The Menace on Main Street

A serial killer bloodied the headlines. If a husband happened to be present in her bedroom, he’d lasso him like a calf, ordering without asking, his brute muscles twisting beneath his wife-beater T-shirt. Took his time, like an actor overdoing it. Year after year, detectives thumbed cold case reports, kept alert in case he grew tired of being careful. Justice hovered on the verge, hoping to sneak him into submission. Instead, his identity crouched in the shadows for decades, the itch of him unscratched. His cruelty and crimes crackling with secret electricity, he went about his life as victims watched warily behind the blinds, or doused sorrows in alcohol, or met a bridge and heard it say jump.  Finally, his capture came one night.  No warning.  Under a cloud-basted sky, he protested while handcuffed, loaded into a Sacramento County patrol car, his bulky 74-year-old body pretending bafflement, his back curling like an accusation, his surround sound of confidence shattering like a schoolboy’s alibi.

. . . . .

"The Menace on Main Street" is a prose-poem

Note: California’s serial rapist and killer Joseph DeAngelo  – dubbed “The Golden State Killer” – was arrested in 2018.