Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

“I’ve been thinking about that since you asked before. You know, there is the myth of the Amazon Women—maybe that’s what it’s all about.”

“Yes?”

“An Amazon Woman would cut off her own right breast so it wouldn’t get in the way of her using her bow and arrow.”

Of course, how silly of me not to have thought of that before. “So we’ve got a killer into mythology? What’s his point, cut off their breasts because that makes them seem like Amazons and then he’s a bigger deal for having brought them down? Or is it just his way of saying that, no matter what they are, he’s bigger and badder and he can hurt them anytime he chooses? And why cut some but not others?”

“I have no idea,” said Bill Suff, but he was fidgeting and fidget-ing and fidgeting, nervous as a cat.

“All right, let’s talk about Casares,” I said.

The Casares case was the one where tire tracks at the orange grove murder scene matched all four of Bill’s mismatched tires. This was the case where Bill admitted to the cops that he’d been at the scene and seen the body, but she was already dead. His story was that he’d stopped to pick fruit late at night, saw the body, and panicked because he rightly surmised that everyone would think that he—convicted baby killer—must have been involved. The problem with his story was that he had taken home Eleanor Casares’ clothes and then laundered them, and even Bill Suff couldn’t really explain why he would have done that.

The naked body had been discovered with a coat draped over its head and face. According to Bill, her clothes were piled along-side her, and he just grabbed up the pile and fled.

None of this nonsensical story was admissible at trial, as previously noted, because the cops ignored Bill when he begged for a lawyer before he answered any questions. He now says he was so tired and scared by the cops, he would have said anything. But he still can’t explain why he took home Eleanor Casares’ clothes. Maybe he just thought she didn’t need them anymore, so why let them go to waste.

“I’ve read your own defense investigator’s report on this, Bill,” I said, “and even though Tricia Barnaby’s a big ally of yours and thinks you got a raw deal by the illegal way you were arrested and then tried, she’s got a real problem with your story about seeing Casares’ body in the orange grove.”

“I admit I was there. And I admit I saw it.”

“The problem is, Tricia showed you photos of Casares in life, and you said they didn’t look like her.”

“I couldn’t really tell if they were her or not.”

“Yeah, but when you saw her in the orange grove—the only time you ever saw her, according to you—her face was covered up by a coat. So how do you know what she looked like?”

Bill didn’t skip a beat. “It wasn’t Casares that Tricia showed me photos of—it was Kelly Hammond.”

Tricia Barnaby had showed Bill photos of every victim, and her reports were quite clear. She had specifically advised the defense lawyers about the “problem” with Bill’s identification of Casares because, up to that point, Tricia had almost convinced herself that Bill was innocent.

Bill and I stared at each other. He knew that I knew he had just lied to me.

“Bill, I don’t care if you’re guilty or innocent, and I’m just here for the story. Not the truth, not the lies, just the story. So you can say that Tricia Barnaby is wrong, and you can say you’re innocent, and I’ll make sure that your words get published in our book. Even more, I’ll help you with your criminal defense just because I want to keep the system honest and because I hate the death penalty. But, if you really want to get off Death Row, then you’re going to have to be candid and truthful and make a jury see you as a human being. Juries don’t put human beings to death. Even the families of the victims will let up on you and get back to their lives if you just give them closure. What I’m telling you is that my best advice, based on my experience, is that if we get your convictions over-turned, then you are going to need to plead up to at least Casares, and maybe Coker, as you say. You are going to need to tell the world you’re guilty, but your mind is such that you couldn’t help yourself—whatever the truth is of your psychology. Because sane people aren’t serial killers. And, in prison, you are not only not a harmful person, you are productive and sensitive and you can contribute to society through your writing. So that’s the deal. That’s the only way I can help you. This book will humanize you in the public’s eye—they never heard from you at trial, so it was easy to stereotype you as a one-dimensional monster. But now once they are surprised to find that there’s more to you than they know, that you actually might have some worth, that your voice is important to be heard, then it’s up to you to give credibility to that voice and that humanity by being honest. You won’t be forgiven, and you shouldn’t be, but maybe people will conclude that it’s not up to them to decide that—that’s God’s job.”

It was quite a speech, and Bill was twitching by the time I was done.

“So, tell me about Casares,” I said.

He started to speak, and then he cut himself off, and then, stammering, out of breath, he lurched into: “I just remember that when I was back in my van and I was pulling out, and my headlights washed across her lying there in the graveyard— I mean in the orchard !—I saw her face in the light shining under the coat.”

I don’t know if I looked faint, but I sure as hell felt it. An orange grove wasn’t an orange grove: it was a graveyard ! And Bill knew he’d just given himself away. It was more than a Freudian slip: it was a pratfall, a swan dive, Earth reentry, a shine a light in his eyes and count the fingers what fingers KO—“yes, Houston, we have splashdown!”

Suddenly, I was awash in my recollections of all Bill’s innocuous little stories about all the secret little places he used to scout out and then take Cheryl and Bonnie and this or that girlfriend to. As well as the various Tranquility Gardens where he’d go alone.

Suddenly, his fantasy writing became real for me. And his previously grounded science fiction tome, “Crash Landing”, took flight. In that piece, however, refugees find themselves marooned in an unknown world in an uncharted universe. Our world—Earth—becomes a parallel world where any given space, any room, any cove or dune or field or orchard can simultaneously be something else entirely. It wasn’t that the place looked any different in each universe, it’s just that each universe had a different meaning and a different set of rules, and people could cross over at the intersection points, finding themselves the victims or heroes of agendas quite opposite from anything they just left behind.

And that was why Bill Suff could never harm a fly, let alone be a serial killer and baby destroyer. Murder was wrong in our world, and death was permanent and to be avoided. But, in another world, murder wasn’t murder at all—sometimes it was even mandated for the greater good and for unrelenting destiny—and death simply didn’t exist.

Suddenly, I had understanding to go along with the impression that Bill had always given me that there simply had been no crimes in Riverside, that accusing him was not wrong, it was absurd.

The deaths of all those young women had happened in another world where they weren’t dead at all, but they had nonetheless been sacrificed for their own good.

And the person taking the sacrifices was not a killer but a priest, a holy man, a wizard, salvation incarnate.

Which was why Bill had to have dressed the part.

“Where’d you hide the clothes, Bill?” I asked. “The jumpsuit, the robe, the clothes, the surgical tubing, the knife, the engraving tools, the paint, the condoms, all the stuff. There must be a bag or a box somewhere, like that tackle box you used to have.” He said nothing, so I went on: “It’s all out there, and it can help save your life. It explains you. First we humanize you by showing the good side, the writer, romantic side of you—the truth. Then we explain what happened by showing what really happened—no more guesswork by cops and profilers—we show the aberrational side as it really exists—again, the truth. Truth and closure. Once we know you, we stop fearing you because we know you can be controlled. And once you know you, maybe you don’t feel like killing anymore. Either way, we no longer have to kill you. We don’t have to snuff the Suff .”