by Steven James
’Twas there that we parted in yon shady glen,
On the steep, steep side o’ Ben Lomon’,
Where in purple hue the Hieland hills we view,
An’ the moon comin’ out in the gloamin’.
The moon coming out in the gloaming.
Tonight at dusk.
But until then, Plainfield.
He’d been to the small town numerous times and knew exactly where he was going. And, of course, since he was visiting Plainfield, he didn’t just think of Jeffrey Dahmer, but also of Ed Gein, the cannibal and necrophile who’d made the small Wisconsin town famous in the 1950s.
Over the years most people had forgotten about Gein, but they hadn’t forgotten about the novels and movies his life and crimes inspired: Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and even the Buffalo Bill character in Silence of the Lambs. One quiet Wisconsin handyman inspired the villains of three of the most iconoclastic horror movies of all time.
Ed had been in the habit of digging up graves and taking the bodies of the women back to his home where he would make lampshades and clothes out of their skin. He sewed together belts from their nipples.
At first Ed was just a grave robber, but eventually that wasn’t enough for him. He killed Mary Hogan on December 8, 1954, managed to suppress his urges for a few years, and then murdered Bernice Worden almost exactly forty years ago on November 16, 1957, at the hardware store on Main Street.
Even though the original owners had sold the business long ago, amazingly, the place was still operating as a hardware store. Maybe the stories that surrounded it, the aura of death, actually attracted attention—and attention is almost always good for business.
In any case, Ed had taken Bernice’s body to his home, hung it in his garage, and gutted her like a deer. That was how the police found her the next day when they paid Gein a visit. He’d also decapitated her.
Gein and Dahmer.
For some reason, Wisconsin had more than its share of anthropophagous psychopaths.
The Vanderveld interview ended and Joshua went to the basement’s chest freezer, rooted around beneath the bags of frozen vegetables, the TV dinners and the venison steaks from the four-point buck he got bowhunting a few weeks ago, until he found the two packages wrapped in butcher paper.
He placed them in the small cooler he was taking with him on his trip, but he didn’t add any ice. He wanted the contents of the packages to thaw on the way to Plainfield.
Even from the basement he could smell the sizzling sausage frying in the pan, just waiting for him in the kitchen, cooked up lovingly for him by his faithful wife, the woman he’d been married to for nearly five years.
He headed upstairs to join Sylvia for brunch.
15
Ralph and I worked all morning and even into the early afternoon, but we couldn’t find any solid, incontrovertible connections between the cases in Ohio and Illinois and the one here in Wisconsin—all just circumstantial.
Though it was frustrating, admittedly, it wasn’t all that unexpected. Investigations in real life aren’t like the ones you see on TV. You don’t find a clue every eight minutes and solve cases every forty-two. I’ve often thought of how great it would be if it worked that way, but it’s just not the real world.
Now we were seated at the Skillet, a restaurant just down the street from HQ, looking over the menu. We needed to be back in forty-five minutes for the one-thirty briefing.
The national media outlets had already jumped on this case and with the reports of Hayes abandoning Lionel naked and cuffed in the same alley where Konerak Sinthasomphone had been found, and then the amputation of Colleen Hayes’s hands, Dahmer and his cannibalistic crimes were already making their way through the news cycle.
An unholy resurrection of a man who—
“They have Hungarian beef goulash.” Ralph jarred me out of my thoughts. He was pointing at the menu. “I’ve never been to a restaurant before that actually serves Hungarian beef goulash.”
“Yeah.” It took me a second to refocus, to be present here again. “I’ve heard it’s good here.”
“Really?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Huh.” He set down the menu authoritatively. “Well, that’s what I’m gonna get. Goulash. It just sounds like a man dish. I mean, can you imagine a one-hundred-five-pound supermodel ordering that? I’d say you gotta be at least two hundred pounds and have hair on your chest to truly enjoy a good bowl of Hungarian beef goulash.”
Honestly, he was right; I couldn’t picture a runway model working her way through a plate of goulash.
Ralph rapped his knuckle against the table. “Some things just sound tough. Like ‘Bulgaria.’ I’m a big boy, but I wouldn’t want to mess with someone from Bulgaria. The word alone makes me think of meat cleavers and dark forests. Werewolves too.”
“All that from ‘Bulgaria’?”
“Yeah. Unlike ‘France,’ which makes me think of lattes and poetry about feet.” He downed his coffee in one gulp. “Know what I mean?”
“Did you just say ‘lattes and poetry about feet’?”
He shrugged. “It just came to me.” He gestured toward my cup. “You sure you don’t want any java?”
“Naw, I’ve never been able to get past the taste.”
“Well, you gotta add sugar and cream.”
“To kill the taste.”
He considered that. “To calm it.”
“Ah. Well, why would I want to develop a habit of drinking something that I need to…um…calm the taste of?”
“Because caffeine is a beautiful thing.” He drew out the word “beautiful,” turning it into its own paragraph, then snapped his fingers toward our server and ordered the goulash. I went for a medium-rare cheeseburger—one of my weaknesses—and while we waited for our food, we reviewed some of the details of the case.
Although documentation and collection of physical evidence are important, interpretation of that evidence in relationship to the nature of the crime is just as vital. All crimes occur in a specific place at a specific time by a specific individual and, though some people believe in “random acts of violence,” I don’t buy that. Crimes always have a context in time and space and in the life of that individual offender. The search for clues is essentially the search for context.
And that’s what we were trying to do.
And failing at.
So far.
Ralph leaned across the table, his hefty forearms causing it to wobble. “So, seriously, Pat, what are you thinking here?”
“I’m not really one to venture hypotheses this early in an investigation.”
“Motive and all that?”
“Well, like I said at the department, I try not to read too much into—”
He waved that off. “No, I get it: you don’t trust your instincts. Motive. Whatever. Okay. But if you did?”
I was about to try staving off the topic again, but I changed my mind when I realized he was being persistent because he respected me and I wanted to show him just as much respect. I deliberated on his question carefully. “Ralph, do you ever read novels?”
“More of a movie guy myself.” Then he added nonchalantly, “The two kinds of action movies.”
“Two kinds?”
“Yeah, the Bruce Willis kind, and the chick flick kind.”
“How are chick flicks action movies?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “Well, you watch one with your wife, and that night you get some…”
“Ah. Action.”
A sly smile and a nod.
“Well, sometimes an author, or maybe a painter, will produce a piece of work to honor a previous artist, one who has passed away. Let’s say, write a new Philip Marlowe crime novel, or a new Sherlock Holmes story or copy the strokes of Picasso. Or, I suppose, possibly film a movie in the style of Hitchcock. It’s called a pastiche.”
“A way to pay homage to ’em.”
“Exactly.”
He considere
d that. “And what—you think that’s what our guy’s doing here? A pastiche to Dahmer?”
“There’s no way to know for sure, but it’s something to think about, especially with the amputation and the location of…” I considered something that hadn’t occurred to me before. “That pier where Colleen was found. It’s just down the street from the chocolate factory where Dahmer worked. They might very well have shipped goods from there. I’d say it wasn’t a mistake our guy left her at that pier. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
He eyed me. “Really?” To my surprise he sounded skeptical.
“Course not. Coincidences are just facts looked at out of context. You study a case from the right perspective and you’ll see that they don’t exist.”
“But…” He tapped a thoughtful finger against the air. Obviously we were not on the same page here. “Coincidences happen all the time. You think of someone you haven’t thought of in years, then ten minutes later you get a phone call from him. You dream of an event and then two days later it happens. What about déjà vu? Life is full of coincidences.”
“I would say there has to be a scientific explanation for those things.”
“Why?”
“Because…well…” As I debated how to answer, I found myself at a loss for words. His question really was a sweeping one, encompassing the breadth of a person’s beliefs about the nature of reality, God, miracles, the supernatural—a lot more than I felt ready to delve into at the moment. “Well…”
The server returned. I prefer Cherry Coke, but the only cola on the menu here was Pepsi. She refilled Ralph’s coffee and my soda, giving me a moment to consider my response.
“Pat, there’s a limit to what science and reason can explain. For example, no philosopher yet has ever been able to prove that we’re not all just brains in a jar.”
I’d read about that famous philosophical dilemma before: “I think, therefore I am.” But how do you know you’re not just a mind thinking that you’re a person with a body? It’s the quintessential question of how we know we truly exist and I couldn’t think of any good response.
He folded his hands. “I want to hear more about this deal with you and coincidences, but right now, finish up with what you were saying a minute ago. Pastiches. The alley. Dahmer.”
“Right. The timing and nature of the previous homicides to what we have here certainly makes it appear that they’re related.”
“But we studied the case files all morning, didn’t find anything solid. It’s possible they’re not.”
“Correct. So let’s just take the crimes last night for a sec. They go much deeper than just some teenager finding out that alley is next to where Dahmer used to live, and then spray-painting profane graffiti on a wall or leaving a chopped-up mannequin in the alley. We’ve had that before.”
“I can only imagine.”
“No, our guy was all in, playing for keeps: threatening a woman’s life, forcing Vincent to drug and abduct another man, strip him, leave him out there in that specific alley.”
“Not to mention cutting off Colleen’s hands.”
“Not to mention that.”
He paused. “So, we hold back from assuming that the cases are connected, dial in as much as we can on the Dahmer angle, maybe explore any other possible Dahmer pastiches in the past, or things at the first two homicides that we might have missed that could be related to Dahmer’s crimes. Maybe pastiches to other killers.”
“Yes. Locations in particular. When he was a teenager, Dahmer murdered his first victim in Bath Township, Ohio, just over an hour north of where the first body was found down near White Oak. There might be more there that we can look into.”
“Interesting.”
And that’s when our food arrived.
16
Honestly, I was ready for a respite from thinking about cannibals, amputations, and dead bodies—especially now that I had a juicy cheeseburger in front of me. Ralph must have been thinking something along the same line because, as he went at his beef goulash, he asked me about my hobbies, my background, steering our conversation away from the case.
“I grew up not too far from here, in Horicon. I like to rock climb, get out west to Yosemite when I can. I was a wilderness guide for a while in college, got my criminal justice degree: UW–River Falls. Ended up attending the police academy two weeks after I graduated.”
He eyed me. “And you’re what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”
“Twenty-five.”
Mentally, he did the calculations. “Then how are you a homicide detective already? A department as big as Milwaukee’s, it must usually take what, at least six, seven years on the force for that?”
I wasn’t really sure what to say. “I notice things. Thorne noticed that.”
Ralph gazed across the restaurant and gestured toward a man in a gray business suit four tables over, his empty dishes in front of him. “So, Armani over there; what do you notice about him?”
I glanced at him momentarily, then back at Ralph.
“He was expecting a petite woman whom he knows well, and whose company he enjoys, to meet him here more than twenty minutes ago. He’s disappointed that she never showed and is still holding out hope that she will. He ordered the fish and chips and a large Pepsi, drives the black Ford Explorer parked outside, isn’t a very big tipper, and is about to get a parking ticket.”
“What the—?” Ralph stared at me. “How do you know all that?”
“There were two menus on his table when we first came in. Two waters, but no one else ever showed. He ordered her a cup of coffee. He checked his watch four times and finally ordered his meal.”
“So he was expecting someone, okay, but how can you tell that it was a petite woman that he likes?”
I pointed to the main entrance on our left. “Whenever anyone comes in, he looks that way, but the door is backlit from the outside, so from where he’s sitting it’s not possible to see people’s faces when they enter. You’re left with—”
“Ah. Posture and frame.” Ralph caught on. “So, when a group of people or a man, or maybe a tall or large-framed woman enters, you’re saying he doesn’t look as closely at them.”
“But when a shorter, slimmer woman enters—”
“He watches her until she steps away from the door and isn’t backlit,” he concluded.
“Where he can see her face. Yes.” The door opened as we spoke, Armani looked that way as a six-foot-four guy lumbered in. Our man in the suit promptly glanced down at his watch.
“And you just happened to notice this while we were sitting here talking?”
“Yes.”
A pause. I took a bite of my cheeseburger. It really was good.
“But you said he knows her well. What tells you that?”
I swallowed, wiped some ketchup from my chin. “Remember the coffee on the table?”
“Yeah, he ordered it for her. So what?”
“You typically wouldn’t order coffee for someone you’re meeting for the first time and he knew she took cream and added it. You wouldn’t do that unless you’re expecting someone momentarily.”
“Cools it too quickly.”
“From what I hear, yes. And you don’t add cream to a woman’s coffee unless you know her well—it’s a bit of an intimate act. People are pretty protective about their coffee and what they put into it to…calm it. So he has—”
“A close relationship with her and he expected her right away.”
“So it seems.”
“And the Ford Explorer…Let me guess, his keys there next to the newspaper. You saw the vehicle parked out front when we came in. Guessed it was his?”
“Didn’t have to guess. You can tell by the key fob that he’s driving a rental. The Explorer out front has Maine plates and an Enterprise agreement form lying on the passenger seat.”
He blinked. “You saw that when we passed by?”
“Yes. He’s tanned; it’s November in Wisconsin.”
“And i
n Maine. So he’s not from either state.”
I shrugged. “Can’t tell for sure, but it helps give context.”
“And why’s he about to get a ticket?”
“Parking is strictly enforced in the blocks surrounding police headquarters.”
“Okay, I get that.” We both ate for a moment, then he stopped and lowered his heaping spoonful of goulash. “You said he had fish and chips and a Pepsi. There’s an empty tartar sauce packet on his plate, that’s easy enough. And now that I think about it, the menu lists only Pepsi products and there’s a little dark-colored pop left in his glass, so—”
“Soda.”
“What?”
“We don’t call it pop here; that’s more of a Michigan deal. We call it soda. You should also know we call drinking fountains ‘bubblers.’”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. It’s a Milwaukee thing. And yes, Pepsi is the only dark-colored soda being served today. Nowhere near as good as Cherry Coke.”
“You still haven’t explained how you know he isn’t a big tipper.”
“The cost of that meal, drink, and a coffee plus tax compared to the bills he set on the table. Only an eight percent tip.”
Ralph examined the man’s table once again, this time even more closely. “But there aren’t any bills there.”
“His server already picked them up.”
He looked at me incredulously. “You’re saying she came by before I even asked you to prove that you notice things?”
“Yes.
“And you calculated all that then—the tip, everything?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know any of that would be pertinent to anything?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then how—”
I notice things.
I shrugged. “Luck, I guess.”
He opened his mouth as if he were going to reply, then closed it again and chose to go for some beef goulash instead.
Moving past the topic of the guy at the table and following along with our discussion from earlier, I asked Ralph what he did before joining the FBI.