Dumb dumb dumb. I still cringe when I think about it. All the trust that had been built up exploded all around me. I’d asked a fairly obvious trick question, and Bill put me between the crosshairs and pulled the trigger without even a nod to mercy: “I wouldn’t have any idea about that,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly and I can’t even imagine what a murderer would be like or how he’d think.” It was an answer by rote, the standard response from someone whose fate had all too often been in the hands of cops and juries and jailers and parole boards. Name, rank, and serial number—that was all he was giving me—he’d totally shut down.
Of course, it would do no good to argue with him, to tell him that innocent people can well imagine and are manifestly intrigued by what killers might be like, while only the guilty refuse to discuss it out of fear that they might give away some truth about themselves.
In a backhanded sort of way, I considered Bill’s response—or better, lack of response—to be a victory for me, but the cost had been too high. I knew his first shot at me was about to become a fusillade.
“This will interest you,” he said snidely. “Before my trial, I told my lawyers to get a book—Mr. Murder by Dean Koontz. Get the book and read page 23. That’s all I’ll say.”
“I’ll get it first thing tomorrow,” I said with real contrition, knowing that I was being played for a fool.
“Good,” he said. And then: “I guess we should talk about our contracts.”
“Sure—you have any questions about them?”
“I don’t, but my copyright lawyer does,” he said.
Now I was reeling. His copyright lawyer? How in the hell does a convicted serial killer get a copyright lawyer?
“Your copyright lawyer?” I asked.
“There’s this lawyer who’s been asking to visit me. She’s got some interest in me and my case, although I’m not sure what it is. I think she’s against the death penalty. Anyway, I’ve been phoning her the last few days, and when I told her about our contracts, she had me get in touch with a friend of hers who’s a copyright lawyer, and I read him the contracts and he’s got some changes—ready?”
Under California’s “Son of Sam” law then in effect, Bill couldn’t make any money from this book (although his family would get half)—the book was for his ego and perhaps to help him with his appeal by presenting another side of him, that’s all, so what reservation could he have about doing it? It suddenly occurred to me that all the time I’d spent on this project and on the phone with Bill had been wasted. He was playing with me, had enjoyed my attention, and had now had enough. I was but a link in the growing chain of unwitting sycophants that surrounded him. He’d used me to manipulate someone else into introducing yet another person into his life. There he was locked in jail, the key all but thrown away, and he had more friends and advisors all the time, working for him for free. I’d have had to pay my own lawyer at least five hundred bucks for the contract revision notes this murderer had gotten for free! In fact, the advice had cost the copyright lawyer— he’d had to pay for the collect phone call!
Incredibly, Bill Suff, baby killer, serial killer, was about to give me revisions on contracts that I had drafted. I didn’t need to give the matter much thought—he was going to get emotional honesty from me, like it or not—I figured I’d listen to his fucking notes… and then tell him to shove it. And that’s what I did.
He read me the revisions, which basically consisted of him retaining both the copyright and the creative control of the book’s content, and I said: “Bill, listen, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, and I don’t want you to sign something you don’t want to sign, but these are standard form contracts that protect both of us and the project, and I don’t agree with these revisions you’ve just proposed. The publisher will never go for them. I have to assign the publisher all my copyright to the material, and so do you. So I’m thinking the best thing would be if we don’t go forward on the project. It’s been interesting speaking with you, and I want to encourage your writing, and we’ll talk once in a while, okay? But I’ve got a lot of other projects to do, and this just doesn’t work for me. Really, no hard feelings. It’s cool.”
“Right,” he said, not so much cool as abruptly freeze-dried. “Nice talkin’ to ya. I understand.”
And we rang off.
I’d meant it when I said I would forget about this project, and Bill knew I meant it—you can’t bluff this guy. Weirdly, I was relieved—dealing with Bill was too damn hard. But, by the same token, I now knew Bill would sign the contracts. A day would pass, maybe two or three, and he’d sign. He wouldn’t let me abandon him—he’d spent his whole life trying unsuccessfully to deserve not to be abandoned. And I’d wind up stuck doing this book, no matter what tsuris it would rain down on me.
I got up from my desk, said good-night to my dogs, stretched and clicked off my office light as I opened my office door. The darkness was disconcerting. I gave my eyes a few seconds to adjust; and, gently, the invisible became fuzzy, grainy, clear—lines of light and shadow that showed me the way across the hall and toward the bedroom. I took one step, and my breath caught even before I knew why. I froze there, in the night, in the shadows, and a shudder ripped through my body. I heard something, not something in the house or yard, but something in my mind. My dogs all lifted their slumberous heads and eyed me—the chow’s ears revolved around and aimed, all pinched and on edge and expectant. Maybe the animals were hearing it too, could that be possible? Could there be some unvoiced but incredibly clear thoughts that are so outrageous and alarming you can actually hear them screaming across time, space, and species—thoughts made palpable not by meaning but by intention? Because what I was thinking, what I had just realized, what I was hearing replayed louder and louder in my mind, was that oh-so-controlled, oh-so-inexorable, impervious, overflowing, burning glacier ice in Bill’s voice, in his final words to me, words that were not words but sounds, precise and clipped and utterly devoid of human emotion, sounds I had misperceived as calm but now knew were threats and promises of pain and death. For suddenly I knew, without question or hesitation, that had that secretly livid man/monster been able to hitch up his big BILL belt and climb into his big BILSUF van just after our phone call, some innocent girl would have lost her life tonight. Like all the others, she too would have missed the signal, would have heard the words but not the sounds until it was too late.
So, like that, my virginity was lost. I had gotten in bed with a serial killer, and, by the mere sound of his voice, Bill Suff had shown me how the cycle for him begins.
7
If There’s a Tempest, Fugue It
On page 23 of Mr. Murder by the eminent and prolific Dean Koontz, the most likely circumstantial suspect in a homicide considers the possibility that maybe she did the crime but just can’t remember it because she was in a fugue state.
A fugue state is a sort of wakeful unconscious, a sort of trance, a state where you are active and responsive but unable to will control over your acts and unable to remember what you’ve done when you later “come to”. This is not simply amnesia where your memory blacks out but your behavior remains consistent; in a fugue state you are theoretically capable of acting out in ways that are “not you”. Accordingly, under the law, you would not be culpable for your acts.