Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

That was all to his letter. Jeannie started wondering about it. Lee visited her on Thursday, and he wasn’t supposed to be home before Monday. Could he have really been AWOL?

She put aside his letter and started reading the second one. Her heart started with a lurch when she saw who sent the letter.

20 August, 1970

Quangtri, V.N.

Dear Mrs. Burress,

My name is Captain Warren Fox, and the commanding officer of “Company B” of the Army’s 7th Division, stationed in the Quangtri Province. Last night, 19 August, a patrol was sent out to observe movements of Viet Cong forces.

On the way back to the base this morning, approximately 7:30 A.M. (Viet Nam time) the patrol was ambushed. I regret to be the person that has to inform you of your son’s death.

Jeannie almost fainted when she read that part of the letter. Slowly she read further.

Your son, Pfc Lee Burress, was in the process of trying to pull the lieutenant, in charge of the patrol, back under cover when he was shot.

I assure you, his death was immediate, and he did not suffer any.

The rest of the letter was about transporting him home. “But, that’s crazy,” she started. “I saw him at 4:00 that afternoon.” And then she remembered the time difference. She started figuring out the times, wanting to prove that the letter had to be wrong.

She knew there was nine hours difference between Viet Nam and California.

“But that means he died around 3:30 that afternoon.” She shook her head not wanting to believe it. And then remembering some of the things he said brought it to her.

He had only a little time before he had to be back. And he said he was AWOL “kinda.” And the time almost standing still.

It shocked her now. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but surely… He couldn’t…

The only sound then was Jeannie falling to the floor, in faint.

Day in and day out I read a lot of material by aspiring authors. Whenever I am producing a television show, I continuously read work samples from writers looking to be hired, and many of my friends are writers who ask me to review their “works-in-progress” and then give them notes. It has been my experience that every gas station attendant and his uncle thinks he has a novel or TV episode inside him bursting to get out, and who can blame them? What with the quality of popular writing nowadays—the poor storytelling and the even more pathetic, repetitive stories themselves—today’s gas station attendant could well be tomorrow’s or even today’s John Grisham.

When I first read Bill Suff’s stuff, I was surprised. I think perhaps I was expecting Jack Abbott, that murderer/prisoner/writer whom Norman Mailer championed (to his everlasting embarrassment) some years ago. Abbott wrote In the Belly of the Beast , a raw, searing, violent look at his violent life, crime, and the prison system. As you may recall, Mailer helped get Abbott out of jail and into posh parties, after which Abbott committed more violent crimes and wound up back in stir. Where he belonged. I think he died a violent death there, or maybe it was in a shoot-out on his way there. Either way, Abbott’s gone and I don’t care enough about him to look him up in my encyclopedia. Frankly, I’d hate to find that he’s listed there. I don’t even want to know that Mailer’s got an entry.

But, unlike Abbott, what’s interesting about Suff’s creative stuff is that it’s sweet and sad and innocent. Truly innocent. Reality impinges as lost love and death, so it’s all about tragedy, but it’s not about pain or violence; it’s actually about hope and what could have and should have been. It also insists on an afterlife and spirituality that is good and true and immortal, mitigating today’s pain with the certainty that, whatever mistakes we make here, eternity will set it right.

From a “writing standpoint”, there are three indicia to apply: Has the writer exhibited the craft and talent to communicate that which he intended? Has the writer created an original story or merely mimicked something he’s read? Has the writer challenged himself to be special and insightful in a way that justifies all writing as a lasting legacy?

Bill’s material hints at being professional on all scales. Trust me, this puts him up in rarefied air—it takes a hundred writers or more before you find one who “gets it”. Bill clearly has command of the language and his craft, although he’s also still working at improving word choice and sentence structure. While his plot is at once familiar, it’s also personal in a way that makes it original. Is this material so moving and important that it deserves to be saved in a time capsule? In context, yes, because it answers questions about him and, like it or not, he has had a tremendous impact on a tremendous number of people’s lives—he matters, now and forever. Bill’s crimes orphaned three dozen children, including his own (Bill Jr. by Teryl; and Bridgette by second wife, Cheryl, to whom Bill was married during the final years of his rampage—both children taken away by their respective States and placed in permanent foster care). Numerous other people—from cops to lawyers to journalists—lived and breathed Bill Suff for the “best” years of their professional lives. Yes, Bill matters. He also has something to say, and we really ought to listen.

For a moment then, let’s play psychiatrist-detective, as I did when Bill’s handwritten draft of “Tranquility Garden” arrived in my mail.

As I read the story, the hero tries to convince the heroine to break off her engagement to another man and commit to the hero instead. She declines. She then learns that the hero is dead, and that she’d been communing with his spirit.

Accordingly, I couldn’t wait to ask Bill what would have happened had the heroine agreed to commit to the deceased hero. I thought I’d found a murderous hole in his logic. I just couldn’t wait for him to tell me that, if the heroine fell in with the ghost, then the heroine would have to be murdered in order to join him.

However, when I posed the question to Bill, he acted like I was the idiot for missing the only obvious and correct answer: “If the heroine chose to commit to the hero, then he wouldn’t have died . They would have lived happily ever after.”

At first this seems a terribly charming solution, but it quickly degenerates into sheer terror. The heroine killed the hero . She still loved him , but she chose to deny him the living reality of that love .

“Tranquility Garden” was written while Bill was in jail in Texas, taking writing classes and ultimately earning himself a college degree in sociological services. At the same time, he was writing letters to Teryl’s parents and others. Bill’s fiction and poetry may have been sweetly tragic, but his letters were clear paeans to his pain: “With Teryl gone, I feel like I have died,” he wrote, “I am dead now. I am alive, but I am dead.”

This theme plays itself out in Bill’s later writings, as you shall see. And, I finally found I had to agree with Donny: after the final betrayals by Teryl, whatever shining vestige of humanity Bill had hung on to throughout his pained childhood and adolescence abruptly flickered out and died. His soul ceased to be. Of course, Teryl was not the cause, merely the final straw, and, had it not been her, it likely would have been someone or something else that proved the definitive betrayal. But the thing is, once he was now soulless, once he was now dead, Bill was immortal. He was dead, but he discovered that nonetheless he went on. “I am alive, but I am dead.” Get it? I do. These are the same words I said to myself after the deaths of my mother, brother, and best friend in an auto accident in which I was the driver and sole survivor. My mother had finally worked up the nerve to divorce my father after years of unhappiness, and we were on our way to Vegas for a couple of days to “toast” the occasion. But all had gone awry when a defective radial tire shredded on the interstate. For me, I had to think: Wasn’t it some sort of mistake that I’d survived? Was I now living on borrowed time, or was I left here for some higher purpose?