the nineteen-year-old garbage collector had experienced fueled his role as the ultimate rebel. He strode into Nebraska’s death chamber, expressing only defiance right to the end. The executioner had to throw the switch on the electric chair three times—each a jolt of 2200 volts—before Starkweather agreed to die.
I flipped open my copy of Peterson and sought out the kingbird on page 108. The page was missing, excised neatly with a razor-sharp implement.
I was on my feet, grabbing my keys and moving toward the door. “You know how I feel about coincidence, Lane,” I said. “There’s no such thing. Like so many of Wolf’s victims, Janet’s throat was sliced with surgical precision. Wolf was trained as a marksman in the military. He grew up in Vermont, so he certainly knows his way around a deer rifle like a 30.06. He was consistent about signing in for his kills. Remember his fascination with birds? This time, instead of feathers, we get a page from a birding field guide—
my
fucking field guide, by the way. Who else would have the brass balls to kill Janet, shoot me, rip out a page from this book, then return to Janet’s?”
“Could we have a copycat on our hands, Pop?”
“No,” I said, slamming the door as I headed for my Jeep.
IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME THAT I HAD BEEN unable to follow Pop’s train of thought. He had come out of the hospital and latched on to Peter Kurten. Then it was Charles Starkweather. Now it was John Wolf.
I couldn’t keep up with him.
I remember one time when I was in my teens, and I wandered into Pop’s study He was so busy poring over some photographs at his desk, he didn’t notice me. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he got up and walked through the door that led to the garage. I followed him, passing
“What’s this got to do with Wolf?”
It had everything to do with Wolf. I was growing increasingly convinced that my attempt to incinerate the bastard had failed, that the most prolific killer I had ever encountered—and the one who most needed to die—somehow had walked away from Armageddon.
The essential nature of the psychopath is the power to play the shell game on a person’s mind. When thereare too many intrusions, too much abuse from too many fathers—most of them made mad from their own sense of power and mission—something snaps inside. Then, it is up to each of us to watch out for the sleight of mind game
.
When I did not answer Lane, she left the room.
I walked to the kitchen counter, retrieved my copy of Peterson’s
Field Guide to the Birds,
and returned to the table. I placed the book next to my stone gorilla, sat, and stared, and waited. In five minutes, Lane was back.
She looked at me and quietly asked, “What’s he gonna say, Pop?”
She was playing a game that we had played since she was a child.
“Lincoln,” I said. “This has everything to do with John Wolf.”
I had traveled inside other people’s minds. They had wandered into mine. I knew what they thought and felt and what they were going to say before they said it. When they did not want anyone to know who they were, when
they
didn’t want to know who they were, I pushed their faces and their souls in front of a mirror. I exposed the fallacies in their thinking, and now, I feared, the fallacies in my own thinking were about to be put on display. I had made a monstrous mistake.
Lane stood in the doorway with a fax in her hand. “Right again, Pop,” she said, according to the script for our game.
“Charles S. Weathers
of Lincoln,
Nebraska,” I said, experiencing just a twinge of twisted admiration. “Charlie Starkweather? We have a killer with a sense of humor.”
Starkweather, like Peter Kurten, operated according to a retribution- or vengeance-based system. With his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Fúgate, in tow,Starkweather set out from Lincoln in 1957—killing eleven times before he was finished. Every injustice that the nineteen-year-old garbage collector had experienced fueled his role as the ultimate rebel. He strode into Nebraska’s death chamber, expressing only defiance right to the end. The executioner had to throw the switch on the electric chair three times—each a jolt of 2200 volts—before Starkweather agreed to die.
I flipped open my copy of Peterson and sought out the kingbird on page 108. The page was missing, excised neatly with a razor-sharp implement.
I was on my feet, grabbing my keys and moving toward the door. “You know how I feel about coincidence, Lane,” I said. “There’s no such thing. Like so many of Wolf’s victims, Janet’s throat was sliced with surgical precision. Wolf was trained as a marksman in the military. He grew up in Vermont, so he certainly knows his way around a deer rifle like a 30.06. He was consistent about signing in for his kills. Remember his fascination with birds? This time, instead of feathers, we get a page from a birding field guide—
my
fucking field guide, by the way. Who else would have the brass balls to kill Janet, shoot me, rip out a page from this book, then return to Janet’s?”
“Could we have a copycat on our hands, Pop?”
“No,” I said, slamming the door as I headed for my Jeep.
IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME THAT I HAD BEEN unable to follow Pop’s train of thought. He had come out of the hospital and latched on to Peter Kurten. Then it was Charles Starkweather. Now it was John Wolf.
I couldn’t keep up with him.
I remember one time when I was in my teens, and I wandered into Pop’s study He was so busy poring over some photographs at his desk, he didn’t notice me. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he got up and walked through the door that led to the garage. I followed him, passing
Similar Books
