Because the killer was nearly always the victim’s boyfriend or husband or ex-husband, celibacy was another commonsense precaution she was seriously considering.
Boyfriend, husband, ex-husband. Because every viewer knew this, the Dateline producers had to work hard to maintain suspense. Alternative suspects were identified, investigative blunders explored. Time was spent developing the character of the victim. The heartbroken parents were interviewed, the bereaved siblings, the teary best friend.
Like most serial killers, Dateline was drawn to a particular type. Its ideal victim was relatable and sympathetic, a devoted wife and mother. She need not be wealthy; it was enough to be attractive, young, and White. When prompted, her survivors would agree that her children were the center of her world. Such a devoted mother, surely, didn’t deserve to be shot or bludgeoned or shoved off a cliff.
Once in a while, a childless woman would have the temerity to turn up murdered. This was not ideal, but the Dateline reporters found workarounds. If the victim was young enough, a case could be made that she was desperate to start a family. Ideally, she had discussed this ambition since childhood. Ideally, she’d already picked out the babies’ names.
When there was no way to work children into the narrative, it was entertaining to watch the reporter scramble. The victim’s hobbies were mentioned, her devotion to nieces and nephews. Occasionally there was a dog. In such cases, the reporter’s questions smacked of desperation: What did your sister do for fun? It was a bit like watching an awkward blind date, the leading questions, the anxious search for common ground.
From her ongoing study of Dateline, Claudia had extracted several lessons. In the world of service journalism, these would be bullet points.
Before shooting or strangling or bludgeoning your wife, get rid of your cell phone. Your text messages will be retrieved, your calls triangulated between cell towers.
Google search terms to avoid: “antifreeze poisoning,” “fatal gunshot,” “how to overdose.” Police will seize your computer, so do not create a Google map of the burial site. The internet is not your friend.
Don’t smoke. Cigarette butts retain your DNA.
Cameras are everywhere. Avoid ATM machines. Do not stop at a gas station. If you must buy gloves or bleach or tarps to wrap the body in, don’t do it at Walmart.
Let someone else find the body. If you must find it yourself, remember: your 911 call will be recorded. Try to sound upset.
When the episode ended, Claudia was still wide awake. Her alarm was set, as usual, for seven a.m. In six short hours, she’d have to get up for work.
She set out driving.
TIMMY’S PORCH LIGHT WAS ON, A YELLOW MOSQUITO BULB LEFT over from summer. When he came to the door, his face shocked her. The Rasputin beard was gone. Without it he looked younger, cleaner, unexpectedly handsome. If she’d met him on the street, she wouldn’t have recognized him. His skin had the moist, rubbery look of an infant’s after a bath.
“This is your face?”
She had never given a second’s thought to what his bare face would look like, so why did it look wrong?
Timmy touched his chin gingerly, as if to make sure it was still there. “I have a business trip coming up,” he said. “I figured it was time.”
“How does it feel?”
“Like half my head is missing,” he said.
She followed him inside. The TV was playing, a nature show about piranhas. From his TV tray he took the water pipe and offered her a hit.
The weed was more aromatic than the stuff he sold her, and stronger. “What is this?” she asked in a choked voice.
“Train Wreck. My private stash.”
“It’s kind of—intense.”
When she handed back the pipe, Timmy waved it away. “Hang on to that awhile. You need to catch up.”
Then he muted the volume and told her a story. Claudia understood that this was exactly why she’d come: to stare at his immense soundless television, to sink wordlessly into the embrace of his couch.
The story was about his uncle Frank—his dad’s brother, a Brockton firefighter. In his youth Frank had been a Golden Gloves champion, a handsome guy, a guy women loved. After he blew out his knee and could no longer fight fires, he retired to Delray Beach, Florida, where there was nothing to do all day but drink and go to strip clubs and get obsessed with one of the girls, a paid professional who danced around a pole.
“So Frank watches her every day,” said Timmy. “Spends all his money on her. Eventually he blows his whole retirement to set her up in an apartment. She’s twenty-six and Frank is a hard seventy, but in his mind he’s still a good-looking guy. He has no problem believing this girl is in love with him.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Claudia said.
“Well, yeah. Uncle Frank is in for a rude awakening, because guess what? The stripper has a boyfriend, a Florida statie. And one night Frank gets pulled over on the highway and the cop—for no apparent reason—starts whacking his Eldorado with a tire iron.”
“Shit,” said Claudia, filled with genuine anguish. The scene was entirely too vivid: headlights racing along the interstate, palm trees swaying in the wind.
“Frank being Frank, he gets out of the car and takes a swing, but the cop is forty years younger,” said Timmy. “Also, he has a tire iron.”
Claudia handed back the pipe.
“So Frank spends two months in the hospital.” Timmy took a long drag. “The doctors say he’s going to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. By the time he gets out of the hospital, his wife is long gone, and he spent all his life savings on the stripper, so he has to live off his daughter. Who, go figure, still idolizes him.”
He handed Claudia the pipe.
“The daughter—my cousin Bridget—married some rich douchebag and lives in a fancy housing development, a bunch of McMansions around a man-made lake. And of course Uncle Frank hates it there. So one night he’s had enough, he’s at his fuckin limit, and he drives his chair straight into the lake.”
“No!” said Claudia.
“He waits until the middle of the night, when the daughter and her husband are sleeping, so they won’t hear him if he changes his mind and starts screaming for help. Which he does.” A long pause. “Finally one of the neighbors hears him and goes in after him, but it’s too late.”
They sat in silence. Claudia studied the piranhas darting across the screen.
“Jesus,” she said finally. “That’s a depressing story.”
“Wait, there’s more. They find the chair a week later,” said Timmy. “They have to drag the lake.”
Why tell her this story? Was there even a reason? It didn’t occur to her to ask. She inhaled deeply, his words washing over her like water—a warm rinse of received experience, not to be questioned. Train Wreck had done its work.
Timmy went to the window and peered out from behind the tapestry at the silent street. “Where is everybody? It’s like a bomb went off out there.”
This was briefly confusing, until Claudia remembered that she’d left her house after midnight.