Page 15 of The Trap by Catherine
Angela’s cheeks felt as if they’d suddenly been set ablaze.
“But she’s bound by the same Official Secrets Act we are, Dee,” Don went on. “And while she mightn’t have the qualifications—yet—she’s got more cop-on in her little finger than some chief supers we know.” He paused. “She reminds me of you, I dare say.”
Denise pushed back her chair.
“Well,” she said, “in that case, can I borrow her?”
BASE CAMP
Where did it all start?That’s always what people want to know, isn’t it? Where it began.
I have to say, I never really understood this obsession with the beginning until I inadvertently developed it myself, watching true-crime documentaries.
Surreptitiously watching them, mind you. I never do it openly. Not because it would, you know, arouse suspicion or anything.Please. I just don’t want to be known as someone who does that. Because let’s be clear: I have no interest in it as a genre. The vast majority of what gets lumped under “true-crime documentaries” is, in fact, sensationalist shit. Talking heads who have absolutely nothing to do with anyone involved, pointlessly pontificating. So-called criminal profilers spewing pseudo-scientific bollocks. Reenactments so bad, the actors aren’t even worthy of their job title.
Anyway.
I don’t watch those. I watch theactualdocumentaries, made by real filmmakers with something to say, the ones that air on prestige channels at primetime. Well, my wife watches them while I sit beside her, occasionally turning the pages of some thick historical biography I know she won’t ever ask me about, one eye on the screen.
And I must admit that, yes, I often find myself sitting there, through the opening credits—flickers of a moody landscape, Ken Burns–effect on a vanilla corner of a crime-scene photo (nine times out of ten: a bare foot), grainy baby picture—wondering if they’ll even be able to take us to the beginning, if they’ll know where it is.
Because you really need the man himself to bring you there, don’t you? Only he really knows where everything began. Will they have him? Will there be mumbling audio recorded long ago on Death Row? Chicken-scratch diaries helpfully explaining everything? Inadvertently revealing statements made by a guy still proclaiming his innocence, idiotically thinking that participating in a documentary about the crimes he’s suspected ofwill be the best way to prove it?
What I really want to see is someone just telling the truth, but if they’re lucky enough to actually have the guy, to be able to interview him, they’re always so bloodytentativeabout it, aren’t they?
They don’t want to piss him off, I suppose. If they have him, he’s almost certainly already in jail and won’t have anything to lose by cutting the interview short and refusing to cooperate. They have to tread carefully. I get that.
But it seems to me like they never eventryto ask the questions that would quickly and efficiently lead us all back to the start.
For instance:
Did you just wake up one morning and decide you wanted to kill someone? Was that it? Or was it more like, overnight, something appeared that had never been there before? Or was it something that was always there, always in you, and you were just waiting for the right time to act on it? And was that when you said,Fuck it, I’m not resisting this any more, I’m just going to do what I want, regardless of the consequences for me? Or did someone do or say something that set you off and you found that doing whatever you did to them was something you wanted to do again, to other people, even if they hadn’t pissed you off? Or was there never any beginning, just an always, and trying to figure out when things changed is like searching for the start of a circle?
I’m the last one, if you’re wondering.
Also, I wish they’d ask: whatspecificallyabout it do you like?
* * *
I like my wife. I really do. I like her the most.Sometimes I even think there’s a little streak of darkness inhertoo. I mean, this is a woman who will routinely turn to me with a big smile on her face to say things like, “You know me, I bloodylovea good sex cult,” and, “Yeah, yeah, but when are they going to get to the actual murdering?” and, “I’d have killed her too, she’s so bloody annoying.”
And yetI’msupposed to be the deviant one?
That was a joke, by the way.
A lot of the time, when I meet new people, I find that needs pointing out.
To be fair to my wife—her name is Amy; to be fair to Amy—she doesn’t just watch documentaries about murderers. She’ll watch anything that qualifies as a senseless tragedy. A minute-by-minute examination of a ghastly terrorist attack as described in great detail by the survivors, authorities, and animated graphics. Three interminable hours about a greedy pharma dynasty whose drug ruined millions of lives and claimed a few hundred thousand. All the risks of summiting Everest, but with a deadly weather event thrown in too. A sex cult masquerading as self-improvement. Another cult masquerading as a religion (special guest star: ancient volcano aliens). A man who loved bears, finding out they definitely didn’t love him back when one of them ate him and his girlfriend. Oh yes. Sign her up!
That last one was quite good, actually. Werner Herzog.
Before you ask, no. She doesn’t know. What I find fascinating, though, is that she seems to think that she would, that it would be obvious.
We were watching—she was—that one about Ted Bundy’s girlfriend, the woman he was with during his killing years, and Amy kept throwing up her hands and saying, “Oh, comeon?!” and of course I had to say, “What? What’s wrong?” because I was supposed to be enthralled byHero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayettein the Age of Revolution, which actually wasn’t a great choice because Amy had recognized the name fromHamiltonand started asking about it.
“He moves to Utah,” she said, waving at the screen, “and then the murders move to Utah. They’re out on the water one day and his eyes go black and he pushes her in. The police sketch looks exactly like him, the suspect drives the exact same carandthey know the guy’s first name is Ted. And yet she’s trying to claim that shedidn’t know? Seriously?” She folded her arms, shook her head in disgust. “Please.”
But I disagreed with her assessment of what was happening on screen.
