Paradise Lost and Found....pt. 3

In prison you are aware that the guy next to you in line may have done some really heinous shit. You never let yourself get completely relaxed. Looks and demeanor can be deceiving, so you treat anyone you don't know with a degree of caution and suspicion. Kusumben Patel, the grandmother who was murdered at the Paradise Motel probably treated her customers with a modicum of caution. John and Mildred Caylor most likely felt safe and comfortable in the little home and bookstore, Raytown is a fairly quiet suburb, bad shit happens there, just not with the same regularity as it does on Prospect.

What are the chances of being robbed and killed? As of 2009, Kansas City Metro Area's population is around 2 million. On any given day, your chances of meeting a violent end are slim. If you are a regular law abiding citizen the chance is even more remote, like winning a really fucked up lottery. The metro wide homicide numbers as of this writing are probably around 150 or so. Subtract the number of people killed who were involved in criminal activity, and the numbers drop to maybe 30 or 40 at best. Scratch domestic violence murders, crimes of passion, people killed by a spouse, significant other, family member, or friend, and the numbers are single digit, a handful every year . Square world people killed during robberies fall within that tiny demographic. The odds that you will be struck by lightning are around 1/700,000. Your chances of being robbed then killed pale in comparison.

Most of the time when someone commits a robbery, their goal is to get what they came for, then get away. Those fuzzy surveillance camera shots of the guy at the tellers window, or the grainy photo of the underachiever robbing a 7-11, more often than not show a guy who is almost as scared as the victim. Then there are the heavy handed types, they shoot a hole in the ceiling, push and shove the victim, they exhibit a semi controlled violent nature. They might pistol whip you, they may beat the hell out of you, but they aren't looking to kill you. Then there is a thankfully small percentage of the criminal world, who want to kill you.

In my mind the thing that the Caylors and Mrs. Patel shared, was really bad luck of the draw. Out of two million people, they were unlucky enough to cross paths with someone who came to kill them, just to find out what it feels like. Killing for killings sake. It certainly was never about the money. There's the rub. How do you guard against that? Truth is you don't, you can't. A guy walks into the Ward Parkway mall and opens fire, another randomly shoots people at a school, a guy walks into your place of business and decides to kill you, just for shits and grins. So the thing that the victims shared in this series of posts, at least the thing that most stuck out in my mind, was the horrible hand they were dealt, the 1 in 2 million shot . I imagine they each had that sudden realization when they knew how it was going to end. A crystalline moment, a sharp intake of breath, then an oily blackness closes in on the light until it's just a pinhole, then nothing. They woke up and started out the day like every other day, just like every other day, exactly as we all do. Then that one in two million shot of bad luck walked through their doors.