A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

entirely alone, there was no chance for anyone to help him. He got no psychiatric treatment and no pharmacological treatment.
    For Cool, who was entranced, beset, consumed, haunted, obsessed, and possessed by buses, it
was
only a matter of time before someone or some thing triggered his fear and rage. The fact that the catastrophic shooting on the bus was virtually simultaneous with the homecoming reunion for the Class of 1973 cannot be ignored. It is quite possible that Silas
did
resent being teased about his name, being called a “cool guy” a quarter of a century before. He may well have harbored a resentment that burgeoned along with his developing paranoia. He may have wanted to show those classmates who barely remembered him that he was the most famous of them all. Twenty-five years after the fact, his actions were not unlike those of the violent outsiders in the 1990s high school massacres.
    It was only a matter of five seconds. If Bus Number 359 had fallen from the top of the Aurora Bridge, Silas Garfield Cool would have taken nearly three dozen people with him in a headline-grabbing suicide plunge. And he would have achieved a ghastly sort of celebrity. He may have planned for it to be that way. But bad timing and fate foiled those plans.

The Killer Who Planted His Own Clues
    Mystery writers like to say there is no such thing as a perfect murder, but they’re wrong. There are probably thousands of perfect murders and they’re not all committed by brilliant killers. If a victim isn’t missed when he or she vanishes and no body is ever found, or if one
is
found and not identified, the killer is free and clear.
    In this case, the victim was found quickly and identified at once, but her not-too-bright killer attempted to complicate the crime scene by setting up red herrings. He left all manner of false clues for the homicide detectives, but he was completely oblivious to the
real
clues that remained. Most murderers are caught because they leave infinitesimal pieces of themselves behind, unaware that forensic science and detectives’ technical skill have evolved to a point that is almost uncanny.
    But the killer in this case caught himself because he was bored and made a stupid decision. It was so stupid that the detectives who tracked him never considered that anyone who was trying to evade capture would make such a blatant mistake; they found that mistake in their routine checks, not in their prime crime scene investigation.

T he shy spinster school teacher was an unlikely target for a murderer. “Spinster” is an outdated description for most single women, bringing images of
Little House on the Prairie,
but it fit Sharon Mason. She was still single at the age of thirty-seven and that was by her own choice. Although she was slim and attractive, she rarely dated or even mingled much with people her own age. She looked much younger than her true age. She was five feet four and weighed only 104 pounds, and she seemed fragile, although she was perfectly healthy. She had brown eyes and auburn hair.
    Sharon was very cautious and reserved to the point of being timid. Other women took chances that she would never have dreamed of: walking alone at night, making friends by talking to strangers, and accepting blind dates. Not Sharon. She erred, always, on the side of safety. Besides, she preferred being home in her apartment to going out at night. The only way she could have been safer would have been to stay there twenty-four hours a day.
    But Sharon did have a full life outside her apartment, a life that revolved around her career and her parents. She had taught the first grade at the Roosevelt Elementary School in Tumwater, Washington, for nine years. Her kids loved her, and her co-workers admired her. She was always at school for special events that involved her students.
    Tumwater isn’t exactly a big town, although it is a suburb of Washington’s capital city, Olympia. Tumwater’s claim to fame is that its natural spring water is the main ingredient of a popular beer. But Tumwater and Olympia are far more cosmopolitan than the city where Sharon grew up. She came from Aberdeen on the Grays Harbor inlet along the Washington coast. Aberdeen is a logging and deepwater fishing town and people claim it rains there more than any other spot in the state.
    Born late in life to an Aberdeen couple, Sharon was to be their only child and the focal point of their lives. Every weekend, without fail, she drove home to