At a young age, I realized two things: that I wanted to kill serially, and that every good serial killer needed a schtick. Something that oozed creativity but was still subtle. So, I made an agreement with myself—I could only start killing if the perfect schtick came to mind. This seemed like a fair arrangement between me and myself.
The puzzle pieces came together on January 11th my sophomore year. Katie and I ate lunch in the computer lab most days because we knew the people in the cafeteria would be the people who attended our high school. Food wasn’t allowed in there, but we’d eat our sandwiches and fuck around on the computer. YouTube, Cool Math Games, online shopping. Katie loved Wikipedia the most. On the 11th, she was pasting in the family names of some of the rich kids at the school.
“Some of these assholes actually have pages,” she said. “Josh’s dad, Walter Edward Rhinebeck, wrote Bedtime for Bonzo. The old Ronald Reagan movie.”
“Let me see that,” I said.
“No wonder Josh is such a shit,” she said. “His dad’s a rich movie guy.”
“Was,” I said. I pointed at the list of facts under Josh’s dad’s picture. “Born April 3, 1930. Died March 31, 1994.”
“Jesus, I didn’t know Josh’s dad was dead,” said Katie. “And I hate when that happens.”
“What, when people die?”
“No! When they die so close to their birthdays,” she said. “That bothers the fuck out of me. See? Now his age is 63 on Wikipedia and it’ll be 63 forever. But the guy probably considered himself to be 64 in the week before he croaked. It’s not fair. They should really round up.”
“Whatever,” I said, but internally I was exploding. I had had my revelation.
What if I started killing people a few days before their birthday? I thought. It was an interesting schtick with a potent outcome. Katie was right: robbing people of one final birthday did add an extra layer to death. Would people pick up on my pattern? If it was a handful of people, all within 48 hours of their birthdays? I liked thinking of future detectives putting the pieces together—realizing they’re dealing with one of the interesting ones. But would they be able to trace it back to me?
…They could through Katie. The very conversation we’d just had would be in her recent memory, and that could jeopardize everything. Could I see her going to the police? It was a fifty-fifty shot, but she was smart no matter what. Maybe the universe was thinking of me and all the stars had aligned. Maybe there was a reason why birthdays were on her mind.
I had a revelation on top of my revelation. I had the perfect way to kick my whole career off and cover my ass at the same time. Katie’s seventeenth birthday was January 16th.