*
NOT LONG AFTER THAT nostalgic drive into the old neighborhood, I was doubled over on my office floor, the throbbing pain on the left side of my abdomen and two specific areas of my stomach burning like a thousand toothaches. This type of excruciating pain only had occurred once before, in 2007, during a period of grief after a friend had committed suicide. Thinking then that I was having an appendicitis attack, I called my doctor, who sent me to the ER.
Sitting outside the ER, I held my left side (come to find out, not the same side as your appendix) as gentle as I could without making the pain worse. Tender to the touch, somehow holding it made it better. I could not bend. I waited two hours before they got me in, conducted an assessment, and scheduled a litany of tests.
Suffering through this same episode again as my interviews with Jesperson became more intense, I considered how deep I’d allowed myself to become immersed in a project that was now affecting every part of my life. My writing never had such a visceral, somatic reaction on my body. People would ask how I could speak with a serial killer as often as I did, talk about the most heinous behaviors imaginable, and not be drawn into that darkness. My stock answer worked on them: “I don’t think about it—I just plow through and then let it go.” But the sicker I became, the more anxiety I suffered, I knew I could no longer fool myself. My friendship with Jesperson was deteriorating my health, mentally, spiritually, and physically.
On some days, not having a handle on it was all I thought about. Yet, it was easy to talk myself into continuing. When I became physically ill, I focused on the bigger picture: that Jesperson might have additional victims, and if I gained his complete trust (which I knew I was close to), he would admit to me where they were buried. This drove me to keep him talking. On top of that, I could maybe identify and bring home one of his Jane Does.
*
BACK WHEN I WOUND up in the ER, convinced I was having an appendicitis attack, I was sent to the CT-scan unit. The staff there had me drink two quarts of a thick, white, chalky, metallic/synthetic-tasting concoction. I gagged with each swallow. Took me about an hour to choke the stuff down. This CT scan would be the first of several, along with X-rays, colonoscopies, endoscopies, and other invasive tests.
After drinking the chalk, lying on the table, staring at the ceiling, I saw myself in surgery at some point down the road—if I wasn’t on my way already.
Knowing how bad these episodes had gotten in the past, I needed to choose a path with Jesperson: Cut him loose or try to push him over the edge of coming clean. Playing psychologist and friend to a serial killer, listening and ingesting all of his issues, was not working out.
Back in 2007, the hospital had sent me home after explaining they’d send the CT-scan results to my doctor and he’d be in touch.
My doctor called and asked me to come in to see him.
Not a good sign, I knew. He must have found something.
He explained that I had gallstones and diverticulitis, the cause of that doubled-over pain sending me to the ER. I’d had an “episode,” a flare-up (infection), of the diverticulitis in addition to a gallstone attack. The episodes might be caused by an allergy to certain foods, he said—as I pictured myself becoming one of those people: a gluten-free-eating, kale-chip-munching, quinoa-devouring, Dr. Oz-watching hipster.
Not in a million fucking years.
The underlying problem was stress, my doctor explained, which aggravated and enhanced my digestive issues. Stress produced an abundance of stomach acid; acid exacerbated the situation. For that, he was going to send me to a surgeon for a consultation.
“Listen,” he then said—a tone that meant we were now entering into a more serious part of the conversation. “The diverticulitis and the gallstones are not what really concern me. We can easily treat those with antibiotics and get your infection, at least, under control.”
My stomach twisted. There’s more?
“It’s this right here,” he added, pointing to his laptop. My CT scan.
I stared at the screen. The CT scan of my colon had picked up the bottom, lower section of my right lung. On the rounded portion of that lung was what looked like a small yellow jacket nest hanging from a window shutter: A spot on my lung? It was as if my eyes were drawn directly to it. Clearer than anything I’d ever seen in my life.
A tumor?
“Let me get you hooked up with an oncologist. We’ll see what’s going on here.”
He never used the C-word, instead opting for the O-word. But it was all I heard inside my head as I drove home. I’d just quit smoking that year, after inhaling a pack or more a day for twenty-seven years.
“It’s probably nothing,” he said, patting me on the back. “Don’t worry.”
To a guy suffering from anxiety, it was a fatal diagnosis—and all I thought about. Now, all these years later, with Jesperson taking over my life, that fear of being chronically ill as I lie on my office floor, doubled over, holding my side, contemplating and questing what the hell I was doing, well, that sense of dread and finality came back to me. There was going to be a price to pay for my so-called friendship with a serial killer.
23
STRANGE CONDITION
“I’m so scared of dying without ever being really seen.”
—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
OUTSIDE HER CAMAS, WASHINGTON, HOME, SNOOKY COLLINS watched as a dark blue Peterbilt 359 Series tractor-trailer pulled up, its air brakes letting out a loud hiss as it stopped and parked along the street. Just a few months old, the truck had a shine to it. As Snooky wondered who it was, her daughter, Julie Winningham, popped out of the passenger-side door and climbed down from the tall perch. Snooky hadn’t seen Julie in quite some time and so she smiled as Julie and a rather tall brute of a man walked toward the front door.
“Julie,” Snooky said. “Julie! Julie!”
Was there anything better than a hug from your mother?
After the embrace, pleasantries and I-missed-you-so-much, Julie looked up at her companion, whom she referred to as her boyfriend, and, according to several reports, introduced him as “Chris.”
Snooky thought it odd that after they sat down and talked, Julie called him Keith. Which was it? The first time Julie said Keith, Jesperson looked at his girlfriend and, Julie later characterized, “reacted as if she wasn’t supposed to use that name.”