them on the floor in haphazard piles that she would neaten up later. She read more details about the deaths of Schlosser’s two other young victims. They had not died exactly the way Heidi had died.
Vera had been only fourteen years old when Heidi Duplessis, a sophomore from her own school, had been forced out of the home where she was babysitting and murdered hours later in the woods. In the hierarchy of high school cliques, Heidi had been a moderately popular girl—a girl who wore expensive, preppy clothes and had a head full of spiral-permed curls. She was known for a ready smile filled with short, white, square teeth that flashed in the middle of her deeply tanned face. Heidi Duplessis, age fifteen: friendly, well liked, unthreatening, but still not someone who would have deigned to speak to Vera, even if their paths had crossed directly.
Heidi had been strangled to unconsciousness before she was stabbed, though one stab wound was ruled as her ultimate cause of death; with Schlosser’s other two victims, Margot Pooler and Rosemary Trang, he had skipped the preamble and gone straight to the stabbing. Though Vera knew that killers sometimes switched up their modus operandi, she also couldn’t lose sight of the fact that serial killers tended to like the consistency of patterns and that each new mode of killing had its reasons.
Vera also knew the strangler and the stabber had something in common. They didn’t mind demonstrating a sense of intimacy toward their victims. They were not afraid to get close. She thought about the papers she had just reviewed and dropped down on her hands and knees, sorting through the pile until she found the page with the passage she wanted to read again.
VACHON: What else can you tell us about the murder of Heidi Duplessis?
SCHLOSSER: Well, what do you want to know? It started with choking, like I said. I was holding her throat, and I moved in real close, so if you were looking at us from far away, you’d have thought it’s just a man and a woman about to kiss. But my intent was just to get a real good look in her eyes so I could see the life go out of them bit by bit.
Vera copied these exact words into her notebook and studied them, thinking.
Now this,
she told herself,
might really mean something. This might be put to good use somewhere in my Schlosser book.
But she was beginning to lose steam, now that the sun was threatening to come up. Two more hours before she had to leave for school, not enough to go back to bed but just long enough to grow weary before her workday even began.
She placed her head on her table, on top of her folded arms, and closed her eyes, still thinking of Schlosser’s confession. The words
just a man and a woman about to kiss
floated through her mind in the disembodied way that thoughts did when she was close to sleep.
I could make something of this,
she thought from this far-off place, but she knew she would not—not on this morning, at least. The hours never worked in her favor. And even if they did—even if there were finally time enough to begin to write what she wanted to write—something always got in the way of it. Her unfinished schoolwork waiting to be graded. Her lesson plans waiting to be drafted and finalized. Her own fears and doubts causing her to look at the reality of Schlosser like a child peeping through her fingers at something—something she knew she shouldn’t see but wanted to.
• • •
Vera considered herself a creature of habit—someone who came into her own once she’d carved out a routine for herself.
By the time three weeks of teaching at the Wallace School had passed, she felt as though she had begun to get her footing in her three classes and had developed an innate sense of the rhythm and pace she could expect from each set of girls. More important, she had a better handle on each girl as a result of reading her journal entries; she had seen each girl’s whole
being
emerge more vividly on the page, though
Vera had been only fourteen years old when Heidi Duplessis, a sophomore from her own school, had been forced out of the home where she was babysitting and murdered hours later in the woods. In the hierarchy of high school cliques, Heidi had been a moderately popular girl—a girl who wore expensive, preppy clothes and had a head full of spiral-permed curls. She was known for a ready smile filled with short, white, square teeth that flashed in the middle of her deeply tanned face. Heidi Duplessis, age fifteen: friendly, well liked, unthreatening, but still not someone who would have deigned to speak to Vera, even if their paths had crossed directly.
Heidi had been strangled to unconsciousness before she was stabbed, though one stab wound was ruled as her ultimate cause of death; with Schlosser’s other two victims, Margot Pooler and Rosemary Trang, he had skipped the preamble and gone straight to the stabbing. Though Vera knew that killers sometimes switched up their modus operandi, she also couldn’t lose sight of the fact that serial killers tended to like the consistency of patterns and that each new mode of killing had its reasons.
Vera also knew the strangler and the stabber had something in common. They didn’t mind demonstrating a sense of intimacy toward their victims. They were not afraid to get close. She thought about the papers she had just reviewed and dropped down on her hands and knees, sorting through the pile until she found the page with the passage she wanted to read again.
VACHON: What else can you tell us about the murder of Heidi Duplessis?
SCHLOSSER: Well, what do you want to know? It started with choking, like I said. I was holding her throat, and I moved in real close, so if you were looking at us from far away, you’d have thought it’s just a man and a woman about to kiss. But my intent was just to get a real good look in her eyes so I could see the life go out of them bit by bit.
Vera copied these exact words into her notebook and studied them, thinking.
Now this,
she told herself,
might really mean something. This might be put to good use somewhere in my Schlosser book.
But she was beginning to lose steam, now that the sun was threatening to come up. Two more hours before she had to leave for school, not enough to go back to bed but just long enough to grow weary before her workday even began.
She placed her head on her table, on top of her folded arms, and closed her eyes, still thinking of Schlosser’s confession. The words
just a man and a woman about to kiss
floated through her mind in the disembodied way that thoughts did when she was close to sleep.
I could make something of this,
she thought from this far-off place, but she knew she would not—not on this morning, at least. The hours never worked in her favor. And even if they did—even if there were finally time enough to begin to write what she wanted to write—something always got in the way of it. Her unfinished schoolwork waiting to be graded. Her lesson plans waiting to be drafted and finalized. Her own fears and doubts causing her to look at the reality of Schlosser like a child peeping through her fingers at something—something she knew she shouldn’t see but wanted to.
• • •
Vera considered herself a creature of habit—someone who came into her own once she’d carved out a routine for herself.
By the time three weeks of teaching at the Wallace School had passed, she felt as though she had begun to get her footing in her three classes and had developed an innate sense of the rhythm and pace she could expect from each set of girls. More important, she had a better handle on each girl as a result of reading her journal entries; she had seen each girl’s whole
being
emerge more vividly on the page, though
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