Inside the Mind of BTK

Q
23
Dennis Rader sat in the black plastic chair, ramrod
straight. The dark circles of sweat on his blue T-shirt were growing
larger by the minute around his armpits and beneath his neck. In the
past, I’d always paid close attention to the way my interview subjects
perspired. It often meant they’d begun to lose control. But here in
El Dorado all bets were off. The place felt like a goddamned sauna,
and I was dying to take my sport coat off, but decided to keep it on.
Rader no doubt was impressed by my feeling compelled to put on a
sport coat for him.
“Sorry to hear about your mother,” Rader said, squinting as he
peered into the camera. His words hit me like a sucker punch to the
gut. I figured Casarona might have told him about my mother’s death
three months earlier, but I never imagined that he’d bring it up. Something
about a serial killer handing out condolences over the death of a
loved one just seemed ironic. Not only that, he didn’t mean it—because
he couldn’t mean it. At least not the way most people do. But he said it
anyway, because it was one of those things that normal people said to
one another, and Dennis Rader had long ago mastered the art of trying
to do and say all the things that were expected of normal people.
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