Inside the Mind of BTK

284 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
as a child, I didn’t buy it. Either he didn’t want to admit it or his psyche
had been so shattered by the trauma that he couldn’t retrieve the
memory. I refused to believe that Rader was a natural-born killer. It
was far too easy an explanation.
It was late. I wanted to get some sleep. My body was running on
East Coast time, where it was closing in on three in the morning. “If
I’m gonna do this interview tomorrow, I gotta get some shut-eye,” I
mumbled. Casarona nodded wearily, looking almost as exhausted as
I felt. We said good-night, and as I headed off to my room, she called
out, “I forgot to tell you the code word.”
“The code word?” I asked.
“Yeah, the code word. Because I wouldn’t get a chance to speak
with Dennis on the phone between the time I met you in person
tonight and when you showed up for your interview tomorrow morning,
I came up with the idea of having you give him a prearranged
word that just Dennis and I would know.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, convinced she’d been watching far too many
spy movies.
“Depending on how much I trusted you and what I thought of
you, Dennis and I had several passwords,” she said. “Depending on
what you tell him, he’ll know how freely he can talk to you, how
open he can be.” She paused for a moment, staring down at the stains
on the hotel carpet. “You know, he doesn’t understand why I’m letting
you speak to him. He really wants me to save everything for my
book.”
I stood there looking at her, too tired to summon up the energy
to tell her how idiotic I felt muttering some stupid code word to a convicted
serial killer.
“So, what is it?” I asked, starting to feel annoyed.
“I’m still trying to decide,” she said.
“Look, I’m really beat. Why don’t you phone me in the morning
when you decide on something.”
She started to look a bit embarrassed by all the cloak-and-dagger
precautions she was taking. “Tell Dennis when you see him ...tell him
that the lion is strong,” she said.
“That’s my password?” I asked. “The lion is strong.”
“That’s right.”
“This is ridiculous, you know.”
Casarona smiled.“Tell him the lion is strong, and it is very positive.”