When shadows fall

This city has been traumatized by another mysterious murder. Two weeks ago, a young woman, walking home from her job at a restaurant, disappeared. Local residents volunteered by the hundreds, but searched the whole neighbourhood in vain. And then, this weekend, police found her body in an NCC park, eerily echoing another young woman's disappearance and murder two years ago – both involved NCC parks, although in different parts of the city.

Although I've never been to the park where this grisly discovery was made, I know something of these places. There is an NCC park near where I live – Conroy Pit. It is a busy and lively set of trails, because it is one of the few parks where the NCC lets dogs run off the leash. I hike and bike there all the time, and there are always dogs chasing one another, as serene young couples dote on their mutts as though they were offspring. The forests are maintained with great care to ensure a variety of tree species. Each fall, the variety pays off in a splendour of orange oaks, red maples, and yellow birch. Birders put out feeders and then watch with binoculars. I remember going out tracking deer with my daughter in the fall. There are pictures in my photoblog of that.

So it saddens me that beautiful things are used by the ugliest people to conceal the darkest deeds imaginable. Our cherished places become infamous places.

But that, I suppose, is the nature of a crime like this. It is the ultimate act of callous selfishness. Someone out there – and sadly, surely male – placed preeminence that night on his own imagined need that had to be satiated – lust, jealousy, anger, or some power-mad craziness? He didn't take into account in any way the personal sovereignty of a young woman who had every reason to hope – and every right to hope – that she would go to college, and/or pursue her interests and ambitions, and share in the unfolding lives of family and friends. It never entered his mind to care for the outcome of her life - that she deserved an end in a hospital bed surrounded by great-grandchildren. He never cast one thought in the direction of her now shattered family, how they may never be the same.

There are many variations of the Golden rule – from the Wiccan rede (“an ye harm none, do what you will”) to the Abrahamic commandment “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Its a ridiculously simple concept for a human being. Would you wish to be treated in the way you are about to treat someone else? Most people fall a little short in this department, but we try to live that out day by day. Our sins against one another are venal, usually a petty crime of omission, not commission. We are mostly good people.

Whoever did this act is not good people. He doesn't bother with the golden rule, and may not even truly understand it. Oh, he may recognize the need to affect the appearance of basic decency. But inside, there is nothing. A black hole. A void. Or maybe something worse than nothing, who knows? Most of us never do more than peer into the dark well, the fevered nightmares of childhood, or some cinematic moment that scared the hell out of us. This man lives there, permanently. I cannot imagine he knows any real happiness; just a feral sort of schadenfreude. And perhaps now, panic, as he realizes he may be caught. Though I am frightened for my daughters and want him caught and jailed, I also feel sorry for him, in a very weird way.