Inside the Mind of BTK

Q
5
It was getting late. When I looked up from the stack of
pages detailing the Kathy Bright homicide, the sun had vanished, and
a coating of darkness had descended on the world outside.
I decided that maybe it was time to pack it in and head home for
the night. I was tired. I gathered up my stacks of crime reports, wrapping
rubber bands around each individual pile, tossed them into a bag,
and trudged out into the darkness to my car. A few minutes into my
half-hour drive home, I realized exactly what I needed to do. It was
something I hadn’t done in nearly a month. So I turned the car around
and steered north, toward Quantico National Cemetery, to visit the
grave that had been intended for me.
Months earlier when it was assumed that I’d probably never pull
out of my coma, some bureaucrat in the Veteran’s Administration
reserved a plot for me in this newly opened cemetery that had once
served as a blockade point for Confederate troops during the Civil
War. When I refused to die, my plot was given to someone else. But I
knew its location and felt a kind of strange attachment to the place.
There but for the grace of God, I often thought to myself.
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