GORDIAN'S KNOT
A Novel
Chapter 1
This journal documents the events leading to the commission of my first, and perhaps only, murder. I must apologize for beginning my story at a time other than the beginning. But you must understand that it was only this evening that it occurred to me that a documented account of my little adventure might add to the experience of becoming a killer.
To meet me, one would never suspect that murder was my aspiration. I am a calm and gentle man, an orderly man without anger or violence. I shrink from such things normally. Doing this thing, even contemplating it, is so out of line with my character as to be laughable. You see, my whole life, up to this point, has been about conformity. I wake every morning, trundle off to work with a million other office-bound commuters, I put in my eight hours and I return to my orderly, covenant-restricted subdivision, to my cat, Thomas, and to my wife of 28 years, Judy. We are a childless couple so our lives have been blessed with serenity and predictability since we met in college more than a quarter century ago. To look at me you would never say; "Here lurks a murderer". To look at Judy, you would never say there is the spouse who drove her husband to kill. To even look at Thomas, the nearly inanimate fur-ball that he has become, you would not say there preens the cat of a murderer. The point is, I guess, that you would never look at me at all. I am about as noticeable as a drinking fountain in a park.
My actual decision to become a murderer happened two weeks ago, Sunday. I was alone as Judy had stayed to help out at church, and I was watching TV, CNN to be precise, when a story caught my attention. Actually, I remember very few of the details of the news story; it had something to do with a murder for hire drama that involved a few too many players and a doomed plot. But the single statement that caught my attention was the announcer's pontification that once again the authorities have foiled what set out to be the perfect crime.
Outrageous, I thought. Illogical! Firstly, the crime under discussion was clearly not the perfect crime. It was, at best, a comedy of errors masquerading as a farce. Secondly, since the authorities had uncovered the deed with little more than an interview of a dull-witted would-be criminal, one who came under their control by dumb luck, it very clearly wasn't anything like prefect.
Then the thought occurred to me: How many truly prefect crimes had been committed, crimes that the authorities never uncovered, crimes that the criminals never ultimately admitted? You can see the dilemma straight away. If the crime truly was perfect, by definition, it could never be discovered or revealed. It must always remain, undisclosed. And all these less-than-perfect killings out there, who are they killing? All the wrong people, I say. A husband beats his wife to death leaving the state the messy and expensive job of prosecuting him and housing his sorry butt for 15 to 25. No, he should have died and his wife should have been credited with performing a public service. What is needed in my view is for some balancing of the scales. For once the bully should die, for once the evil should be vanquished and the righteous should prosper, not the other way around. And I am not talking about civil disobedience. I am not proposing to bump off the bad guy and then walk proudly into the hall of justice and throw my self on their mercy. I am talking about killing someone who badly needs killing or stealing from someone who has made a fortune from stealing from others and getting clean away with it, forever. I am sick to death that this sick society continually and relentlessly rewards the evil-doers, the malefactors and those willing to push the law to its limits. I am sick of the celebrity athlete who rapes the coed and then actually prospers from the publicity of his trial. I am tired of the has-been actor who kills his spouse in, believe it or not, a completely successful attempt to revive his doomed career. And I am worn out with the jet-set executive who steals the corporation blind only to float off on his golden parachute and land in an even bigger corporation to loot afresh. Somebody needs to put all this right!
People say there is no such thing as the perfect crime. It then occurred to me that the only way to prove or disprove the possibility of a truly prefect crime was to try to commit one myself. Only by succeeding, would I conclusively prove that a perfect crime was possible. Only by failing would I demonstrate that, I at least, was incapable of committing one.
Being a calm and prudent man, I did not rashly act on this novel notion. And obviously, I did not discuss the matter with my best friend, my spouse, my lawyer or my spiritual advisor since any discussion of the notion of committing the perfect crime would be immediately self-destructive to that purpose. Rather, I kept the notion to myself and continued to consider the possibilities. In fact, in my most private of moments, I have been thinking of little else.
So what would possess me to undertake this vile ambition? Why would a fifty-year old Certified Public Accountant seek to risk everything on the zany desire to kill someone and get away with it? Good question. I hope that I may reveal to myself the answer to that question through the progress of this Journal. You see, I know the desire is there. I suspect that there is a deep-seated motivation in there as well. But right now, I don't know what it is. I have never been obsessed with such a desire before in my life and I am fascinated by the concept that something inside me is compelling me to do something that I can't explain. We will see.
Why a murder, you ask? To me the answer to that question is self-evident. Murder is the ultimate crime, it is the king of crimes. Theft is merely the shifting of material wealth, a subtle variation on commerce. It is solely by arbitrary standards that our culture says one form of commerce is theft while another is a clever business arrangement. Every day of my working life I am asked to justify transactions that only a few years ago would have sent my employer to jail. But now these same transactions are euphemistically called "creative accounting" a term and a concept that I strongly detest.
Rape is out of the question. I view rape as a perversion, a desecration of a sacred and beautiful act. Rape isn't so much a crime as it is an abomination. That is not to say that I don't believe it should be a crime, I certainly do. But it is far too repugnant for any sane individual to put the words perfect and rape in the same sentence. I could no more rape a woman than I could cut off my own right arm with a butter knife. Even the thought of it is beyond my understanding.
No, murder is the ultimate crime and the one which I have decided to pursue. I have been thinking about little else for the past several days. It is not yet a solid willfulness in my mind. It is more like a germinating seed, something taking form, growing and evolving into a fully flowered plan.
That is, in part, why I began this story. I realize that there is much to consider, much to plan. And if I fail to write down my thoughts for later reference, I know from past experience, that I will regret it. Oh, certainly I risk this account being discovered, but that risk is small. I frequently spend hours writing at my computer and my wife thinks nothing of it now. And who, other than her, would be prompted to look. No the risk is minimal and certainly worth the reward of having my thoughts better organized. So, you see, it is not to posterity that I dedicate these words. It is not in the ego-driven hope that one day this account will be read and admired that I document my thoughts. It is merely, to help guide my own thinking and to keep on paper what my mind will surely be incapable of holding. There is much to consider.
Take the choice of the weapon, for example. There are so many factors to consider and the threshold is very high indeed if this is to be the perfect crime. To my mind, that rules out the use of an explosive device automatically. Perfect implies precision and a bomb is inherently imprecise. How could a murder be called perfect if the intended victim is brought down with a whole room full of innocent people? Co-lateral damage is the hallmark of a military raid, not a precise, well planned murder.
Poison has much more appeal. The idea of concocting the perfect potion is seductive. Poisons can be subtle and slow acting. They can be difficult to trace under the proper circumstances. I think the prospect of murder by poison must stay in the mix for the present. It is too soon to rule it out.
Murder by vehicular means certainly has its appeal. With something like forty-thousand deaths a year attributed to the use of our highways, who would notice another. Yet that in itself may be the fatal flaw of murder by motorcar. Does one have the right to claim the perfect murder if the crime is merely a well concealed variation on the daily slaughter? Could one even claim to have committed a murder at all given the natural range of willfulness and intent that results in vehicular accidents where someone dies? Would not the use of an automobile to kill someone be like just another death on the fields of war, as a spoonful of water is to the sea?
So I suppose one could say essentially the same thing about death by household accident. Imagine that I contrived to kill my neighbor be stealthily pushing over his ladder while he was painting his house. Would that be murder? Perhaps all the elements are there; we have a dead victim, a perpetrator, perhaps even a motive and a means, but is it a murder in the sense that we could call it a perfect crime? If the conclusion is that my neighbor fell due to his own clumsiness then I, the author of the deed, would be the only person to even know that a crime had been committed. No, I think that the deed must obviously be a crime for it to count. Everyone must know straight away that the victim did not die by their own hand, that someone's malicious and willful intent was present.
By that logic, the authorities must know immediately that there is a murderer, that the murder must be caught and that all the resources of the State must be put to hand to make it happen. If that condition is not met, there will not be a perfect crime, just a perfect deception. It must be obvious that a murder was committed.
Viewed in this light, the choice of a weapon comes into focus. The weapon must be a firearm. In the United States, the gun is the murder weapon of choice and when the authorities see any death by firearm, they automatically and instantaneously think of murder. So the choice is in effect made for me. I regret that I will not be able to stew over my chemistry set concocting the perfect death brew. The thought really does appeal to me. But if I am to commit the perfect murder, it must be with a gun.
So be it. I have resolved my mind to the inevitable. I am to become a murderer and I am to commit my crime with a gun. I am to do it to the highest possible standard and with the greatest possible regard for justice and equity. I am to undertake this deed with the same dedication and tenacity that I have devoted to my profession and my private life. And I will strive to make my murder a work of art as opposed to a seamy and sorted abomination of human fallibility. All that remains is to select the victim and to see if I have the brains, tenacity and ingenuity to make my murder into a thing of beauty, the perfect crime.
The weekend is past and today was a Monday like any other. To be more specific, it sucked, as the kids in the mailroom would say. The commute this morning was the usual blur of brightly colored ego-symbols dashing down the highway so their owners could earn more money to afford more ego symbols. The scene would be infuriating were it not so ironic. The only thing special about this morning was the spring rains that turned the piled snow into perpetual slush along the Interstate. As I tried to follow the commonly accepted rules of the road, I was cut off, insulted with the one finger salute and generally pissed off. Too bad that I have no way of killing one the road-rage assholes that plague my life. Surely, something better to kill must be found.
And as I reread the words that I typed this past weekend, the word beauty jumps to the surface. You see, there is this woman at work who I consider to be supremely beautiful, at least physically. For years, since she came to the firm, I have seen her from a distance and been fascinated by her more than attracted to her. I would see her in a corridor and notice the perfect hips and the shapely legs. I would see her in the cafeteria and I would notice the radiant hair and the polished, elegant nails.
It was only at last year's Christmas party that I had the opportunity to speak with her and observe her closely. It was late and the original crowd in the main conference room had thinned considerably as people paired for dinner or for the commute home. Suddenly, she was standing next to me, eye to eye more or less, and actually speaking to me.
"Some party," she slurred. "Work your ass off for fifty-one weeks and management expects morale to soar because they buy us some cheap booze and give us two crappy hours to celebrate the holidays."
I noticed the flawless skin, the emerald blue eyes and the lashes that were so long they looked like bird’s wings.
"I was hoping to meet some studs," she went on, clearly tipsy, "but all that's left is you pudgy trolls. Oh well little troll, maybe Santa will bring you a little girl troll for Christmas. Looks like you could use a good troll screwing to loosen your tight little troll ass up a little. I'm going home."
She sloshed away toward the elevator and was gone. She never shared another word with me in the months since. I presume she doesn't even remember actually speaking to me. I presume that to her, the brief conversation we shared could have just as easily happened between her and a house plant.