Of course, I monitor all these incidents, and if a death occurs in a particularly disappointing way, I often will go back in time to manipulate events for a more pleasing outcome. Accidents and random violence, however, are chaotic, and their results are often pointless. I have, on occasion, saved a person from one meaningless death on a given day only to subject him to a better end that evening.

The old phrase ”going down for the third time” has its origin in this phenomenon, that a doomed person may be saved once or twice before finally being slain. Accidents are my main work, yes, but there is one type of murderer whose work runs entirely counter to mine: the serial killer. Their victims tend to be unknown to them. Their murders are orchestrated to satisfy their own fantasies, not to provide a fitting end to a victim’s life. It was because of the likes of Heirens, Gacy, and Dahmer that I was assigned this area. I cannot stop such humans from killing, not until it is their own time to die. Nor can I do much about victim selection, since these men act according to random opportunity or elaborate fantasy. On a night that such a man is prowling for a kill, I struggle to keep up, saving those I can and attempting to tweak the deaths of those I cannot.

My jurisdiction does not go back to the time of Gacy, but does to that of Dahmer. They were similar murderers, in many ways, luring their victims to their homes and tricking them into vulnerable positions. Gacy used a pair of real handcuffs, saying he had a magic trick to show his guest. Dahmer used drugged beer. A mere queasiness was enough to save some of the victims. I caused one young man to throw up on the carpet, and while Jeffrey cleaned up the poisonous mess, his prey slipped out the door.

But I could not save all of them. Some were marked for death, and even if they escaped, I killed them later that night. Nor could I kill Dahmer, for his time had not come.