My mother is addicted to true crime. It can’t be fiction, she says, it must be true. She devours these tales late into the night, listens to podcasts while she’s driving, shopping, cooking. Why? We ask her. I like knowing what humans are capable of doing to one another, she says and tells us about The Bone Crusher. He kidnapped kids so he could break their bones. Swore he loved the sound, she says. Imagine the pain!
It becomes a running joke in our house. Lock the doors so the bone crusher doesn’t get us! Soon, we aren’t just locking doors, we’re bolting them shut. We install alarms that are so sensitive to movement we cannot get up to use the bathroom at night. We give away our cats because they’re nocturnal. We install dozens of cameras: perched like eagles in the corner of each room, scattered across the front and back yards, pointed at every door and window. The mailman, landscapers, maids and friends all stop coming. All day and night we wonder what is lurking inside the walls and beneath the floorboards; all day and night we feel the grip of fear so tight that it hurts.
