Shocking True Story (2 page)

I wondered if this is where we had sunk. Murders were so commonplace that a good story had to rise to a level of outrageousness faster than a two-day-old corpse in a pond before it would make the basis for a good book. Because of O.J. The Innocent, Eric and Lyle "We Are Orphans!" Menendez, Casey “Tot Mom” Anthony, Scottie "The Hottie" Peterson and Drew “Not Related to Scott and Not Particularly Hot but Still a Killer” Peterson, the next crazed killer had to do something really off the hook, totally off the wall, to get the notice of a publisher. A good story, a
meaningful
story, had been replaced by the likes of
Lobster Boy Murders
and
any
maniac who ate flesh or held his family captive for at least a decade.

"Market's a little tough now,"
the book editor droned on.

It was true, a sea of black and white and red covers stare out from the true crime section like a penguin massacre. But was that my fault? Was it the fault of women like Amanda Winfield? Were the killers running the art department of every mass market true crime book publisher in New York? I didn't think so.

What I did think was that Amanda wanted her husbands (numbers two and three) out of the way so that she could be with her ex-reporter lover, who claimed he wanted to get into true crime himself. Husband No. 2, a geologist, was bludgeoned to death with a chunk of granite and husband No. 3, a fireman, was shot and torched.

Torched!
The fireman was
torched
, I had reminded the book editor.

"There is some irony there, but it would have been better if Amanda had been a little more devious about it."

I couldn't believe what I had heard.
A little more devious?

“
Devious isn't screwing your lover ten minutes before sending him to kill your husband, with the promise of a blow job when he returns?”

"It is and it isn't,"
the editor said.

All I could do was drum my fingers on my mouse pad as I thought it all over while the young man, who lived in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world, rambled on over the phone. He didn't get it. He just didn't get crime. This guy failed to understand that America extended beyond Manhattan, and true crime readers were interested in the shocking kind of murder among people they can relate to. It didn't have to be a greedy Boston socialite or a love-struck astronaut in diapers to strike a chord of interest among readers. The occupation didn't necessarily define the crime. Yet a preacher's wife who enlists two boys from the choir to kill, or a kindergarten teacher, like Amanda Winfield, who manipulates her lover—they are the people next door.

Middle America loved those kinds of killers.

"With
Inside Edition
and
Dateline
out there you really have to have something on the edge to compete,"
the editor concluded before hanging up to take a more important call.

And so I sat there, two months from financial ruin with the hope that I'd find the right story in time to get my twin daughters braces, pay the mortgage, have my wife's hair highlighted and keep the gas tank reasonably full.

I scanned the pages of
USA Today
. I flipped through back issues of
People
. I surfed through everything from CNN.com to TMZ.com. I Googled. I pawed through letters postmarked from San Quentin to Huntsville and every correctional facility in between. Envelopes were decorated with multicolored pen depictions of flowers and ferns, deer and tears. Prisoners spent as much time inking the outside of their envelopes as they did composing the contents held inside. Some weren't bad, at least insofar as their artwork was concerned. Most were, well, criminal.

I thought about putting the Amanda Winfield book out myself. Self-publishing was huge, now that a quarter of all books sold were electronic editions, now that Kindles and Nooks and Kobos and iPads could be found on every ferry and in every coffee shop. I let my mind run wild with it for a moment. I'd put it up on Amazon—the new center of the book universe—and make 70 percent on every sale! I'd design my own cover! I'd promote it on Facebook and Twitter and Goodreads! I'd do blog tours! I'd work my media contacts! The word-of-mouth would be huge! Editors like that little twerp in Manhattan would beg me to sign with them!

Then I thought about the cost of libel insurance. The
prohibitive
cost of libel insurance. Which every true crime writer had to have. Publishing true crime without legal cover—the kind publishers provided—was like going grocery shopping in the nude. You just couldn't get away with it.

Moving right along...

I'd sleep on it. I'd agonize over it. I just wanted a good crime. Was that too much to ask?

Something else was on my mind.
It
. I kept it under my desk blotter. I couldn't even call it a letter. Just
it
. I had read it only once, which seemed enough given that its content was fairly direct. I remember picking through the stack of bills and opening it at the post office, thinking it was a fan letter. Like I got that many. Instead, it was a single sheet of paper with letters cut from magazines and newspapers and pasted down like some kind of ridiculous ransom note, the kind a deranged scrapbooker might fashion:

Although I put crafty nutcase's note away, the implied threat never really left my mind.

♦

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 7, WAS HOT and the girls were restless. Fireworks littered the roadway, and the acrid smell of gunpowder still hung in the air. From our kitchen window I watched an eagle return to a snag that he had wisely abandoned the day of the Fourth of July festivities. The cracked-mirror surface of Puget Sound reflected through the soft branches of fir and cedar trees like a store searchlight. Valerie had gone to work and I had to get our girls occupied with something so I could rifle through my old-school, battle-scarred Rolodex and get on with my work. But no DVD would satisfy. Nor a game of Scrabble, which they usually loved. No suggestion for an outside activity would pull eleven-year-olds Taylor and Hayley from my peripheral vision so that I could get busy. I broke down and let them watch MTV while I made an early lunch.

"Later, we'll have a discussion, girls, on why pole-dancing in a wet T-shirt is demeaning to women," I said.

Both rolled their eyes before turning full attention to the manic cut-with-a-shredder video flashing on the screen.

While the microwave resuscitated macaroni and cheese, the horn affixed to my front door sounded. The previous owner despised doorbells and instead installed a bicycle horn to announce the arrival of friends and family. It was a dumb idea, but in the years we lived in Port Gamble, Washington, I had grown used to the dumb and different. Especially when we bought House 19, the oldest and creakiest of the original nineteenth-century row houses built for mill management. The mill had died, however, and sometimes I was convinced our house wasn't far behind, with all its leaks, drafts, groans, and creaks. None of which I could afford to fix.

Before answering the horn, I went to the freezer and grabbed three Mr. Freeze pops, tossed two at my girls, and hid the other behind my back.

"Any other blues, Dad?" Taylor asked, lifting her head off the floor and away from the television for the first time since I had given in to MTV.

"No," I lied, as I shoved the blue frozen bar into my back pocket. "Only orange."

I hated orange. I also hated the idea that blue was called raspberry. I had never seen a blue raspberry in my entire life. Red, yes. Even gold once on an episode of the Food Network's
Barefoot Contessa
. Never blue. Blue raspberry, I was sure, was the malicious invention of a misguided chemist at the FDA.

Maybe there was a culinary true crime book somewhere in that?

I looked at my calendar for next day. Coffee with Jeanne Morgan was on tap.

Good old Jeanne.

♦

Forty miles away a woman logged on to the Prime Crime chat room, as she did nearly every day at that precise time. Chat rooms were becoming old school in the Facebook-is-the-center-of-the-universe era, but this one had a dedicated following and was still going strong. She sipped her diet Coke through a plastic straw and picked at some edamame, her favorite snack, in a white porcelain bowl. She scanned the roster to see who was online, and before she could finish reviewing the list, a window popped open on the screen of her Dell laptop.

Crimeguy:
Hi.

KEVFAN:
Hi yourself.

Crimeguy:
Tomorrow's the big day, right?

KEVFAN:
Yes! Kevin and I are having coffee. I've sent him an e-mail telling him I have big news. That news is YOU, you know.

Crimeguy:
No. Please don't tell him.

KEVFAN:
Why not?

Crimeguy
: I'm not ready. Please.

KEVFAN:
I think he'd want to know. He's very caring.

Crimeguy:
I know. But, please. I have more thinking to do.

KEVFAN:
If U R sure.

Crimeguy:
Yes. U R so nice.
He is so lucky to have you supporting him.

KEVFAN:
He's told me he can't live without me.

Crimeguy:
Cool. Good to know.

Monday, July 8

Jeanne Morgan was my Number One fan, a designation that she arrived at with the assumption that there was actually some kind of ranking among my readership. I accepted it as a compliment and immediately embraced her as the archetypical true crime reader. Jeanne was in her sixties, had undergone a hip replacement, and wore her brassy, blonde-dyed hair in an updo that made her more Down and Out Librarian than Homecoming Queen.

Which, she had told me on at least a dozen occasions she actually
had been
some four decades ago.

Valerie thought Jeanne came from the
Misery
region of devoted reader territory, but I didn't mind. I liked her from the first moment she showed up at one of my “events,” telling me all that I needed to know.

“I read your books.”

Love it.

“You look younger in person.”

Love it more.

She clinched the deal during an especially excruciating mall bookstore signing by telling me that her best friend Tobi-Shay had been murdered by a stranger. The case was still unsolved.

“I know you could do justice to the story, Mr. Ryan. You understand the pain and suffering of victims like no other true crime writer working today.”

I wanted to tell her true pain came from the indignity of a mall signing, but I held my tongue.

“Maybe someday I will be able to tell your story.” I stopped to correct my caring self. “I mean,
Tobi-Shay's
story. Do you mind getting me a latte?”

She didn't.

After that, there wasn't an event that Jeanne
didn't
attend. Latte in hand. Nodding at whatever I said. She created a Goodreads page for me, a Facebook group, and made sure that Oprah Winfrey's Next Chapter got an email whenever I had a new release.

“You never know,” she said. “She might want something different.”

I smiled at her. “Long shot, Jeanne. None of my books have an incest-survivor angle or push personal empowerment.”

She smiled and titled her head. “You empower me.”

If Valerie had been there her creep-meter would have clanked, but not mine. I liked Jeanne. I dedicated my last book to her:

For Jeanne Morgan, My Number One fan...

I write the wrongs because of readers like you.

Every few months, we'd have coffee. She'd tell me how great I was and I'd tell her how much I appreciated her support. We met ostensibly so she could show me what she was working on with her website promotions. But in reality, I just figured Jeanne was lonely. I'd looked at her websites every now and then, wondering how many “friends” I'd have if she hadn't been working the internet like a Liberian heir in search of a dim-bulb American with a bank account.

Jeanne was on the calendar for the next day for one of our get-togethers.

She e-mailed the night before:
I've got something BIG to tell you.

AS SHE ALMOST ALWAYS DID, Jeanne Morgan posted a bulletin on Facebook:
Today I'm meeting with our favorite author. Will let you know more later
. Anyone who read the Jeanne's Kevin's Krime Blog knew that meant coffee at a Starbucks off Highway 16 in Gig Harbor, a town west of Tacoma, separated from the big city by the distinctive green-hued arching span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Regular readers of Jeanne's blog knew that before schlepping over to Starbucks, Jeanne always bought a small houseplant for Valerie because “author's wives are people, too, and they deserve our support.”

Valerie appreciated the gesture, of course. But frequently lamented the obvious.

“Jeanne thinks that I'm married to you as some kind of social work, Kevin. Like you need some—”

“Empowerment?” I asked.

Valerie shook her head. “More like a muse to inspire you to absorb the rhythm of blood spatter on a davenport or the lyrical way a knife slices a spinal cord.”