and he’s in payback mode,

cracked her skull maybe with a bat,

probably his kid’s. “What do you say, Bob?”

He shrugs. Psychology is not his thing.

He likes putting it together

like a math problem he can solve by adding one plus two,

but that doesn’t work with psychos.

They hide from the average crime solver.

Somebody like me has to go down into hell with them

and bring them back,

even though they’re radioactive with an evil

that clings to your skin.

I’m still hot from the last crime.

Hear the crackle and pop

as I pass through the mind of this killer.

There he is on his knees, his eyes filled with a red glow.

He has to pee and does into the water

that runs over her shattered face,

then he zips up, he leaves

just as the sun rises as big and as orange

as those lollipops

his mom used to buy him

when the first urge to destroy

made him tear apart his toy rabbit.

No, it was her, naked, her big breasts

swinging over him that first set him off,

as she bent down to say good night

as he lay in bed,

the odor of alcohol and a fight with his dad

suffocating him, making him reach up

and pinch the nipple inches from his face.

His mom said, “Suck on it, go ahead,

if you’re man enough.”

He wasn’t then, but he is now

and I’m on his trail.

I’m going to swallow him

like the whale did Jonah.

Who am I kidding? He’s gone, Bob.

I won’t catch this one,

because he’s disappeared into the ether

of ordinary life.

Can’t you feel it?

This kill wasn’t planned.

It was some kind of posttraumatic thing

where a scent, a sound, maybe a glance

threw him into his murderer’s trance

and he entered his mother’s spread thighs,

his eyes closed tightly

as he felt those breasts press against his head

like two feather pillows, so soft, so . . .

Then he came out of it

in his driveway.

His rosebushes, his azaleas,

the big cedar tree

and the kid’s swing reassured him

that what had happened

was only a fantasy

and he told himself so over and over,

even as he cleaned a few remaining drops of blood

from his hands,

then watered his rosebushes

and greeted his wife with a kiss

when she came home from the store.

He did not acknowledge, or go near that door

behind which his mother

said, “Just once more, son, once more”

and he tried, he really did,

before he fell asleep,

only to wake in his own bed

and tell himself he’d had a bad dream

and leave it at that

and leave us with another unsolved murder,

another body to send to the morgue

to be claimed by relatives

who’ll never have another peaceful day like his

when it’s hard to believe he’s the one who’s alive

and not on the other side