Trial three featured Carla and June, two lifelong friends in their fifties. They both struggled with eating disorders, which feels like a random detail to include in the report until I get to the part about how Morrow starved them for days before telling them they had to eat each other to survive. On the sixth day, Carla waited until June fell asleep, then killed her and carved off a chunk of her thigh.
Morrow abducted two adult brothers for his next trial, Arthur and Eli, and brought them to the meat processing plant where Arthur worked. He forced both brothers to hang above a giant meat grinder, telling them that the first to let go would be ground, but the other would go free. Eli slipped first.
My brain decides this is the perfect opportunity to playWould you rather?—Would I rather eat another person, or fall into a meat grinder feet-first? I might choose the meat grinder if I could fall into itheadfirst, because then at least my brain should shut off quickly, but I’m nowhere near coordinated enough to execute that swan dive.
I get an uneasy feeling and glance up at Donny.
“Did Morrow have a flair for the dramatic?” I ask. “He brought the brothers to where one of them worked. The eating disorder thing with the friends. Did he get off on making it personal?”
Donny nods. “He certainly did.”
I flip to the next case. Howard and Louise were married for sixty years. Morrow put them in a room with a knife and said the first to kill the other would go free. They wouldn’t touch each other. Morrow got so angry that he began cutting off their limbs, trying to tap into their primal survival instinct, but still neither of them touched each other, and they were found in pieces.
The words blur on the page, and I raise my eyes to the ceiling of the van as I blink away tears. That’s love. Choosing to die together rather than live with what you’d have to do to survive.Morrow must have been so pissed that his whole theory fell apart right in front of him.
His last trial was between a young woman and her brother-in-law: Kate and Kenny. Morrow mistakenly thought they were a couple and forced them through the trial, ignoring their pleas to let them go, that they weren’t romantically involved. Kate gouged out her own eyes. Kenny refused to participate, and Morrow slit Kenny’s throat.
Only four people survived the trials. Two died by suicide. One died of old age, but Kate’s still alive. She lives with her sister in Oklahoma, but has never recovered. Obviously. How could she?
Does she lie awake at night, wishing she could change her choice? Or does it give her comfort to know her brother-in-law loved her enough to die for her?
I can say from experience that knowing Dad died for me hasn’t given me any comfort. I already knew he loved me. All it gave me was guilt.
The miles blur. DJ wakes up as we take an exit ramp, and Griffin drives past industrial buildings that give way to run-down strip malls and neglected commercial zones.
“Welcome to beautiful downtown shit hole,” he says. “Current temperature is a balmy thirty-two degrees, and local attractions include trash and the strong smell of urine.”
I’ve never been to Pittsburgh before. I stayed around New York and Jersey most of the time, or went up to Boston when we visited Mom’s family for Christmas. Dad used to joke that we were tri-state people, born and raised, and anything past Philadelphia was not worth visiting.
Since aging out of foster care, I haven’t strayed far from Jersey. It’s always been home. Dad loved Newark with fierce loyalty that made me love it too, even the ugly parts. I can still feel him in the city sometimes, in the smell of diesel and cart hot dogs, in the way people walk fast and talk faster.
Pittsburgh feels different. Quieter somehow, even with the highway noise.
As Griffin pilots the huge van through the streets, DJ reaches under her seat, pulling up a tablet on steroids. The screen glows blue, covered in a collection of tiny windows and readouts.
She swipes to another screen, and I catch a glimpse of a map with a blinking dot.
“The strip mall’s part of Officer Henley’s beat, but he’s currently three blocks east,” DJ says.
It’s after midnight when Griffin pulls into a strip mall. A Thai massage place sits beside Danny’s Cleaners, which is next to what used to be a bakery, the windows boarded up and covered in low-effort graffiti. The Verizon store at the end looks like the only place people actually visit, its sign still on and glowing red.
We pull around to the loading dock, which looks exactly like the crime scene photos. The dumpster sits against the brick wall, its blue paint chipped and faded.
Griffin parks at the mouth of the loading dock so we have a clear view of anyone coming.
Donny steps out first. The temperature slaps me in the face the second I’m out of the van—cold enough that my eyes water immediately. I zip Dad’s jacket all the way up to my chin, burying my nose in the worn canvas for warmth.
I round the side of the van where Griffin and Donny are standing. Donny has a spray bottle in one hand and is spritzing his jacket sleeves, his pants, and even the tops of his boots. Griffin’s doing the same thing to himself, though he’s being way less careful, just dousing his whole torso.
“Um.” I point at the spray bottle. “What are you doing?”
“Salt water,” Griffin explains. “We apply it to our clothes as a repellent.”
“You’resaltingyourselves?”
“Yep.” Griffin sprays another liberal coating across his chest, and Donny rests his bottle on the rear bumper. “Like a nice dry rub before we get barbecued.”
“That’s not a good analogy,” I say.
