Michelle was an incredible writer: she was honest—sometimes to a fault—with her readers, with herself, and about herself. You see that in the memoir sections of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. And you see how she was honest about her own obsessions, her own mania, her at times dangerous commitment to the pursuit—often at the expense of sleep and health.
The mind for investigation and logic. The heart for empathy and insight. She combined those two qualities in ways I’d never encountered before. Without even trying, she made me rethink my own path in life, my own way of relating to people, and the things that I valued. She made everything about me and everyone around her better. And she did it by being quietly, effortlessly original.
Let me give you a specific, anecdotal example and then a broader, more universal one.
ANECDOTAL: IN 2011 I WORKED WITH PHIL ROSENTHAL TO DEVELOP a sitcom based on my life. Louie had been on the air for a year, and I was besotted by the new ground it was breaking in terms of how to structure a sitcom and how to present the personal in a comedic way. I basically wanted my own Louie. And so Phil and I sat down and walked through the details of my day-to-day life.
“What does your wife do?” Phil asked during an afternoon writing session.
I told him. I told him that she’d started a blog called True Crime Diary. I said it began as a way for her to write about the numerous cold cases and developing cases she followed online. I explained that she’d incorporate possible suspects’ Myspace entries. Social media is a gold mine for investigators, she realized. The old, pulling-teeth method of getting suspects to talk was nothing compared to the mind-dump these sociopathic narcissists offer daily on their own Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. She used Google Maps and a dozen other new platforms to construct solutions to seemingly dead-end cases. She was especially adept at linking data from an obscure, decade-old case to a seemingly unconnected current crime: “You see how he’s improving his m.o.? Failed kidnapping attempt on a street without easy freeway access has evolved into a clean snatch right near a cloverleaf where he can merge and reverse. He built up his courage and his skills. It’s the same car in each case, and he’s going unnoticed ’cause it’s a different state, and a lot of times different police forces won’t share info.” (That particular monologue, I remembered, was delivered one night in bed, laptop propped up against her knees; this was Michelle’s idea of pillow talk.)
Her blog entries led to interest from cable news shows, then to Dateline NBC, which hired her to reinterview suspects in a Mormon black-widow murder case. The persons of interest had stonewalled when approached by a major network, but they were more than happy to blab to a blogger. They just didn’t realize that the blogger they were talking to had invented a mutant, more expansive form of homicide investigation. They told her everything.
Phil mused over all of this for a minute or so after I finished talking. Then he said, “Well, that’s a way more interesting show than what we’re working on. How ’bout your TV wife is a party planner? Sound good?”
Now for the more universal example of Michelle’s uniqueness. We live in a swipe-right, blip-span culture of clickbait, 140-character arguments, and thirty-second viral videos. It’s easy to get someone’s attention, but it’s almost impossible to keep it.
Michelle was dealing with a subject that demands sustained, often unrewarded attention to yield any sort of satisfaction or closure. It requires the attention of not just a single reader but of dozens of cops, data miners, and citizen journalists to spark even a minor breakthrough.
Michelle earned and sustained that attention through flawless, compelling writing and storytelling. You understand everyone’s point of view in her writing, and none of her subjects are characters she invented. They’re people she got to know, cared about, and took the time to really see: the police, the survivors, the bereaved, and, as hard as it is for me to fathom, even a wounded, destructive insect like the Golden State Killer.
I’m still hoping he hears that cell door slam behind him. And I hope she hears it somehow too.
*
THIS PAST CHRISTMAS, ALICE, OUR DAUGHTER, OPENED A PRESENT that Santa had left her. She was happy, unwrapping her little digital camera and messing around with the settings. Fun gift. Happy holiday, sweetie.
Later that morning, she asked, out of the blue, “Daddy, why do you and Santa Claus have the same handwriting?”
Michelle Eileen McNamara is gone. But she left behind a little detective.
And a mystery.
— PATTON OSWALT
Herndon, VA
July 2, 2017
OceanofPDF.com
Epilogue: Letter to an Old Man
YOU WERE YOUR APPROACH: THE THUMP AGAINST THE FENCE. A temperature dip from a jimmied-open patio door. The odor of aftershave permeating a bedroom at three a.m. A blade at the base of the neck. “Don’t move, or I’ll kill you.” Their hardwired threat-detection systems flickered meekly through the sledgehammer of sleep. No one had time to sit up. Awakening meant understanding they were under siege. Phone lines had been cut. Bullets emptied from guns. Ligatures prepared and laid out. You forced action from the periphery, a blur of mask and strange, gulping breaths. Your familiarity freaked them. Your hands flew to hard-to-find light switches. You knew names. Number of kids. Hangouts. Your preplanning gave you a crucial advantage, because when your victims awoke to the blinding flashlight and clenched-teeth threats, you were always a stranger to them, but they never were to you.
Hearts drummed. Mouths dried. Your physicality remained unfathomable. You were a hard-soled shoe felt fleetingly. A penis slathered in baby lotion thrust into a pair of bound hands. “Do it good.” No one saw your face. No one felt your full body weight. Blindfolded, the victims relied on smell and hearing. Floral talcum powder. Hint of cinnamon. Chimes on a curtain rod. Zipper opening on a duffel bag. Coins falling to the floor. A whimper, a sob. “Oh, Mom.” A glimpse of royal blue brushed-leather tennis shoes.
The barking of dogs fading away in a westerly direction.
You were what you left behind: a four-inch vertical cut in the window screen at the ranch house on Montclair, in San Ramon. A green-handled hatchet on the hedges. A piece of cord hanging in a birch tree. Foam on an empty Schlitz Malt Liquor bottle in the backyard. Smears of unidentifiable blue paint. Frame 4 of Contra Costa County Sheriff Department’s photo roll 3, of the spot where they believe you came over the fence. A girl’s purpled right hand, which was numb for hours. The outline of a crowbar in dust.
Eight crushed skulls.
You were a voyeur. A patient recorder of habits and routines. The first night a husband working dispatch switched to the graveyard shift, you pounced. There were four-to-seven-day-old herringbone shoe impressions beneath the bathroom window at the scene on the 3800 block of Thornwood, Sacramento. Officers noted that standing there you could stare into the victim’s bedroom. “Fuck me like your old man,” you hissed, like you knew how that was done. You put high heels on one girl, something she did in bed with her boyfriend. You stole bikini Polaroids as keepsakes. You stalked around with your needling flashlight and clipped, repetitive phrases, both director and star of the movie unspooling in your head.