M-U-R-D-E-R

He was a beautiful baby boy. Perfect, some might even say. We didn’t even clip his penis, every inch of him was perfection. I wouldn’t let a soul come near my son with those penis-snipping shears, or whatever archaic tool they were bound to use. His mother was indifferent, but I knew. I knew that he was complete and whole and didn’t need to be tampered with. 

The first time I held Jack, his hand grabbed mine, urgently, like he needed to tell me something. His eyes went wide and I whispered, “What is it?”, letting the words slip softly into the air and hang there, unanswered. I felt each tiny finger caress my palm, and like most parents, I swore then and there that no harm would ever come to him.

As the years passed I taught him catch, compassion, and cuss words. We sat the nights out on the porch, when his mom was gone on business trips and we could play Scrabble over TV dinners and a couple beers. What’s a couple beers at 15 when your dad is chief of police?

It was two years after that when we caught wind of the first murder. Homicide was busy for weeks trying to track down clues and motives in a seemingly random crime, and I was dealing with a whole mess of paperwork and stress headaches. I worried about my son. The victim was a 17-year-old, like him. The kid went to a school over in Charington, miles away, but too close for comfort. Their swim team had gone against ours at State last year.

“You ever think about carrying a knife on you?” I ask him one night, as we sit in the July heat, sticky wicker stuck to my shin. The third high school kid had been murdered last night, in just three months. The station was going nuts.

“What for?” he asks, placing S-T-A-C-K on the board and adjusting his wiry glasses as he adds points to the Scrabble sheet.

“It just seems like it would be a good idea.”

The next day we went knife shopping. Jack seemed a bit indifferent to the task, and after his fourth request to go check out the video game aisle, I relented and picked out a shiny hunting knife myself. The cashier saw my uniform and didn’t request ID as I plopped cash on the counter.

It was months before another murder, but Halloween night brought two. Jack and his mom had been gone all evening, his mother volunteering at the church’s Trunk-or-Treating event, Jack off with some swim team friends. I had cops assigned to every corner of the city, knowing well and good that a dark, spooky night is a serial killer’s wet dream. I took my own corner off of Main Street, filled with moms and their 3-year-olds’ sticky candy hands.

The next morning I busted everyone’s asses, throwing detectives around like rag dolls. Failure was not an option anymore, and I let everyone know it. I could sense the fear in the room. The fear of the killer, the fear of me, the fear for their children, their nieces and nephews, the fear for their jobs and their lives. It was all beginning to swell together, like a giant monster, even as Halloween decor and costumes slowly disappeared from the shelves in nearby stores. 

By December, we were national news. 

LOCAL COPS LEFT CLUELESS AS SERIAL KILLER RAMPAGE CONTINUES

HIGH SCHOOL KILLER ON THE LOOSE, NO NEW LEADS

SMALL CITY MYSTIFIED BY SERIAL MURDERER

I feared for my son, constantly. I bought him several more knives which laid in his room, unused. One day, I peeked in while he was at swim practice. His mom and I convinced him to join the team, hoping the scrawny muscles poking through his pale skin would inflate a little, and he wouldn’t be so helpless against an attacker. 

I peered in the closet. Clothes littered the floor. I hung up a few of the hoodies on hangers then stepped back out. The dim lighting made his unmade bed look ominous. I thought about how I would feel if one day he didn’t return to the bed, couldn’t. A cold flash went through my body as I imagined his lifeless body, my stomach leadened. I made the bed, neatly. 

Next, I poked through some newspapers on his desk. My heart flopped. Headlines stared back at me in bold black letterhead. Notes in the margins made my skin crawl. I pulled open a desk drawer and found the knives. Underneath them, a calendar, dates circled, all dates when his mother was gone, Jack was out of the house, when I was alone. 

I shut the drawer with a snap and returned to my room to think.

The next night at dinner, I looked at my perfect son. His pale shoulders didn’t appear any larger than last week, yet his presence was intimidating. We ate in silence, his mother away again for the second time this month. 

Before I lost the courage, I grabbed his hand. This was unprecedented territory for me. We were not the touchy-feely type very often. He looked up at me in surprise, and I could see something in his eyes. Was it fear?

“Son, is there… is there anything you want to tell me?”

This question hung in the air, larger than life.

His eyes went wide. 

I waited. I whispered, “What is it?”

He hesitated, I could see it. His lips opened almost imperceptibly before clamping shut. He shook his head no. I stared for a moment longer, then dropped my head and continued the meal in silence; though, it was heavier than before, weighty with untold secrets.

I paced for weeks. I paced in the station, in my room, in the kitchen. I wore out tiles and floorboards and carpets, and no matter how much I walked, I was walking in circles. There was only one solution that I kept coming back to. Secrets cannot remain secrets forever. Time will not stand still even as I pace. Action needed to be taken.

On a cold night in January, I was waiting. We were there, uniformed and at the ready. I could see in my mind’s eye how it would happen: Jack comes home, his hair still slightly damp from swim practice. He shuffles off his shoes and shimmies his head, trying to relieve his head of some of the moisture. I take a long last glance at him before everything changes. He is truly perfection, my boy.

Only a few seconds later, he takes notice of us in the living room. We’re sitting on the couch; the hearth by the fireplace; his grandmother’s ancient armchair. I see his eyes go wide again, so innocently. He questions why we’re here. I ask him, one more time. Jack, are you sure there isn’t anything you want to share with me? With us? He looks stunned. The metallic sound of government-issued rifles shuffling into armpits fill the silence between us.

He asks again, what is happening? I tell him. He has the right to remain silent. He has the right to an attorney. Anything he says can and will be used against him. 

From beneath his floppy brown hair, he is looking at me wildly. “You…” He trails off, the sentence left unfinished in the cool air of the living room.

I know that this is what will happen. I know it as I sit in the armchair, heart beating steadily, firm in my decision. My son needed protection, and I gave it to him. I saved him from the cruelty of teenagers, time and time again. And now I will save him from the cruelty of the world, too. Although he may not see it immediately, he will thank me someday. He will thank me for giving him a safe place. He will thank me for not letting any more of life’s dangers befall him. Honest-to-god, I am saving his life.

These thoughts swirl around in my head as I wait, thumb tapping against the gun in my holster.

I hear Jack’s car engine rumble to a halt outside and I time his entrance in my head. The door will open in three, two, one...