I went in search of a killer’s house today.  I knew the name of the street from a newspaper article.

I drove and scanned the two-block long neighborhood, looking at cozy homes with white siding, gray siding, yellow siding. Almost all remained original with three bedrooms, one bath, living room, and kitchen.

Was it the yellow house with a string of electric candy canes stringing the driveway?

My icicle lights still drape my deck railing.

Was it the gray home, a section of lattice leaning against against a faded front door?

Under our deck a piece of lattice is down: our old hound used to crawl beneath and sleep in its coolness in the summer. The previous front door of our farmhouse leaked air so badly in its last years, we covered it with plastic and a blanket in the winter.

Does a killer who fires multiple shots in one victim and a neat shot through the forehead of another have any identifying characteristics outside his house?

Maybe the home isn’t his. Perhaps, he rents it, shares it with a mom or a dad or both; a grandmother, a girlfriend or friends or friends’ family. Maybe he lived alone. Does he have family to share his life?

Our house is home to my husband and one cat. Numerous friends and extended family have slept on couches and floors.  My daughter lived here into her 20s and came back, briefly, in her 30’s with her young family to look for a house to buy.  Now two grandchildren come for overnights.

What does a killer’s home look like?

Probably like mine or yours with four walls, windows, doors, a roof.

Most killers’ homes may have no extraordinary outward appearance that would separate it from another house in the neighborhood.

But sometime during that person’s life, something went terribly wrong. Whatever the wounds, the pain, the desperation that lay behind invisible walls that allowed him to survive as long as he did, were just that–invisible.  Either no one noticed or no one cared.

I don’t think I’ll ever know what a killer’s house looks like.

All I can do is be vigilant with my own inner home and look beyond outer appearances.