Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

My mother and best friend died the day of the crash, but my brother lingered in a coma for several days. I recall vividly the moment of his death, the doctors shooing me from the room as the monitors flatlined and the charger on the heart paddles whined, readying to fire off a last, futile jolt. Head in hands, the world spinning a web of darkness, I was sitting in a chair in the private nurses’ lounge when the doctor came in to tell me what he knew I already knew. He was a young man and he’d sworn days earlier that my brother would make it. Now he said nothing; he just reached out and touched his hand to my shoulder and then withdrew, leaving me alone, and, in that next instant, I wanted to be dead so badly, I actually died. It was an instant that, like time itself, was there and gone and yet lasts for all time. Past, present, and future, all coexisting. I wanted to die, and I think what happened is that my heart skipped a beat, and in that skip I was dead, and I knew it. But then, against all my conscious will, despite the unendurable psychic pain I would have to face, Darwin went ahead and did his thing—my genes, my molecules, my enzymes, all those physical, physiological, biochemical, totally incomprehensible processes that make humans the fittest to survive, all surged through my system and snapped me back to life. I was bungeed back out of a pure black abyss and suddenly found myself alive again. Alive, but dead, angry that I was back; alive, but dead, emotionally blunted; alive, but finding that the chemistry which made me breathe did so by blocking out the pain which had made me want to die, while the price for that freedom from pain proved to be the evisceration of my soul. It would take me many years to track down and barter for the return of that soul, and I cursed Darwin every step of the way. Like Bill Suff, I was a ghost, an amoeba, an ant—I’d been nuked and survived, and I’d had no say in it coming or going.

Of course, I didn’t start serial killing. I treaded water for a long time, but I finally found the shore again, rocky though it was. I was alive but dead, and then I came all the way back to life. Unfortunately for Bill (and his victims), once he was dead, he stayed dead—the cumulative total of his past left him no choice, the same as my own past sent me in the opposite direction. And so when Bill kills, it’s a reality he’s come to accept because life and death are one and the same to him, and his victims are always still alive, always with him. He hasn’t killed them, he’s simply drawn them into his world. For all eternity. And that’s why Bill won’t confess—confess to what? It’s not that he’s not guilty , it’s that there were no crimes . That’s why serial killers routinely whip polygraphs.

Now take a peek at the reproduction of the actual handwritten page from “Tranquility Garden” (see photo insert). The scripting is tiny and orderly—you almost need a magnifying glass to read it. (Bill’s later work does require a magnifier—examine his handwriting in his prison logs—see photo insert.) Partly this is a reflection of Bill’s orderly, precise mind and obsessiveness and need to manipulate you into working at connecting with him, investing time and effort into making him a part of your life, into making each of you codependent on the other even as he maintains ultimate control; and partly this tiny handwriting is due to the lack of paper given inmates—you’ve got to learn to cram as much as you can onto each page. But bear in mind that as an inmate you are writing in pencil (you can’t have a pen because the metal and plastic parts could be used to pick locks or stab guards or worse), and, to write so small you have to sharpen the pencil point after every couple of words… but of course you have no pencil sharpener, so you improvise by notching your fingernail or filing the pencil against the edge of your metal cot-frame.

And then, finally, you have to get inventive to make a thorough presentation: Bill actually changes his handwriting for the “letter” portions of the story. This is not just words on paper, this is graphic art, fully pictorial, telling you so much about the man who created and crafted it even while it manipulates the reader to respond as he wants. “Tranquility Garden” is Bill Suff’s story—a story about Bill

Suff and yet not about Bill Suff—note how he first used his own name as the hero, but then erased it and changed it to “Lee,” pressing so hard on the lead that it crunched and spread, darker than the other words. And Lee’s birthday—August 20—is Bills birthday, and the last name of Lee’s mother is the maiden name of Bill’s own mom.

Clearly, in the “fictional” story, Bill wants to be Bill Suff, but yet he cannot be, and he wants you to know all of that, to let him play it both ways. “Hey, I’m not who I say I am!” he screams silently, but is he warning us or flaunting himself? Are we to be terrified or intrigued, or both? Of course, practical necessity dictates that he cannot allow himself to reveal too much of himself without it coming back to haunt him—prosecutors might see this, the parole board might see it, people who sit in judgment might see it, he himself will certainly see it, and, like every writer, he knows he will find something surprising, something he doesn’t want to see, so better to distance even himself. At heart, Bill wants to take the witness stand, but he must also preserve his deniability. No matter what, he must survive. No matter what, he will survive. Is that cowardice or cleverness or manifest destiny? Is he playing games or just giving in to evolution? Or is there somehow still some sick hope in this simple soulless hulk that some way, some day, he can find life again, forgive and be forgiven, if only he has enough time?

Alive, but dead. Dead, but alive, and marking time.

And prison is all about marking time—that’s what makes prison and death indistinguishable—that’s why Bill is so comfortable in prison. He proclaims his innocence as to all counts at all times, but yet he never bangs on the bars of his cell, never cries, always acts the “model” prisoner. Texas let him out for “good behavior” after ten years of a seventy-year sentence. He’d earned his degree, showed—through his writing and drawing—that he could express his emotions in “acceptable” ways, and so he was declared “rehabilitated”. He “deserved” another chance. He’d made a “mistake”, but he’d “learned” a lesson. He was entitled to “a life”. But, of course, Texas didn’t understand that Bill Suff was long dead. Death had caged him when he was roaming in our midst, and he’d felt no differently, no worse, when he’d been warehoused out of our sight. Texas prison time was no punishment, and neither had jail resuscitated him. Freed from the Texas jail, he wasn’t about to make himself “a life”, he was about to take some. So, the hero of “Tranquility Garden” is not Bill, but rather his alter ego. Him, but not him. Dead, but alive. And, you, the reader, are now part of Bill’s story, part of his reality. Bill Suff knows that you and others like you have gotten a hold of this book. He knows you’re interested, maybe you’re titillated, maybe you’re repulsed, but, however you position it, you care about him now . For an hour or two tonight while you read these words , Bill Suff matters to you . To him it’s like he waved and smiled and got your attention, offered you something you wanted—you hopped in the van with him and now he’s in control of you, and, dead or alive, you’re not getting away. Justify it any way you will, you’ve allowed yourself to become yet another of Bill Suff’s victims. I know I am.