Passion for Forensics

For me, it’s been another day of job searching, taking the dogs for a walk, cleaning the cat’s litter box, making my lunch and leaving my dirty dishes in the sink – normally I’m pretty good about cleaning up after myself, but today I was distracted.

I found the perfect job nearby from an online job board that allows me to focus on my writing and I was too preoccupied with adjusting my resume, writing the perfect cover letter, and searching for samples of my work to remember to wash the dishes or run the vacuum cleaner like I was asked. Whew! That was a mistake.

When my lovely, talented and perfectly pleasant wife came home after a particularly difficult day at work – she works in the health care industry – she noticed the dirty dishes and the dog hair on the rug and sighed disappointingly.

“Oh, yeah,” I said apologetically noticing her disgust, “um… I got distracted today and forgot that.”

Jessica just smiled, rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

Of course, that made my next question blatantly ill timed.

“So,” I paused thinking of the best way to pose the question, “what’s for dinner?”

That wasn’t it.

“Order a pizza,” she said slamming the dishwasher shut and walking away to change clothes.

A few minutes later, I’m sitting on the sofa with my phone to my ear, on hold with the local pizza joint doing as I was told, when Jessica returned in her workout clothes pushing her aerobics ball into the middle of the floor. She grabbed the TV remote, turned it on and tuned it to one of her favorite work out shows, I Am A Killer. While most people listen to fast music or watch videos of personal trainers when they work out, my wife likes to watch real stories of conniving murderers and serial killers and the investigators as they try to unravel the “perfect” crime.

As I’m ordering a family size pineapple with Canadian bacon and watching my beautifully fit and attractive wife pump out the crunches on her ball while studying the techniques of murderous masterminds, it dons on me, she can totally kill me and make it look like an accident.

“Ah, yeah! Let me get an order of bread sticks with that too,” I bellowed into the phone after the guy taking my order repeatedly asked if I was still there.

After placing the order, I put my phone on the table and sit back to watch Jessica power through chest-flies with her head back watching the first episode of season two and Lindsay Haugen crying on the 48-inch screen telling the story about how she took pity on her depressed boyfriend and strangled the life out of him in a mercy killing.

“She’s such a lying bitch,” Jessica said dropping her weights on the floor with a thud, causing me to jump. “She just got tired of his whining and killed the lazy bum.”

“Heh, heh,” I chuckled nervously.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing. I’m fine… I’m just fine… Fine, fine, fine!”

“Oookay,” she said with a confused look. “I’m gonna take a shower. Did you order the pizza?”

“Absolutely! Yes I did… I ordered the pizza. Should be here in about 10 minutes.”

“Great!” She said pointing down the hall to the shower. “Pause that for me! Will you?”

I paused the show, then took the opportunity to get up and get a beer. I started thinking how neither one of us ever really watched regular television, no sitcoms – with the exception of Friends reruns – no dramas, and certainly no “un” reality TV, though we do like to watch the occasional “fixer-upper” show. For us, it’s mostly history shows, documentaries or a movie on Friday and Saturday nights. Still, last year, Jessica insisted on watching the popular crime drama Dexter and once we started, we were both hooked.

We plowed through all eight bloody seasons of serial killer Dexter Morgan graciously killing killers in about three weeks. She scared me a little then, when about halfway through season two, she revealed to me that if she were going to hide a body, she would just sneak into a graveyard at night and bury it in the bottom of an open grave. It was surreal to see the show introduce that very same strategy in season three.

Since I have known her, Jessica has always liked the light versus dark perpetual battle between forensics and criminal strategy. She told me early in our relationship that she always wanted to be in the FBI, but her father, a retired federal officer, discouraged her when she was young. I think that is why she took to the show Dexter so quickly because she still has the itch and Dexter Morgan so fully embodies the expertise of both sides of that war. My only concern, which itch does she most want to scratch?

Jessica liked the crime show so much, she wanted to start the series over again as soon as Dexter looked up into the camera and the screen went black on the last second of the last episode, but I balked at the suggestion.

“I need a break sweetie,” I pleaded. “I haven’t slept well since we started watching this. It’s just too… heavy before bedtime.”

“Fine!” she said with pouty lips, “Just put-on Forensic Files then.”

“Forensic Files,” I exclaimed. “How is that better? You go from entertaining, dramatic television with creative camera angles and colored corn syrup to macabre, real-life murders with grainy black and white photos of blood and body parts? I won’t sleep any easier. Why do you like that crap?”

“I’m just practicing,” she said with a smile.

I’m just practicing… She’s repeated that phrase several times, because I’ve asked her that question before. Every time I click over to Netflix, the “continue watching for Jessica” reads like a serial killer’s “how to” list – Evil Genius, Cold Case Files, The Staircase, Homicide Hunter, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. It’s all there. Every real crime story about really bad people, my beautiful, loving, talented, and forgiving – might I add – wife watches with a passion.

Truthfully, my fear is all in jest, Jessica fell in love with Dexter because of her love for the hunt. The same reason she likes all the real crime series shows I have already mentioned. With the real crime shows, she sees herself right next to the cigarette smoking investigators profiling their killer. What makes them tick? What drives them? What motivates them to commit these heinous crimes? Were they abused as a child or bullied? Did they experience trauma or are they genetically predisposed?

Generally, the real crime shows are “case closed.” We already know the outcome of the investigation, and most often the trial, but good directors and good actors like in Homicide Hunter, the true stories of Lt. Joe Kenda, a homicide detective in Colorado Springs, reenact the crime so armchair forensic analysts like my wife can be part of solving the case and bringing the “perp” to justice.

Though fiction, Dexter, incorporates the best of all those things. While in every season we are introduced to a new contemporary and rival for Dexter Morgan and invited to be part of the hunt, we also get to see where Dexter comes from and how he developed into an expert forensic analyst as well as a skilled serial killer.

So, I’m just being foolish when I wonder if my wife is studying exactly how to kill me and make it look like an accident. She just has a passion for forensics and these shows, real and fiction, are all bathed in it.

“Hey,” I hear Jessica call down the hall after getting out of the shower. “Find The Staircase, before the pizza gets here!”

“The Staircase,” I queried, vaguely familiar with that title. “Which one is that?”

“The story of Michael Peterson... the writer,” she called down the hall again. “He supposedly killed his wife, pushed her down the stairs and claimed it was an accident.”

“Oh… That one,” I said.

I take a big sip of my beer in contemplation of what just happened when the doorbell rings causing me to spew the stinging beverage out my nose. I gathered my composure, soaked up the spilled beer with my shirt then called down the hall. “Pizza’s here… Sweetie!”