In a run down diner, in the rundown seaside town of Aberdeen, Washington, is an old falling apart breakfast diner, the kind that locals might frequent, but you’d drive on past until you got to a Denny’s. Past the main dining room, and the access to kitchen and restroom is a worn-out seldom-used back dining room. It used to be a smoker's dining room, but like the customers and the jobs and the old growth forests, that's long gone.
If you visit here in the mornings, you'll find one single customer dining back here, a grizzled old man who used to be a logger. He's short, he's wiry. His hands tremble a little, but beneath that plaid flannel shirt you’d suspect he's still got grizzled wiry muscles. He orders the same thing every day, white toast, two eggs, sunny-side up, and a breakfast steak, rare. Then he'll spend a couple more hours there, reminiscing with himself, and having his coffee refilled by an ever cheerful waitress. He has good reason to consider himself history's most prolific serial killer.
If you sit down to chat, he won't question your intentions, though he will make assumptions. He'll make small talk with you, the way old people are so practiced at. If you ask him about the logging industry, he'll go into it in detail. From the golden days of his youth, to its eventual collapse. He'll talk about environmentalism, and the spotted owls, and the real reasons why it all fell apart. He might surprise you, there’s more to the story then you’d guess, and he’s impressively frank.
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Make a hint of interest in the inherent danger of the logging industry, and he'll gladly talk about the accidents. All the really grizzly ones, the missing fingers, the shins being split in half from dropped chainsaws, the torso's being whipped in two by broken guidelines. He'll talk about how common they are, how, back in the old days before audits and labor groups and worker protections, there'd be police to inform, a few forms to sign, a widow to grieve, how easy to was to make it all look like an accident, how the investigations were always just a formality. How you can just move on to the next job in the next county, and you don’t even need to use your real name. They didn’t even check IDs back in those days, just show you know how to use a chainsaw, and you can start the whole thing all over again.
When he sees the growing horror on your face, he'll ask you how much more information you need before you arrest him. When he realizes you're not a cop, and the jig isn't up, he wonders if he can add one more to his tally. He'll tighten the grip on his steak knife, and he'll wonder if he's still fast enough to make it to you before you make it out of your booth, down the hall, and out of the diner's entrance.
He's still surprisingly fast. The diner's staff always cheerfully clean