The Darker Side

'For my next trick,' I mutter, padding back to the living room, 'I will turn to my most long-term and beloved addiction.'

Work.

Work, work, sweet glorious work. One of the fine things about having a job with real purpose is that you can use it to replace yourself when you need to. That cicada buzz can be seductive as well as stressful.

I grab the yellow legal pad and pen from the coffee table. I keep this pad there for one of my own rituals. Late at night (like now) when I am alone, I curl my feet under me and try to bring order to the jumble of data in whatever case I'm working on. It helps me focus and has led to any number of useful epiphanies over the years. It's also a pretty good talisman. Scratching away on that yellow pad helps beat back thoughts I don't want around.

There are certain axioms I've developed over the years about homicides. Pragmatisms. Insights. I concentrate on these and jot them down to get the wheels turning in their grooves and dispel Tommy and the ghosts he brings.

The Victim is always everything. Even when the murder is a random event, remember: the thing we choose on the spur of the moment can be the most revealing.

A killer once told me he chose his strangling victims by watching for the first woman who made eye contact with him. I pointed out that, somehow, these first women were always blonde. He thought about this, laughed, and admitted that his mother had been a blonde. ('Mom was a real cunt,' he had added without prompting.) Method tells us what drives him, or what he wants us to think drives him.

Another killer I caught beat his victims until they had no face. He had been driven by a hatred so intense that it could actually induce a minor fugue state. 'A couple times,' he'd told me, 'I remember starting to hit a whore, but I don't remember nothing else till it was over. Which is a real shame. 'Cause honestly, that's the best part.' He really had been regretful about it.

Insanity is not the same as stupidity.

The truth is, they're all crazy in their own way, but some of them are also brilliant.

Sex as a component, or the lack thereof, is key when considering motive.

This last one gets me thinking.

Both victims we know of--Lisa Reid and Rosemary Sonnenfeld--

were murdered but not sexually abused. Lisa was a pre-op transsexual, which in itself points toward a sexual component. Rosemary's past points to sex as well, and yet he didn't abuse her. I chew on the pen, thinking about this. I come to the same conclusion as I had earlier. It's not about sex for him.

This is rare. It's almost always about sex.

Not this time.

Okay, then what's it about? Victims are everything. What are the commonalities?

Both victims were women.

I scratch that out. Lisa Reid was not a woman. The distinction might be unfair to her, but it would have been significant to the killer. This is not a commonality.

Look for similarities in method then.

Both victims were killed in the same way. A sharp object was thrust into their right side and angled up and into the heart. Both victims had a cross placed inside the resulting wound. I consider the cross. After sex and general insanity, religious mania plays a big part in serial homicides. Only parents get hung with more blame than God. Satanic elements are a popular choice, but there are plenty of instances where the killer felt that he was saving his victims, that he was working for the man upstairs, not the one in the nether-basement.

Is that the deal here? Is he saving his victims from something?

I doodle on the pad:

What do you save someone from?

One answer:

The consequences of their actions.

From a religious standpoint, you save them from damnation. Yeah.

What damns someone?

I rattle my brain, trying to jar loose old memories of catechism. Something about mortal sins, venial sins . . .

I take my notepad with me as I pad up the stairs and into my oftused home office. I sit down in front of my computer and open the browser to a search engine.

In the search field I type: mortal sin defined. The first choice is Mortal Sin--definition

'Ask and ye shall receive,' I mutter. I click the link. The American Heritage Dictionary definition of mortal sin appears: A sin, such as murder or blasphemy, that is so heinous it deprives the soul of sanctifying grace and causes damnation if unpardoned at the time of death.

There is a treatise farther down on the page that relates to Aquinas.

A mortal sin destroys the grace of God in the heart of the sinner. In order for a sin to be mortal, it must meet three conditions: A. Sin must be of a grave matter.

B. Sin is committed with the full knowledge of the sinner. C. Sin is committed with the full and deliberate consent of the sinner.

Thus a mortal sin cannot be committed by accident, as two of the qualifying components are knowledge and consent. In other words, the sinner knows what he or she is doing is an offense against God, but does so anyway, and with premeditation. The sinner is aware that he is rejecting God's law and love.

In Galatians 5:19-21, St. Paul gives a list of grave sins: 'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, em- ulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunken- ness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not in- herit the kingdom of God.'

And in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: Paul also tells the Corinthians,

'know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God?

Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the ef- feminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunk- ards nor railers, nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.'

It continues in this vein. I go back and click some of the other links the search engine gave me. I'm not surprised to find that the specifics of what constitutes a mortal sin is a widely debated subject. The Catholic Church has views and definitions that are distinct from Protestants. Orthodox churches in places such as Eastern Europe have different views than those in the west. Strict traditionalists classify the so-called Seven Deadly Sins as mortal, while others dispute this.

There are definite points of agreement. Everyone allows that murder is pretty bad. Homosexuality is universally considered to be a quick ticket into hellfire.

'Sorry, James,' I murmur. 'No one likes a godless sodomite.'

The most general consensus, from what I can see, is: you know it is a grave sin, you know it denies God's love and law, and you do it anyway. If you don't take responsibility for that mortal sin prior to death, you're fucked. Get ready to burn like an indestructible marshmallow over an eternal campfire.

I lean back in the chair and consult my notepad again. Okay, let's roll with this. So . . . if he's saving them from damnation then--what? He gets them to confess before he kills them?

The other and obvious possibility occurs to me.

Maybe he is not saving them. Maybe he is damning them. If he's aware of something they've done, something he considered a mortal sin, and he kills them before they have the opportunity to repent, then, within his paradigm, he'd be sending them straight to hell.

Why would he want to do that? I doubt it's based on a personal connection with the victims, so direct revenge is out. It would have a broader base. Vengeance in absentia? Sending a message?

Will of God?

'Are you saving them, or damning them? Do you care about their souls?' I toss the pad down on the desk in frustration. 'Do I have any idea if I'm even on the right track?'