by Barbie Wilde
It is almost insulting that the police think that some bozo plumber named Lonnie had the wit, ingenuity, artistic talent, nay—genius—to commit my crimes. Lonnie is going to get all the credit, all the fame and all the publicity. It will be his name that goes down in the Serial Killer Hall of Infamy. How irritating. Not that I care about such fripperies, but in a strange way, my pride has been wounded.
On the other hand, maybe I should just shut up and be grateful—be very grateful—that they suspect someone else.
I certainly seem to have the luck of the damned.
ENTRY 90:
I spoke to Elene again. She seemed to be quite eager to get together to discuss things. She wants me to come over to her place tonight. I decided to go. I need all the information I can get. I have prepared my presentation to her about the poses of the bodies, just in case she wants to hear my conclusions.
I feel more nervous about seeing her tonight than I did going out on my date with Tamsin.
ENTRY 91:
Making the great leap.
Driving to Elene’s house, I tried to analyze my confused feelings: fear, anticipation and doubt. At the bottom of the cesspool of my swirling anxieties thrashed the Great White Shark of Libido—ravenous for a taste of Elene’s flesh, but on my terms. Half of me was determined to have her this evening. The other half was reluctant to break the barrier, to leap the chasm and dive into some form of intimacy with her. Intimacy? Who was I kidding? I wanted Elene. I wanted her completely. I wanted her to surrender to me so I could conquer her body and soul. That is what lovemaking is all about to men. If they admit it to themselves, most men know that to make love to a woman is to subdue her. Books are written about it, popular songs are composed, plays scribbled, movies made. If you are a stalker, all you have to do is look at popular media to see that if you are persistent enough, you will always get the girl. All the lessons are there if you want to see them, such as never taking “no” for an answer. How many women say “no”, when they mean “yes”? Women say “no” because they want to make their surrender into something special. It’s a little treasure they give to you: “I said ‘no’, but now I mean, ‘yes, yes, yes’, because you are the man who I am willing to break my strict moral code for. You are the man worthy of my love. You are THE MAN.”
I got to Elene’s around 7:30 PM. Her place was tastefully furnished: white walls, lots of books, minimal furniture and just a few framed, black and white Brassai posters on the wall. The usual female clutter must have been relegated to the bedroom. She greeted me at the door wearing a low-cut, blood red dress. The color suited her. The dress was mid-calf length, but she was in her bare feet, which I found very appealing. Perfect little pink toes, painted carefully with ruby red nail polish. Elene was wearing Chanel Number 5 again. I shed my coat, scarf and gloves and walked into her warm and cozy sanctuary. I immediately felt at home.
I sat on the modern gray leather couch and Elene poured drinks. She made me a passable vodka martini and she had a Ricard, the traditional French aperitif. We talked about the weather, then I opened my briefcase and gave her my conclusions about the positions of the bodies and the artwork. Of course, I had a distinct advantage since I committed the murders. I pretended that it had been quite difficult to trace the poses of the bodies to various works of art with the goddess Venus as their subject.
Elene was impressed by my efforts, I could tell.
Elene: “Professor, would it take a great knowledge of art to obtain this information? The reason that I am asking is that our prime suspect, Lonnie Snarldon, isn’t exactly an Einstein from what I can gather. He went to Onondaga Community College and got a Bachelor’s in Business Studies, but his grades were only average.”
Me: “Well, I think if the desire is there, then it is possible to find out anything. If Lonnie is obsessed by images of Venus, then it would be simple enough to access the paintings off the Internet, for example, or any popular art book from the public library.”
Elene: “I see. I have to be honest with you, Professor, I think the police have overstepped the mark on this one. There is plenty of forensic evidence to point to Lonnie as the murderer of Vivian Miller, the prostitute who was strangled on Saturday. There was also a witness who saw Lonnie pick up the victim in his car, but I don’t think that they have a very strong case for him committing the ‘Painted Lady’ serial killings. I can’t imagine someone like Lonnie having an obsessive ‘Venus Complex’—for want of a better description. These are elegant crimes, committed by someone who put a lot of thought and planning into their execution. Lonnie doesn’t strike me as a thinking/planning kind of guy.”
(Oh, Elene, you are so intuitive. “Elegant”—I like the sound of that.)
Me: “Other than strangling the girl, what additional evidence do the police have?”
Elene: “Frank would probably hate me telling you this, but you’re assisting with the investigation anyway, so what’s the difference? He wrote on the dead woman’s body.”
Me: (I couldn’t believe my luck.) “Wow. Really? That’s sounds conclusive to me.”
Elene: “He didn’t write anything poetic. All he wrote was, ‘Fuck You Vivian.’”
(Echoes from my dream of the other night.
Although I guess writing “Fuck you” is hardly original.)
Me: “Oh.”
Elene: “Not what you would call lyrical verse.”
Me: “Maybe if you’re a rap artist …”
Elene: “There is something else that is bugging me. I know that I have to be aware of the professional pride aspect, but Lonnie just doesn’t fit my profile of the serial killer and that, to be frank, annoys the hell out of me. OK, he has a certain amount of rage against women and his relationships with the opposite sex are bumpy, but I just don’t think he fits the bill.”
Me: “What does Frank say about that?”
Elene: “Frank thinks that I am just sore because I missed the boat. He hates the idea of outsiders being involved in investigations at the best of times, even though I have been helpful to him in the past. He thinks it’s hilarious that I pulled a boner on this one. In his jaded eyes, it serves me right that I got it so wrong.”
Me: “Frank won’t entertain the idea that HE might be wrong?”
Elene: “The police have a suspect that they think fits the bill and it will take a hell of a lot of evidence to the contrary to convince them otherwise. How they are going to prove that he committed the other murders may be a challenge, but believe me, they can make it stick if they want to bad enough. Poor old Lonnie is tailor-made for Death Row, I’m afraid.”
Me: “Any previous convictions?”
Elene: “Two as an adult. One for assault in a road rage case and one for sexual assault. And his juvenile record isn’t sterling either. Two B and E’s and one Grand Theft Auto.”
Me: “Things don’t sound so good for Lonnie.”
Elene: (taking a swig of her Ricard) “No, they don’t.”
Elene went off to finish preparing our meal and I chewed over the latest facts. Lonnie was looking good. He was looking real good for the murders. What a break.
We ate dinner. Elene was an excellent cook. We had an appetizer of baked green peppers garnished with anchovies, olive oil and black olives, which tasted better than it sounded, followed by roast chicken stuffed with parsley accompanied by rice and homemade ratatouille.
We drank a Bourgogne Aligoté white wine that complimented the food perfectly.
After dinner, Elene and I retired to the couch, listened to music (Chet Baker’s Greatest Hits) and talked some more, mostly just personal stuff. I was only paying attention on the most superficial level. All I could think of was making love to Elene. Touching her skin. Breathing in the scent of her flesh. Penetrating her and watching her face twist into that mixture of agony and ecstasy that women do so well.
Then something Elene said broke through …
Elene: “You seem a bit distracted, Professor.”
Me: “I’m
sorry. I keep thinking of those poor women getting killed and the police not catching the right guy. It’s infuriating.”
Elene: “I know. I think we should do something about it.”
Me: “We should?”
Elene: “There must be a way that we can catch the right man.”
Me: “Well, we don’t exactly have the resources. After all, that’s what the police are there for. Anyway, Lonnie will have legal counsel.”
Elene: “Yeah, some crappy public defender.”
Me: “You never know, this is bound to be a high profile trial. Perhaps some hotshot lawyer will take on the case for the publicity.”
Elene: “I know a good criminal lawyer in New York City. I might be able to persuade him to get involved.”
Me: “Maybe you should give him a call sometime.”
Elene jumped up and walked briskly to the telephone while I silently cursed myself. Why did I have to mention Lonnie again and get her all steamed up about the injustice of it all? I should have just told her what was really on my mind: ravishing her body.
Elene called her friend in NYC. He was interested, but, thankfully, he was extremely busy. He wouldn’t be able to take the case. He promised her that he would give it some thought and call her back with the names of some other lawyers that he could recommend.
Elene returned to the couch. She was passionately fired up and she kept prattling on about poor Lonnie and how brazenly the police were going to stitch him up. I contemplated making a move on her, but something stopped me. I felt too exposed, too vulnerable and, frankly, too irritable. The security I had initially felt in her house evaporated. All this talk of Lonnie was killing my libido, which was remarkable in itself. Interesting to think that my potential savior was coming in between Elene and me, but there you go.
We broke up the party around eleven, as Elene had an early class the next morning. I went home and masturbated myself to sleep, accompanied by daydreams of ripping off that red dress, with all its connotations of red flags and bulls. Red, the color of blood, the color of sex, the color of her lips—open wide, begging for mercy, begging for more.
ENTRY 92:
The news seems to engender the most depressing thoughts. I watch it daily and all I feel is despair and contempt for the human race. The things we do to each other beggar the imagination. I’m just a talented amateur compared to the maniacs running loose out there. All the incredible innovations of the 20th and 21st centuries become meaningless in the face of the mind-numbing poverty, ignorance and stupidity that one is confronted with every day. And yet we go on and on and on. The horrors don’t stop us. We keep on plopping out babies like there is no tomorrow, even though for many of them, there isn’t.
The most powerful human instinct of all seems to be the one to procreate no matter what—to continue to churn out mindless multitudes of ignoramuses every day without pause. Meanwhile there is only a tiny minority of people born into this world who develop abilities that will further the progress of mankind. Is there a design fault at work here? It is almost as if nature’s most important task is to hand out this procreation instinct, regardless of the quality of the product. One would think that natural selection—survival of the fittest—would preclude this abundance of dunces, but the question is: the fittest what? Is it the fittest body or the fittest brain? Once upon a time, the physically strong would logically be the ones to survive; now it is supposedly the smartest. Does that mean that the world will be full of Bill Gates clones in fifty years? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
If there are around seven billion people on the planet and 5.1 billion people are living on the barest subsistence level, then what is the point of the human race? What are we here for? If only 15% of the population are the movers and shakers, does that mean that we could get rid of those pesky 5.1 billion souls and not notice? The world might be a cleaner, smarter, less poverty-stricken and disease-ridden place.
Hey, I have an idea. Maybe instead of forgetting the debts of the Third World, we should just nuke them. They are never going to solve their problems anyway; we know that. The will is just not there. We should just nuke the poor, misbegotten lot of them. Except for the nuclear fallout, the world would be a better place. There would be no depressive atmosphere of misery to bring down our Have A Nice Days. On the other hand, forget nuclear weapons. Too much radiation. Just use neutron bombs. They kill all the people and dogs and stuff, but don’t destroy the buildings. The radiation disperses very quickly, so there will be less harm to the environment. Trouble is, what would we do with all that shitty Third World architecture?
I think that this is a dandy idea. I wonder how difficult it is to get hold of a neutron bomb? I bet I could pick up one cheap in the local K-Mart in Tehran.
ENTRY 93:
Elene called me today to tell me that District Attorney Kulkinski has charged Lonnie with my works of art. I should feel like celebrating, but until Lonnie is in the clink for good, I am not home free.
Elene was furious about Lonnie being charged and she asked me to come over to her place again to discuss my findings in depth. I am not sure how I am going to take advantage of all that negative emotion, but I am definitely going to make a move tonight. After all, she keeps begging me to come over to her place. That must mean something.
ENTRY 94:
Elene was beside herself when I arrived. I’d never seen her so angry. I tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t listen. All she could do was talk about Frank and what a bastard he was. She even forgot to offer me a martini.
Elene: “Professor, did you ever see that documentary directed by Errol Morris called The Thin Blue Line? The police stitched up this guy called Randall Adams for the murder of a policeman. Just because it was convenient. Just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just because the only other suspect was a sixteen-year-old local boy ineligible for the Death Penalty. Just because Adams was a drifter from out of town. A policeman pointed a gun in his face and Adams was coerced into signing a confession. His lawyer was so overwhelmed by the case that he let it slide. Adams spent years in prison until the documentary came out and the authorities were shamed into doing something about it.”
Me: “You’re not implying that Frank would shove a gun in somebody’s face to get a confession, are you?”
Elene: “Why not? Since Lonnie’s incarceration, no more murders have occurred. Why not have him go down for the whole kit and caboodle? Jesus, it means that Frank can spit in my eye, he can spit in the FBI’s eye and he can spit in Lonnie’s eye.”
Me: “Calm down. They will need some evidence linking Lonnie to the other crime scenes, surely.”
Elene: “Not if they do a deal. Not if Frank explains the finer points of Death Row living to Lonnie in gruesome detail. Not if the D.A. gives Lonnie a blow-by-blow account of what it is like to die by lethal injection. Lonnie will sign the papers, because he is stupid enough to do it, because his lawyer is inept and because no one gives a shit. All they want to do is tidy up the paperwork and have someone—anyone—go down for the serial murders. Lonnie did kill someone, so he’s not exactly an innocent babe. As long as the real killer doesn’t strike again, Lonnie’s sunk. And if I were ‘The Painted Lady’ serial killer, I’d lay low, change my M.O. and signature style, and even move to another city if I had to. Jesus, the real killer is going to get away with it and there isn’t a thing we can do about it.”
Me: “I guess not.”
Elene put her head in her hands and, for a moment, I felt sorry for her. I did adore her and her compassion for Lonnie the Loser might have moved me, if it wasn’t so funny. I sat down next to Elene and put my arm around her shoulders.
Me: “You are getting worried about something that hasn’t even happened yet. Let the judicial process do its work. It isn’t that corrupt, you know. It’s functioned pretty well up to now.”
Elene: “Do you know how many estimated miscarriages of justice occur in the United States every year?”
Me: �
��Please don’t tell me, it will only depress me. Anyway, I appreciate your passion for Lonnie’s predicament, but he has murdered someone. The precedence has been set. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe he did kill the other girls. After all, you can’t be completely sure. People’s minds work in mysterious ways. You can’t say that just because he killed a prostitute one time, it doesn’t preclude his murdering a legal secretary or a dental hygienist on another night. Just because he’s a loser, doesn’t mean that he can’t have fantasies about art and Venus. You’ve told me yourself that profiling isn’t the be-all-and-end-all. Even the FBI gets it wrong sometimes, they must do. They’re not perfect and neither are you. All you can do is base your conclusions on what has gone on before. And unfortunately, the human mind is a constantly evolving, living machine, so in the course of things, a killer could pop up who doesn’t match the common, run-of-the-mill profile, like Lonnie. You have to learn to be more flexible.”
Elene: “To hell with flexibility. I know in my guts that Frank is wrong.” Suddenly, Elene jumped up, walked to the telephone and started dialing. I had a sinking feeling of déjà vu.
Elene: “Frank, it’s me. I need to see you right now. I don’t care what you are doing. We need to talk.”
Elene had her back to me, which was fortunate, because I don’t think that she would have liked the expression on my face at that particular moment.
She turned to me and said, “Professor, I’m sorry, but I have to talk to Frank about this. I’m not going to let some poor guy get framed for two serial killings that I know in my gut that he didn’t have the intelligence to commit. Let’s meet up next week, OK? I promise I’ll make it up to you then.”
