I just finished reading two books about the Adam Walsh case: Tears of Rage by John Walsh and Susan Schindehette, and Bringing Adam Home by Les Standifer with Detective Joe Matthews. The first is a 1997 memoir by Adam’s father, John, who since his son’s kidnapping and murder in 1981 has become a high-profile, extremely effective advocate of children’s and victims’ rights, as well as hosting America’s Most Wanted. The second book, released in 2011, follows the years-long investigation by Matthews, originally called in as a polygrapher when Adam disappeared. Years later, he became a friend of the Walshes, and ultimately they asked him to try to solve Adam’s murder. Tracking down 27-year-old evidence and sifting through calls to tip lines, he finally was able to confirm that longtime suspect Otis Toole had indeed killed Adam.
Both books are a case study in how not to effectively solve a crime, although Walsh tries hard to be diplomatic. A small-town police department with an inexperienced detective botched the investigation, not only through their ignorance but through an almost inexplicable hubris: They rejected help from larger, neighboring jurisdictions; refused to request FBI help; dismissed Toole’s multiple confessions; focused on a suspect who had an alibi and had been cleared by a polygraph; misrepresented information in the official files; lost or misplaced valuable pieces of evidence and information; and, egregiously, torpedoed the careers of cops in different jurisdictions who tried to help solve the case.
Also remarkable is how much things have changed since 1981–when 6-year-old Adam disappeared from a Sears where he had accompanied his mom–and how much that’s directly due to the Walshes’ efforts. John Walsh himself says he doesn’t know if losing Adam served a greater good, per se (he seems to recognize that such questions could make him crazy), but he does feel strongly that he and his wife have helped ensure that Adam’s death wasn’t in vain.
I’ve also been watching Bones obsessively. Last fall, I bought seasons 1-6, and I’m now ready to start 6. Season 7, currently airing, is on hiatus because of star Emily Deschanel’s maternity leave. I’m already panicking about where I’ll get my fix if I finish season 6 before 7 resumes airing. Yeah, I need a life, I know.
Part of the appeal of shows like Bones–and many, many others, from Criminal Minds and the NCIS franchise, to The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother–is, I think, the way the characters form a family. They’re neighbors or coworkers or college friends or exes who establish this bond that endures and transcends all sorts of things: deaths, violence, new relationships, breakups, arguments, whatever else. These characters, because of their place in the universes of the show, are accepted, guaranteed their spot in that specific community. Figures like Sheldon Cooper or Temperance Brennan, who have little social finesse, find individuals who care enough about them to interpret the rest of the world to them, to serve as a bridge. I think that’s part of why the Booth-Brennan partnership on Bones works so well.
But, because I’m an introvert who takes fiction too literally, it also makes me wonder: Where’s my Booth? Where’s my best friend Angela Montenegro, and my friendly psychiatrist I can drop in on anytime, free of charge, because he wants so desperately to be helpful? Why don’t I have a “bug and slime guy” in my circle of friends?
Beyond that are the usual questions of significance and purpose that dog me. My friends in the television solve crimes, provide closure to grieving families, help attain justice for victims, and make the world a safer place. In the course of doing that, they get to explore and develop their individual interests and passions, fall in love, have babies, run off to the Egyptian room for down time, and then drink at a cute little bar when they successfully wrap up a case. Does anyone really have that much job satisfaction? (And would it be healthy to have no life outside work?)
I like teaching. It’s fulfilling for me on a level that corporate communications never was. Yet I still, and increasingly, feel like there’s something missing professionally. I’m beginning to see modest success from my bookselling sideline, but I don’t seem to find time to write during the semester, when the grind of classes is going on. And that’s a problem. Any of you teachers and professors out there have any advice on balancing teaching and one’s own creative/ professional pursuits?
But back to the vague dissatisfaction. Now I’m reading Steve Jackson’s No Stone Unturned, and maybe it’s the Bones effect, but I keep thinking it might be rewarding to work in some way on solving crimes and bringing criminals to justice. I don’t have the emotional or psychological resilience to be a cop, nor the attention span for law school. I don’t think I have the detail to attention required to be a forensic anthropologist, entomologist, or anything else (nor the wherewithal for that much more schooling; I have no academic background in anything remotely related). And although I’ve been looking on various law enforcement-related sites, I have yet to see any openings for a forensic writer or editor.
I keep feeling like there’s something out there I could do, something I’d be good at, something that would help people (not that teaching doesn’t, I think, but in a different way); I’m just waiting to figure out what it could possibly be. It seems like I’m good at various things that are cool and entertaining but that don’t add up to a whole that contributes in any meaningful way or even enables me to make a living.
Today someone asked me if I had plans for the future, and then I made the mistake of having a glass of wine with dinner. Such little things still make me so maudlin….
