Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

Oh, and that business about her being pregnant—he knew she wasn’t lying, he could tell by the desperate yet determined tone of her voice. But he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, about killing a pregnant woman. There was no way in the world he was going to spare her because of the pregnancy, but he just wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Babies frightened him. They ruined his life. Like his birth had ruined his parents’ lives.

Yet, he liked babies. When you played with them and fed them and they were happy, they were great, like little animals. It’s just that you couldn’t keep them happy, and they demanded so much. Animals were easy to train. Babies fought you. They always made you feel like you couldn’t do enough and you couldn’t do anything right. And, to be honest, a baby wasn’t really yours, was it? Maybe when it was growing in the womb it was part of the mother, but it was never really connected to the father. Fathers could have babies and never even know about it. Fathers could have babies, know about them, and then walk away from them at any time and never come back. Mothers could have babies that weren’t their husband’s. And, when mothers were pregnant, fathers didn’t exist at all, they suddenly ceased to matter, they became phantoms. It wasn’t “Wham! Bam! Thank-you, ma’am!,” it was “Wham! Bam! Thank you, sir—now take a hike, I’m busy for the next nine months and then the rest of my life.”

It was no coincidence that the killings increased in frequency and urgency the moment the Killer’s wife got pregnant. The only thing worse than her being pregnant was her actually having the baby.

His baby would have to go.

But then Cathy’s baby wasn’t even a baby yet, or was it? The Killer wanted to know, he wanted to see. He was curious, he was stimulated. Boy, girl, black, white? Did it have hands and feet? How about a face? Or hair? Or a heart? In magazines and on TV he’d seen photos of babies in the womb—the doctors looked in through the belly button. Sure, the belly button—he knew what to do, he’d done it before with women who weren’t pregnant—he’d cut carefully, precisely, and he’d look in, but this time he’d see a baby. It wouldn’t hurt it, it would be okay. It would be like the Killer was a doctor. He would see things that only a privileged few earn the right to see.

But then Cathy noticed him looking at her stomach. She knew. She knew he wasn’t just going to kill her, he was going to do something to her baby. It didn’t matter that she and the baby were both already dead, that even though her lungs still breathed and her heart still pumped, her life was now in retrospect. There was no escape here, but she was not going to let him do things to her baby!

So she fought, tied up though she was. Maybe she kicked, or spit, or bit, or simply screamed. And he saw in her eyes that look of horror—not fear, horror, the look you have when you see a monster, the look the girl had in that dream he always had—the look his wives both had when they caught him hurting their babies—and so now the Killer got mad at Cathy McDonald. He saw himself in that look of horror, and he didn’t like what he saw, so he had to destroy it, he had to destroy the monster even though the best he could do was shatter the mirror.

The Killer punished Cathy McDonald. She got strangled and she got stabbed. She got killed several times over. And somewhere along the line the Killer took down his pants and fumbled for a condom. He pressed himself on top of her, and he licked her face, then the blood on her torn neck, then her nipples, then took a gentle bite, careful not to break the skin or leave a tooth impression that could come back to haunt him.

And he was surprised to find that she tasted good. Not sweaty, not salty, not bitter, not bland. Cathy McDonald tasted sweet.

The FBI profilers try to be proactive; they try to force serial killers into the light before the next killing happens. It doesn’t take much in the way of brains, balls, or gamesmanship to sit back and let a serial killer keep killing until he screws up and gets noticed, so you’ve got to somehow get yourself a step ahead of a guy who’s been a step ahead of you ever since the opening bell. But, proactive can backfire. It’s never like TV or the movies where the killer now decides to go after the cop, because that would require the killer to change his emotional rules of engagement—the killings would have to take on a different meaning for him—and, if he could do that, then he could stop killing altogether. No, proactive backfires when you piss the killer off. Then, as a profiler, you have to live with the fact that, although the killer would have killed again even if you’d done nothing, you are nonetheless responsible for his choice of victim and the final insults she suffered.

No authority in Riverside will confirm whose brilliant idea it was to publicize the Prostitute Killer’s profile with respect to race, not that it wasn’t obvious anyway just by listing the victims, but Cathy McDonald died because of it. In addition, her mutilation reflected a new and nauseatingly nasty “fuck you” from the killer.

In the previous killings where the right breast had been excised, the severed tissue had been found nearby or tossed on the ground. In the Casares murder—the next after Cathy McDonald— the severed breast would be hung from a tree branch, just another way for the killer to demean the victim herself or maybe make the authorities briefly think that these killings were not tied to the many others where the breasts were left intact. The killer walks a desperate tightrope of desire to “sign” his crimes even while he varies the signature so he won’t get caught.

But, in Cathy McDonald’s case, the severed breast was never found.

Why? What horror did this imply? Was it symbolic, artistic, or of practical necessity?

The first of the “excision” killings was in San Bernardino, a murder for which Bill Suff has never been charged, although he will be should he ever overturn his Riverside convictions. Right now, San Bernardino is simply saving itself the cost of a death penalty trial.

I asked Bill about the San Bernardino case and he waved it off: “They just think I did it because her right breast was cut off,” he said.

“Good enough reason, don’t you think?” I responded.

“I love women’s breasts,” he replied, “why would I cut one off?”

It suddenly occurred to me that not even in the lowest, drunk-enest, ugliest locker room conversation I had ever had with anyone at any time, had I ever had a conversation like this. But then I had to ask myself: If you are innocent of atrocity, what exactly is the right way to answer when you are accused of it? If Bill would’ve thrown up at the question, would I have taken that as guilt, as remorse? If he’d laughed, would I have thought him nervous? Is there anything he could have said or any tear he could have shed that would have been innocent-seeming in the face of such guilt-loaded inquiry?

Perversely, my mother used to ask me what I’d say at her funeral, what sort of wonderful eulogy I would give, this “gifted” writer son of hers.

Of course, I was appalled at the question, appalled and terrified. I did not want to contemplate her mortality in any context. I told her that there was nothing I could say, that mere words could not capture her or the depth of my feelings for her, so her funeral would be the one time I would be tongue-tied, with a case of writer’s block that could not be moved.

She seemed not to understand.

What I meant but could not express was that I would not use my talent and my heart to affirm her death. If I did not acknowledge it, if her death did not just pass like another sunrise and sunset, then it would be like it had not happened. And, if I told her in advance that I could not eulogize her, then maybe she would keep herself from dying. Of course, while she was alive I could not tell her that I was really insolently refusing to do what she’d asked of me, so I couched it as an impossibility, but promised to do the impossible nonetheless.