The following is the original unedited and unabridged manuscript. Soon to be abridged.




from the case files of Detective Chris Hines.

Prelude

In 1982, William S. Burroughs wrote a book called 'The Place of Dead Roads'. The book was generous and unapologetic in its luridness. Within that book, however, there included a recipe for making poison: That is, to put baked beans and a piece of pork into a metal canteen for three weeks. When the can bulges, then you have your homemade botulism. A woman once ate a rancid baked bean, spit it out and rinsed out her mouth. Three days later, she was dead from botulism poisoning.

Case #1 -Bean Soup

Suspect's statement.

My name is Tim Bean. I was 12 years old when this happened. After years of witnessing constant abuse I realize at that young age that my stepmother cannot help it; it's her personality.
She is not likely to change and I have to save myself from more years of this. A priest told me, "Compassion for oneself is most important of all."
"All diseases are diseases of exposure." -William Burroughs. It is best to remove oneself from the site of contagion.
One night, at the dinner table, it is my turn to ladle out the soup. "Father", and my adoptive siblings, brother and sister are in their respective rooms. I ladle the soup, but add in a poison bean poured out through an empty salt shaker in my pocket.
The other characters in this grim drama enter the dining room. Stepmother takes her first sip of soup. That is all it will take. And suddenly, it is as if the cosmic tapestry has been disturbingly, irreversibly ruffled. "Father" speaks angrily, saying, "During the war, there were many traitors who were working for the Nazis. They were brave enough even to commit murder!"
There was a commercial from the Poison Control Centre of the United States on television at that moment. Stepbrother and stepsister glared at me during the airing of that commericial. Stepmother, however, looks and me thoughtfully, and with, it seemed, a look of great sadness.
That night, I hear her complain of a stomach ache to my father. She was standing right outside my room when she said it. Funny, she usually always never comes to my room or even near it at night.
The way she was standing out there was haunting, the way Madeleine must have stood in the Library of the House of Usher.
Over the course of the next day, her lips turn cyanotic blue.

At the funeral, everyone could tell, especially my grandparents, just by looking at my eyes that I killed her. The mark of Cain, to be sure.

The Police released Tim Bean. The stepmother's death was ruled to be a uniquely singular case of food poisoning. Tim Bean was released after Police questioning.

At least once a month, for the rest of his life, for "no reason", Tim Bean is pulled over and questioned by the Police.


Case 2 - Straight Razor -suspect's statement

A visit to Wreck Beach, Vancouver. I score 4 tabs of Superman LSD. Naked chicks.

My name is Jim Murrison. A few days ago, I bought a straight razor. In the Stephen King book, 'Hearts in Atlantis', the book mentions a store which sells straight razors with fancy carved handles. However, the book said, that, "These razors are not used for shaving." It did not mention what the razors were used for.
They are used for killing pigs, obviously. On the strength of that remembered paragraph, I bought a straight razor. A gold plated one with a pig with wings and clouds surounding. A pig flying to heaven. For the spiritually inclined porcine abbatoiriste, of course.
Stepmother mentioned that she was born in the year of the pig. But when I researched for myself, I saw that she was really born in the year of the monkey. But following her bullshit at face value, I decide to visit her, but not without my pig razor.
I was flying on LSD at the time! I use a file and scrape off the pigs wings, and the clouds, too. This little piggie will not be going to heaven!
I visit her when others are at work. The room darkens and lightens like a movie filmed w/out a light meter. (this is a metaphor for light and darkness trying to sideline one another at this point. Plus the pupils will dilate and contract wildly on LSD)
She is sitting on her hands rocking back and forth slightly. "What are you doing here? Are you on drugs? What's wrong with you?!" I pounce and slit her throat. Then for some reason I hear someone say, "No..." and I, Jim Murrison feel a liquid warmth on my hands. Like Aldous Huxley's 'Eyeless in Gaza' I flash back to five seconds ago. Oh yeah, I was thinking that she got a hysterectomy a few years ago ie she is partially eviscerated; why not complete the process? The razor cut through with all the difficulty of a welding torch cutting through melted butter. Past the formidable layer of yellow subcutaneous fat to the purple intestines that was glazed like a sugar donut. I was ripping out her guts like someone ripping the wires out of a telephone! A large pool of blood had formed. Crystalline kaleidoscopes had embedded themselves here, there, and everywhere.
The birds were singing outside. Their whistling songs were deafeningly loud, strangely, but this is just an effect of the LSD.
I was laughing and laughing! I threw pieces of her guts around the room.

With $75,000 I got to Cambodia as soon as possible. There were no extradition treaties between Canada and Cambodia. However, in Cambodia, I ran into some strange karma, coincidences directly related to my act, but that is another story.

Case 3 - Liquid Bean Sleep -Police notes

Library Book. The Place of Dead Roads. A copycat crime. Tim Bean never got convicted for his crime, but he was never approached by his best friends and never advised to go into politics in that jocular way that most good friends will speak to one another, either.

Rex Roth. 12 years old. The botulism bean. Administered when stepmother was asleep. She awoke and cursed a blue streak. Beaten by father.

suspects statement: "The next day, like a defector planning to leave Russia, I packed all my things. Stepmother vomited all the next day, from what I hear. She kept on reaching out her arms, kept doing that, as if reaching out to a state of painlessness that would now always be beyond her.
That was when she was not clutching her stomach."

She died at the hospital 24 hours later. Roth was sent to a juvenile detention unit. The rest of the family move to a different town. They are never reunited.

POLICE BLOTTER - March 11, 1983.

Detective: Chris Hines, Homicide RCMP

When I showed up to work this morning, there was a case dossier that had not been there before.

3 women found dead. One killed from a suspicious food poisoning. One from a gruesome homestyle hand-crafter evisceration, "Real folk, that's for sure!", I thought.
And another from the same M.O. as the first murder. The stories were splashed on the papers. The first murder occurred February 1st. The second, the next day, on February 2nd, the next occurred on March 3rd.
The words, "serial killer" were even bandied about.
I had been working at this job for 11 years now. It's what I do. It's all I do. After hundreds of cases, I could solve these ones, I think, w/out even leaving my desk. All I need is a computer, the case files, a phone, and half a dozen Tim Horton's donuts and some coffee.
Although "serial killer" was used, the next day, it was ruled out by Police forensics particulars, prints, differing angles of attack which suggested different heights, different DNA profiles. Murders know no timetable. As I was opening the box of donuts, two more cases were brought in by a female Police secretary. They happened today.

Case 4 - Steel Toed Boots. -Police notes

Luke Leary often wished that he could have "ten minutes alone in a room w/ his stepmother." He said this such a twisted snarl of maliciousness, that it was obvious he was not referring to incest.
One day, early in the morning, he walked into the house where his stepmother was living.
"I was wearing steel toed boots. I had stepmother in a corner. I thought of an old schoolyard joke,
"Why do Italians wear pointy shoes?" "So they can kick the cockroaches in the corner!"
One miscreant trajectory of my steel toed boot hit her skull. There was a sickening crunch. A large circle of blood was inkblotting on her head. She was near dead.
More kicks resulted in gruesome anotomical displays of broken bones and bloody apertures newly formed as her arms, ribs, stomach, head were kicked repeatedly.
Obscene wounds, bones broken, limbs bent in grotesque angles in some cases, multiple places as to almost from a semi-circle.
Arcs of blood were peeled from her dead corpse frame with with every horrifying retraction of my steel toed boots.
A symphony of sickening crunches and red splatters.
I had left her half-triturated body where it lay, in that corner, immersed in a small lake of blood. I turned away in disgust. Later, I was caught and sentenced. The Detective was named Chris Hines.

Case 5 - Stab with a knife -suspect's statement

14 years old. Rick Jones. Oppressive stepmother. Verbal abuse. Insults non-stop. "Chinky language.
the unreasonable chores. Worst of all, the constant sadistic beatings. I take matters into my own hands. I stab her with a knife.
She dies later. I get sent to prison.

POLICE BLOTTER

Detective: Chris Hines

The cases were written alternatively in Police notes , and quoted statements from the suspects.
Because of the close proximity of the killings, at first it was naturally assumed that it was a serial killer. but the forensics particulars ruled that out. However, there was a baffling similarity to all the cases.
I thought of my old detective friends from the world of literature, Mssr. Auguste Dupin, Mr. Hercule Poirot, and of course, Sherlock Holmes.
Murder on the Orient Express said that just because there were multiple stab wounds, it does not necessarily mean that they were all caused by one murderer, so in this case, the same applies.
And in the case of the food poisonings: Forensics labs in Switzerland can find one part per billion of the most obscurest and most illegal drug.
A part of a masticated lima bean was found in one of the victim's stomach, in the other traces of botulism were smeared on her lips and tongue. A review of her kitchen found that lima beans did not figure in her usual recipes.
A book was recently released called 'The Place of Dead Roads' this contains a recipe for botulism using beans. This is the inspiration of similar poisonings in the U.S. They were rare, but a sudden spate of an unusual MO of homicide can usually be attributed to literary copy-cat killings.
This must be like that. Plus the suspects also checked the book out on their library cards.

I can only arrest. I can not determine guilt or innocence, let alone the sentence.

In the first case, the suspect was released due to his age and severity of abuse.
In the second case, the suspect fled to Cambodia. The appropriate information has been forwarded to Cambodian Police.
In the 3rd case, the victim was released after serving time.
In the last two cases, the suspects are still serving time.

I solved these cases, ultimately, because I myself am the stepchild of a sadistic half-wit stepmother. The vast majority of people have unassumingly kind stepmothers, but for me, it was an exception as my stepmother was a mean one. A seamstress upon meeting a saint see only the buttons or the zipper and I saw the similarity in these cases immediately.
Stepsons killing stepmothers. What is the world coming to? And these were only five murders committed in Canada this month. I am an RCMP Detective so my jursidiction covers all of Canada and these particular cases have somehow landed on my particular desk.

Although I never killed my stepmother, after a time, I never saw her again, so in a way, that is like killing her; killing her by proxy.

I immediately made the connection, so I told the RCMP Sergeant Matt Mason, my deductions. The fingerprints, the tapings, the 310 DNA Analyser findings all seemed to confirm this.

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