The Darker Side

Frances grips Kirby’s head with a hand on each side to keep her from moving. Michael positions the picana in front of Kirby’s mouth.

  “You can either open of your own accord, or I will smash this into your teeth until they’re no longer in the way.”

  Kirby doesn’t smile or joke, but she does open her mouth wide.

  “Last chance,” Michael says. “Do you want to confess?”

  Kirby sticks out her tongue and makes an ahhhhh sound, like she’s having her throat checked by the doctor.

  Michael doesn’t hesitate. He slips the picana between her teeth and into her mouth. I can tell he’s in the back of her throat because her face starts to get red and she begins to gag. Frances removes her hands from the sides of Kirby’s head. It’s a deft move; they’ve done this before.

  That’s when he hits the button in the handle of the picana.

  The result is instantaneous and awful. Her body goes taut as the electricity causes her muscles to contract violently. Her eyes bug out and her teeth snap down onto the picana with such force I’m surprised they don’t shatter. Urine runs down her legs. Her belly jumps; I realize that she’s probably defecating against her will. It only lasts a moment, it seems like an hour.

  Michael lets go of the button. Kirby’s mouth flies open, he yanks the picana back. Vomit comes with it and the convulsions follow. Spasms rock Kirby’s body as her muscles and brain try to figure out how to respond to what just happened. Her chair goes over sideways and she crashes against the hardwood floor again, twitching. Her eyes flutter. The spasms eventually die off and we can hear her breathing against the floor, deep, ragged, moaning breaths.

  Michael waits a moment, just watching. He walks behind her, reaches down, and rights her in the chair. I can’t believe how much different she looks now than just ten seconds ago. Her face drips with sweat, her chin and chest are covered in vomit, and her eyes are having trouble focusing.

  Michael leans forward. He brushes a lock of sweat-matted hair away from her forehead.

  “Now, my child? Are you ready to confess? Don’t be afraid, God will forgive anything you are truly penitent for.”

  Kirby opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. She closes it, swallows, struggles to compose herself. She lifts her head up and gives Michael the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen on a stone-killer.

  “Let’s go again.”

  “Jesus!” I say. “How much longer, Alan?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes? The torture we just saw happened in two.

  “I don’t know if she can last that long.”

  “She’ll last,” James says.

  Is that a hope or a prayer? I wonder.

  “If you insist,” Michael says, “but in the end, the result will be the same. We all break under God’s will. God is love.”

  Frances grips Kirby’s head again and Michael brings the picana back up.

  “Drive faster,” I tell Alan. “Please.”

  42

  “CURTAINS ARE DRAWN,” BRADY POINTS OUT. “WHAT’S HER state? Can she take the flash-bangs?”

  Kirby’s received the business end of the picana three more times. She hasn’t broken, but her smart mouth is gone, the surest sign that she’s hurting. Only her eyes remain defiant.

  “She can take it.”

  The house is in Reseda. It’s an older ranch style home from the 1960s that hasn’t seen much updating since. The blue and white wood trim is cracked and peeling. The lawn is full of dead or dying grass. The windows are dirty and the curtains look old. The Murphys don’t care about this home; it’s just a place to camp between murders.

  Brady jabs a finger at the picture windows that lead into the living room.

  “No finesse. On my go we’re going to toss flash-bangs through the windows, and simultaneously smash open the front door and throw in a few more. Then we breach and take them down. My team will enter, we’ll call you in when it’s clear.”

  Brady’s voice is low and urgent. His men are silent and still, but it’s the tense motionlessness of a track runner waiting for the starter pistol to go off.

  Kirby screams for the first time and we hear it in stereo; it plays from the computer speakers and filters out from the house.

  “Wait for the next scream,” I say. “That’s when they’ll be the most off guard.”

  In the end, the monsters are all the same. They live for the screams.

  Brady looks at me and frowns.

  “It’s her best chance,” I say. “Better another shock than a bullet. She can take it.”

  Brady processes this in a heartbeat; he nods and then signals to his men in the front to be ready. One is poised at the picture window. Another stands by the front door with a battering ram, while yet another waits next to him, flash-bangs in hand. Brady has his HK53 at the ready.

  My team and I stand back by the cars. Everyone has their weapons out. The moon hangs above us all, silver and unforgiving.

  We’d just arrived, so the neighborhood hasn’t yet woken up to our presence. That will change in another heartbeat.

  There is a sense of time passing by the second, or the millisecond, or the nanosecond. Everything hangs, a tremendous waiting.

  Kirby screams and the world explodes.

  Flash-bangs crash through the window. The battering ram hits the door once, the doorjamb is destroyed as the door flies open. More grenades are tossed inside and again that stereo-echo as they detonate. I see it happen from the outside, I hear it happen from the inside, and it all happens in the blink of an eye.

  Brady rushes into the home, followed by his men. There’s no hesitation in their motion; everything they do is committed, decisive, swift. The camera has fallen over and now faces a wall. I can’t tell what’s happening inside.

  “Come on,” James mutters. “Hang in there, Kirby.” I don’t think he’s even aware that he’s saying it.

  I hear Brady and his men yelling at the Murphys.

  “Get down on the fucking ground!”

  Grunts and sounds of a scuffle follow. I hear thuds. A minute later Brady is at the door, motioning us in. We run.

  The living room is to the immediate right. The Murphys are both down on their stomachs on the floor. They are looking at each other and their lips are moving.

  “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’” Michael says.

  “‘I will fear no evil,’” Frances replies.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Brady growls.

  They ignore him and continue their recitation.

  James moves to Kirby. The smell of feces and urine and sweat are strong in the room. Her head hangs down, her hair brushes her thighs. He kneels in front of her, puts a hand under her chin, and lifts it up. It’s a tender act, unexpected.

  “Are you okay?”

  “S-stupid…stupid question,” she croaks.

  She’s talking to him, but her eyes are on me. They are pleading with me.

  “Everyone out of here except Callie and me,” I order.

  Hesitation and quizzical looks follow. The Lord’s Prayer murmurs in the silence, like flies buzzing against a screen.

  “I mean it,” I say. “Now, please.”

  Only James seems to understand. He stands up and heads for the door without another word. Brady’s men pull the Murphys to their feet and begin to walk them outside. Michael stops in front of Kirby.

  “You didn’t confess. You’re going to hell, you know.”

  “S-see you th-th-there,” Kirby hisses. She tries to blow him a kiss but fails.

  “Get them out of here,” I say.

  Alan is the last to leave.

  “I’ll watch the door,” he says, and pulls it shut behind him.

  “C-can Callie clear o-o-out too?”

  “I need her help, Kirby,” I tell her, my voice gentle. “She was there for me right after. You can trust her.”

  Callie remains silent as Kirby studies her with a weary eye.

  “K, c-can you p
lease get me out of this?”

  “Of course, honey-love,” Callie tells her softly, kneeling next to the chair.

  Callie pulls a pocketknife from her purse. As she begins to cut the ropes, Kirby starts to shiver. I put one hand on her shoulder, move the hair back from her brow with the other. When the ropes are off, she rubs her wrists and sits there for a moment, shaking.

  “C-can I t-tell you something?” she whispers to us.

  “Anything,” Callie says.

  She smiles. “I’m ab-b-bout t-to run out of s-s-steam…”

  We catch her as she topples forward from the chair in a dead faint.

  This is what I’d seen in her eyes, that thing I’d understood. Kirby was about to fall apart and she wanted as few witnesses to that secret as possible.

  KIRBY CLINGS TO ME, HER arms around my neck, as Callie washes her in the bathtub. We clean her like a baby, and she lets us. It’s a moment of trust not likely to roll by again. Her muscles twitch and spasm, and her grip tightens as Callie (gently, so gently) wipes her private areas for her.

  “Want to hear my confession?” she whispers in my ear, so faint I’m sure that only I can hear her.

  I say nothing. I feel Kirby’s lips smile against my skin.

  “I had a friend, when I was sixteen, who got murdered by her boyfriend. He beat her to death and ran. I found him one year later and it took him three days to die. I wasn’t even eighteen, but I never felt a lick of guilt about it.”

  I say nothing. I stroke her hair. She puts her head on my shoulder and sighs.

  Everyone, even Kirby, needs to tell someone their secrets, sometimes.

  Ego te absolvo, Kirby.

  43

  “WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE BODIES?”

  I sit in the room with Michael Murphy, as I have with so many others like him, trying to pry out his final secrets. The last confession. He examines me, my scars, tries (I guess) to look into my soul.

  “Are you Catholic?” he asks me.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Maybe. What did you do with the bodies?”

  He hid from us for twenty years. Where did the victims go?

  He sits at this table as he sat at the one in his video clips. The rosary has been replaced by cuffs around the wrists, but the posture is the same. Michael Murphy is exactly where he wants to be. In his mind, jail was just the next best pulpit to preach from, the death penalty he and his sister had received was an opportunity for martyrdom. They confessed without prompting or the need for a trial.

  In terms of the video clips, “viral” remained an apt term. They’ve made their way around the world and back again via the Internet. In most instances their use is voyeuristic, the opportunity to peer into the last moments of another human being, to put an ear to the confessional booth. But it can’t be denied that they ignited a debate that will probably rage on for months or longer.

  There are those who feel that their methods were inexcusable, but that the message still has merit. Murder, one person had said, is not a Christian virtue, but full truth before God is. In other words, we don’t condone how they did it, gosh no, but as far as what they had to say…well…

  There is a radical fringe who consider Michael and his sister to be heroic, revolutionary. I’d run across a website selling T-shirts with slogans like Full Truth or Hellfire and Only God Can Judge the Murphys.

  All of this would sicken me if not for the most basic truth: support is in the minority. Most Christians, the majority by far, decry every aspect of what the Murphys did. Many have written open letters of apology to the families of the victims on behalf of all Christians and Catholics, and I am reminded of that section from the catechism of the Catholic Church Father Yates had read to me about the guiding principle of love. It’s nice to see that for most, those aren’t just words.

  The Murphys remain a ball of contradictions for me. Understanding the monsters the way I do is like harmonizing with a dark melody. I can never duplicate it, not exactly, but I can hit the notes an octave or so above, and from that surmise their song. I’ve achieved some of that with Michael and his sister, but many aspects elude me.

  Fanaticism, when it is applied to serial murder, is almost always a smoke screen. Terrorist leaders who preach death in the name of God aren’t really interested in God; they’re just getting off on making people die. Hitler spoke of strengthening the Aryan race; in reality, he was just another serial killer.

  I’ve seen little evidence that either Michael or Frances took sexual pleasure in the crimes they committed. The physician at the women’s prison where Frances has been housed confirmed that she is still a virgin. They never asked for the death penalty to be taken off the table.

  True believers? Or is there some dark joy buried deep, hidden so well that even they’ll never see it?

  “Do you really want to know?” he asks.

  “No, Michael. I just had some free time today to come and chat with you. Of course I want to know.”

  He folds his hands and smiles. “Then confess something to me. It does not have to be something huge, but it can’t be something small either. Tell me and I give you my word, I’ll reveal to you what happened to the others.”

  I consider this offer. It’s never a good idea to trade in an interrogation. Once they have what they want, they don’t need you anymore and they can shut down. Michael’s drug of choice is truth.

  “Swear to God,” I say.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Swear to God that you’ll tell me if I confess to something.”

  He shrugs. “Very well. I swear to God.”

  I sit back in my chair and think about it. He’s not going to be happy with something like masturbation. It has to be personal, it has to be difficult, it has to ring true, but my personal integrity needs to remain intact at the end of it.

  “My mother died when I was twelve,” I say.

  “What of?”

  “Pancreatic cancer.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s a painful way to die.”

  “Yes, it is. Toward the end, all she did was moan or scream, day and night. The painkillers didn’t help.”

  “That must have been difficult for you.”

  Difficult? It comes to me now like it was then, a glistening piece of horror. My mother’s hair had always been long and full. The radiation had made her as bald as a baby. I’d always thought her eyes were one of the most beautiful things about her. Because of the pain, they rolled in her head, or she squinched them shut tight, or she cried. Her curves had been reduced to a skeletal waste, and her scent, that mother-smell that had once been as comforting and natural to me as breathing, was now alien and reeked of sickness and the Horseman.

  My dad, bless him, was a good dad, a great dad. He was a wonderful husband to my mom. But he couldn’t take it for too long in that room, next to that bed. He’d visit for an hour and spend the next two days recovering. So it was left to me. I sat by her side and stroked her forehead and sang to her and cried with her. She was at home, and we had a hospice nurse, but I got the nurse to let me help with most things. At twelve, I changed my mother’s diapers and I both hated and cherished the moment.

  “In the last weeks, she begged me every day—sometimes twice a day—to kill her.”

  Kill me kill me please, honey, kill me, she’d moan or screech, over and over and over. Please, please, please, kill me and make it stop, make it stop, Oh dear God, make it stop…

  “Mom was Catholic. Her faith had always been strong. She raised me to believe. In spite of it all, there she was, begging to become a suicide.”

  “God tests us,” Michael says.

  I glance at him and I consider killing him. Just for a millisecond.

  “I believed that suicide meant she would go to hell. One day, toward the end, she had a good morning. It happened sometimes. She’d come back to us. Her eyes would get lucid and we could actually talk for a bit. It never lasted long. That morning I could h
ave called my dad in, but I didn’t. I decided to talk to her alone.”

  “About her death wish.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “Yes. I told her that suicide was a sin, that if she asked for death and got it, she’d go to hell. I told her that she needed to tell me she wanted to live until the end. I needed to hear those words from her.”

  He cocks his head at me, and narrows his eyes.

  Does he see where I’m going? Maybe. Maybe this is his talent, maybe he smells sins like a dog smells meat.

  “She was lucid. She still hurt, but I was able to get through to her, and she showed me at that moment what real faith could be. She smiled and told me what you told me. ‘God is just testing me, love,’ she said. ‘It will be over soon.’ ‘Say the words, Mom,’ I asked her. She was a little puzzled, but she was tired, so tired. ‘I want to live to the end,’ she told me. An hour later, she was gone again, back inside the pain, begging for death.”

  “Your mother sounds like an extraordinary woman.”

  “Yes, yes, she was.”

  He leans forward a little.

  “The sin, Smoky? What did you do?”

  I hate that he’s using my first name.

  “I just needed to hear the words, you know? So that when I killed her, it wouldn’t be a suicide.”

  There it is, I think. The truth of you.

  Because his eyes had widened as I said those words, ever so slightly. Not the widening of shock or surprise, but thrill.

  “You murdered your mother?” he breathes.

  “I brought her peace,” I growl. “The peace that your God wasn’t giving her. She was being tortured daily. We don’t let animals suffer like that. Why people?”

  “Because, Smoky—people have souls.”

  I feel like spitting in his face.

  “Whatever. The bottom line was I poisoned her with an overdose of morphine pills. I knew how; I helped with her medication. And it wasn’t a suicide, so, against your beliefs, she didn’t go to hell for it.”

  He taps a finger against the Formica top of the table, considering. “I have to agree with you on that, Smoky. Your mother went to heaven. Her last, lucid wish was not for suicide. You, on the other hand…” He shakes his head. “Unless you ask for God’s forgiveness, you will never feel His grace.”