LJ Idol Topic #16: "Open Topic"
“Mind if I sit here?”
The man slides into my booth without waiting for me to answer and flashes me a smile. Obviously, this was who I came to see. I fold the newspaper I’d been reading and drop it next to my half-empty coffee cup.
“You said you had a line on a murder story I’d be interested in, Mister… ?” I ask.
“Straight down to business, huh?” he replies. “No getting to know you chit-chat, Eileen? And just call me John. For now.”
I take a sip of my lukewarm coffee. “I see. Look… John. I drove out to this god forsaken place before the crack of dawn because you said you had something for me,” I say. “I have a long drive back to LA, deadlines to meet and an editor up my ass. I don’t exactly have time for snipe hunts here.”
“Believe me, you’re going to want this story,” he says. “But I’m starving, why don’t we discuss it over breakfast?”
I glance at my watch and sigh as he signals the waitress. I study him as he orders a stack of pancakes, sausage, two eggs over easy and a tall orange juice. There’s something about him and his self-possession that sets off those little warning bells in my head that have served me so well throughout my career as a journalist. I decide to roll the dice and order what he’s having.
He scratches his scraggly black beard and smiles. “Good for you.” he says. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day after all.”
The waitress comes back with a cup of coffee for him and a refill for me.
“I’ve read your books, you know,” he says after the waitress departs. “I especially liked your books on the Night Stalker and the Green River Killer. Very insightful work. You really have a knack for showing us how the minds of these psychos work.”
“Thank you,” I reply. “So, what am I doing here, John?”
He sips from his cup of coffee. “Eileen,” he starts. “How would you like a chance to interview the most prolific serial killer of all time?”
I laugh. “Last I checked, Coral Watts is dead and Gary Ridgway is locked up.”
“Actually,” he says. “They could never find any evidence that Coral Watts killed more than the twelve he was convicted of. His boasts of making it into the triple digits seem highly unlikely. Gary Ridgway on the other hand, does have 48 or 49 confirmed kills. It’s impressive but still minor league stuff compared to what I’m talking about.”
The waitress dropped off our plates and I watched him savoring the aroma of the food. My stomach growled telling me that I was in fact, pretty hungry. “John” struck me as an odd character and I was quite likely wasting my time but there was just something… compelling about him. I wait to speak again until the waitress is out of earshot.
“So what you’re telling me,” I say as I pour syrup over my pancakes. “Is that you are the most prolific serial killer in history.”
He takes a bite of his pancakes, clearly savoring the taste. “Not only that,” he says. “But unlike those other hacks, I can provide concreted evidence to back up that claim.”
I took a bite of my sausage and watched him for a moment, saying nothing. He smiled at me as he forked another heaping of pancakes into his mouth and chewed, slowly and deliberately.
“Eileen, let me ask you something,” he finally says. “What do you think having a story like this will do for your career?”
I processed the question as I sipped from my coffee cup. The world of journalism was still, by and large, a boys club. That’s not to say that women hadn’t made some inroads in the business but it was mostly the men that got the bloody and brutal assignments, that were often put into harm’s way covering a story. Maybe it was a misplaced sense of chivalry, rampant misogyny or a subtle form of sexism but women rarely got the meaty, meaty stories. You would rarely, if ever, see a woman assigned to the border covering the bloody cartel warfare or into the middle of a gang battle in South Central LA. I’d written books about famous serial killers before but those had all been after the fact. Not that they’d done exceptionally well anyway. To have access to an active serial killer in the midst of his spree and to chronicle it body by body… it would do absolute wonders for my career. I felt like a ghoul for feeling the slight twinge of excitement building in my gut.
“Honestly John,” I say. “It would probably do a lot of good things for my career. But why do you think I’d be interested in following around the bloody trail you’re allegedly leaving behind?”
He laughed and then took a bite of his sausage. “Because I know you,” he says. “You’re an ambitious woman. And given how male-oriented your profession is, unless you bag a story like this, you’re likely to remain a second-tier talent. And I know that doesn’t sit well with you.”
I take a bite of my own pancakes, trying to not let him see that he’d pegged me. It’s a grim reality of the profession… you unfortunately have make your bones on the backs of corpses. But you don’t get a chance to make your bones if you don’t get the assignments. I haven’t been happy on the local crime beat for quite a while.
“So why me?” I ask. “And should I be worried about my own safety here?”
He laughs again. In another context, his laugh could be considered good natured, even infectious. “Eileen, you have nothing to worry about,” he says. “I respect your work tremendously and think your talent is being wasted. I have absolutely no desire to harm you. Even if you say no to my proposal.”
“Good to know,” I say. “Though, having admitted to being a murderer, you’ll forgive me if I don’t quite take you at your word.”
He laughed again. “Fair enough,” he says. “I may be a lot of things but a liar isn’t one of them. I mean it when I say I have no desire to harm you. I only wish to help you.”
I eye him over my coffee cup. “That’s sweet of you, John,” I say. “But what is in this arrangement for you? What are you getting out of it? What’s your angle here?”
He finishes chewing a mouthful of pancakes and smiles. “Don’t believe in simple altruism?”
I look at him but say nothing.
“Okay,” he says. “What I get out of our little partnership is exposure. Notoriety, I suppose. I was never exceptional at anything when I was a child. Now I am exceptional. The absolute best. The peak all others will strive for. I am an artist that simply wants to be appreciated in my own time.”
I lay my fork down and wipe my hands. “So you say. There’s still a matter of corroboration of these claims.”
His smile grows wider until it looks like his face may split in two. He reaches into his pocket, removes a computer thumb drive and sets it on the table in front of me. “Here is all the corroboration you need, Eileen,” he says. “On this drive are the pictures of ninety-seven women, in various states around this great country of ours, raped and killed by yours truly as well as supporting documentation of places and dates.”
I lost my poker-face and couldn’t stop my eyes from growing wider at the claim. Ninety-seven? I couldn’t formulate a cogent question, a witty remark or anything at the moment and sat in stunned silence. This was the reaction he’d apparently been hoping for as he smiled and nodded.
“Well Eileen,” he said as he dug into his pocket and dropped a couple of twenties on the table in front of us. “It’s time I go and give you some time to think about things. I’ll contact you in a couple of days and see whether you want this story or whether I should move on to somebody else that might.”
I looked at him as he stood up. “What makes you think I won’t take all of this to the police right now and bury the story, denying you the spotlight you so obviously want. I know what you look like and can give your description to the cops.”
He laughed again. “You could do that,” he said and winked at me. “But remember, appearances can be deceiving. Is what I look like right now the real me or is it a construct? Beards can be added and eye colors can be changed. Weight can be added or subtracted with a little bit of make-up and know how. Do you really know what I look like, Eileen?”
I looked at him, unable to say anything.
“And Hell, if you really wanted to go to the cops, all you have to do is give them that thumb drive with my fingerprints on it,” he said. ”Maybe I’ll turn up in a database and the game will be over. But then again, I may not. Either way though, I will keep killing until they stop me. It’s too much fun to just stop. But I know the ambition that drives you, Eileen. It’s the same sort of ambition that drives me too. We both want to be the very best at what we do. And we want the recognition that comes with being the best.”
He gave me one last smile and left the diner, leaving me to absorb everything he’d just dropped in my lap. I stared at the thumb drive and knew that there were two options available to me. Ordinary people would only see one option… go to the police, turn everything over to them and let them handle it. But as much as it turned my stomach to admit, John was right. I was like him in some ways. The waitress came over and refilled my coffee again.
I don’t know how long I sat there in silence, weighing my options and debating what the “right” thing to do was. He’d promised to keep killing no matter what. Couldn’t a national story putting the spotlight on him help catch him before he killed again? By giving him the stage he wanted, couldn’t I also potentially be saving more lives down the road? I grabbed my cell phone and punched in the number for my editor at the paper. His phone rang three times before he picked up.
“Sal,” I said as I picked up the thumb drive, wiping out all existence of John’s fingerprints. “You are not going to believe the story I have…”