We have quite a few killers, but "twisted" doesn't
have to mean "homicidal." To round things out a little, here are some folks who
aren't murderous.
—
Matt Lawrie runs the service station on the south side of town. "Gas, tires, shocks, and brakes / Lawrie's boys got what it takes!" Many locals fill up there simply because heading out to Winkler's truck stop to save a few cents per gallon isn't worth the hassle of entering and exiting a busy highway. Lawrie's also has a surprisingly successful used-car lot attached.
His secret? In his downtime, Matt dresses up as a clown – a
terrifying clown. JT's transgenic pollen awakens homicidal mania in some, but Matt's "abnormal psychology" is just a giggling love of freaking people out. He chooses rainy or foggy nights, when visibility is low; he loves to liven up grainy security footage, but he occasionally lurks in one of the town's parks or on the side of the highway. Serenity Falls has a lot of
clown sightings, and they're mostly Matt – mostly.
Of course, given the sheer number of killers in Serenity Falls, it's probably only a matter of time before somebody shoots the clown or hits him with a car. Then "killed ol' Matt" will become
that person's secret. And that might not mean the end of the clown sightings . . .
—
Hamish "Ham" Duggan is one of Lawrie's handful of employees. He has an appalling sense of fashion and a bizarre sense of humor – in fact, a lot of people think
he's the clown. But he's just a used-car salesman, running Mat's lot. You'd think that would be a boring job in a small town, especially a small town where quite a few people have money and prefer new cars, but business always seems to be booming.
His secret? Business is booming because many of the people drifting into town, hiding bodies, and generally being sketchy want to acquire or get rid of cars in a hurry. Ham
doesn't know about their crimes, but he has a good memory for faces, and occasionally finds strange stuff when cleaning cars for sale: a little blood here, some strange white powder there, a cartridge casing under the seat, even a picture of JFK one time.
Like his boss, his activities make him a target. Sooner or later, somebody is going to decide the car they sold wasn't "clean" enough – or worse, some enterprising soul is going to find a vehicle that one of the town's psychos used in a crime and then abandoned, and sell it to Ham. Then he'll know too much.
—
Lise Duggan (née Perrault) is Hamish's wife, originally from Louisiana. She puts up with Ham's tacky clothing and tackier humor because the same charm that helps Ham sell cars makes it hard not to like him anyway. She draws the line at "Ham and Lise sandwich" jokes, though. She's a stay-at-home mom, and looks after her twins, Sylvie and Roch (yes, she did the naming).
Her secret? Sylvie and Roch are artistically talented, but not in a normal way. After meeting townsfolk, they draw portraits . . . which all too often show horrific details, like bloody knives in hand or sad little faces peering out of attic windows. Lise keeps these hidden away from everybody, including Ham. She hasn't decided whether to show them to a psychologist.
Eventually, like any good mom, Lise probably will want to talk to somebody about the kids' drawings. At which point the children will doubtless end up exposed to one of the town's numerous creeps. What would happen next is anybody's guess, but if it were bad, Lise would ask her two beefy brothers back on the bayou for help. Loïc and Bastien aren't killers, but they're definitely hoodlums.