Opening Moves

by Steven James

  Because of the pastiches we were looking at, or whatever you called them, I thought we should perhaps analyze the sites of Dahmer’s and Gein’s crimes as well—the graveyard, the bars Dahmer frequented, the hardware store, their residences…

  With these sites added to the mix, the number of data points would grow exponentially—even before I added in the victims’ travel patterns.

  No wonder Dr. Werjonic used computers to analyze his data. Looking for and prioritizing the importance of each of these locations in my head, or even on paper, would be terrifically difficult, especially since I wasn’t very familiar with the algorithms he used to account for distance decay.

  As I was thinking about all that, Thompson came in, smiling, carrying a Daily Donuts box. He was a burly, fun-loving guy in his late thirties. Happily married. Volunteered as a youth group leader at his church. He was also the most diehard Packers fan I knew—and around here, that was saying something. I’d never seen him without some kind of Packers paraphernalia on—a hat, shirt, belt buckle. Today, it was a lapel pin.

  He set down the box.

  A cop bringing in doughnuts. I felt like I was in the lead-up to a punch line. “Doughnuts?” I said. “Really?”

  “Not quite.” He reached into the box and brought out his prize. “Cherry turnovers.”

  Oh. Well, in that case.

  He took a substantial bite. “Want one?” As he spoke, he didn’t seem too concerned with closing his mouth to hide the half-chewed cherry turnover he was eating, and despite myself, the images of cannibalism from this case flashed through my mind and all I could think of was that he was chewing…

  Well.

  I didn’t even want to go there.

  I turned away.

  “Um, no thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. But they’re good.” He finished the turnover, then fished around in the box again and produced another one. He leaned closer and stared over my shoulder at the board as he bit into it. “Trying to map it out, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  Crumbs from the turnover inadvertently dropped onto my desk. “Oops,” he mumbled. “Sorry about that.”

  I tipped the papers to the side over the garbage can to get rid of the crumbs. “No big deal.” Down the hall, Ellen, Corsica, and Lieutenant Thorne were heading toward the conference room and I invited Thompson to follow me.

  “Don’t worry.” He picked up his box of cherry turnovers. “I brought enough for everyone.”

  Not at the rate you’re eating them, I thought.

  “Good thinking,” I said.

  The praying hadn’t helped.

  Even swinging by the hospital fifteen minutes ago on his way to work to walk past Adele’s and Colleen’s rooms hadn’t helped. Whispering prayers for them as he strode past their doorways, past the officers assigned to guard their rooms, had been good but hadn’t been enough to change Joshua’s mind about tomorrow.

  “Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

  Your deeds.

  Are.

  Evil.

  Joshua felt compelled to act, drawn, as it were, toward the darkness by a force more powerful than his will.

  During his lunch break he planned to drive to the bank under the pretense of making a withdrawal, but he would really be estimating where SWAT would set up their barricades, deciding where he would be able to park to still see the bank entrance. Then he would rent the moving truck.

  Despite his misgivings and conflicted feelings, he was beginning to understand who he truly was.

  He was going ahead with everything.

  Yes, he would see this through to the end.

  It would end tomorrow afternoon at four twenty-five.

  Sundown.

  The gloaming.

  54

  The briefing went surprisingly quickly, with everyone summarizing what he or she had been working on: Radar had dug up a list of Caucasian public health workers, social workers, coaches, paramedics, and cops who worked in the West Reagan Street neighborhood. So far no leads. He was still working on getting in touch with an expert on Civil War–era medical instruments to see if we might be able to trace that amputation saw we’d found in the boxcar. It turned out it was harder to find an expert than we’d thought it would be.

  Corsica was looking over Griffin’s receipts. Nothing yet to report.

  Thompson found out that Movie Flicks Video Store, which was only six blocks from the Griffin house, had a record of Griffin renting both The Fugitive and When Harry Met Sally on Sunday evening. While it wasn’t possible to know if, or when, Griffin and Mallory actually watched the movies, at least, so far, their story was checking out. Thompson was also evaluating U-Haul and moving truck rentals to see if he could find something that might lead us to someone using one to transport ten mattresses.

  Lyrie had come up dry yesterday trying to find a neighbor or work associate who’d seen a sedan that they didn’t recognize in the area preceding Vincent’s call home at around seven o’clock. He’d spoken with Adele Westin and she wasn’t able to give a physical description of her abductor.

  After the search warrant was issued for Timothy Griffin’s receipts, Ralph had done a background check on Griffin and now distributed his findings. “Nothing striking,” he noted. “You can read it over when we’re done in here.”

  Gabriele had spoken with the people at the Salvation Army thrift store and found out the director was out of town at a fundraising dinner and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. However, she was going to continue to follow up on hotels, used-furniture stores, and thrift stores in that part of town to see if we could track down where the offender got the mattresses from, in the hopes that someone at the store would be able to identify him.

  Thorne told us he’d looked up the other true crime books Heather Isle had written and one was about Ted and James Oswald. “No address for Ms. Isle that I can find. No photo on the book. I’m working at tracking her down to have a chat. Ask her a few questions about her sources.”

  The Oswalds again. They just kept popping up on the periphery of this case.

  Looking for a connection between this week’s victims, Ellen reported that she’d spoken with Adele, Colleen, Vincent and, on the phone, with Carl, who was still in custody in Plainfield. The couples had never met, never lived near each other. There were no areas of their lives that appeared to overlap. “I’m going to follow up on that more. There’s got to be something there.”

  The CSIU didn’t come up with much either. Based on the temperature of Hendrich’s body and the temperature in the boxcar, they estimated time of death to be between two and four p.m., which didn’t really narrow things down too much for us. No incriminating prints were found in the stolen Ford Taurus, the locks, the fence, the items in the boxcars, or the police tape. Initial tests showed that only two people’s blood was present on the floor of the boxcar, so I was at least thankful there wasn’t evidence of additional crimes. The CSIU did find some DNA inside the plastic bag—apparently our guy put something in there after all. No DNA results yet, though. Two weeks at the earliest.

  The guy who was abducting these women and (if he was the same person) who’d killed Hendrich was good. Apart from the DNA in the bag, so far pretty much everything we’d put into play was coming up empty. It was almost like he knew exactly what we would be looking for and how to keep us from finding it.

  I summarized the information from Dr. Werjonic that I’d been reading regarding nodes, distance decay, and victimology. “One of the points that Dr. Werjonic kept bringing out really grabbed me,” I told them. “Sometimes the killer chooses the locations for expedience, sometimes the locations choose the crimes.”

  “What does that mean?” Thorne asked.

  “Well, the killer didn’t choose the bar, the alley, the pier or the hardware store, or that specific graveyard for expedience, or to save time, money, or effort; he was evidently choosing them because of their significance to the live
s of Dahmer and Gein. In a sense, the locations chose the crimes, which means that something more important than saving time, money, or effort is guiding our guy’s crime spree.”

  “Telling a story?” Corsica said.

  “Paying homage?” Ralph suggested.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. But it wasn’t just Dahmer’s apartment—it was the alley that was significant in his eventual arrest. It wasn’t Gein’s house, but the same hardware store where Gein shot and killed his final victim—the scene that led the police to his home. So we’re looking at the locations that eventually led to these two guys’ apprehension, not just at their crimes.”

  Thorne nodded. “Good.”

  “So here’s what I’m thinking. If we could postulate other killers that our guy might want to draw attention to—or pay homage to, or whatever—we could stake out the locations that were significant to their arrest. Try to get one step ahead of this guy.”

  Nods around the table.

  “But,” Ellen said, “we’d be looking for someone on the same level of depravity as Dahmer or Gein? From Wisconsin? That should be a short list. There can’t be too many other killers from the state with that kind of grisly reputation.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Radar offered.

  I gave assignments to everyone else.

  Thompson would delve deeper into the pastiche idea, see what other connections the victims and missing persons in this crime spree—or this set of crime sprees—might have that paralleled Dahmer’s or Gein’s life or their crimes. This included looking into the possibility that Ralph and I had talked about yesterday, that the homicide near Cincinnati might have some sort of connection to Dahmer’s first murder in Bath, Ohio.

  Ellen and Ralph would keep pursuing the victimology research.

  Corsica announced that she would continue focusing on the receipts and compare Griffin’s catalog subscription list to our suspect list. Also, she’d see if there was anything else Hendrich might have bought from or sold to Griffin to try to establish if someone had been setting him up from the start.

  Gabriele and Lyrie would visit the hospital, interview Colleen, and try to find out who else besides Griffin might have known about the cuffs. Earlier interviews with Vincent hadn’t produced any names.

  Thorne was going to keep looking for a way to reach Heather Isle and focus on leads related to Hendrich’s homicide.

  I decided to examine the Oswald case. Ted and James weren’t cannibals, weren’t as infamous as Dahmer or Gein, but their case was certainly bizarre, and had been highly publicized when they were arrested back in 1994. Certainly, with the cuffs, the Heather Isle book, and the unsuccessful pleas of Dahmer and Ted regarding diminished responsibility for their crimes because of extenuating circumstances, it seemed that the Oswalds were at least tangentially connected to this investigation.

  We ended the briefing at 10:54 a.m., with everyone heading off to work on their respective projects. I’d seen the chaplain visiting Colleen at the hospital yesterday and now, on my way to my desk, I asked him how she was. “Okay,” he told me. “I think she’s more concerned about what’s going to happen to her husband than she is about being attacked…in the manner she was.” It was selfless and courageous of her, but I’d gotten a similar feeling when Radar and I visited her room on Monday.

  I rolled out my chair and took a seat at my desk.

  On the note that Dr. Werjonic had left for me, he’d requested that I call him between 11:00 and 11:05, which seemed quirkily specific, but it just might have been that he liked things to be prompt and precise.

  First, I put a call through to Detective Browning, the man whom Ralph and I had spoken with at the Waukesha Sheriff’s Department, to get the Oswald case files delivered here to HQ. I had the sense he wouldn’t be too happy about it, but right now worrying about hurting the guy’s feelings was not at the top of my priority list.

  No answer.

  I left a message explaining what we needed.

  As I was hanging up, I saw the receptionist directing someone toward my desk.

  I recognized him immediately from the grad office brochure about the current lecture series.

  Dr. Calvin Werjonic.

  The visiting professor had decided not to wait for my call but had come to see me in person.

  55

  Tall. Slim. Distinguished. Dressed in a conservative dun-colored suit, he carried a tan London Fog trench coat draped over one arm and greeted me with a genteel smile and an outstretched hand. “Calvin Werjonic. And you must be Detective Bowers.” His English accent was rich and sonorous. His eyes, studious and precise, taking everything in.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  After a firm handshake, he gestured toward the papers on my desk. “I admit my handwriting isn’t…well, I’d say what it used to be, but it’s always been rather…tried.” He pulled out an actual, real-life pocket watch and checked the time. “Well, shall we chat here, or is there a better place to discuss your case?”

  “Um, honestly, I’m thrilled you would offer to help, but—”

  He flagged a finger in the air to stop me. “Most assuredly, I don’t expect you to tell me anything about the case that’s not already public knowledge. Taking that into account, I’ll offer what help I can. And you have no obligation to accept any of my observations or implement anything I might suggest. So, then, here? Or is there another, more suitable place?”

  “Let’s step into the conference room.”

  His eyes were on the maps on which I’d stuck the thumbtacks for the scenes of the crimes. “Interesting…” he mumbled. “And can we take this with us?”

  “Sure.”

  I wheeled the board with the maps as I led Dr. Werjonic to the room with the empty Daily Donuts box on the table. “Doughnuts,” he mused when we arrived. “Isn’t that a bit of a cliché? Here in America?”

  “Actually,” I said, defending my country, albeit lamely, “they were cherry turnovers.”

  “I see.”

  “Officer Thompson’s favorite.”

  “Of course.”

  Not really sure if that helped.

  He took a seat. “Well then, let’s get started.”

  “Just so we’re clear, you’re offering to help me with the case I’m currently working on, and—”

  “To be sure: the one involving the mutilation of Colleen Hayes, the abduction of Adele Westin, and the murder of Bruce Hendrich. And possibly the connection to two homicides in two other states.”

  I blinked. “How did you…?”

  “Come, come. The soil samples from the murder in Champaign that matched only two counties of southeast Wisconsin—there was a report on the news. That, and the anthropophagic behavior.”

  “That wasn’t made public.”

  “True.” He smiled. “But thank you for confirming it.”

  Okay, now that was just plain sneaky. “But how did you know last night that I was the one on this case anyway? That information wasn’t released until the newspapers came out this morning.”

  “Based on your grades and your request for the photocopied notes—which, I must say, is quite admirable—I can tell this program is a priority for you. The graduate assistant who requested I leave the notes for you mentioned the request came via a dispatcher, so I realized you were calling it in from the field. After a quick review of your attendance records, I noted that there has been a high correlation between your absences and high-profile homicide investigations in the city over the last six months.”

  “You teach in Vancouver. How do you possibly know about our homicide investigations here in Milwaukee?”

  “I stay current.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “So”—I tracked with his train of thought—“from there it was simple enough to infer my involvement in this current case, the most high-profile one in months.”

  He smiled. “Timing and location, Detective. It always cracks down to timing and location.”

  “Alright, so
just to reiterate: I can’t divulge anything confidential about the case. It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  “How about if I just tell you what I can, based on what I already know. From television, the newspapers, that sort of thing. Start there. See if that helps at all.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He steepled his fingers. “The Dahmer and Gein locations relate to the story he’s telling more than to the travel routes he’s taking. For instance, we don’t know that he himself has ever visited the New Territories Bar or the alley in Milwaukee, or the graveyard or the hardware store in Plainfield for that matter. Remember, he sent other people to those sites.”

  “True. Good point.”

  He gestured toward the map. “Which does not help us in our efforts to use geographic profiling to discern the most likely location of the kidnapper’s anchor point, but that’s not really the issue anymore, is it? Since we already know where it is.”

  “We do?”

  “The boxcar.” He stood and, with his finger, he traced, on the map, one after the other, the roads that branched out from the train yard’s parking lot. “The location of the train yards determined his travel routes more than his home address did, which will not help us in finding his home. He knows these neighborhoods. He was familiar enough with the woods to flee through them in nearly dark conditions, and then to make it through the neighborhood—yet being a Caucasian, he would likely be highly noticeable to the people living along those streets.”

  “We were thinking the same thing.”

  “Yes. The news accounts last night implied as much. Which reminds me, you’ve forgotten one key location.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “The parking lot in Pewaukee from which the Ford Taurus was stolen.”

  I was embarrassed I’d missed that. “I’ll add it.”

  “So, knowing the anchor point—the boxcar—I would suggest you begin to analyze the possible travel routes to and from the train yard to the other sites you’ve already noted.”

  At least that thought had already crossed my mind. “The algorithms in your notes.”