The Last Victim (6 page)

By the time I’d finished, the cop figured he had a handle on the situation. “Come here,” he yelled to his partner, who was
still examining the vehicles. “You gotta hear this one. You won’t believe it.”

The last I saw of Mr. U-Turn, they were giving him four separate citations and lecturing him about lying to the police.

That type of incident was not unusual in my life. Early on, I recognized the value of pretending to be dumber than I really
was. I liked to watch people, to study their tendencies, to let them reveal the best they were capable of, and also the worst.
Then I had a way to protect myself if they tried to hurt me.

For as long as I could remember, I’d had a hard time trusting people. I’m not sure why, but I believed that, given the chance,
almost everyone would try to hurt me. It may have been those true-crime stories I was raised on. Or just an unlucky string
of run-ins. Certainly, the messages I got from my parents were conflicting and confusing.

My mother, in particular, seemed completely unpredictable. One time she gave me a hundred dollars to go to the mall and buy
new sneakers. I hadn’t had a new pair of shoes in over two years, and she wanted to reward me because she felt I’d been behaving
well—meaning that I’d done everything she asked of me and hadn’t challenged her.

I was so excited when I walked in the door with my brand-new Nikes. “Mom, check these out!”

She looked at me but didn’t say a word, so I said again, “Mom, come look at my shoes.”

“Are you happy now? Are you happy, Jason, that you always get what you want?”

I couldn’t believe what was happening. I knew I couldn’t have done anything wrong because I hadn’t even been home. All I’d
done was go out to get the new shoes like she said I could.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You’re totally selfish! Your father’s all upset that I let you spend so much money on shoes.” Ah, so that explained it. “What
the hell do you do around the house?” she continued. “Nothing! You get everything you want. You’re a spoiled little brat.
You just think you’re the king, don’t you?”

To this day, I’m still not able to predict when my mom’s mood will change. But in her defense, I
can
be difficult at times—stubborn, surly, and yes, manipulative. It just amazed her that I was able to get away with the things
I did, without paying what she believed was a fair price.

I’d somehow always known how to get people to open up, to tell me things they’d never admit to anyone else. I knew just what
buttons to push, and once I had the information stored up, I felt armed in case they lashed out.

Reflecting on it, I think I employed this strategy with everyone else because I couldn’t do it with my mother. She rarely
told me anything about herself, but she demanded that I tell her
everything
about what was going on in my life. And each time we got into a fight, she used whatever I’d confided to her against me.
Given the circumstances, it’s not surprising I was unwilling to trust others, or that I constantly wore a mask to hide my
true self.

I
was the firstborn son in my family, the first grandchild, the first nephew among my many uncles, and the first child among
all of my parents’ friends.

“He was spoiled rotten,” my mother would tell anyone who asked about me. “He was doted on by everyone. Because he was constantly
surrounded by other adults, he was always the center of attention. They played games with him and always let him win. To this
day, Jason can’t stand losing. He will do anything to make sure he is the one in control.”

Needless to say, this was a sore point in our relationship. Winning was not just a game for me; it was as if my whole life
was at stake every time I was asked to perform: whether playing a game, taking a test, or participating in a discussion. I
had to be the best at everything I tried.

During my early school years, I was a model student— not only in my grades but in my citizenship. There was one elementary
school teacher who deducted “points” for the least infraction, whether it was a late homework assignment or talking out of
turn. Over the course of an entire year, I managed to avoid a single demerit, a feat the teacher found incredible if not troubling.

“I very much enjoy having Jason in my class,” she explained during one parent conference.

“So what’s the problem, then?” my mother replied.“

It’s not really a problem so much as it’s an area of concern.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” my father pressed.

“Well, it just seems that Jason is very diligent about making sure he does everything in class exactly right. In fact, I’ve
never seen anything quite like this.”

She then described her point system and the many things a child could do that would result in a lost point. “Most kids, you
see, lose a point here and there for their handwriting, or talking without raising their hands, or forgetting to turn in a
homework assignment. That kind of thing. Your son, though, has never lost a point for anything!”

The looks of confusion on my parents’ faces immediately transformed into gigantic smiles. Rather than be surprised by this
report, they were relieved to hear I was continuing my perfect record.

“No, no,” the teacher continued. “You misunderstand. I mean, you should be proud that Jason’s work is excellent. My concern
is that he is a little
too
diligent. It’s just not altogether healthy for someone so young to be concerned with doing everything perfectly.”

My parents finally got what the teacher was talking about. They’d also been bewildered by similar behavior at home. My father
blurted out, almost without thinking, “You know, it would be good for him to lose a point here and there, just so he can get
used to the idea. Maybe he’d loosen up a little.”

The teacher agreed. From that remark, a plan was born in which it was decided that sometime during the upcoming week, she
would manufacture some arbitrary reason for deducting a point.

But it wasn’t until the next report that I became aware of my demerit. I couldn’t believe it! I cried and sulked for days,
devastated by my perceived failure. Even after my parents revealed that the teacher did this deliberately to teach me an important
lesson, I still couldn’t forgive myself for the lapse. I genuinely believed that if I’d done a better job, the teacher couldn’t
have found a single slip, no matter how hard she tried. Such was my misguided sense of proportion that for years afterward,
it still bothered me that I’d lost that point. If I learned a lesson from the experience, it was to work even harder toward
perfection.

But it wasn’t enough to just work hard, I had to stand out! As the years flew by, the pattern became fixed: I craved attention—especially
when it derived from overcoming some obstacle—but once I’d achieved my desired goal, the lack of challenge led me to a new
project.

For example, I was always good at baseball. As an eleven-year-old third baseman, I was considered one of the most promising
athletes in the city, invited to play in leagues with much older boys. One year later, to the surprise of my family and friends,
I abruptly quit. I told people that I just didn’t feel like it was enough of a challenge any longer.

Looking back, the real reason I quit was that I was afraid of being second best. There were other boys who were bigger, stronger,
and faster than I was. Before long, they’d be able to perform better than I could, no matter how hard I worked. I just couldn’t
stand the thought of that. I’d rather not play at all than face the prospect that I wasn’t the absolute best.

The following year I took up the trumpet, eventually ascending to second chair in the school band. The music teacher felt
that I had great potential as a musician, but I soon lost interest in the instrument. I just couldn’t see myself in a high
school marching band. I intended to be the star football player.

Along with these athletic pursuits, I also had a number of hobbies, especially collecting things. When most boys my age were
collecting baseball cards, I became a dealer. I got a job in a card store just so I could have a first look at anything new
that came in. On occasion, I would also accost younger kids on the street to try to buy their collections.

Before that, it was a huge coin collection. I taped coins to every spare sheet of paper in the house. I attended coin shows,
wrote to family members all over the country recruiting their assistance to search for particular pennies I especially coveted.
I visited the mint in Philadelphia to get more rare and unique coins. And just like everything else I did, once I felt I’d
met the challenge, I moved on to something else.

When I was fifteen, I took up weight lifting with a vengeance. I became completely obsessed with bulking up my body. I worked
out two, even three times a day, to the point where I was huge—over 200 pounds at five feet, eight inches tall. I reached
a point where I was eating dozens of vitamin supplements, taking weight-gainer fuel, as well as eating half a loaf of bread
for breakfast each day.

Eventually, this, too, became boring, so I moved on to kickboxing. Again, I became totally focused on being the absolute best.
I went to school, then to the gym, then to kickboxing, and finally fell into bed exhausted each night. This used to drive
my parents nuts.

“Jason,” my mother would vent, “is there some reason why we have to live with that pole thing in the yard?”

That “pole thing” was a gigantic stake I’d sunk into the ground to use for toughening up my feet and legs for tournaments.
I’d kick it for hours at a time.

“Come on, Mom, you know I need it to get myself ready.”

“I just don’t know what to do with you. You use those bottles to rub your shins till they’re raw. You—”

“I told you a hundred times. I have to deaden the nerve endings on my legs—”

“Don’t use that tone of voice with us!” my father would object.

“Look, Jason,” my mother would warn, “we’ve had just about enough of this stuff!” and the lecture would continue.

As a little boy, I continuously lived with fears of being abandoned, as well as being kidnapped. I cried a lot. From kindergarten
onward, I presented an image of being well behaved but unusually vulnerable.

My parents tried to shelter me as much as possible. Whereas my friends were allowed to see scary movies, I was never permitted
to do so. In fact, even certain news shows and documentaries were ruled out.

At age seven, I remember lying in bed one night, trying to get to sleep, and hearing the sound of the television in the other
room. By the sounds of the screaming and music, I could tell that my parents were watching something frightening.

I snuck out of bed and peered down the hallway to see what was being broadcast. It turned out to be a film about the Holocaust.
I sat in the darkened hallway, huddled on the floor, and witnessed Nazi soldiers beating and killing people. I saw dead bodies
being moved around and piled up in stacks. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would treat others that way. I wondered what bad
things the skinny people had done to deserve such brutal treatment.

While I sat frozen in the hallway, shuddering and frightened, my parents turned and discovered what I’d been up to. The look
on my face was enough to confirm their worst fears about why they should continue to shield me from such horror.

“Come here, honey,” my mother called out. I thought I was in big trouble for sneaking out of bed.

My dad, as well, seemed unusually solicitous at a time when I would normally be yelled at. My tears seemed to be working,
in part because my terror was genuine.

“Hitler is dead,” my father explained. “The Nazis lost the war. They can’t hurt you now.”

“But we’re Jewish, too, just like the people in that movie.”

“Yes, that’s true,” my father admitted, “but people are not like that anymore. That’s why Grandpa went in the army, to stop
that type of thing.”

Once calmed down, I was filled with questions. “But why did the Nazis want to kill Jewish people? Did they do something bad?”

“No, honey, the Nazis were bad people and they liked to hurt others.” Even as he was uttering the words, my father knew that
such a simple explanation would never satisfy me.

“But why did they do that? Why did they kill people? Will people try to kill us, too? Mom, I don’t want to die.”

I had so many questions, and I hoped some answers might appease my fear. I was especially curious about what the soldiers
thought about when they killed the Jews. I wondered how they slept at night and whether they had nightmares about the things
they’d done.

My parents tried to answer my questions as patiently as they could, but I exasperated them. They just wanted a normal kid
who wasn’t so sensitive, so inquisitive. Never in their wildest dreams could they imagine how far my curiosity would take
me.

I
’ve always felt drawn to that which I fear the most, especially when it’s forbidden. When I was ten years old, I earned first
place in a science-fair competition, an honor that allowed me to enter an advanced placement course offered by the school
system. Told to choose a special project for the year, I begged my teacher to let me dissect a frog. Then I badgered my parents
to give me permission. Against their better judgment, they acquiesced. I couldn’t wait for the momentous day.

My mother accompanied me to the proceeding, since she was also interested in what a dissection would be like. As soon as we
walked into the lab, I could smell the sickening stench of formaldehyde.

At one end of the room were science supplies—skeletons, tubes, beakers, and the like—and at the other were four long brown
wooden tables. One table, in the opposite corner of the room, looked like it had been set aside for us. There were chairs
all around it, and a large pan in the middle surrounded by dissecting tools.