— Have you ever been or do you ever plan on being a serial killer?
— Mm, well, I mean, you got to keep your options open.
Because the killer has to come back. The killer has to talk, to tell this story until it’s used up. Other stories, they use you up. To the only audience a killer can risk having, his victim. Cassandra on her bed of moss. The microphone hanging above her, connected to a tape recorder and a transmitter broadcasting to a sheriff’s deputy perched on rocks across the canyon. Far enough away he can swat mosquitoes without giving himself away. The headphones over his ears. Sitting on the ground, crawling with ants. All the time, listening. In his earphones, birds sing. The wind blows. You’d be amazed how many of the killers come back to say good-bye. They’ve shared something, the killer and the victim, and the killer will come to sit at the grave and talk about old times. Everyone needs an audience.
— If I told you to murder an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast, would you do it without question?
— Without question? No. I'd ask, "How much?"
All day long, she says, our biggest enemy is other people. It’s people packed around us in traffic. People ahead of us in line at the supermarket. It’s the supermarket checkers who hate us for keeping them so busy. No, people didn’t want this killer to be another human being. But they wanted people to die.
He's a little upset. I've managed to upset a mass murderer.
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