Eileen Dewhurst - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 112, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 684 & 685, September/October 1998

“How’s dinner coming?”

“Couple more minutes, that’s all.” And so the Titanic was lost.

“This is the next part,” he said, now looking up at me from the space between the board and my chest.

“Once you uncover the board, you have to guess the puzzle. That’s hard. I have a good memory, but my mom gets the puzzles right. That’s how she wins. She’s really smart. She’s a lawyer.”

“I’m sure she is, Justin. Since this is just practice, I’m going to look at the puzzle. Maybe I can show you some tricks. Help you beat your mom.”

“Cool,” he said and clapped his hands.

I pulled the backing up and looked at it. “You know, Justin, if your memory is good, you might try to uncover the corners first. That puts a frame on the puzzle. It’s a lot easier to figure out from the edges in instead of the middle out.”

A chill went down my back and out my arms as the picture in my head disappeared and a great white shape rushed to breach into recognition on the vast empty sea of my mind.

I stood up, handed Justin the board, and hurried back to the office. Sliding into the chair, I pulled an empty legal pad in front of me and stared at the pictures.

“Aren’t we going to play anymore?” Justin asked forlornly, from the doorway.

I looked over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Justin. This is very important. I’ll play with you when I’m done. I promise. Okay?”

“You promise?”

“Yes. I promise, Justin.”

He stood there trying to decide the worth of my word, weighing it against the collection of promises he already held. He turned and walked away. I heard the shingles spill onto the wooden floor.

His mother appeared in the doorway. “What happened? He just ran into his room. Dinner’s on.”

“I’m sorry. I was playing with him when I got this idea about Munsey and the murders. I bolted over here to try it out and I told him I couldn’t play with him now. I’ll just scoop this stuff up and take it back to my place. Let you and him get on with dinner.”

She came towards me. “Do you have something?”

“No, no. I have an idea. I need to try it out. It’s probably nothing. I really need to get on it while it’s fresh, before I lose it.” I started to take the pictures down.

“No, no,” she said, palms up in retreat. “Stay here. I’ll close the door. We’ll be quiet. Do what you have to. We don’t have any time to spare. If you’ve got an idea, run with it. Do you want any food?”

“No, thank you. How about a cup of coffee? You might want to put on a pot. This could take awhile.”

“Sure. Coming right up.” She shook her fists in excitement and disappeared.

I wondered if this scene had been played out before, with her husband. The disappointed child, the abandoned dinner, work demands taking priority. Eventually sliding from a separation that was impromptu and random to one that was formalized and permanent.

I didn’t need food. I was burning up excitement as fuel, the same excitement I felt every time I had panned golden nuggets of meaning out of the onrushing blur of life. So far, that had turned out to be the one enduring passion of my life.

I drew diagrams and schematics, scribbled translations and made lists and erased them all. The hours wore on. The refills of coffee told me so. The trash can filled, then overflowed. I kept drawing and writing. Eventually, the tide of erasures receded and I was left with a single page of work. The clock said two a.m. when Monica knocked on the doorframe.

“How’s it going?”

“Gone as far as I can. I’m done.”

“Want something to eat?”

“No, thanks. I’m caffeinated to the eyeballs. I can’t eat when I’m wired like this.”

She slid down along the wall until she sat cross-legged on the floor. She sipped from a steamy mug. “So?” she said, dipping her head in anticipation, her eyes as somber as her son’s had been.

I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes for a minute, put the glasses back on, and turned to the pictures.

“I was playing that game with Justin and telling him how frames help solve puzzles, when it occurred to me. There were frames on these murder scenes. See here.” I pointed to the bloodstains around each body. “They aren’t from the victims. Ermentraut’s notes say that, or I think they do. They’re unnecessary to the scene. There’s plenty of blood all over the place from the head injuries. Why the frame? What does a frame do?”

Monica shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never actually been at a crime scene.”

“A frame tells you what the field of information is. What’s inside is important, what’s outside is not. Serial killers don’t frame their work. They know what’s important. They arrange it just so. They remove what’s irrelevant. When it’s just right, when it’s satisfying, they stop. That’s the ‘art,’ if you want, in the composition.

“If Schuster’s right, then this is Earl Munsey’s ritual reenactment of his shame, changed to include his fantasized torture and rape and revenge. Very satisfying. This is a scene by Earl for Earl. There’s no need for a frame. Suppose, just suppose, this isn’t a construction for the killer’s own use, own pleasure. Who is it for? It’s a construction. There’s no question about that. He brought the bodies, the weapons, the blood, the props. Who’s going to see this? The police. It’s a message to them. They need a frame. They have ignorant eyes. They don’t know what to attend to, what to ignore. He’s helping us poor dumb bastards along. He’s jumping up and down, waving his arms, saying Here I am, here I am.”

“Did you figure out the messages?” A tentative, hopeful smile emerged across her narrow oval face.

“I think so.”

“What do they say?”

“Bear with me. I have to explain this step by step. The logic seemed inescapable to me when I was doing it. But delusions can be quite logical, too. You have to understand it and believe it. If I can’t convince you, you can’t convince anyone else.”

“The typical way of interpreting a crime scene for clues to the killer’s personality is actuarial and symbolic. What do most serial killers have in common? What are the significant correlates? What needs do certain acts satisfy? For example, why mutilate the face? Why take souvenirs? And so on. We’re talking about translating their hidden, obscure inner language because they’re talking to themselves, not us.

“Suppose this guy is talking to us. He speaks our language. How do we read? Left to right. Top to bottom. So I looked at what was inside the frames. Here is Joleen Pennybacker.”

I picked up the photo and used my hands to frame her body. “Left to right: furs, body, potpourri. Top to bottom: perfume, bloody stick. Gibberish, right? That’s what I’ve been doing all night. Trying every different category that might describe each element, trying to make sentences out of them.”

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“What do they say?”

“First, there are rules to the messages. All languages have grammar and syntax. Ignore the bodies. They’re irrelevant, zeros, place-holders. Without them there is no crime scene. No crime. He killed these women as bait. To draw us in as an audience. That’s why there’s no penetration. His driving need isn’t sexual, it’s narcissism. He demonstrates his power by leaving an abundance of clues that nobody gets. He’s diddling us, not them. He’s been laughing at us for two years now.”

“Those poor women. You’re saying he killed them just to show us how smart he is, that he could get away with it. This is incredible.” She shuddered.

“Don’t say that. It has to be credible. Otherwise Earl Munsey fries for this. His eyes explode, his blood boils, his hair bursts into flame. And this bastard laughs all the way to hell.