Page 22 of Go Home
Before going back to the motel, she took a detour to the sea.She’d had an idea of blowing away the cobwebs with fresh, maritime air, but in the end, she sat in her car.The talk of priests and priesthood had inevitably brought back memories of Denton, who’d attempted to become an ordained minister, but failed the application process.
She’d learned, with the aid of much therapy, not to repress these associations –a feeling squashed is a feeling that turns around and bites you, as her counselor had put it.
Instead, where possible, she gave the feelings the time to emerge into the light, considered them, then quietly put them back where they belonged, like someone sifting through a scrapbook.That was the idea, at least.Sometimes she managed it.Sometimes she went running and suppressed the memories with endorphins.And sometimes, she got blind drunk.
Later in his life, the aspiring priest Denton re-emerged as a successful salesman, an itinerant lifestyle which suited his extra-curricular interests as a serial killer but which also, undoubtedly, tapped into his powers of persuasion.The handful of victims who’d survived Denton’s attentions described him as a man of charm and charisma.Tall, good-looking, with a soft Southern accent, he seemed to have had a sixth sense for the spiritually needy.
He’d strike up conversations in innocent, everyday settings – big grocery stores, libraries, museums – never once going for the typical hunting locales, like the seedy bar or the interstate truck stop.He’d give his victims the impression that he’d spotted something remarkable in them, a special quality, a unique closeness to God.In a very short space of time, like a salesman closing on a deal, he’d get them to a point where they believed that he and they had a special mission.
The nature of that mission differed from person to person; he seemed to know which would press the right buttons for each individual.Suzy Smith, from Arlington, Texas, had told a girlfriend that she and Denton were going to set up a soup kitchen, filling bellies as they saved souls.Calista Gaines-Walker, of Kenosha, Wisconsin, described in her diary their plans to journey up and down the Rust Belt, curing the opioid crisis with prayer.The missions were bold and extravagant; in that sense they contrasted perfectly with the narrow, lacking, trodden-down lives of his victims.Denton knew exactly what to say.He gave every one of them their own, individual gospel.
And crucially, he put a lot of work into it.The traditional serial killer might stalk his prey for days and weeks beforehand.He might also hang onto the body for some time afterwards.But conscious, living contact between the killer and the victim was usually just a matter of hours.Minutes, even.
By contrast, Denton did his stalking out in the open.And he built a relationship with his victims that could last for weeks.He understood how to mitigate the risks: he picked people who were basically lonely in the first place, and whose disappearance might take a long time to come to light.He was very careful about CCTV cameras, typically obscuring his face by means of an endless cycle of beards and baseball caps.But he also impressed upon all his victims the importance of watertight secrecy.The mission depended on it.And his victims believed him entirely, until, of course, there came a moment when they realized how wrong they’d been.
That was what Kate couldn’t get out of her mind.
Not the attacks.The attacks were almost too savage to comprehend.They represented a complete reversal of everything Denton appeared to be up until that point.Beforehand, he was, as more than one person described him, “a southern gentleman.” Charming, polite, unselfish.
In the attacks, he became something else.Hardened cops and M.E.s were sickened by the crime scenes Denton left in his wake.More than one person suggested that they were the work of a wild animal.He quite literally tore people apart, describing the process in his own twisted journals as “a sacrifice of the willing.”
And Kate could have met the same fate.But it was Denton’s victims that troubled her.In particular, that moment when each one must have realized that it was all a lie.That they weren’t special, and they weren’t going to embark on a grand adventure.The only thing unique about them was the way they were shortly about to die.She couldn’t think of another thing under heaven so abominably sad.
One therapist told her that she was projecting.Concentrating on the feelings of Denton’s victims, rather than on her own.By feeling sorry for them, she was maintaining a fantasy that she, herself, was unmarked and unharmed.Kate had decided to stop seeing that therapist.
After returning to the motel, she took a long, hot shower.Plentiful running water was one of the few good points about the place.Marcus said the décor reminded him of a line from a Leonard Cohen song: “There is a crack in everything.”He was right.The toilet, the sink, the mirror, the bedhead… there really was a crack in everything.Filled with grime.
Emerging from the shower, she checked her phone.My roomwas the terse text message she had just received from her partner.She pulled on gray sweats and a blue hooded top, rubbed her hair with a towel, and walked across the courtyard.
Marcus was dressed almost identically, though it looked – and smelled – as if he hadn’t got around to the shower yet.He padded to the bed like a huge bear, settling a silver laptop on his knees.
“I got in,” he said.“It seems mostly to be parish business – whose turn is it to do the flowers, this year’s Veterans Day service will be on yadda yadda.Lotsof banter with the pétanque crew until a certain point, middle of last year when all that stops.And thenthis…”
He clicked on an email address, revealing a lengthy correspondence between Father Tom and someone with the handlesully1980.He passed Kate the laptop, then chivalrously, plumped up the pillow for her, and lumbered off the bed.
As he went into the shower, she started to skim through the emails, certain words and phrases catching her eye:
advised you to seek specialist help
egregious accusation
hypocrite!
to do that in full view of the community
destroyed my trust
destroyed yourself
inform the diocese
check into rehab
a dangerous game
threaten me
refuse me
