John Betancourt: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006

Taos was a wonderful city, large enough to lose yourself in, small enough to feel comfy and not alone at all. The mountains reminded her enough of Colorado, and after a number of months, she found a job as a hairdresser. God, that had been a good time, an innocent time almost, far away from her mother and the thoughts of Ted, about to be executed by the State of Florida.

By now she was in her mid twenties, feeling good about having left Colorado and all that crap back there, the stories about Ted, the questions from all the men in journalism, law enforcement, and law offices. She started exercising; there was nothing she loved better than getting up in the morning under the cool desert sky and jogging a mile or two before showering and going to work at Top Cuts. Yeah, that had been the name. Top Cuts.

It was in Taos that she met Randy Phinney, a bronzed man about five years older than her, who worked construction. Thin black mustache and a sharp, barking laugh that attracted her for some reason. She had trimmed his hair a few times before he came right out and asked her out, and she blurted yes before really thinking about what was going on. He was the opposite of Ted: muscular, outdoorsy, and if he had read a book since leaving high school, he sure liked keeping it a secret.

He took her to roadhouses outside of Taos, danced with her to twangy country music that comforted her. She tried horseback riding for the first time in her life — and God, the bruises along her inner thighs took weeks to heal — and weekend camping trips, tents, and sleeping bags tossed in the rear of his Jeep, camping out under the night sky, the stars so bright it almost hurt her eyes to stare at them.

Then one night she went to his rented house, out in a lonely part of Taos, and he was drunk. She had seen Randy with a few beers in him before, but nothing like this. That night she felt something when she came into the cluttered living room — like the heavy air one feels just before a thunderstorm breaks out.

Randy stood there, weaving, like his feet couldn’t quite lay flat on the flooring. His eyes were sharp and there was a rolled-up newspaper in his hand.

She stood there, knowing what was going to happen next. Knew that eventually, something like this was going to happen.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“This,” he said, thrusting the rolled-up newspaper at her. She took it in her hand, unrolled it. There was the picture of Ted at his trial in Florida, looking snappy with a grin and a bowtie. Next, horrifyingly black and white, the “real death” photo the tabloid promised, showing Ted with his head shaved, skin gray, after his electrocution. And there, even worse, was her own photo. Mystery girlfriend still missing. She looked at the story. Written by a man.

She looked up at Randy. “I was going to tell you, it’s just that—”

He strode right up to her, face inches away, and she smelled the stale scent of beer. “Bitch,” he said. “You, you were with that killer. That bastard... What was it like, huh? What was it like?”

She turned to get out of there, when Randy grabbed her arm. She yelped. He spun her around and said, “Damn it, what was it like? What was it like to be with a killer? Huh?”

“Randy, you’re hurting me,” she said. “Let me go, I’ll—”

So it happened.

Like destiny or some damn thing.

He slapped her once, then again, and part of her said, Was this what it was like, for the other women? To know that some man has now grabbed hold of you, some man with murder in his heart, and that there would be no happy ending, no last-minute rescue, just the terror and fear and pain, ratcheting up, higher and higher...

Another slap. Randy was cursing now, and with both of his strong hands, he dragged her by her arms into the bedroom, where the night progressed, through the slaps, the taunting voice, again and again.

“What was it like?”

“Was he good?”

“Am I any better? Huh?”

“Did he teach you anything? Huh?”

Through that long, dark night, she finally learned it all.

The reporter closes her notebook, steps up, and almost as an afterthought, she takes Patti’s photograph with a small digital camera, Patti sitting alone on the park bench, her hands folded primly across her lap. She sits there as the sun slowly sets, the air becomes cooler, and only when a full bladder demands some attention, does she finally get up and walk away.

After that night with Randy Phinney in Taos, she spent a half day in the shower, and then drove out without a word, without a forwarding address, without much of anything, damn it. She drove west until she ran out of land and ended up at the Pacific Ocean, in a small town just north of San Diego. Another hair salon, another apartment, and the whole cycle started up again, after months of peace and pleasure, when a certain man came into her life and dated her and kissed her and said he loved her, right up to the point when he found out. The the same questions:

“What was it like?”

“How was he?”

“What did you learn from Ted?”

It takes only two days for the Sentinel article to come out, and the first time she walks into the Kut & Kurl, she almost weeps with relief from what the other women there do to her. One by one, they come over to squeeze her hand and touch her face and whisper good wishes to her.

Then, like she expects, the men show up.

They’re quiet at first, shy, sitting in the chairs by the door, looking like ten-year-old boys standing against the wall in the gymnasium at their very first school dance. They stare at their shoes or out the windows, but one by one, they request her for their haircuts. She knows what’s going on behind those shy expressions. They are curious. They want to know. They want to know what it’s like and how it happened, and being with someone who talked to Ted and lived with Ted and loved with Ted, well, it’s the next best thing to being there, right?

She trims their hair and beards and mustaches, quickly and efficiently, all the while knowing that it’s happening again.

Oh yes, again and again.

From small town to bigger town to city. Her story gets out and the men come by and eventually one man captures her interest, one man who wants to know everything, and she finds herself succumbing, again and again.

His name is Peter Wickland, about forty years old, old enough to know about Ted and his bloody years of work, but young enough so that he doesn’t know all of the story. He’s stocky but well built, dressed in clean jeans and buttoned dress shirt. He has a close-trimmed beard and nice, thick brown hair. She finds herself enjoying the feel of his hair through her fingers as she works it. He’s a freelance investment counselor, working out of his home at the beach, and after his fourth visit to the Kut & Kurl — about four months after the Sentinel article appeared — he asks her out.

And she says yes.

The first date is just lunch at a restaurant in town, nothing fancy, just a quiet meal and some laughs and then a walk along the park by the river. As they leave the park, Peter says, “I’ve got two things to say to you.”

“Sure,” she says.

“The first is, I’d like to see you again.”

She smiles. It has gone well. “That’d be nice. What’s the second thing?”

He smiles back at her. “I don’t care about the newspaper article, about what happened to you. If you want to tell me, fine. But I won’t ask you.”

She leans forward, kisses him on the cheek, and forgives him on the spot for lying to her.

For among other things, that’s what she has gained over the years, that no matter how many times the men who have come into her life say they’re not curious at all about Ted Bundy, they really do always want to know. Honest to God, that’s all these men cared about was her time with the nation’s most famous serial killer. Men, men, men, it seems all they care about is the blood and the gore and the terror that those women, her poor sisters, went through, and what, if anything, she can tell them to let them in on what had really happened.