A Serial Killer’s Daughter

by Kerri Rawson

  “Why did you swerve?” the boy with the kind eyes asked again.

  “I was tryin’ to avoid that chughole.”

  “A what?”

  “Chughole. You know, a hole in the road.”

  “You mean a pothole?”

  “Yeah.”

  He laughed uncontrollably. “You are so Kansan.”

  “Yeah? So are you.”

  “No. Dad’s from Long Island, Mom is from Denver, and I’ve never, ever, heard anyone call a pothole a chughole before.”

  “Well, that’s what my dad calls it.”

  Darian, soon to be twenty years old, needed a ride home, and my twenty-one-year-old self volunteered, or was roped into volunteering, I don’t exactly recall which. Darian was trying to cheer me up as we tackled the bad weather and questionable roads, and I noticed—appreciated it. It was the first chance at a long conversation, and the drive was passing by quickly.

  “What do you call that, Kansan?” Darian was pointing out the car window to a huge antenna sitting at the junction of Routes 77 and 50, near Florence.

  “An-tanna.” This was said in a hick Kansan drawl.

  He laughed again. A lot.

  As I rounded the corner to Route 50, I looked over at him and knew I was in big trouble. When we reached his home in west Wichita, I asked if he would like a ride back on Sunday.

  Really, God? After fighting against it for so long, and trying to go every other way, is this who I am supposed to be with? This guy? Really?

  A month later, over Christmas break, Darian picked me up for Sonic and a Thunder hockey game at the Kansas Coliseum. We had the chance to ice skate after the game. I was timid on the ice, but he took my hands in his, pulling me fast while he skated backward. My soul and heart were flying. I didn’t want to stop, wanted to feel this way the rest of my days.

  God? This guy.

  A few weeks later, in early January 2000, Darian and I were driving out to Denver, Colorado, for a Campus Crusade conference. Friends were in a car ahead, and on a steep, icy overpass in Salina, Kansas, they slid into a skid. Their car hit ours as we passed, knocking us up against a guardrail on the right as we headed down. I was driving and pretty shaken up, but it seemed we would all be okay—until I looked in my rearview mirror and watched as my friends’ tiny car was smashed from behind by an eighteen-wheeler that had come over the hill.

  Darian was sitting next to me in the passenger seat as I began yelling, praying, and cursing: my crappy, low-tech cell phone wouldn’t roam to call 911.

  Our group pulled over at a truck stop while first responders tended to our friends. We made two of the hardest phone calls I’ve ever been a part of, notifying parents their daughters had been in an accident. Darian and I, along with three other guys from another car, stayed most of that day at the emergency room, speaking with the highway patrol and sitting beside our friends, waiting for their families to arrive. One of the girls was unconscious and later taken to surgery.

  Late that winter afternoon, we finally headed toward Denver, taking turns driving. When it was my turn, Darian drew a funny picture on a sticky note and stuck it under the rearview mirror so I wouldn’t focus so much on seeing the accident over and over in the mirror. We didn’t arrive at our hotel until midnight, making the trip on the drifting snow and patchy ice of I-70, often passing by spinouts and cars in the ditch. That terrible day there was a good deal of praying, wondering why we still pressed on, and making phone calls from pay phones to update our worried parents.

  My feelings were a mess and my heart felt like a rock. Originally Darian was supposed to be in the back seat of that two-door hatchback with another boy. While I was devastated for my injured friends, I was also relieved Darian and the other guy hadn’t been in the car. Darian told me it had been a mistake to look at the car when he went to retrieve his bag from the police station; there were no more than inches left where he would have been sitting.

  Realizing what I could have lost, my heart continued to shift. Late one evening, curled up in overstuffed hotel chairs, we didn’t just decide to date—we settled on marriage. Darian told me, “I fell for you the first time I met you, and I’ve been praying since that you’d become my wife.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should hit him for upending the past year and a half of my life with his prayers or to just go with it. I decided to go with it—it wasn’t every day one heard “I’ve been praying for you to become my wife.”

  I’m guessing he was a little more focused in the prayer department than I’d been.

  The next evening, walking in downtown Denver, when he took my hand in his, I knew. This was it. We would quickly become inseparable, and to this day, I have no idea what took so long for me to figure it out.

  MARCH 2000

  OKLAHOMA

  “Is your dad always like this?” Darian was camping with Dad, Brian, and me for the first time. It was spring break, and we were in somewhere-nowhere, Oklahoma. It would be his first and last campout with us because my “idiosyncratic dad,” as Darian would say later, was driving my sane boyfriend insane.

  “Dad can be particular, likes things a certain way. It’s better to just go with it. Otherwise, he’s gonna get bent out of shape and tank our whole week.” I said this while lying with my head on Darian’s chest. We were hanging out in his tent, which was much roomier than my tiny one-man. “If ya go along with him, then he won’t care so much if I spend an inordinate amount of time in your tent during the day.”

  “Oh, right. Go along with your dad. Got it.” Darian wrapped an arm around me and chuckled. Darian was an Eagle Scout and more than capable of maintaining a camp. He hiked rugged miles for days at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico a few years before and had been quite a bit more successful at it than our own undertaking in the Grand Canyon.

  But Dad, according to Darian, “had taken all the fun out of camping” by doing everything himself. I didn’t care—I was used to Dad being in charge and fussing around camp, which left me more time to fish, read, be lazy, or make out with my boyfriend.

  Dad hadn’t made Eagle, but when he was young he hiked Philmont like Darian. And Dad was my brother’s troop leader for years, helping Brian get to Eagle back in 1993. I figured Darian and my dad would bond and I’d gain another guy to fish with. But Darian wasn’t into fishing, considering it too slow, and seemed to get Dad’s ire up. Dad told me weeks before he thought Darian was a bit sketchy, with his wallet chain and leather jacket, and I shouldn’t date a wannabe artist who wouldn’t be able to provide for me.

  My dad wore a similar leather jacket when he was younger—it still hung in our coat closet—and telling me I shouldn’t date Darian pushed me all the more toward him.

  We survived the week together, taking short hikes and clowning around on the park playground equipment together, Dad included. It was too early for decent fishing, but the March weather was a wee bit warmer in Oklahoma than in Kansas, and I considered it a good week. Afterward, Darian would question my dad’s oddities, but Dad had gotten comfortable enough with Darian to never knock or question him again.

  I’d argue that most fathers, if not all, give their daughters’ boyfriends some grief. And, I’d reckon most boyfriends, at least quietly, hold opinions about their girlfriends’ fathers.

  It took time for Dad to adjust to someone new. My bringing a boyfriend along on a weeklong campout was likely challenging to my dad, but he grew to like Darian over that week. And at the time, Darian, a laid-back guy, simply was pointing out that my dad had eccentricities and could be particular—wanting things a certain way. It would be another five years before hindsight upended the lot of us.

  CHAPTER 18

  Make a Place of Your Own

  MAY 2001

  MANHATTAN

  It took five years, a mess of lousy grades, and a good deal of fretting, but I did get to walk across the Bramlage Coliseum stage in a black cap and gown to pick up my bachelor’s in life science. But I stayed in college another two years. I was
on the seven-year plan for slackers who liked to pile up student loans and didn’t want to leave nice guys with kind eyes they were falling in love with. I wanted to become an elementary schoolteacher.

  I didn’t want to be the oldest individual to ever live in the dorms, so I moved to a small apartment a few miles west of campus. I started summer classes and took a job at a college retail store. Darian stayed in Manhattan during the summer also, working on campus and living with a few guys in an old, run-down house.

  Darian and I would spend as much time together as we could manage around work and classes. On weekends, we would go hike the trails at Konza Prairie or Tuttle Creek. I’d attempt to cook him dinner, and we’d curl up on my couch to watch movies.

  I wasn’t sure about renting that apartment since it was on the second floor and the sliding-glass door was my only way in and out. But I called Dad, asking if he thought it would be safe, and we talked over location, lighting, and an escape plan. He told me it sounded fine; it was on a busy, well-lit corner, and if I had to, I could crawl out my bedroom window and drop down to the ground. When Dad helped me move from the dorms, he rigged up a broom handle I could wedge into the metal track when I was home.

  When I was in seventh grade, I’d stayed with a friend, and her mom told us that not far from their house, someone had thrown a cinder block through a lady’s sliding-glass door. The lady had gone missing and was later found murdered. I remember eyeing my friend’s door warily. From that time on, I didn’t like glass doors.

  Ten years later, I called Dad to ask what he thought about the little place I wanted to rent. Then, four years after that, I learned he was the one who threw the cinder block through the sliding-glass door I was told about in seventh grade, the door that belonged to Mrs. Davis.

  Living alone still ended up getting to me. When I got home in the evenings, I checked my utility and bedroom closets plus the space behind open doors, and I even whipped the shower curtain back, making sure the apartment hadn’t been inundated with bad guys. The night terrors I’d had since I was little grew into full-on haunting.

  Usually less than an hour after falling asleep, I would jolt, jump, kick, sometimes scream. Only vaguely awake, I was seized with terror, barely aware of myself or my surroundings. Sitting in bed, I’d look around in the dark, convinced someone, or something, was standing in my bedroom doorway, near my bed, or at the worst, in my bed.

  My body would go from dead sleep to fight, flight, or freeze.

  Maybe if I fight with all my might, I will survive.

  Maybe if I lie here real still, it will go away.

  My heart racing out of my chest, I’d bolt up, soaked with sweat—fully convinced this was it, this was the end. It felt as if I was losing years from my life.

  I slept with my bedroom door locked and would have to convince myself it was okay to leave my bedroom to go pee. Sometimes when I woke up startled, instead of freezing I would wander around my tiny place, thinking or muttering, “The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?”1

  I’d walk around with my gigantic black Maglite, which served a dual purpose as flashlight and weapon, compulsively checking the lock on the front door and the broom handle.

  Still in place.

  I’d even check the slightest spaces around my furniture and kitchen appliances—it was humanly impossible for someone to be in those spots, but I’d check.

  Something kept scaring me, and I was trying to find it.

  Climbing up on the couch my folks passed on to me, I’d peer down into the dark space between it and the wall. I’d look behind the fridge and the slight space behind the stove.

  All clear. Back to bed.

  My parents knew I could flip out at night, but I didn’t tell them how bad it had gotten. I didn’t tell any doctors I saw at the on-campus health center for the occasional sore throat or klutzy injury. I knew my behavior was reaching extreme levels, but I didn’t tell anyone how wigged out I could get—not even Darian.

  I’d also face thunderstorms, but at least those perceived threats had actual potential to cause harm. A few times in the predawn dark, I rode out blaring tornado warnings, listening to my battery-operated radio, pressed up against a dryer in the corner of the community laundry room. It was on the first floor, with sturdy interior walls. (Out of hundreds of residents, I was the only one who did this.)

  In August 2001, I went back to my weekday job at the dining center, worked at the retail store, and sold loads of purple merchandise out of a tent near the stadium during football games. On Sundays, I worked in an embroidery shop, trying to make tight ends meet.

  In September, I was on campus when the World Trade Center was attacked. My science-methods teacher notified us at Bluemont Hall, and by the time I reached my music-methods class at McCain Auditorium, I heard the Pentagon had been hit and the towers had fallen.

  My class canceled, I drudged over to Putnam Hall in shock, tears falling. I found Darian in the basement, along with many others, watching the coverage. As I learned about Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania, trying to comprehend what I was seeing, I grabbed Darian’s hand. I drove back to my apartment later that day listening to the news on the radio and didn’t know what to make of a sky devoid of planes.

  I drove home three days later, and Dad hugged me tight, his eyes wet with tears as he handed me a stack of the Eagle’s front sections, which I read through, then saved.

  I fell into a hole of sadness, fear, and uncertainty after 9/11. Depressed, stressed, stretched too thin from work and school, I became sick. After struggling for several weeks, and a doctor telling me I was nearing pneumonia, I cut back on work and dropped several classes, setting myself back another semester. My parents helped me, bringing boxes of food to stretch my grocery budget and making sure I could cover rent.

  In the spring of 2002, I retook the classes I had to drop in the fall and had only one more semester before starting student teaching full-time. In the summer, Darian went to Orlando for an internship with Campus Crusade and I fell into a crisis. I lost my retail job for failure to show up on time. To console myself I colored my hair, getting copper-red dye all over my white-tiled bathroom.

  Not able to find another job, broke, I ended up staying with my parents part of the summer. To earn my keep and continue to pay rent on my place back in Manhattan, I offered to help with home improvement work. I turned Brian’s old bedroom into a guest room, painting over the dark-blue walls with a cheerful lilac, painted the bathroom yellow, and helped my mom wallpaper the kitchen.

  Darian helped me get through my lousy summer, calling long-distance and surprising me with a shipment of long-stem roses in soft pinks, whites, and purples.

  In the fall of 2002, Darian and I were driving back from our good friend’s wedding when I became peeved. While he was refueling his car, I inquired—by yelling—“When are you ever going to ask me to marry you?”

  He said, “I’m working on that very thing—trying to save up money for a ring.”

  Oh.

  We shopped for rings not long after at a family jewelry store on Poyntz Avenue near the mall in Manhattan. He proposed in November, getting on one knee in my apartment after dinner out at our favorite Thai place.

  I was thrilled to be home with a princess-cut solitaire to show off at Thanksgiving. Over winter break, Mom and I hit up the after-Christmas sales at Hobby Lobby for decorations in my wedding colors, silver and burgundy. We also went wedding dress shopping, buying the second one I tried on: A-line, strapless, with embroidered butterflies zooming all over the bodice and skirt.

  I spent the last semester of college off campus, student teaching fourth grade in Riley, a small town northwest of Manhattan. When my car finally shot the last of its life in February 2003, Darian loaned me his Chevy Corsica till my parents were able to bring up their Ford Tempo. It was a sacrifice on their part, shorting them a car, but much appreciated by their twenty-four-year-old
daughter, who just needed to get through the last of her extremely long stay in college.

  A month before I graduated, Dad drove up to Manhattan, picking me up for a weekend at Glen Elder. My brother met us at the lake too. I don’t remember having much luck fishing that trip, but it felt good to be out under the blue sky. Dad drove me back on a warm Sunday afternoon, and we stopped at Sonic before heading back to my place.

  He saw me in, hugged me goodbye, and with his hands on my shoulders encouraged me “to finish out strong.” He told me he loved me and would see me soon. I stood on my wooden deck in front of my sliding-glass door and waved goodbye to him, watching as he drove off till I couldn’t see him anymore.

  CHAPTER 19

  Head Down the Wedding Aisle, Even If You Have to Hobble

  JULY 2003

  WICHITA

  Oh, man. My glasses broke.” It was the night before my wedding, near the end of July 2003, it was past midnight, and I was sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, fretting.

  “Let me see.” Dad sat down next to me. I handed him the two pieces. “Hmm, we’re not going to be able to fix these. The nose piece has broken in half.”

  “Darn. I still need to pack too.”

  “Well, kiddo, you better go do that, and we’ll see about getting you a new pair of glasses in the morning before the wedding.” Dad looked assured, although his eyes had been giving him away over the past month; his baby girl was getting married and moving sixteen hours away. I’m not sure he knew what to do about it.

  Back in June, Darian called to tell me, “We’re moving to Detroit.”

  It wasn’t a question, asking if I wanted to move to Detroit. It was a statement.

  We needed jobs, any jobs, anywhere in the country, and Detroit was it. Darian had been offered a graphic designer job, which he’d accepted and agreed to start a week after our wedding.

  I hung up the phone. “Hey, Mom, we’re moving to Detroit!”

  She nearly spilled the spaghetti she was draining in the sink.