The Devil's Cinema (31 page)

They confirmed their plans to meet on Friday, October 31, 2008.

Twitchell could not wait.

T
WITCHELL ROSE EARLY FOR
his favourite day of the year. Carved pumpkins decorated front doorsteps. Children had their spooky costumes ready for trick-or-treating after school. Twitchell was checking his email at his parents' computer desk, seeing that the novelty of the day wasn't forgotten by someone his own age. “Happy Halloween,” Renee had written in an ecard. “And hope everything is going better for you!” Her card included a picture of Dexter Morgan with a simple caption: “Thinking of you.” He was touched. “You're so sweet you're giving me cavities,” he wrote. “Thank you for this.”

He headed for the kitchen, grabbed a notepad, and started scribbling down his list of things to do for the day. He still had to put the final touches on his Iron Man suit. He spent the rest of the morning spray-painting a red coat over the chest plate and helmet. All of the body armour would need another coat and he still had to make the neck guard and glue Velcro to the skin-tight black body suit he would wear underneath. But seeing the time, he knew it would have to wait until later that afternoon. He went back to the computer, dropped the names of his new business associates into his investment contracts, and printed them off. He slipped on his sneakers and zipped up his fleece jacket, two tickets to the evening's Halloween Howler tucked into one of the pockets, his keys in another.

He had a brisk twenty-minute walk ahead of him to reach the coffee shop on time. He hurried along his street, passing the park where he played basketball as a kid, his shoulders up high to shield him from the chilly weather. Thick clouds were covering the afternoon sun. At the end of his street he turned north and noticed a white van racing at an incredible speed, looking like it was out of control. The tires were screeching as it tore around the corner and skidded to a stop not far from where Twitchell was walking. The driver honked, just once, catching his eye.

An army of police officers in tactical gear spilled out from all sides of the van. Black helmets bobbed in a march, then scattered as their assault
rifles were held at the ready. The squad was shouting, their voices blending overtop of one another.

Twitchell stood in amazement at the drama unfolding around him, not comprehending at first what was being yelled in his direction.

“Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”

The police demands finally registered and he dropped to his knees. The tactical team swarmed. He lay on his belly in the dry grass of a neighbour's front lawn. His arms were pulled back and he felt the cold click of handcuffs closing in around his wrists.

A detective with glasses appeared and leaned over, his badge dangling from his neck. The man confirmed the team had caught the right suspect. Then he inched closer so Twitchell could hear him: “You're under arrest for first-degree murder.”

Twitchell was yanked up to his feet, hands cuffed behind him. Feeling wobbly, he nearly fell as one leg collapsed under his weight, twisting to the side. The cop steadied him and he was paraded over to an unmarked police car. The tactical team watched closely.

Standing there in disbelief that this was really happening, Twitchell kept his head low as the detective emptied his pockets, finding a handcuff key that appeared to match the cuffs used in the failed attack on Gilles Tetreault.

Twitchell had fallen for their trap. The excited investors he was supposed to be meeting were a con job, but he wouldn't be told for months that it was an officer in the hate crimes unit who had orchestrated the entire week-long conversation with him. Getting Twitchell to leave his parents' house on his own had prevented a potential standoff and eliminated the chance that any remaining evidence inside could be destroyed. And there was something simply satisfying for the investigators in having lured a suspect through the Internet when he had done the same. When they realized the timing of the arrest had also denied Twitchell his chance at winning the Halloween Howler costume competition, their satisfaction deepened.

Twitchell was tossed into the back of the police car, where he stewed as the detective climbed in the front, joining another detective, and read him his rights.

The cops were confident they knew what had happened, where his life had morphed into real-life crime. But Twitchell saw things entirely
differently: they didn't know the real story and there was so much more to tell. He furrowed his brow, hiding what was really on his mind.

As the car rolled toward police headquarters, Twitchell could only stare out the window, convinced deep inside that despite his sudden predicament, he still held the upper hand.

I
N A HOLDING TANK
in the homicide section of police headquarters, Twitchell stuck his hands in his pockets and stared straight ahead. The shutter on a camera clicked. Constable Gary Short from the police forensics team took photos of Twitchell's face, his hands, his little goatee. Twitchell slipped off his T-shirt, exposing his hairy belly and a jagged appendix scar. He had a
Star Wars
tattoo on his shoulder of the rebel alliance's insignia. More photos were taken. He turned around, revealing his naked back, another tattoo, and a cluster of pimples. He removed his jeans and stood on the cold and freckled linoleum, wearing nothing but his striped jockey underwear. The man was a spectacle. Constable Short had him turn again so he could take a picture from each angle and complete his routine booking and arrest photographs. One of the last photos captured a solid black tattoo burned into Twitchell's right ankle – the helmet of Achilles. He barely said a word as he was photographed, the camera flash flooding his skin with bursts of white light.

Twitchell slipped on a new pair of street clothes provided to him just as Detective Bill Clark walked in. He smiled at his murder suspect and offered his hand. “Do you remember me?”

Twitchell hesitated. “Yeah, I do.” He didn't like Clark, but he still grabbed his palm and shook as the pair met in person for the first time since their overnight police interview.

“Listen, sorry, I wanted to call you, so you could turn yourself in, but you left the house and tactical jumped the gun.” Clark was lying, but he wanted to get Twitchell settled and in the right frame of mind.

“Oh, okay.”

“You talked to your lawyer yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, follow me.”

For Twitchell's arrest interview, Clark had spent hours preparing a PowerPoint presentation of all the gathered evidence in the hopes of
overwhelming him. Clark knew he had messed up his first interrogation. Back then he thought he could prey on Twitchell's emotions to elicit a confession. But the investigation had revealed much about Twitchell. Clark thought his suspect was intelligent, but heartless, lacking the typical feelings of remorse some killers express. The detective imagined a laptop loaded with the facts would be far more effective against such an emotionless opponent.

Clark sat Twitchell down and explained how the police team had come to its conclusions. One of the latest pieces of evidence was from the crime lab. Only hours earlier, preliminary results had come back, triggering the afternoon arrest: a DNA match had finally linked Johnny Altinger to a blood stain found in the trunk of Twitchell's car. It was only a matter of time until all of the results came back with the same conclusion.

Clark moved the laptop closer to Twitchell's face as he went through the pile of evidence, but his suspect hung his head low; Clark grabbed a paper copy of his presentation and placed it in Twitchell's lap, where he couldn't avoid seeing it.

“I won't be saying anything.” It was Twitchell's standard reply for hours.

Clark got him talking a bit about
Dexter
, but the arrest interview was achieving only short answers. He finally asked Twitchell bluntly: “Did you film it?”

Twitchell shook his head.

The detective watched him closely. His answer appeared unrehearsed and truthful, but he couldn't be sure. Clark dug deeper and asked if the entire case was a hoax.

Twitchell finally responded with a question: “Just out of curiosity, does a person not get into trouble for the hoax as well?”

Meanwhile, a forensic examination of the clothes Twitchell had been wearing upon his arrest determined that his belt and sneakers were soaked or spattered in blood.

L
EGS CROSSED AND FEELING
anxious, Traci sat crying on a couch in one of the soft rooms down the hall from Twitchell's interrogation. She was devastated that she had not only fallen for her old flame once again but had now been dragged into a homicide investigation.

A detective seated across from her read out a few passages from S. K. Confessions that mentioned “Laci.” Twitchell had written about their
volatile relationship in great detail, from their meeting in college to the rekindling of their passion at the movies. Some of his words cut deep. Every flaw about Traci was exposed and criticized in the document, whether her religious beliefs, her past relationship decisions, or her personal health issues. It was deeply personal, brutally cruel.

Traci shook her head. “He's such a conceited asshole.” She tugged on her hair and sighed in frustration. “I'm sorry, I've just, really, in the last three weeks, I've grown to hate him. I've never hated him until now.” She tugged again at the hair on the back of her head.

The detective looked up from his notes. He told her that for a man who had lied, it certainly seemed like he was being truthful in his writings. Traci had just confirmed it.

“But he's
not
the same guy,” she said. She thought back to when they were first dating and compared it to his demeanour during their affair. “I don't know how it's different, but he's just not the same guy I used to know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, he seems less connected with the world. He just seems … meaner.” Traci didn't know how to describe it. “I know what he's doing to his wife, I know that I'm a part of that. And I know that's
mean
. It's cruel. And the fact that I'm a part of it … it's just disgusting.” She raised a tissue to her eyes, tears streaming freely. “That's how I feel,” she said. Her voice trembled. “I'm angry. I just
hate
him.”

C
LARK SQUINTED AT
T
WITCHELL
, who was still sulking and refusing comment. After more than two hours of interrogation, Clark had finally given up on his presentation. All that work for nothing. It was time to bring in Detective Paul Link. Clark introduced him as the big-shot “Inspector” as they had planned. But the impact was minimal.

It would take Link several hours before he achieved even a small victory in the interview room. He asked Twitchell how he thought it would look if he continued refusing to speak, considering everything he did could be used in court as evidence.

Twitchell thought back to Clark's PowerPoint presentation and turned to Link. “I'm not denying what he just showed me,” he said plainly. “Just … not able to talk about it.”

About an hour and a half later, as late evening approached, Link was giving up too. He was running out of questions. He decided to give Twitchell two options. He shoved a piece of paper in the suspect's hands that laid them out clearly:

Twitchell was tired. The interrogation was draining. He started to beg for a night to sleep on it. “Option two is what I'm leaning to, but I just can't do anything 'til tomorrow.”

It was late anyway. He was led out of the room and taken to the holding cells in the basement of police headquarters. He'd spend the night in isolation. Detectives were left to contemplate how best to crack his hardened exterior.

B
ACK AT THE HOME
of Twitchell's parents, the forensics team was photographing every room and gathering potential exhibits. In the basement, scraps of foam plastic Twitchell had used to build his Iron Man costume were scattered about, stuck into the shag carpet. In their search, police found a pair of black leather gloves; blood was caked into the stitching around the wrist of one of them. Outside, they spotted a curved mark of scorched grass in the middle of the backyard. It was the same dimensions as Twitchell's oil drum. Above, a clothesline was coated in black soot.

Twitchell's parents were waiting at his sister's place while the police made these discoveries. They had been driven there earlier by a detective tasked with executing the search warrant, which included their vehicles, as soon as they arrived home from work.

The sight of forensic investigators descending on the normally quiet neighbourhood had enraged Twitchell's mother. But Twitchell's father was far more subdued, even pausing to express his sympathies for the victim's family as the pair were escorted from the property. Then, later that night, he made a rare unsolicited comment, catching the detective completely off-guard. “Officer, can I offer you some advice?” Twitchell's father had said. “Have a vasectomy.”

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE
interrogation, Twitchell sat in an office chair at police headquarters once again, digging his fingers into a fast-food paper bag. He pulled out a warm Egg McMuffin, peeled back the greasy yellow wrapper, and took a big bite, breathing in through his nose as he chewed. His leg started bouncing as he sucked back on a drink.