The police are certain they've caught the Green River Killer. The story, unexpected and nearly unbelievable, competes with war coverage in the Puget Sound. (I notice it doesn't make the front page of The New York Times, but BBC World News is covering it.)

I was eleven, twelve and thirteen while they were finding bodies. Pictures of the victims blazed across news broadcasts nightly. Myths proliferated about the killer and the speculations infiltrated my family storytelling through co-workers and other extra-familial connections.

The details were gory and interesting, like the stories they tell us about Ted Bundy when they want scare us away from traveling alone or talking to strangers.

When I think back to those years I believe that I kept the information intellectual. I compartmentalized it as an east-side problem, something that wouldn't happen in our town-or to good girls.

But it must've been traumatic. Although I haven't thought about it in years, I feel a little sickened by memory when I see that man's picture giant and blurry on the front pages of both Seattle dailies. Suddenly Kent and Auburn and the whole Green River valley are tainted by psycopathy and the secrets that sustain it. The victims' images elicit revenant emotion—something... something to do with fright.

That fear, mixed with disgust, comes as curiosity to find an explanation—as an almost delightfully insatiable interest in individual psychology.

What is the metaphor here—the projection?

I think that puzzle is levels deep. I think maybe it's not worth realizing. I think the hint of it is enough and the feeling abiding the hint the most elegant answer.

I've no commentary on the circumstances surrounding the arrest or on the details of the unsolved murders. I've, surprisingly, no opinion whatsoever on those matters. I'm simply moved by the realization that this event was formative in some small way. It contributed to a worldview, though it's impossible now to discern precisely how. It's simply a diffuse piece of the larger self-delusion, a newly discovered narrowing on the plane of all-possibility.