The Devil's Cinema (9 page)

Clark's jaw dropped.

Anstey couldn't contain his excitement anymore. “It's a diary of how he killed the guy!”

“Holy shit!” Clark smacked his head. “Gimme a copy! Come on! Come on!”

Kerr yanked the papers away from Clark. “No, no, no. Hang on, hang on here. This is the
original
. We've gotta be careful how many of these we make.”

Eventually a few photocopies were made – on Clark's insistence – but only enough for all the major detectives. They wanted to keep this unexpected development very quiet.

The text had been pulled off the laptop found in Twitchell's car. Constable Michael Roszko in the tech crimes unit had found two temporary files buried in the hard drive and stitched them together. Both files had been made automatically in Microsoft Word by a user logged in to an account titled “Xpress Entertainment.” One temporary file was likely created when the text was copied to the clipboard; the second was likely made during an auto-recovery backup. The original Word document, however, had been deleted. There were thirty-five pages of writing. The document appeared to have been saved as “SKConfessions.doc.”

Clark huddled around his copy at his desk, reading as fast as he could.

“This is incredible!” Clark kept repeating as he read, at times covering his face in disbelief or clutching the back of his head. “Wow!”

The first page described the decision to begin killing as the “hand of fate,” an idea taken from a fantasy book by David Gemmell. The second page detailed the method: targeting men through online dating websites. At first, the diary stated, the plan had been to lure cheating husbands, a way of “taking out the trash” – a line borrowed from the fictional Dexter Morgan, who justified his actions because he only killed bad people society already held in contempt. But the plan of targeting married men was too risky, the diary concluded, so it was changed to luring “middle-aged single men who lived alone.” The writer reasoned it would be easier to get away with killing such men undetected. With no roommates or wives to worry about them, a victim could disappear for longer before people would notice. A fake female profile would do the trick: an attractive girl, using photos of a real woman's profile living in another city, but under a fake name and fake personal details. The girl would be flirty, toying with the man until he was so eager his guard would drop and he would fall for the trap.

The document revealed that a “kill room” had been chosen: a double-door detached garage with a dirt driveway in the south end of the city. All the killer had to do was remove the address sign from the back wall of the garage and give out strange directions so nobody would know the physical address. The diary detailed the killer's disguise: a black hockey mask, the forehead painted with gold streaks. It served the “double purpose of facial protection and identity shield to give the victim a false sense of security in thinking they would be let go.” Then he picked out his “kill knife” from a military surplus store to help with the “nasty mayhem” about to transpire:

Clark's eyes flared as he kept reading. He knew what was coming next: Johnny was going to show up at that garage and be killed by Mark Twitchell.

But that wasn't what happened.

Apparently, Johnny wasn't the first victim.

The document described another attack on October 3, the Friday
before
Johnny disappeared. During the earlier attempt, the attacker's stun baton had failed and the victim had fought back, reached for the man's gun, and somehow managed to escape.

Clark realized they had to find the surviving victim. And the Twitchell file had suddenly become something much bigger: a serial killer investigation. Thank God the detectives had the foresight to order twenty-four-hour surveillance, he thought. Now that the surveillance team had confirmed a positive sighting of Twitchell at his parents' house shortly after Clark's visit, he was at least being watched while they gathered more evidence.

A
T THE OTHER END
of the office, Johnson drew his own conclusions as he read the diary. About halfway through the text, he noted how the author began paying homage to a young woman:

The diary described his encounters with “Laci” at the movies while his wife, “Tess,” was at home and caring for their baby, “Zoe.” He later received a speeding ticket on the way to the woman's home for a late-night rendezvous. The diary then evolved into an erotic narrative with an entire page devoted to the extramarital affair.

Johnson thought it was pretty clear what was going on: Twitchell simply changed the names, but everything else was true. It meant Traci had been
downplaying her contact with Twitchell. Perhaps she was embarrassed about having an affair with a married man. Little did she know, however, that the object of her affection was secretly writing about being a wannabe serial killer with a lust for blood and violence.

C
LARK TOOK THE DIARY
home with him that night, as did every other detective on the file. For the first time in his thirty-year career, he was overwhelmed with evidence in a homicide file. Reading the diary was an odyssey, a startling descent into the criminal persona, with the depths of human depravity presented to the reader in the form of entertainment. A detective usually never knew this level of detail about their suspects. Eyewitnesses were unreliable, even an admission from an accused was often embellished or twisted in some way. But what Clark and the team believed they had found this time was a virtual blow-by-blow account, an honest and full confession, relishing in every sordid detail. They had total insight into what the killer was likely thinking. Twitchell had written an extremely comprehensive account of how Johnny was killed. The descriptions were disgusting, some too graphic to repeat, words strung together about unspeakable and grotesque acts. Twitchell wrote at length about the difficulty in trying to hide Johnny's body. He had scoured the river valley for the perfect spot, but there were too many people around so he had to think of another plan.

Clark made it to the last section, hoping for a big conclusion.

Clark flipped the page. “Where's the rest?” he asked out loud, pinching the paper, trying to see if a couple were stuck together. But there was nothing else. “Where's the body?” Either Twitchell had left out the ending or tech crimes had failed to locate it. “It doesn't say where the body is!”

A
NSTEY'S INVESTIGATION RAMPED UP
quickly. They had a potential serial killer on the loose, a surviving victim to find, and likely a body hidden in a sewer somewhere in the city. He was granted use of thirteen homicide detectives. Before he was finished, at least 112 officers would be involved in the case in some way, far more than any typical homicide investigation.

He littered his desk with sticky notes as he tried to cover off every angle. Anstey read the diary hundreds of times. He had no doubt that it was written by Twitchell and that it told the truth. It was found on his computer, under his company name, and the content matched details they already knew about his life. But with no body, it would be unheard-of to lay a murder charge. These were just words after all, and with no physical remains, a court could find there was reasonable doubt in the case. How could the police be sure Johnny wasn't still alive?

Anstey knew he would have to prove that the diary was a full and truthful confession to prevent the case from collapsing at trial. As he read the diary, he kept saying to himself, “Can I prove that this is true?” When he could, he marked a sentence down as a task to prove and assigned it to a detective to complete. By the end, 301 tasks would be assigned. Acting Detective Dale Johnson took on many of them.

Everyone saw how the various threads led back to the rented suburban garage. But the forensics team still hadn't gone inside because the officers were still busy processing evidence from Twitchell's home and vehicle.

It became a growing point of suspense. What could be in there? What secrets could be uncovered within the garage-turned-film-studio where Johnny Altinger had vanished and another man, identity unknown, had escaped with his life?

I
T WAS IN THE
early evening of October 23 when police phone calls expressing concern for Johnny's well-being finally prompted comments to drift on to the Internet.

One of Johnny's old friends from Vancouver decided to post a message online about the strange disappearance. He signed in to Facebook and
wrote on Johnny's personal profile page: “Edmonton police (homicide) are looking for John. He was last seen Oct. 10th.”

Then something quite odd occurred. About an hour after the message was posted, Johnny logged into his Facebook account and did one simple task: he added a friend. And then, just like that, he logged right back out again. It was very odd indeed.

C
RUISING THE NORTH SIDE
of the city along 137th Avenue, Clark talked shop with his new partner, Detective Paul Link. He had been brought in from the polygraph unit down the hall from homicide on Anstey's insistence. Someone had to do Twitchell's arrest interview when he was finally hauled in, and many cops considered Link to be one of the experts at interviewing murder suspects. There was some concern that Clark's interrogation tactics had alienated Twitchell. He was no longer the first pick for the job. It hadn't helped that whenever Clark retold the story of seizing Twitchell's car he added a handful more swear words and colourful insults. Anstey cringed at this, thinking he needed a cop whom Twitchell would trust, not despise, so they'd have a better chance of getting a confession. Link, who was tall with salt-and-pepper hair, could play the good cop role with ease or quickly switch into another mood if he felt the tactic useful. He knew how to deal with any kind of killer, but it also required a great deal of preparation before the planned confrontation.

Clark and Link spent hours at headquarters going over the evidence to bring the detective up to speed. On some nights, they'd cruise around Twitchell's parents' house, the radio traffic from the surveillance team buzzing through the speaker like background music.

It was during one of these northside drives when Link revealed he wasn't entirely convinced that Twitchell was guilty. “I'm fifty-fifty.”

Clark was floored. “How can you be fifty-fifty with what we've got?”

“I'm trying to not get tunnel vision.”

“Well, I don't have tunnel vision, but I'm ninety-ten,” Clark said. His tone was more jesting than hostile. “Until we get the body we can't be one hundred, but come on!”

“I just wanna keep an open mind.” Link didn't see how the man who killed Johnny and left behind all this evidence could be the same man who wrote the diary, which made the killer sound like a genius who could
commit the perfect murder. In Link's mind, there was a disconnect. “It's too bizarre to even believe.”

But the teasing continued for days. Whenever Link walked by a homicide detective, they'd ask for an update. “Still fifty-fifty, Paul?” And they'd share a quick laugh at Link's expense.