A laugh sounded at the other end. “I didn’t think you’d understand, Hope.”
“I’m prepared to try.”
“With due respect, Hope, you’re out of your league.”
“My league is Wilna van As. She has nothing to do with the latest developments.”
“It sounds as if you don’t think our Mike is going to accept the offer.”
“Please, Kara-An.”
“I’m not the one you should beg, angel.”
She suddenly didn’t know what to say.
“I have to go. There’s someone at the front door. Strength to your elbow, Hope.” And the line went dead.
¦
“What do you really want?” he asked as she opened the door.
For a moment there was astonishment; then she smiled. “Come in, Zatopek van Heerden. What a wonderful surprise.” She closed the door behind him, pulled him roughly toward her, put her hands behind his head, and kissed him hard on the mouth, her fingers pulling his hair, her body full of little urgent movements pressing him against the door, and then he shoved her away and said, “Fuck you,” and she stood in front of him, her lipstick smudged, and she gasped and she laughed, and he said, “You’re sick.”
“I knew you would understand.”
“And bad.”
“Just like you. But stronger. Much stronger.”
“I have a counteroffer.”
“Tell me.”
“Fuck the doctor. He can lay a charge. This is just between the two of us.”
“What’s with you and doctors, Zatopek?”
“I’ll give you what you want. For the publicity. Purely for the publicity.”
“But only when it’s all over?”
“Yes.”
“Can I trust you?”
“No.”
“And if the story of your life isn’t all I want?”
“You want me to hurt you, Kara-An.”
“Yes.”
“I saw you last night.”
“I know.”
“You need help.”
She laughed once, a single barking sound that filled the entrance hall. “And you’re going to help me, Zatopek van Heerden?”
“Do you accept my counteroffer?”
“On one condition.”
“What?”
“If you shove me away again…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t hold back, Van Heerden. Let all that rage out.”
? Dead at Daybreak ?
26
Sometime during the routine academic years, I took part, late one night, in one of those senseless conversations that people have when they’ve had just enough to drink to lose their embarrassment at talking utter nonsense. The others taking part have long been forgotten, the proposer of the theory a mere shadow. But the subject was fate – and the possibility of parallel universes.
Just suppose, the argument had started, that reality forked, like a road, every time you made a major decision. Because you generally have two choices, this would cause a split in the universe, an option between broad and narrow roads.
Because difficult decisions were often made on a fragile balance of possibilities, in which the minutest of minute reasons could disturb the knife-edge equilibrium.
And supposing you and your world continued in both realities, together with all the others you had already created with your choices. In each parallel existence, you lived with the results of your decision.
It was an amusing game, a quasi-intellectual exercise, a rich resource for the writer of science fiction, but it haunted me for years.
Especially after Baby Marnewick so suddenly intruded into my conscience again.
It began with two articles in the same issue of
On a professional level, the contents of the articles were revolutionary and dramatic: a criminological leap that eventually narrowed the gap between applied psychology and practical policing. But for me the experience of reading them was far more personal than academic because the facts, the modus operandi, the examples on which both articles based their arguments, were a blueprint of the death of Baby Marnewick. They made our dead neighbor rise up out of her grave, shook loose the memories and paraded them in front of my consciousness with a fanfare.
It made my life’s predictable path take an unforeseen direction.
And now I’ll have to lecture you because in the subsequent years I learned that the emotions that serial killers unleash often lead to false perceptions and popular views that are seldom rooted in reality.
The first thing one must understand is the difference between serial killers and mass murderers. The former are the Ted Bundys of this world, tragically damaged people who kill one victim after another in more or less the same way. They are, almost without exception, men, their targets usually women (unless they are homosexual, like Jeffrey Dahmer) and their most important psychological motivation is a total inability to make an impression socially – although I say this with great hesitation because, by trying to put it in a nutshell, I’m as guilty as the mass media of generalization and one-dimensional explanation of a far more complex phenomenon.
In contrast, mass murderers are those who will climb into the bell tower of a university and start shooting wildly. Or such a killer may be a White Wolf who does the same on a street corner – in contrast to the repeated, planned stalking of single, helpless victims by the serial killer.
Mass murderers are the shooting stars of daylight who, in one moment of flaming evil, swing Death’s scythe, are usually quickly caught, and finally leave innumerable questions unanswered.
Serial killers are the covert comets of the dark firmament who follow their path of destruction time and time again – prowlers, thieves of the night. Their crime is a show window of power, of the complete domination and humiliation of their victim, pathetic attempts to take revenge for the killers’ total lack of normal, healthy social and sexual interaction.
And Baby Marnewick’s dossier was a classic example, a perfect fit for the serial killer’s psyche.
If the views and theories of the two articles were true, it meant that Baby Marnewick’s murderer was identifiable, because the two authors had presented conceptual models of likely perpetrators, their behavior and lifestyle: often unattractive, usually single men with an inferiority complex, who lived with a domineering or promiscuous female parent and had an appetite for positions of power, such as might be found in the police or the Defence Force, but who usually lived on the edge of the law-and-order world, as security guards, for example. They were users of pornography with the emphasis on bondage – and variations on the theme.
Predictable, identifiable. Catchable.
It also meant that Baby Marnewick hadn’t been the first or the only victim of her murderer. Serial killers are
