“Bill, I don’t care if you’re guilty or innocent, and I’m just here for the story. Not the truth, not the lies, just the story. So you can say that Tricia Barnaby is wrong, and you can say you’re innocent, and I’ll make sure that your words get published in our book. Even more, I’ll help you with your criminal defense just because I want to keep the system honest and because I hate the death penalty. But, if you really want to get off Death Row, then you’re going to have to be candid and truthful and make a jury see you as a human being. Juries don’t put human beings to death. Even the families of the victims will let up on you and get back to their lives if you just give them closure. What I’m telling you is that my best advice, based on my experience, is that if we get your convictions over-turned, then you are going to need to plead up to at least Casares, and maybe Coker, as you say. You are going to need to tell the world you’re guilty, but your mind is such that you couldn’t help yourself—whatever the truth is of your psychology. Because sane people aren’t serial killers. And, in prison, you are not only not a harmful person, you are productive and sensitive and you can contribute to society through your writing. So that’s the deal. That’s the only way I can help you. This book will humanize you in the public’s eye—they never heard from you at trial, so it was easy to stereotype you as a one-dimensional monster. But now once they are surprised to find that there’s more to you than they know, that you actually might have some worth, that your voice is important to be heard, then it’s up to you to give credibility to that voice and that humanity by being honest. You won’t be forgiven, and you shouldn’t be, but maybe people will conclude that it’s not up to them to decide that—that’s God’s job.”
It was quite a speech, and Bill was twitching by the time I was done.
“So, tell me about Casares,” I said.
He started to speak, and then he cut himself off, and then, stammering, out of breath, he lurched into: “I just remember that when I was back in my van and I was pulling out, and my headlights washed across her lying there in the graveyard—I mean in the orchard!—I saw her face in the light shining under the coat.”
I don’t know if I looked faint, but I sure as hell felt it. An orange grove wasn’t an orange grove: it was a graveyard! And Bill knew he’d just given himself away. It was more than a Freudian slip: it was a pratfall, a swan dive, Earth reentry, a shine a light in his eyes and count the fingers what fingers KO—“yes, Houston, we have splashdown!”
Suddenly, I was awash in my recollections of all Bill’s innocuous little stories about all the secret little places he used to scout out and then take Cheryl and Bonnie and this or that girlfriend to. As well as the various Tranquility Gardens where he’d go alone.
Suddenly, his fantasy writing became real for me. And his previously grounded science fiction tome, “Crash Landing”, took flight. In that piece, however, refugees find themselves marooned in an unknown world in an uncharted universe. Our world—Earth—becomes a parallel world where any given space, any room, any cove or dune or field or orchard can simultaneously be something else entirely. It wasn’t that the place looked any different in each universe, it’s just that each universe had a different meaning and a different set of rules, and people could cross over at the intersection points, finding themselves the victims or heroes of agendas quite opposite from anything they just left behind.
And that was why Bill Suff could never harm a fly, let alone be a serial killer and baby destroyer. Murder was wrong in our world, and death was permanent and to be avoided. But, in another world, murder wasn’t murder at all—sometimes it was even mandated for the greater good and for unrelenting destiny—and death simply didn’t exist.
Suddenly, I had understanding to go along with the impression that Bill had always given me that there simply had been no crimes in Riverside, that accusing him was not wrong, it was absurd.
The deaths of all those young women had happened in another world where they weren’t dead at all, but they had nonetheless been sacrificed for their own good.
And the person taking the sacrifices was not a killer but a priest, a holy man, a wizard, salvation incarnate.
Which was why Bill had to have dressed the part.
“Where’d you hide the clothes, Bill?” I asked. “The jumpsuit, the robe, the clothes, the surgical tubing, the knife, the engraving tools, the paint, the condoms, all the stuff. There must be a bag or a box somewhere, like that tackle box you used to have.” He said nothing, so I went on: “It’s all out there, and it can help save your life. It explains you. First we humanize you by showing the good side, the writer, romantic side of you—the truth. Then we explain what happened by showing what really happened—no more guesswork by cops and profilers—we show the aberrational side as it really exists—again, the truth. Truth and closure. Once we know you, we stop fearing you because we know you can be controlled. And once you know you, maybe you don’t feel like killing anymore. Either way, we no longer have to kill you. We don’t have to snuff the Suff.”
Snuff the Suff was the chant of the victims’ families during the penalty phase of the trial.
“Where’s all that stuff hidden, Bill? It’s been waiting out there for years now, and the elements can only be ruining it. We’re already going to be accused of planting it to create a scam defense— we need to dig the stuff up before there’s nothing left of it to find.”
“I ever tell you how much I enjoy Shelley Long?” he asked. “And Bonnie Bedelia, too. Here—I even keep track of their birthdays.”
With that, Bill opened a manila envelope and pulled out newspaper clippings about actresses Shelley Long and Bonnie Bedelia, along with a sheet of legal paper on which he had handwritten their biographies and other pertinent facts.
We then spent the next half hour discussing his favorite Hollywood stars and reviewing his outline for what he hoped would be the next Die Hard movie. He called it Die Hard: Dam Hard. In it the venerable Bruce Willis and his movie wife—Bonnie Bedelia— had to stop terrorists from blowing up the Grand Coulee Dam.
As for the killing clothes and the killing kit, they’re still out there somewhere—in the desert, by the sea, under a rock, by a tree, in a cove, behind a wall—and someday someone will come across them and wonder what they mean. Hopefully, that person won’t try the clothes on for size—who knows what they could make a person do.
11
Excerpts from
“A Whisper from the Dark”
and “Crash Landing”
Two unfinished novels
written by Bill Suff
A Whisper from the Dark
ONE
Sheathed as it was, the sword called “Daystryker” would not cut. But I have a powerful, strong arm and the blow should have felled any man. As Daystryker landed at the juncture of neck and shoulder, Lupien acted as though he had been hit by naught but a feather. As he reached for me, I upended the table and flung it at him. It halted him only long enough to swing an arm sideways and shatter it like so much kindling wood. However, it gave me enough time to dash through the doorway and into the next room.
I slammed the door and threw the bolt. That should hold Lupien long enough for me to attain my desire, I thought to myself. But never before had I seen Lupien exhibit such strength and it would bode much ill for him to lay hands upon me. Ordinarily, his sinews were near the power of mine own. But now his might could be my bane.