THREE
Calm flowed through him to such an extent it was as if he were standing still and all around him moved in slow motion. He stared out of the window, mimicking just about everyone else in Aunt Betty’s Café as he ate his bowl of chili and washed it down with one of their fine cups of coffee. He dragged his gaze away from the group of people surrounding his gift to Sheriff Alton. Nothing much had been happening in town of late and he liked to see his taxes deployed in a useful endeavor.
Sighing, he leaned over his phone to read a book he’d downloaded about various behavioral traits. One of his friends had called him a psycho and he wondered if this accusation was true, but he doubted it. Surely there was a group of people the same as him? People went missing and showed up dead daily, so it was only reasonable to assume there were more people with the same hobby as him out there. At first, he’d believed his hobby wasn’t something he could talk about in general conversation, but the private group he’d discovered on the internet had opened his eyes. There just happened to be hundreds, maybe thousands, of people with hobbies more unusual than his. He glanced at the page. Could he be a sociopath? Nope, he didn’t have an antisocial attitude. He mixed well with everyone. Hmm, what about a narcissist? “A person who takes an obsessive interest in himself.” No, that wasn’t him either. In fact, he’d studied all the psychopaths from Black Rock Falls, and none of them fitted those molds. In fact, it seemed the opposite. Most psychopaths moved through life with ease. They had good jobs, intelligence, and were often admired by their friends… They certainly didn’t stick out in a crowd as being crazy. The idiotic generalization that they were antisocial self-loving freaks was just about as stupid as telling a kid that a dirty old man might kidnap them. It seemed to him a psychopath could be anyone and not the foaming-at-the-mouth madman people wanted to believe. He read on and decided maybe psychopath was too harsh a label for him. Maybe impulsivity would come close to the mark. After all he did act on impulse, and being smart enough to know and understand his trigger, he’d gained some control.
Reading articles and books written by leading doctors over many years had given him the answers he craved. Now, he understood the affairs his father had enjoyed with a stream of women hadn’t been his fault. That sin was his pa’s alone. Although he’d suffered the fallout from his angry parents, he’d never forgotten listening to their lies. He’d often pressed one ear to the door as his pa calmed his mom’s sobs and promised to be a better husband. His mom had told him that all men were the same and, as soon as he married, he’d be out chasing after “marriage breakers” just like his pa. She warned him about the women who only wanted a man until he left his wife, and then they’d dump him. She’d ranted about the same thing so many times it had become like a mantra running in a constant loop in his head. As a kid he hadn’t truly understood her meaning until he’d married a sweet girl straight out of college. At his first job as a married man, a stunning blonde had offered him the world. She’d been irresistible and insisted he leave his wife, but his mother’s voice kept on whispering in his mind. Determined not to be like his pa, he’d taken her out for a night of passion. He smiled at the memory. He wasn’t like his pa after all, and it had been so satisfying killing her. Yeah, he understood his trigger just fine.