A few years ago, while hanging out at my future wife’s apartment, I opened a cupboard in her cramped bathroom. To be sure, this is not a habit of mine, and I can’t recall my exact motivation. What I found hanging in this cupboard above the toilet, however, made me uneasy: a small ax.
“Uh, I don’t mean to sound paranoid or anything, but do you think you could get rid of that ax in the bathroom?” I asked her after exiting.
I had been covering crime for the MT for about a year at that point, and it seemed every second murder played out the same way: friends or lovers drink, friends or lovers argue, one of friends or lovers grabs ax and hacks other friend or lover to death. Postmortem dismemberment by the killer was an occasional twist in these cases.
