Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

So, as I look back every February 8 and make that past present again, as I see my mother, brother, and friend, I remember them as innocent and I momentarily remember myself as innocent, too—I remember what it was like truly not to know that death was just a few yards and a blown tire ahead.

Yes, I remember how it felt to be in a state of grace; I remember life before the fall.

And I know now that, had I been less innocent, they’d all still be alive.

“Original sin” was a setup, a stacked deck, a sure thing—Adam and Eve never had a chance. As theologist, psychologist, and physiologist will tell you, the pursuit of pleasure is ingrained, the elements of survival are pleasurable, and babies are born to trust and count on the care and concern of others to feed that survival/pleasure drive; but pain is knowledge that has to be learned, and danger doesn’t exist until you bite the apple and the serpent bites you back. You don’t know about trouble until you get in some. And then it’s too damn late.

Where our car slid off the road out in the middle of the desert, there just happened to be a flood control concrete culvert. That meant the grade dropped off sharply, and that meant the car would flip. Anywhere else—before or after—we come to a gentle stop, no harm done.

But, if we hadn’t been speeding, maybe we don’t slide off the road at all.

There’s no safe speed for every eventuality, and going through life at a crawl is dangerous on its own terms and likely to get you run over; but speeding down the open road has always been a powerful seductress for me, not because I get someplace quicker, rather because the sensation of speed is an all encompassing world where time, space, sight, and sound all merge, where I become that supercharged subatomic particle of no matter but infinite mass, in all the universe at once, not grounded at all, just blasting through the cosmos. I’d give anything to climb aboard the Space Shuttle—I can hardly wait for the “Jew in Space” program—but the next best thing is a fast car, a tank of gas, a fat cigar, rock and roll on the radio, and a long, paved spine up the middle of the night.

Risk isn’t the issue. The rattle of a fast car gives way to eerie screaming white silence in a faster car, and the exhilaration is the rush itself, not being on the edge. The moment I feel on the edge— anytime anywhere—I ease off the accelerator pedal. I don’t like taking chances, don’t like feeling out of control. And that also means I don’t like getting stopped by cops, don’t like putting my life in the hands of “authorities” who could tell me to get down on my hands and knees and bark like a dog and respond to the name “Butt-boy”. I steer clear of people with any kind of badge, express or implied. So, no matter that I used to speed like mad, I’ve never had a speeding ticket because I’m ever alert and always willing to slow. This isn’t a game—I’m not out to prove I can break the law, not out to show that I’m cleverer than the highway patrol. Then again, at full speed on an open road, the only way you can possibly get caught is by not realizing that you just lapped the officer in question and sucked the ketchup off his fries with your tail-draft. Otherwise, if you’re doing 110, 120, no cop’s about to “routinely” prowl up on you at 130, 140, and give you the required quarter mile pace before he hits the siren. As long as you always stay out of sight ahead of the cop on his beat, you don’t exist for him. You’re safe.

The key to life, the one true bit of grown-up wisdom true for everyone at every time, is that you must strive not to be noticed except when you want to be. And then, how and when you choose to be noticed tells us all what sort of person you are.

Back on the relevant February 8 on the highway to Vegas, I had no notion that I was taking a chance and no sense that I was even remotely out of control. Divorce was making my mother’s and my brother’s and my own future unclear but not uncertain. I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but I had no idea at all that there might not even be a tomorrow.

So, as I had done on innumerable occasions, I sped. I had the car maxed out. We’d sonic boomed so many miles per hour and RPMs earlier, blasted clear of the turbulence, and now we were rocketing peacefully through the thin air at the top of the world. Beneath us, the rest of humanity moved at a slower pace, like their clocks were wound down. Yo, Einstein and your dog, Relativity! We’ve left you behind, man! Woof! We’d left our cares behind and our pasts behind, and the future was beautiful and limitless, and we were light.

Nothing and no one could touch us now.

Once we crashed, I learned different.

Danger is everywhere, it’s there whether you recognize it or not. It’s always been there from the moment you left the womb, from even before that. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have sped. But no one had told me, and my mother and my father had gone out of their way to protect me from it. No serpents in the world they were bequeathing me. You can’t conceive a child if you feel the hot breath of danger on your neck, if you see its yellow eyes burning through the mist, hear the sharp scrape of its scales as it climbs the next streetlamp. No, in order to parent, you delude yourself into thinking that your wisdom, your ability to recognize danger, will protect your child and help you steer him or her away from it.

Now I’ve learned. No more speeding. Not like before anyway. Not as fast. Not for long. Never with anyone in the car. Now when I do speed it’s not so much fun, it’s not pure anymore. Now it truly is a sin.

So, on February 8 every year, I celebrate life by facing the death of innocence. It’s a wrong equation, and someday I suspect I’ll recompute it. I hang on to “the accident” as if, by forgetting it, I’ll finally lose the people I love. I’ve learned a lesson, and I’m not ready to unlearn it. Meanwhile, I have a friend who was just sixteen when she lost her mother to cancer. She thinks of her mother by remembering how they’d do the bunny hop together, how they’d laugh and play. Someday I’d like to find those memories for myself. Someday I’d like to reclaim my innocence. I think I’m getting closer, sneaking up on it. Maybe this year I’ll light candles on birthdays rather than deathdays.

As for Bill Suff, the week of February 8, 1990, he was avoiding sex with Cheryl because he’d learned his own lesson. No matter how he explained it to her, it really had nothing to do with any moral stand and even less to do with redemption. He knew that Cheryl’s parents hated him, hated the very idea of him, this pompous, shiftless, grown man who’d seduced their childish child and borne her away.

Bill knew and Bill worried that if he screwed Cheryl, her parents could nail him for statutory rape, and that would be a parole violation that would send him back to jail in Texas for the rest of his life. That was Bill’s equation.

So, he maintained the discipline to spurn Cheryl’s hot advances, determined to stave off overdue punishment.

For anyone who believes that the threat of jail is a deterrent to crime, here’s proof of it, but it doesn’t work the way you’d think.

See, while Bill sighed relief and patted himself on the back for his show of inner strength and wisdom, it was a lot easier to avoid Cheryl on those nights when he’d come home after raping and murdering prostitutes. He was sated then, and he wanted to be alone with his fantasy memories and his totems. He wanted to make sure Cheryl didn’t see the scratches that some of his victims gave him when they foolishly fought back. And, of course, Cheryl was his alibi, physically and psychologically. The times of the murders could never be re-created exactly by the cops, so Bill could always claim he was home with Cheryl. And why would a man go out and kill hookers when he was living with the woman he loved?