Page 101 of M for Murder

JUNIPER, OREGON. FEBRUARY 1968 – JULY 1989

A s the author of over a dozen bestselling crime novels, Cedric Boone had enough money to ensure his family were provided for. He lived on the outskirts of Juniper with his wife Phillipa – Pippa to her friends – just two miles from the coast in a sprawling country house that allowed him the privacy to write and to raise a family.

While the Boones appeared to have everything they could possibly want, the one thing beyond their reach was the ability to have children. They had tried to conceive for over fifteen years and were ready to give up on the idea of having a family when a friend suggested adoption.

Rodney White hadn’t been exactly what they were expecting. Both Cedric and Pippa had intended to adopt a baby, but when they met this sullen thirteen-year-old boy, and learned of his terrible childhood, their hearts went out to him.

They rationalised their decision: Cedric was forty, Pippa thirty-nine – did they really want to have a young baby at their age? Rodney White was without the love of a caring family and perhaps they could give him what he needed most, a chance at life.

The Boones gave Rodney everything he’d ever dreamt of and more. Like a fairy tale, his life went from rags to riches and he found himself the central player in a warm, loving home.

They gave him new clothes and toys on his birthday and at Christmas. Each year they took two holidays, usually one in the country and one overseas. Then there was his education. Instead of having to worry about fitting into an overcrowded classroom where his teacher didn’t even know his name, let alone that he couldn’t spell, Rodney had private tutors who coached him to read and write and gave him lessons in history, French, German and music.

By the time he turned eighteen, Rodney Boone had far excelled his adoptive parents’ expectations, proving to them that all he had really needed was someone to give him a chance.

He played Tchaikovsky beautifully on the piano and Pippa wanted him to continue his study of music. Rodney had other ideas and planned on becoming an English professor. He hadn’t forgotten his childhood. Couldn’t forget.

His father had been murdered and Myron’s death had been the downfall of Rodney’s family.

The Boones had been wonderful to him, giving him a chance to better himself, but still he thought of his mother, locked away in the institution, and of his two brothers living separate lives with other families, when really, they should still all be together.

He had worked so hard to improve himself and knew that his mother would be proud of him if she could see everything he had achieved. If he could just find a way to stamp out the bitter feelings of his childhood, then maybe he would finally be free to enjoy his life.

College proved to be a new learning experience: four years studying a teaching degree, his first time away from home, interacting with other students. It didn’t take him long to realise that he was different from the rest of them. More intelligent and more important. He wanted to learn, to improve himself, but it seemed that everyone else around him just wanted to get drunk and fool around.

Back in the children’s home, he’d learned to deal with things by channelling his emotions into hatred and violence. Living with the Boones had taught him how to cover those feelings with a genial mask. Not wanting to show the other students that he was different, he wore this mask to make them believe he was one of them.

It wasn’t difficult. He was smarter than they were and knew how to fool them. By the time he had graduated, top of his class, they looked up to him and respected him; all of the female students wanted to date him, and all of the male students wanted to be his friend.

Not once did any of them see beyond his mask and never did they suspect that on the sporadic occasions when the pressure got too much, he would take long drives to nameless towns, picking up women or hitchhikers and brutally pounding the life out of them, dumping their bodies in woods and ditches. He could remember the first time almost as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, even though it had actually been almost fifteen years ago.

Her name had been Evelyn and he had picked her up while driving down to Cedric and Pippa’s holiday home in Palm Springs. It was the beginning of summer vacation and she had been thumbing a lift, trying to get to her boyfriend’s place in Los Angeles. He had seen her standing on the edge of the road, dressed only in a white bikini top and a skimpily cut pair of denim shorts, her crimped blonde hair blowing in the breeze. He had immediately been drawn to her. Although he had never picked up a hitchhiker before, he found himself pulling his car over to the side of the road and offering her a ride. Evelyn was an earthy person, sensual and free-spirited and she talked to him about love and peace and being at one with nature. As she talked, Rodney listened, hating the way that she tried to simplify everything, claiming to have a solution to every problem. What did she truly know about the mundane reality and hardships of life?

He hadn’t set out to kill her. When she had first got into his car his intention had been to drive her to Los Angeles. The longer he spent in her company, though, the stronger the urge became to wrap his hands around her throat and crush the life out of her.

The deed was carried out on a quiet stretch of coastal road. Rodney had stopped the car, using the excuse that he needed to stretch his legs. Knowing there was nowhere for her to run, he had waited until the exact moment Evelyn realised his intentions before he took her life, enjoying the look of terror in her eyes as she finally understood not every story had a happy ending.

As he kicked her limp body over the edge of the cliff and watched it drop like a rag doll onto the sharp rocks below, he found a bitter irony in the fact that she had been named Evelyn. Eve. The life-giver, the first woman.

Eve had been his first victim but having experienced such a high feeling of euphoria he knew she would not be his last. The killings continued long after he had graduated college and long after he had taken up the post as one of the English professors at Juniper College. Six months into the first semester, Cedric and Pippa were killed in a car accident and left their vast fortune to Rodney; and it was six months after their deaths that he was finally reunited with Clifford.

Just as he had promised, his younger brother had tracked him down so they could be together again. It had been difficult. The home hadn’t been helpful in giving out details but suspecting that Rodney was still somewhere on the West Coast, Clifford had started placing personal ads in some of the main papers. Three years, two months and twelve days after the first ad had gone in, Rodney saw one of them and called his brother.

Although they hadn’t seen each other in several years the first meeting wasn’t at all awkward. Both brothers had a lot to catch up on.

Clifford, adopted by Eric and Molly Turner, had spent his childhood in Seattle and after graduating high school he had gone on to study medicine, eventually becoming a doctor. Just a couple of years earlier he had moved back to their hometown, San Palimo, where he had made a fresh start as Doctor Turner.

Rodney was proud of his brother’s achievements and Clifford, likewise, was impressed by how well Rodney had done. They became close, as brothers should, and when Clifford visited Juniper, they would spend their weekends together, sometimes talking, sometimes in mutual silence, but always playing cards just like they had done when they were children. Although he shared most secrets with his younger brother, Rodney still wore the mask that covered his raging hatred and he never told Clifford about the way he chose to cure it. Those feelings were not Clifford’s concern. It was Rodney’s job as head of the family to make sure all the problems were taken care of.

He had thought long and hard over the years about how he could bring closure to his pain and suffering; watching his students, with their flippant, puerile attitudes towards life, he came to realise that the only way to do it would be to truly avenge his parents.

Instead of randomly choosing victims who were unknown to him, he would instead take the lives of some of his students. He would commit twenty-six murders, one to represent each letter of the alphabet to show his mother how hard he had worked, and in doing so he would be cleansing the college of the students’ selfish, carefree attitudes while at the same time freeing himself of the guilt that he had let his parents down.

He decided that Clifford couldn’t know of his plans. If his brother found out, he would either try to stop him, or insist on helping. There could be no assistance. This was Rodney’s job and with each student he killed, Rodney could feel the burden of responsibility being lifted from his shoulders.

He had already chosen the students and he kept their names written in a diary that was locked in the drawer of his desk in the study. He always selected the louder ones. Some male, some female, but always the ones who were popular and stood out from the crowd. He liked to watch that moment between life and death when they finally realised they were not invincible and that their lives could be crushed out in the blink of an eye. Then when he’d killed them – usually he choked them, though the pretty ones he liked to watch suffocate – he would throw their bodies away into the sewer, damning them to eternal hell.

Everything was successful for a while then, just after he’d claimed his fourth victim, his mother had died. She was still in the institution and had suffered a heart attack. Although Rodney hadn’t seen her since the family had been split up, he still monitored her progress, often calling to see how she was.