The Confession

by Tom Lowe

  Her six-year-old daughter, blonde curls around her little face said, “Read us another one Mommy.”

  “Not tonight. It’s bedtime.”

  “Daddy always reads two stories.”

  “Well, when Daddy comes back, maybe he’ll do that, but I’m tired. Your mama worked a long day today. Thank God your grandma lives close to us.”

  “Mama,” her three-year-old son said, brown hair tousled, cheeks pink from the warmth of the blankets, “You forgot to say the prayer.”

  Wanda smiled and said, “You’re right, Andy. Okay, everyone. Let’s put our hands together like our church steeple and close your eyes.” She looked at her son and daughter, eyes closed, tiny hands placed palm-to-palm, fingers extended tip-to-tip, and said, “Dear God, thank you for our home and our family. Thank you for the food we have to nourish our bodies. We are so grateful for what you provide for us and how much you love us. We are blessed to have your guidance. We love you, too. Amen.”

  The little girl looked up through wide eyes and said, “Don’t forget about Daddy.” She closed her eyes tight and said, “God, bless Daddy. Keep him safe and make him hurry home. Amen.”

  Wanda tucked her children into their beds and slipped quietly into the living room. She walked over to the largest window and peeked out from behind the blinds. Dark clouds swirled in front of the three-quarter moon in a black and white kaleidoscope, changing patterns of light and dark over the tree line and farmyard, the old barn in silhouette. She looked in the driveway, hoping that her husband’s pickup truck would somehow be there parked next to her ten-year-old Chevy.

  She glanced up toward the ridgeline, the silhouette of a parked car just barely visible. Intuitively, Wanda clutched the top of her pajamas, felt her heart beat faster. How long had the car been there? Who’s in it? She moved a few feet to the door and flipped on a switch. Floodlights popped, illuminating most of the front yard. A raccoon waddled near her trash can, moths beginning to circle the lights. She heard thunder and saw lightning, and in the burst of white light, she could see the silhouette of a man on the driver’s side of the car. He seemed to be staring back toward the house.

  “I’m callin’ the police,” Wanda whispered. She watched as the driver started the car, keeping the headlights off as he began driving away. In ten seconds, the headlamps came on, and the last thing Elizabeth saw were the red taillights burning in the night, like red coals surrounded by black ash in the center of an old furnace, the kind that used to heat her grandmother’s house.

  Wanda walked into the kitchen, picked up her phone and called her husband. “Brandon, where are you?”

  Her husband, Brandon Donnelly, thirty-three, shaggy dark hair, unshaven, sat behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler as he pulled into a truck stop, the bright white LED light from overhead making his eyes blink. He said, “Hold on, baby. I’m pullin’ in a truck-stop in Peoria to get a burger.”

  “Brandon, listen to me.”

  “Okay, I’ll listen and park at the same time.” He smiled a boyish grin.

  “I think somebody’s following me.”

  “What? Why? What happened?”

  “First it was at work. A customer said some unkind stuff about me. He doesn’t even know me.”

  “What kinda stuff?”

  “Just crap he made up. He called my new tattoo a scarlet letter and said it was the mark of an adulteress.”

  “What the hell is a scarlet letter? Who is this guy?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him in the restaurant before, but I couldn’t get a good look at his face on account the sun was comin’ up and shining in the window where he sat. Brandon, when I was puttin’ the kids to bed tonight, I saw car headlights through the window. When I checked outside, I could see a car parked off the road on the ridgeline across from the farm. When I turned on the floodlights, the guy started up his car, not turnin’ his headlamps on ‘til he’d driven away.”

  “You need to call the law. What kind of car was it?”

  “I don’t know! If I call the law, what am I gonna tell them … some creep parked near my house and was watchin’ me and my kids? That’s all I know.”

  “I’ll be home at the end of the week. Call the sheriff’s office and ask them to send a deputy out at night to patrol around the farm. I’m callin’ my brother. Silas will check on you ‘till I get home. If you hear or see anything, I mean at any time, you call me. I don’t care what time of night it is, call me. Understand?”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Wanda disconnected and listened to the sound of rain falling outside. She walked over to a framed photograph on the wall. The picture was of her and Brandon on their wedding day in front of the church. Wide smiles. Friends and family in the background. A bouquet of roses in her arms. She lowered her eyes to the tattoo. There was a flash of lightning through the window, the absolute white light giving the red rose a different look for a fleeting moment. Scarlet.

  FOURTEEN

  The following morning, Elizabeth debated whether or not to write the killer’s words across the whiteboard in her classroom. She’d mentioned it to Mike Bradford on the phone during her drive to work. He said it wouldn’t hurt his investigation. And now, about ten minutes before eight o’clock, class would begin soon. She set her laptop computer and coffee cup down on the small desk near the lectern. After some thought, she turned and wrote on the whiteboard: Et roborabitur fortitudo eius in hora mortis …

  She set the black marker down, looked at the digital clock in the back of the room, and sat at her desk to read and grade papers. Within the next few minutes, students began drifting in, some with paper cups of coffee in their hands and earbuds in their ears. After all of the eighteen students had taken their seats, each person sitting in the same seat he or she claimed at the beginning of the semester, Elizabeth looked up and said, “Good morning.”

  A few students mumbled greetings, removing their earbuds and opening their laptops on the desks. “Are you handing back last week’s essays today?” asked a girl in a Southern Miss sweatshirt and jeans with holes in both knees, her brown skin smooth against the frayed rips in the fabric.

  Elizabeth stood and asked, “Has everyone here heard about the horrific murders at the edge of the De Soto National Forest? Did anyone know the victims?”

  Blank stares. Arms crossing. One male student in a hoodie, shorts and sandals said, “I heard the guy’s name once. Never had a class with him. Didn’t he graduate last year? It’s horrible.”

  A girl, auburn hair in a ponytail, raised her hand and asked, “Did they catch the person who did it?”

  “Not yet,” Elizabeth said.

  The same girl said, “My mom mentioned she saw you on the news. Are you helping police with the criminal profile?”

  “Yes, I’ve been asked to help.”

  “I think it’s really good that you—our teacher, who actually teaches criminal psychology, is called by police to help them profile the person who did these sickening killings—shows respect for you and our field of study.”

  “It’s like the real thing,” said a male student. “Not just theory.”

  Elizabeth said, “But theory plays a role into the factors contributing to the criminal mind and his or her actions. This is something all of you already know since you signed up for this course, Psychology of Criminal Behavior, to learn criminal behavior theories. And, you’ve already taken its flipside or pre-req, Theories of Personality. Today, we’re going to be discussing an active case, so you can’t repeat what we talk about outside the classroom. Theory or not, agreed?” Everyone nodded. “Okay, let’s see what we can come up with.”

  “What have you found?” asked a male student in a Space Invaders T-shirt and jeans.

  “It’s still early in the case, and I’m working with police; but there are not as many details as we’d like. However, the preliminary investigation indicates the perpetrator is a man. He’s probably white. No older than forty, if that.
Most likely unmarried. He was exposed to organized religion—probably growing up. Religious symbols, such as the cross, have some deep meaning in his life. He’s probably a loner to some extent. Socially challenged. Maybe follows some cult, either as part of a group or by interest to gain knowledge.”

  “You mean religious cult?” asked a female student.

  “Not necessarily. It could be political, philosophical or even social. He’ll put on an act—a façade in public. But there’s a very dark side, and that is not an act. It’s who he is—someone deeply disturbed whom we would classify in our field as having Antisocial Personality Disorder or APD. Is he reckless, hot-headed, and calloused or mission-driven, cold-hearted and calculating with an agenda? Could he be classified as a sociopath or be a psychopath? So, students, listen carefully … our discussion today will go around what we know so far. Then I want you to write an essay presenting your theory on whether you believe this person could be a sociopath or psychopath and why or vice versa. Minimum of two pages.”

  The same student asked, “Do you think these murders are his first, and do you think he’ll try it again?”

  “Personally, I don’t believe the deaths of Brian Woods and Olivia Curtis are his first. But now he’s committing what we call signature murders—staging the bodies, leaving his own sick brand of stylized death behind. Because the investigation is on-going, I can’t get into too many specifics from the crime scene, but I’ll be able to share some for our purpose today.”

  A girl in the front row nearest to the lectern raised her hand. “What are the words on the board? What do they mean?”

  Elizabeth didn’t look back at the board. She looked directly at the student asking the question and said, “Et roborabitur fortitudo eius in hora mortis … it’s Latin, and it means … you shall be strengthened by His presence in the hour of your death.”

  “Where’d you get that?” the girl asked.

  “It was left at the crime scene.”

  “Holy crap,” said a skinny male student wearing a USM ball cap on his head.

  Elizabeth walked near one of the students in the front row. She looked at the words she had written on the whiteboard and then scanned the class, her eyes taking in each young face—faces seeking answers to an evil that was not fathomable in any rational sense of the word. She said, “In the study of forensic and criminal psychology, we look at many areas with its association to crime. Broadly speaking, the theories of criminal behavior involve three prime categories: psychological, biological, and social. Some psychologists now include the military theory, saying that serial killing can be learned. All of this makes quite a soup of human emotions when heated and served to the general population—those of us who have to clean up the messes left behind by the perpetrators.”

  A male student, perfect part in his dirty blond hair, wire glasses, raised his hand.

  “Yes, Jerod?” Elizabeth said.

  “Doctor Monroe, those murders … they’re way beyond a mess. They’re people, just like all of us in this classroom. We know forensic psychology can help profile criminals after the fact, but can it do it before the crime or crimes have been committed?”

  “Yes, however, there are many kinds of mental illness, and most drift along the current of humanity, never diagnosed until something warrants it if you can get the potential patient to seek help. Not all, of course, are on the level of psychopathy in terms of people like Ted Bundy or Dennis Raider, the infamous BTK murderer—he used the initials BTK for bind … torture … kill. He broke into the homes of sleeping victims, binding them with rope, torturing and finally slowly killing them.”

  “That so freaking sick,” said a girl in the left corner of the classroom.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, it is sick. In criminal cases, especially those in which mental competency is a factor under consideration, the questions revolve around this: Did he or she know what they were doing at the time the crime was being committed? Did they or do they know the difference between right and wrong? Psychological … social … biological. How do you think those factors might contribute to crime by influencing the mind?”

  A male student with spiked hair raised his hand.

  Elizabeth pointed toward him. “What do you think, Mike?”

  “I gotta believe that poverty plays a big role. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, you do what you have to do to survive.”

  “But does that give you the right to commit a crime?” asked Elizabeth. “If someone steals bread because they’re hungry, once the hunger is satiated … it’ll come back. And they will steal again unless they make a concerted effort to remove themselves from the cycle of poverty, and now they are linked to criminal behavior. Once the bread is stolen, when the person does it again and again, does this learned action embolden them to steal more … or to take greater, more deadly chances?”

  A girl near the front raised her hand. “I think the question that people in forensic psychology need to ask is what happens to the human conscience when factors like poverty, being constantly hungry, abused, neglected, and stuff like that, turns a person into a criminal, and then there’s no turning back?”

  “Great question,” Elizabeth said. “You’re talking about free will. We all have it—rich or poor. But consider this: How and to what degree might other factors intrude on and then begin to compromise a person’s ability to exercise his or her free will?”

  No one in the class raised a hand. Elizabeth scanned the room and said, “Herein lies the question about the ingredients in the core of life. Why do some people come out of poverty, abuse, neglect, poor diets—diets that starve the brain of the fuel it needs to make good and rational decisions, and still become good citizens? How does one remain or become virtuous, overcome those trappings, and contribute to the good of society?”

  A black girl in the center of the classroom raised her hand and said, “Until you live in another person’s shoes, you’ll never walk the walk or talk the talk. Everything else is nothing but somebody’s theory.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “It’s beyond theory. What criminal psychology seeks to answer is why did it happen? That’s the reason we factor in everything. And that’s why I’m sharing with you something left at the crime scene in the deaths of Brian Woods and Olivia Curtis. We believe the killer knew his victims. How well—whether close or distant—he knew them we don’t know. That’s what police are looking for in the investigation—the connection.”

  “Doctor Monroe, you mentioned that some people with a mental illness go undiagnosed, may not seek help, or aren’t at the level of psychopaths like BTK or Ted Bundy. Can anyone with a mental illness, if diagnosed early, be cured?” asked a girl with waist-length, black hair and ice blue eyes.

  “There’s a lot of debate about cures due to the wide range of mental illnesses. However, most agree that psychopaths, like Ted Bundy and other cold-blooded, serial killers, are on the farthest end of the spectrum. And there’s been scientific studies that support a psychopath’s brain is different—but this is not conclusive. Kate, you asked a really good question, and it’s worthy of a deeper discussion … one we’ll tackle later in the semester.”

  A girl near the back of the class slowly raised her hand and asked, “Should we carry pepper spray?”

  Elizabeth said, “For men and women, that’s probably a good idea, especially around a large university campus. But the killer knows no boundaries. Just be vigilant. That’s always good advice … especially right now. If the killer isn’t caught, he most likely will strike again. I don’t want it to be anyone in this class.”

  “We don’t either,” mumbled a girl in the center of the class.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Does anyone in class attend St. Patrick’s Catholic Church?”

  No one raised a hand or spoke up. A student in black-framed glasses closed his laptop. “Last time I was in church was two years ago. It was Mount Zion Baptist. What’s the deal with St. Patrick’s?”

  “No deal,” Elizabet
h said. “I’m a member. If anyone else is, I was just going to say maybe I’ll see you in church on Sunday. Don’t forget … your papers are due next Wednesday at the beginning of class and be prepared to use the points you made for discussion. You all have a good rest of the week. Stay safe.”

  FIFTEEN

  Late in the afternoon, Elizabeth was in her small office grading papers when the department secretary buzzed the phone intercom and said, “Doctor Monroe, I have a reporter from Channel Eleven calling. He wants to speak with you. Do you want me to put him through or tell him you’re unavailable? It’s almost closing time.”

  “It’s okay, Claire. I’ll probably refer his questions to the detectives. You can put him through.”

  “Okay. Here he is.”

  “Doctor Elizabeth Monroe speaking.”

  “Doctor Monroe, this is Keith Bridges with Fox Eleven News. I was wondering, do you have a quick minute for an on-camera interview today?”

  “What would you like discuss, Mr. Bridges?”

  “Please, you can call me Keith. I was hoping you might have a more complete criminal profile of the person responsible for the murders of Brian Woods and Olivia Curtis. It’d be great to let the viewers in Hattiesburg and the other three counties in our viewing area know what to watch out for. This person has killed two people and detectives say they don’t think he’s done. We may have a serial killer amongst us, and I think viewers would like to know what the suspect might look or act like.”

  “He or she will act just like you, Mr. Bridges. They’ll go about their lives with their day jobs and normal living circumstances, but then something will trigger that person’s anger or excessive need to control, and he or she will kill another victim or victims.”

  “Can you give us more to go on, such as physical or direct personality characteristics?”

  Elizabeth looked at her watch and said, “I’ve given you all I can at this time. For anything more, please reach out to the Forrest County Sheriff’s Department. Detective Mike Bradford may have more. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s getting late, and I have a long-standing appointment I can’t miss. Goodbye.”