Chapter 17: The Bait Attracts the Quarry

As anticipated, I phoned Ginny until the middle of October. My phone conversations to Ginny were a continual stream of clichés and outright falsehoods. She was overjoyed, gushing about her future with me. She had a dream about the two of us, complete with an imagined white picket fence, 2.5 children, and a 4000 square foot home she had seen in a women’s magazine. Unfortunately, Ginny’s unrealistic ideal world was about to come crumbling down.

During one of our phone chats, I revealed that I had encountered Jeff Valentine. That nugget of knowledge shook her. She stated she didn’t remember who he was. I told her he remembered her, and he smiled as if he was reliving a former experience. Ginny abruptly recalled she needed to get someplace and ended the conversation early.

Agent Foster informed me that she was under court order surveillance, both visually and via monitoring her phone conversations. Ginny had two regular callers who would occasionally stop by. At least one of them would stay the night several times a week. The phone chats they had taped between Ginny and them were raunchy. She hadn’t spoken to Jeff Valentine since I saw him a few weeks before. Ginny had not altered her behavior when it came to manipulating others; she would do whatever needed to achieve what she wanted.

I decided it was time to up our game and get her to make a mistake.

The next time I phoned, the outcome could not have been better, even if I had arranged it myself. Instead of phoning at my normal hour, I swapped evenings and called on Thursday night. I dialed Ginny’s phone using “the little black box.” The call began with the typical clicks, pops, and bleeps, followed by a dial tone and the number being dialed.

After the fourth ring, an unknown male voice answered the phone.

“Hello?” the strange male voice said.

The voice dumbfounded me for a minute, and I paused before responding.

“Ah, is this Ginny’s home? I mean, I may have phoned the incorrect number.”

“No, you got the right place. Ginny is in the shower after, ah, her working out; yeah, she was working out for an hour,” the strange male said. “Who dis?”

“Oh, I am her brother James. I am working different hours this week, and I thought since I had some time free, I would give her a call,” I lied. “Can you tell her I called, and I will call her at the regular time next week?”

“Brother James phoned; you will call at the normal time next week. “Anything else?” The stranger repeated to me.

“No, that’s it. I’ll let you get back to you guys doing your exercises.” I replied. “Don’t wear yourself out doing push-ups.”

“Push ups,” I heard him chuckle as I hung up.

Agent Foster grinned, looked across at me, and nodded in approval.

“That should shake the bushes some,” Agent Foster chuckled.

I didn’t even react to his comment since I was preoccupied with remembering. How did Ginny, an adorable young woman, become such a cold, self-absorbed monster?

During my final year of college, I took an abnormal psychology course. It was a required to meet the requirements for graduation. One of the textbook’s chapters focused on psychopaths. The section in question read as if the author knew Ginny and used her as the subject of his writing.

According to the text, psychopaths were violent. That violence left physical and mental scars on me. In an instant of rage, she gripped my left forearm and dug bleeding divots with her fingernails. The divots were still obvious. Then there was the time I had to pick her up and carry her out of a room because she chased another female student. Ginny was enraged because the other girl had simply started a conversation with me.

Another thing I remembered from that chapter was that a psychopath demonstrates a lack of empathy. I remembered how she behaved during the memorial ceremony for my friend Janet, whom she had strangled. Throughout the service, she sat there, bored and uninterested. She usually sat there looking at me.

The most memorable aspect of the chapter was that a psychopath exhibits narcissistic, manipulative, impulsive, and egocentric tendencies. Ginny had done far too many things to give a one example. She murdered five people that I knew about. Furthermore, she threatened many other female students. Those women made the mistake of becoming friendly to me. Ginny was also adept at having her way. Her favorite activities were pouting and throwing tantrums. She understood what it took to persuade me to give in.

The stories she spread about me being a sexist and abusive were the most distressing. She did this to exact revenge on me for breaking up with her. That cost me several dates and ended several promising relationships. Because of those rumors, I spent my senior year and the majority of my graduate school time frame alone. I gave up trying to find someone to date. Why attempt when the stories would eventually circulate and ladies would advise me not to call again?