My friend Sam has always been troubled… the sort of kid you knew would go down the wrong path and wind up in the news. I remember when the story about Daniel Petric came out. He was that teen who, back in 2007, took his father’s gun from a safe after his parents took away Halo 3. He came up behind them while they were on the sofa watching TV, told them he had a “surprise” for them, and shot them both in the back of the head. Not long after the Petric story came out, I remember Sam laughing and telling me, “Dummy got caught almost immediately. If I were ever gonna do something like that, I’d be smarter about it.”
We lived only three houses apart, so we used to hang out a lot. Sam was obsessed with true crime, which meant we watched a ton of it. He was drawn to the most heinous stuff. Like Katherine Knight, the woman who in 2000 butchered her husband and cooked him up into a meal and hung his skin up to dry. The officers who came to her house brushed against the skin thinking it was a curtain.
This was way inappropriate for 12-year-olds, of course, but neither of us had very involved parents.
Maybe because of all this stuff, Sam was convinced that evil was pretty much everywhere. “Dude,” he said. “If this is how much we see, the people who are caught, how many do you think get away with it?”
“Not many,” I said confidently. “If they did, we’d hear about it in the news. People would be disappearing.”
“But think how many might be labeled accidents, but are really murders? Falls down the stairs… heart attacks… I bet sooo many people bump off old folks when they don’t wanna take care of them, or want their money.”
“Doubt it,” I said again.
“It would be so easy,” said Sam. “I bet there’s tons of murders sliding under the radar because people just don’t expect you to actually kill. So, so easy.”
In hindsight, this conversation screams “red flag,” but as kids we both had a morbid fascination with this stuff.
But by far Sam’s biggest obsession was the “piano wire killer,” who strangled four women in our city and was never caught. I found out from Sam’s dad (not from Sam himself) that one of the victims was actually Sam’s older half-sister. She was abducted in ’99, when Sam was only four years old. Like all the victims, she was found naked—her body recovered from the tunnels under Nicollet island. And finally I understood the motive for his true crime obsession. He wanted to catch the person who’d killed his sister. He was trying to understand how it happened. When I asked him about her, he claimed to remember her singing to him and playing on the swings, and admitted he watched every scrap of news relating to her death that he could. So that summer, I suggested we search. Go into the tunnels and look for clues.
“Bro.” Sam’s eyes lit up. “That would be dope.”
We spent a whole summer scoping out those tunnels, winding through unlit utility passages seemingly forever through the cool dark. If you know your way, you can crawl through a narrow passage to Satan’s Cave—where teens and urban explorers sneak in to drink, light up, and graffiti their names. There are even some carvings on the cave walls people have made of goat heads and demon faces. But it’s mostly just discarded beer bottles and trash. The explorations were thrilling, but the closest we found to anything suspicious was a switchblade, a discarded baby doll, and a loop of wire that seemed likely to have come from a bracelet. Sam insisted the news was all wrong, that the killer wasn’t anything like people suspected. Maybe he was right, but he was wrong about the tunnels—there was no evidence there of any killer whatsoever, piano wire or otherwise.
After that summer, our interests shifted from true crime to video games. We played lots of shooters. I got into sports—tae kwon do, and later rowing, backpacking, any wilderness stuff. Sam got into drugs. We’d still occasionally meet up for a hike. I’d go for the nature, he’d go for the opportunity to light up and escape his parents’ constant squabbles.
But I saw less and less of him.
By the time I entered college, he was in and out of jail, getting in trouble for dealing, for breaking and entering, petty crime stuff.
The last time I heard from him was when he called me from jail, asking me to bail him out. Reminding me what good friends we used to be. Reminiscing. “Hey Rufus,” he said, “remember that summer we spent searching the tunnels?”
“Yeah.” Pretty transparent, trying to tug at my heartstrings with a bond that had wilted years ago. But I smiled anyway because those were better times.
“That was dope,” he said. “We never did find much, did we?”
“Nope.”
“Bet if we searched those tunnels now, things would be different. Hey, maybe we go again once I’m out, yeah?”
“Sure.”
“So, uh… I was wondering if you could do me a favor…”
Yeah okay, I was a sucker. I went and bailed him out later that day. We made plans to hang out, maybe to explore those tunnels again. I knew he’d blow me off, but what can I say? He was an old friend and I felt bad that he’d wound up this way, while my life was pretty steady. What’s more, he’d found out while in custody that his dad had died. Suicide, apparently. Which was not a surprise to anyone who knew Sam’s father, but nonetheless surely must have hit Sam hard. Sam was worried now about his mom, having to raise his baby sister alone. Plus they needed money. They always needed money. He wanted to go check up on the two of them, make sure they were doing okay without his dad.
I told him I was here if he or his family needed any help. I gave him my condolences. He just smiled and told me thanks, and didn’t mention his father again on the drive back.
“You know they actually found new evidence in the case?” he said to me when I dropped him off.
“Shit, really?”
“Yeah.” The ghost of a smile. “I’ll tell you about it next week.”
But he didn’t get a chance.
I got a voice call from him two days before we were supposed to meet up. The call dropped before I could answer. When I tried calling him back, it rang a few times and stopped. My subsequent calls went straight to voicemail.
Sam ghosting me was nothing new. But when our appointed meetup passed and he still wasn’t replying to me, I messaged his mom. She said he’d left ranting about the piano wire killer and the tunnels, but she thought it was just his usual talk. He was always spouting big ideas and conspiracy theories, never amounting to anything. She started to complain how she’d thrown her back out and with him running off again, there was no one to help but Maisie, his little sister. The trash and laundry were too heavy for her to lift by herself.
I told her I’d come by later. But now I was truly worried for Sam. Called. Messaged. Even reported my concerns to police, but they jumped right to assuming he’d skipped town to avoid a court hearing (which was, I admit, a pretty plausible assumption). No trace of him anywhere. Still no signal from his phone.
He’d gotten out of jail. Mentioned new evidence. Arranged to meet me. And… vanished.
***
I decided to check the tunnels.
The entrance we’d used as kids was smaller and more overgrown than I remembered. I climbed down the embankment through brush and dry leaves, out onto the concrete ledge, and then ducked into the cool darkness of the tunnel with its low ceiling and narrow walls. Flicked on my flashlight. The faint odor of sewage wafted to my nostrils as I made my way forward, the only sound the echo of my boots treading on the concrete.
After awhile of running my hand along the cool brick, I paused and turned to glance behind me—the entrance had become a distant square of white light. Was this really a good idea?
Well. Obviously not. I might go stumbling into whatever had caused Sam to disappear. Besides which I couldn’t remember the directions to Satan’s Cave. And even if I did find my way in, what was I supposed to be looking for?
Then I remembered Sam’s hint in our last conversation: “You know they actually found new evidence in the case?”
This had me tugging out my phone, searching the news—and I was stunned at the headline that came up:
Twenty-five years after brutal killings, “piano wire killer” confesses.
Whoa. Sam had seriously downplayed this. It wasn’t just new evidence—the killer was actually in custody! And had confessed! So where the fuck was Sam, then?
Maybe the police were right about him skipping town. Leaving his mother alone to look after his sister, me scrambling to find him, and no one to pick up the pieces from his shattered life.
I sighed and headed over to help his mom take out the trash.
***
Sam’s car was in the back when I pulled up, and my spirits lifted. I was eager to chew him out for all the usual trouble. But when I got inside, his mom told me he wasn’t back yet. His car battery had died and he’d left by bike a few days ago.
The house was a mess, filled with empty pizza boxes. Several full garbage bags. Laundry piled up. Sam’s mom—Eleanor—had thrown her back out, I remembered, and couldn’t lift heavy things, so without Sam, she had no one to take out the trash or carry loads of laundry besides Maisie, and Maisie wasn’t a very consistent helper, being only eleven-years-old.
“Is that Rufus?” Maisie came bounding down as I was collecting the trash bags. Her nose wrinkled. “It smells like ass in here.”
“You should help your mom more,” I said.
Once I’d cleared the trash out, I was getting ready to leave when on a sudden impulse, I went upstairs to the room Sam had been using, thinking he might have left me some hint as to where he’d gone. But I found the room taped off with a giant “KEEP OUT” sign. Maisie, bouncing up the stairs after me, told me no one was allowed in. “Especially me,” she added, making a face.
“Well I’m his best friend, so I’m allowed,” I said. But the door was locked.
Undeterred, I started opening drawers downstairs in the main room. When we were little, Sam would sometimes lock his door and his parents would open it and tell him not to shut them out. I vaguely remembered there being a key kept in a junk drawer. While searching, I called out to Sam’s mom asking if she’d heard anything from him. She shouted back from the basement, “He’ll turn up eventually. Like a bad penny.” I grunted and opened a desk drawer—no keys, just old electronics and cell phones—and closed it. Then, opened it again and blinked.
Sam’s cell phone.
I recognized it from the day I bailed him out.
As soon as I had it in my hand, its heavy solidity made my pulse ratchet up. I brought it out to my car and plugged it in. Started up the phone. Couldn’t get past the password.
After a few more tries, I went back inside. Sam’s mom was still doing laundry. I told Maisie to go sit in my car, that I’d take her to get ice cream in a few minutes, and then I went upstairs.
My heart was pounding harder now. The unpleasant odor still lingered, despite the garbage having been cleared out. Sweat pooled under my armpits as I peeled the tape off the door and put my shoulder against it. It didn’t require much force. A couple of short bursts, and I flung it open. Sam’s bed was unmade. Laundry on the floor. Dirty dishes. Messy, like his life. No sign of him. My eyes turned to the closet, to the faint stain of reddish brown on the carpet. I slid the door open, wobbly in its tracks.
My eyes watered—the stench hit me, like sewage and old meat.
I closed the door and dialed the police.
***
Sam’s words from when we were kids hit different now: “I bet there’s tons of murders sliding under the radar because people just don’t expect you to actually kill. So, so easy.”
After unlocking Sam’s phone, the police discovered he’d been drafting me an email. It included a link to a more detailed article about the piano wire killer’s confession. A confession to three of the four murders. But not to the murder of Sam’s sister. Police suspected, even back in 1999, that it was a copycat killing—suspected because the type of wire used to strangle her didn’t match with the other victims.
Over the years, I’d forgotten this detail. Sam never did.
His mom was still downstairs when the police arrived, and I showed them his body, tucked into the closet and curled as if asleep, but rotting. Leaking. Only later would the pieces fall into place: that even as a child, he’d suspected his mother of murdering the half-sister who was born from another woman. That the entire summer we explored the tunnels, that’s what he was really looking for. Evidence to connect his mother to her death. We found nothing back then, but these past weeks, the piano wire killer’s confession brought it all back. A confession Sam’s father likely read, but by the time Sam got out of custody, his father was dead. Sam was looking for proof, not only of his sister’s murder, but also his father’s.
He died of blunt force trauma to the head. Unlike his sister’s or father’s deaths, which were planned carefully enough even now it was hard to prove them, police seem to think his was improvised. Perhaps he confronted his mother, or perhaps she caught him snooping. She likely threw her back out trying to move his body. Sticking him in the closet and sealing the room was a stop-gap measure.
But even so, she might have gotten away with it, and I might have assumed he was still out in the world somewhere, running into trouble like always, if I hadn’t seen his phone.
***
“It would be so easy…” he said back then.
I never knew when he said this that he was voicing suspicions about his own mother. No wonder his worldview was so bleak, his sense of people one of constant mistrust. He didn’t confide in anyone. Not even me. But… I’m glad the truth is finally out.
I just wonder how many deaths, how many assumed accidents, how many heinous misdeeds go flying under the radar like he says…
I’m worried that my best friend has always been right, and it’s so much more than we realize….
Credit: Quincy Lee
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