The Good Lie

by A.R. Torre

Obsession, as I frequently told my clients, never affected outside situations. They only made your internal struggles—and resulting personal actions and decisions—worse.

Part of the game, for many killers, is the con of the innocent, the hiding of the monster, the successful deception that proves to them that they are smarter and therefore superior.

The missing kid. Not Gabe, who hadn’t been able to escape. Scott Harden. Lucky Scott Harden.

And there was something deeply personal about the archetype of the boys that triggered something in the killer. My hypothesis was that the killer’s high school years had been traumatic with respect to his mental growth.

William S. Burroughs once said that no one owns life, but anyone who can lift a frying pan can create death. He was right. Killing is the easy part. The act of living—of finding happiness in life—that’s the hard part.