A door clicks open.
Sam opens her eyes as a young woman steps out, followed by a police officer. The woman holds her bandaged arm across her chest, and Sam sees a tiny split in her lip. The way she walks down the corridor, as if concussed, is so familiar to Sam that she has to resist the urge to call out to the woman. She’s wearing a polo neck that she pulls up under her chin and Sam knows, can picture precisely, the thumb marks on the throat beneath. As they turn the corner, the woman moves her fingers to her hair, smoothing it forward to cover her ears and the sides of her face. Ears, Sam suspects, that are black and swollen, hidden from view, but ringing loudly. Sam wonders if this woman has a little girl at home and who the child might think her mother is fighting with to get the marks she shouldn’t see, but does.
Sam’s chest tightens even more. The salty taste floods her mouth and the smell of seawater fills her nostrils. Her ears begin to roar. She’s losing her grip. She tries deep-breathing again.In for four, hold for two, out for four. Repeat. And again.After a few minutes, though, she can’t keep up the pattern. Her breaths turn into short sucks, like panting. She battles to restore a rhythm, but her vision begins to spot. The tightness in her chest increases until it’s overwhelming. The air is void of oxygen. Her armpits prickle with hot sweat. Her stomach churns. Heart pounding. Chest in agony. Her head feels like it’s floating. She’s going to die, she’s sure of it.
Sam doesn’t hear the meeting room door open, but suddenly Taylor’s piercing blue eyes are in front of hers. He is speaking but she hears only echoes of his voice through the whooshing that iscrashing in her ears. She sees her own hands reaching for him as she begins to slide down the wall.
“Out… side,” she gasps, the panic attack now so advanced that she can barely draw breath. Then her feet leave the floor. Her body is moving through the air, surrounded by warmth and Taylor’s musk. Her head flops on to his shoulder as he carries her toward the emergency exit, and everything turns black.
The Truth Won’t Set You Free
By far myfavorite thing to do is to frame someone else for my crimes. While false confessors can be useful, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing someone else protest their innocence as the cuffs are tightened and down they go. I can’t wait to tell you about Melanie and her charming boyfriend. But before I do, let’s discuss Point 6. You’ve probably forgotten that we’re working through the list of reasons you’ll become a suspect, so here I am, kindly jogging your memory. Point 6 is: You confess.
A whopping 5 percent of you will march into a police station of your own free will and confess.
Very few budding serial killers will believe it’s possible that you’ll have the urge to confess your crimes. But trust me, you’ll find it more difficult than you anticipate to keep your mouth closed. You will want to tell someone. Or, like me, everyone. However, you must resist for a long, long time. As I have.
In order to achieve true greatness, you need to aim for a high victim count before the police are aware you even exist. This has been my recipe for success. Now that I’m at the top of my game, I can declare myself tothe world and satisfy my ego. The sooner you discuss your activity, the less notoriety and respect you will ultimately achieve, as talking will inevitably lead to your capture. You have no idea the lengths I’ve gone to in order to protect myself ahead of this, my debut. Once you’re famous, things only get harder, because false confessors will flock to the police stations in their droves, claiming to be you. That’s unlikely to be an issue until you’re in the front-page headlines, though.
The most likely reason you’ll talk before you’re ready to go to prison is that you’ll hear others talking about your or similar crimes and feel the need to correct them. This includes the press, online sleuths, the general public and your nearest and dearest. Should your crime make the news, it’s best that you don’t watch any of the footage. The police will try to appeal to you and they’ll try to goad you. They’ll try to convince your loved ones to dob you in by telling them that you need medical help. As the police fail to catch you, their appeals will turn into attacks, aimed at angering you so that you’ll slip up. Hence my advice to avoid all coverage about your crimes. Don’t even google it until at least a year later. Don’t talk with those around you about crime, either. They’ll have made incorrect assumptions and it’ll be almost impossible not to correct them.
No one is perfect. I gave in to the urge to talk one night when I was visiting my cousin Bobby at university. I’m taking you back to my youth again here, and I apologize for hopping about in time, but I hope you’re not too stupid to cope. I acknowledge the structure is less formulaic than you’re accustomed to, but why can’t a serial killer push genre boundaries?
Bobby and I were both drunk in a quayside bar, watching girls walk by the window in dresses that barely covered their bottoms, despite the fact that it was snowing.
This was around the time that Harold Shipman, aka Doctor Death, was on trial. The case was all over the news, especially up there because the doc had studied and lived so near by. That night, Bobby broughtShipman up in conversation and made some unflattering assertions about the base instincts of serial killers.
“I think it’s biology what makes monsters like that,” Bobby said, slurping from his third bottle of ale. I just shrugged, not wanting to be drawn in. “They’re wired up wrong. Shipman wasn’t abused, so no one can blame trauma or his mammy. They all blame their mams. Like—”
“Let’s talk about something else,” I tried, but Bobby was like a dog with a bone.
“Maybe Shipman got a head injury as a kid. I read that can be linked with psychotic tendencies in adulthood. What do you reckon?”
“Another round?” I tried again.
“Come on, Denver,” Bobby said. “You did psychology, and you read all them books. What made him—”
“He did it because he wanted to, OK?” I said to Bobby, somewhat shortly. “His motives were pure.”
Something about what I’d said or the way I’d said it silenced my cousin and he simply stared at me for a long while. For the rest of the night he was subdued and we went home early, despite previous promises of dancing the night away in a multilevel club filled with women.
I slept badly that night, which is rare for me. Bobby had rattled me and I’d said more than I should have. The next morning, before I left to walk to the train station, Bobby hugged me. I don’t think Bobby had ever done that before. I stood rather stiffly at first, but then I reached around and patted my cousin’s back, just like they do in movies.
“You know, I… you know I love you, right, mate?” Bobby said to me.
“I love you too, Bobby,” I said, without hesitation or awkwardness, and waved him goodbye.
We lost Bobby under tragic circumstances the following July and I was so pleased we’d had that moment together. I also learned a great deal from it. Mainly that a murderer should never, ever, discuss murder with others. The outcomes are almost always undesirable.
With longevity and a high victim count comes that other risk: thepossibility that someone else will confess to your crimes. It’s happened to dozens of us. While this sounds like a blessing, seeing another person on Netflix, taking credit for your work, is enough to drive even the most stable among us to madness. It’s a position I’ve not yet been in myself, but I anticipate that changing should this book gain me the notoriety that I crave.
People who falsely confess usually have something to gain by plagiarizing your work. Often it’s about bringing meaning or entertainment to their lives, but not always. One woman—you’ve probably heard of her if you’re well read—confessed to murder and named her ex-boyfriend as her accomplice. She was a smart lady—a teacher, I think. She used facts gathered from newspapers and her knowledge of the local area to ensure that they were both jailed for life. Her boyfriend pleaded guilty to avoid death row. The murder was in fact committed by a serial killer known as Happy Face. He was offended by the false confessor and sent little notes to officers and later newspapers, with a smiley emoji in the corner. I think of him every time I see a:).
The more intelligent among you may have considered turning others’ desire to falsely confess to your advantage. You can reclaim your crimes as your own, should you wish, in the future. But you may want to buy yourself time by using a proxy. Especially if the police are beginning to show an interest in you, in which case a confessor can really come in handy.
You can induce someone to confess in a number of ways. The easiest way is to achieve fame and then the confessors will line up, hoping some ambitious cop with a questionable sense of morality will accept the confession as a way to boost their own career. Other incentives, such as money, for themselves or the family left behind, can induce potential confessors.
It’s actually easier than one might think to induce another to confess, as the life of a famous serial killer can be appealing. Perhaps the confessor anticipates a life of fame and floozies. They may desire three guaranteed meals a day, a warm bed at night on His Majesty’s dime. Just a couple ofyears ago, an elderly man walked into a police station and confessed to a murder committed in the 1980s. Police investigated and found that the pensioner was facing homelessness and poverty, and relied on food banks for his meals. Police released the man, surmising that he just wanted a night in the custody suite instead of in a shop doorway. They rearrested him two days later when DNA proved that he had in fact committed the murder. When interviewed, the man said that he’d confessed because he was in his eighties and he thought that the prison’s routine, hot food and clean sheets would do him good.
