Murder, Inc.

When I was a kid, I used to plot crimes.

I have no idea when I first started creating these fantasy projects in my brain. Probably the first time I read about the perfect murder having been committed with an icicle. The murder weapon melts, get it? Sigh.

There was one long summer when I was obsessed with crime. I spent long hours picking out the houses in my neighborhood that I would burgle. I'd scout out locations for hiding caches of weapons or jewels. I would eyeball areas of overgrowth for body dump spots. I spent a lot of time playing Clue, in order to learn all about various weapons.

I never said my research methods were fool-proof.

In reading the various true crime books about Charles Manson, the Son of Sam and others, as well as the random Agatha Christie picked up at the bargain bin at the libarary, it seemed as though there were some simple rules for criminals to follow:

1) Work alone. Don't bring your buddy or your boyfriend or your mom. They have big mouths. They'll end up talking and sending you to the Big House. And I don't mean the stadium in Ann Arbor.

2) Never let anyone see your face. I spent an entire summer avoiding cameras at pool parties and barbeques in my preparation for entering a life of crime. My mother, I'm sure, just thought I was going through "that awkward stage."

3) Always pick your victims at random. This was probably the most important rule. The less contact you have with the victim, the less of a reason police would have to connect you with them. Of course, this limited my potential pool of robbery/crime victims to a paltry few, since I couldn't ride a bike and knew pretty much everyone in the neighborhood.

4) Avoid looking for messages in albums by the Beatles.

I began to realize how difficult the perfect crime would be. I learned about fingerprints and trace evidence, footprints and hair samples. I started walking around in my father's shoes, with socks stuffed in the toes, just for practice. I'm surprised I didn't end up at the kiddie shrink.

I spent so much time plotting that, by the time I'd crafted the perfect crime in my head, it was time to go back to school, depriving me of the precious hours I'd need to do things like digging large holes in the woods to store stacks of money. And, by the end of the summer, I'd started reading books about the occult and started haranging my mother to buy red, black and purple candles so I could start practicing witchcraft.

The neighborhood was safe, for a time.