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“That’s great, Mom, but I really think we need to leave. They’re closing the place soon. Look, the lights are going out.”

“Wait. Just a minute. You have to see this.” She opened the book to some glossy pictures.

“Isn’t it gross?” she asked me. “The police found it when they entered the killer’s house.”

My mother pointed to a photo of a female corpse, hanging upside down from a wooden beam. The woman had been decapitated and her body was sliced down the middle from her throat all the way to her vagina. All of her major organs had been removed.

“Jason, you really should read this book.”

“But you’ve already told me all the good parts,” I dead-panned. She couldn’t tell if I was kidding or not.

“Do you want me to check this book out or not?”

“No!” I said adamantly. “I don’t want to even hear about this sick stuff. And I’m gonna tell Dad about all this crap you’re reading.”

My mother started looking around, embarrassed by my outburst. We both realized it was time to get out of there. I was so angry I could barely talk. As usual, my mother had no idea what I was so upset about.

Although that day my mother’s enthusiasm had rubbed me the wrong way, eventually I did become intrigued with the books she was reading. Over the next year, she continued to tell me about crime stories she’d heard or read about. And pretty soon I was reading them, too. Reading them voraciously.

I was amazed by the power these killers wielded—not just their physical power in some cases but their power to stun a nation. I was intrigued by how they could terrify even the most unflappable and cause armies of law enforcement officials to scramble madly in search of them. Even as these predators disgusted me, I envied the public attention they commanded. Too, against my better impulses, I found myself admiring the artful way many of them stalked their prey and eluded detection.

Eventually, as a kind of self-dare—one intended to relieve teenage tedium more than anything—I began pretending to be the person I was reading about. I know that sounds weird, but I really wanted to figure out why and how these people could do what they do.

I imagined what it would be like to stalk and kill. I put aside all I’d been taught about right and wrong. I tried to pretend I was someone without a conscience. I tried to get to that level of consciousness where one exults in being truly evil.

It was terrifying to be in that dark, remote place. A place where sanity is experienced as something outside. I’m not sure I ever fully got there. I am, after all, a sane person, a moral person. But the attempt to reach “the other side” was exhilarating.

• • •

As I shifted in the car seat to work out the stiffness from my kickboxing lesson, I spied my driveway up ahead. The suburban house we lived in was, for that area, pretty much standard issue: red tile roof, white stucco walls. It had been a comfortable place to grow up in, and, as I was already coming to learn, it could be a welcome refuge from the pressures of university life.

As I turned off the engine, I once again glanced at my new books. What sort of house had the Killer Clown grown up in? I wondered. Was it a place from which sanity had fled? A dark place? Or a place much like mine?

3

First Target

Our house had the lived-in look you’d expect, knowing that two teenage boys were in residence. There was enough room for my mother, father, fourteen-year-old brother, and me to each have our own space, but increasingly I felt closed in, and I resented more and more the constant monitoring of my activities. Lately, it seemed like whatever I did drew criticism, especially from my mother.

“Jason,” I could hear her yell from out in the garage, just as I’d settled in with one of my books. “I’m back with the groceries—get out here and help me.”

“Just a minute,” I grunted, frustrated that she was obviously in one of her “moods.” It never seemed to take much for us to end up in a fight, but lately, we were butting heads all the time. When the two of us went at it, my brother and father gave us a wide berth.