During the course of writing By the Light, I thought it would be interesting to shine some light on abusive priests. The man of the collar was killed by a murderer whom he had abused in youth. To maintain my serial killer’s custom, I had to pick a lighthouse at which he would tell his story through the staging of bodies. My choices were to set the scene at a light in the Deep South near the site of the priest’s demise or at a light in Baltimore near the District of Columbia turf where he intended to select his next victim from the perennial bumper crop of philandering politicians. I ultimately chose to have him dispose of the body at a nautical beacon in my home state of Louisiana.
I wrote that sequence of events on my lunch hour in the cozy loft at the City Market Coffeehouse in Kansas City. On my way across the state line to my abode in Kansas that evening, I was listening to the radio news when a story was related about a victim in Baltimore who shot and wounded the priest who abused him years before. The newscaster said it was the first incident in which a victim had resorted to violence against his un-priestly abuser. The near intersection of fiction and reality almost caused me to steer off the road.
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