by Jack Wallen
So instead of being weak, I joined Tasha in the land of the cold and emotionless. “How long would he have survived?”
“Are you asking me to place time of death?” Tasha’s eyebrows were raised as if she had just been challenged. I nodded. “The time of death would have been approximately one to two hours after the sutures were closed. By the look on your face, I know what your next question will be and the answer is yes, that would mean the victim more than likely died after the killer left the scene. But that’s not the main reason why I wanted to see you.” She turned around and picked up a small metal surgical tray.
Inside the tray was a small bloodied scrap of what looked like—
“Paper. It’s a small piece of paper.” Tasha spoke as she walked over to yet another examination table. Sitting on that table was a Mag-Lite with what looked like a special filter attached to the business end.
The scrap of paper was about the size of a fortune cookie fortune. It was saturated with blood, so I couldn’t see if there was writing of any kind.
“I’ve run it through some tests, and there are no prints anywhere. But there is writing. Here, let me show you.” Tasha grabbed the tray from me, turned to the table, and picked up the Mag-Lite. “With this ultraviolet light filter, I can detect the impression where the ink was on the paper.” She flashed the light over the paper, which revealed very clearly:
jesus and khriste llike yearning
The letters had been typed, not handwritten, and under the light they appeared like beacons. But what did it mean?
I stared at the paper in the tray hoping that something would become clear. “Jesus and khriste llike yearning—is that something from the Bible?” The question just popped out of my mouth. Tasha was obviously lost in thought and didn’t respond. I was never a terribly religious woman, so my knowledge of the Bible was faint at best.
“It looks as if this is a piece to a word puzzle, like it belongs at the end of one sentence or the beginning of another. Maybe a phrase taken from a book or a letter.” Tasha was throwing ideas into the wind.
Something had yet to click. But when Tasha’s last idea took flight, I immediately flashed back to my meeting with S’Fonda.
“The letter!” The connection hit me. “Hold that thought.” I raced out of the lab and made my way to the War Room. The halls and offices sped by like I was the engineer of a bullet train. Fortunately, the War Room was empty. I grabbed the copy of the letter that S’Fonda had given me and ran back to the lab. Tasha, with a rather confused look on her face, was standing in nearly the same position as when I had left.
After filling Tasha in on the letter from S’Fonda, we went to work. Tasha set the tray on the table and held up the light. We compared the new piece of evidence to the old. I scanned each line hoping to find a fit. As soon as I came to the second sentence, I knew. “Bingo!”
“What is it?” Tasha questioned.
“We have a match. Take a look at the second line on the letter.” I said as I slid the paper her way.
Tasha read aloud: “I hold the key to your jesus and khriste llike yearning.” She went silent for a moment. She scratched her head as she stared at the paper. “It does fit better than the other lines. But, what about the misspellings?”
“Did you find anything similar in the first body?” Naturally, I assumed the killer was planting these clues on each body.
“To be honest, I wasn’t the one to dismantle the killer’s work on the other body. But I do still have the body and can look for you,” she said, as she turned to the large drawers that housed the bodies. “Although there was more decomposition in this body, the paper should be intact, if it’s there.” She reached up and pulled out a drawer.
The body that came out on the drawer was cold and had the tell-tale signs of both murder and autopsy. The lump of cloth had been removed from the chest, and the wound had been cleaned and sewn back together. The genital area had not been touched.
Tasha turned to me and before pulling her mask over her lower face, she warned, “This isn’t pretty.”
“Don’t worry about me; I’ve seen it all,” I assured her. It wasn’t true. Throughout my career on the force, I knew the human body had been dismantled in so many ways that even Hollywood couldn’t shock an officer working homicide. Not yet being a part of that elite crew caused me to have to depend on the descriptions from other officers, photos, and lab visits. But Tasha was right, it wasn’t pretty.
You wouldn’t think such horror could be found in Louisville, Kentucky, in the midst of the Bible belt. But there’s just as much hatred and bigotry here as there is anywhere.
Tasha gathered the necessary tools and began to remove the piecemeal genitalia. After about fifteen minutes of work, she surfaced with another small fragment of bloodied paper. She put the paper under the ultraviolet light, and we saw:
hatter you dear gentlemens i am not doubting.
I brought over the letter and read the first and the new line out loud. “You may think me a mad hatter you dear gentlemens i am not doubting.” Again, there were odd misspellings.
Tasha was reading over my shoulder. “What do you think he’s saying?”
“Sometimes, serial killers could be more obvious than others. If it’s all about showing their intelligence, they’ll offer up riddles. I don’t think these are riddles, though.” I looked at the words more carefully. “The misspelled words and odd grammar are either a clue or an indication of our killer’s lack of intelligence…”
“Or the killer hiding his intelligence,” Tasha butted in.
I wanted to agree with Tasha, but something was making me think that this had less to do with the killer, and more to do with the victims. The killer wanted us, or someone, to find these clues, which gave me a strange feeling that something was there within the words, maybe a hidden message that spelled out his motives or even his name.
On the letter, I inked in the phrases from the scraps of paper after their mated first portions. The letter now read:
You may think me a mad hatter you dear gentlemens i am not doubting.
I hold the key to your jesus and khriste llike yearning.
I know your very secret
I know the path to your very
I will hand you your dreams.
Once you have been touched by me,
holds the change and you will
You will finally become that whic
Love and hugs,
Dr. Gabrielle Lakmé
I read the new lines out loud, then stopped, shocked after I accidentally slurred gentlemens i am together. I stood and stared at the letters: s-i-a-m. It was right there in front of me…siam. And before that: t, y, and e. The fragment in the first victim foretold the name of the second victim.
“Oh my God.”
“What is it?” Tasha’s voice was ever clinical.
“He’s telling us who his next victim is. It’s right here in front of us. It’s hidden in the phrase tucked inside the victim, the letters of the next victim’s name.” I pointed out the name of Tye Siam mixed into the phrase.
“So, we take a look at the second phrase and find the name of the next victim before the killer can get to him,” Tasha said with a geek’s enthusiasm. It wasn’t quite as simple as Tasha had spelled out. It was pure luck that I happened onto the Siam name.
I scanned the phrase taken out of Tye Siam, hoping to see some obvious clue. “jesus and khriste llike yearning,” I read aloud. The spelling or grammar should give the name away.
Both Tasha and I were staring so intently at the sentence that we didn’t hear Skip creeping up. “Hey, ladies!”
We both jumped out of our collective skins. Skip stood staring back and forth between us. “Now, why wasn’t I invited to the party?” His eyes burned a hole in my forehead. “Where were you this morning? We have a ritual, ya know. Bright and early in the a.m., we meet—” I put my hand to Skip’s mouth before he sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
“We got our f
irst real evidence, Skipper.” I spoke as if I were trying to calm down a third-grader, which at times he seemed to be.
“Well, give me the Ws!” Skip was fond of slang. In this case, the Ws meant where, what, when, and who, although most of the time, the ‘who’ was reserved for dishing the dirt about dates.
“Tasha discovered a small fragment of paper inside the body of Tye Siam. The paper had text that completed the second line from the letter that S’Fonda gave me. From this, we figured that the killer would have placed a similar fragment in the first victim. He did. The fragments are clues. They tell us who the next victim will be.” I walked through how I had managed to find Tye Siam’s name in the letters on the first fragment. Skip was impressed and gave me the hug to prove it.
“You two are brilliant. Are you two not brilliant?” Skip looked at Tasha, who nervously nodded her head. “You need a tiara. We’re shopping for a big bright tiara because you are the queen of—” Once again, I covered Skip’s mouth.
“Shhhhhhh. We’re trying to concentrate, dear.” I winked at him.
There was a long silence as Tasha and I turned back to the letter. Skip was standing behind us like a carrion bird waiting for one of us to die. I could feel him. I could sense him waiting for something. Skip was not terribly fond of just standing silently for no reason. Even at the office, where Skip’s queen was kept well in check, he had his ways of covertly letting his little girl romp around.
“The lab sent me the results of the blood samples.” And there it was. The little gem he was hiding. He loved that little game, and he immediately had my attention.
He gave me his I’m princess for the moment smile and continued. “It wasn’t the victim’s blood, but it was another male. And, surprise of all surprises, they found lithium in the blood. Strangely enough, they also found a slight trace of estrogen in the blood. The levels of estrogen were akin to those of a male taking a low-level birth control pill.” Skipper was obviously very proud of himself. I decided to take away his tiara.
“So, either the owner of this blood sample was just beginning hormone therapy for an upcoming sex reassignment surgery—”
“—or someone was trying to play God and femme himself up a bit,” Skip blurted out, finishing my thought.
It looked like someone else was bucking for that tiara.
“Oh, and the lab also found xylazine in the victim’s blood.” Skip was certainly on a roll.
“Once more, with feeling,” I said. Skip knew what I meant.
“It’s an anesthesia used in lab animals and horses. If given the proper dosage, which this man was given, it can act as an instant tranquilizer on humans. If given the wrong dosage, the victim turns into Mr. Potato Head for the rest of his life.” Skip handed me the detailed lab report.
“Can xylazine be purchased by anyone?” I prodded Skip for more information. His eyes shifted back and forth. “You didn’t get that far, did you?”
“Mmmmmm, nope. You know me too well, dollface. But I’ll get right back on it, if you like.” Skip had that eager puppy look in his eyes.
“That would be perfect.” Skip turned to leave. “Oh Skippy, one more thing. Could you contact the Southern Belle group and tell them we’d like to meet with them?”
Skip tossed me a nod and ran out the door. The sound of his shoes faded, and I turned to see Tasha staring off in Skip’s wake. She had the look we girls get when we see the man of our dreams. I knew I should break the bad news to her, but I thought it might be fun to see Skip be the bearer of gay tidings. Not only that, but I never took it upon myself to out someone, especially on the job.
I stared at her for a moment and then broke the silence. “Care to descend from the heavens and join me here on earth?” I chided. She gave me a don’t you ever tell look. I smiled. She sighed. We turned back to the evidence.
TWENTY-THREE
The dressing room was silent. Half the queens were fighting a battle with their running mascara, and the other half were refusing to even put on that first lash.
The death of Tye Siam had hit hard and home. No drag queen ever felt truly safe. But none of these girls had ever feared for her life. Everything was different now.
“Why da bitch gotta go git herself killed? Tha’s all Sugah Brown wanna know,” Sugah said before blowing her nose. “Siam was good people. Siam ain’t done nothin’ to hurt nobody.”
Shantee snapped, “We still have a show to do, you know. There are paying people out there, and we owe them our best performances. I’d prefer not to hear or talk about such things while I’m preparing.”
Sugah Brown stood up. Her six-foot-two-inch frame was the largest and most domineering of the bunch. “Now, you listen here, Miss Shantee. We done lost a fellow sistah, and we all gotta grieve in our own special way. I ain’t lettin’ yo queen-of-everything ass take dat away from me.”
Shantee stood and pursed her lips at Sugah Brown. Fortunately, S’Fonda had wits enough to stand between the two. “Girls, you’re both pretty!” The queens slowly put their talons away. “We’re all a little stressed out here, so let’s just take it easy. ‘Kay?” The tension slowly eased away from the room. The girls went back to their business.
Very quietly, Sugah Brown brought out a picture of Tye Siam, set it under her mirror and whispered, “This one’s for you, darling.” Sugah blew a kiss to the picture, stood up, and as the overture to her latest number started spilling out over the audience, she left the dressing room.
The silence was eventually broken by Shantee. “I wish that bitch would keep her opinions to herself.”
S’Fonda shot a disapproving look at Shantee. “I suggest you do the very same thing, Shantee.”
A quiet hush fell over the dressing room. The only sound was Sugah Brown’s number pouring from the stage. Eventually, S’Fonda broke the silence. “I hear we have a new girl coming in.”
Shantee turned to S’Fonda. “Yes, we found her in Tampa. She’s a real cutie-pie too. None of the wild shit for this one. Does the best Dorothy you’ll ever see. Her Somewhere Over the Rainbow will break your heart.”
“Does it have a name, love?” S’Fonda smiled.
“She goes by Ricky Lynn.” Shantee returned the smile.
“Oooooooooooh….sounds so country.” S’Fond’s high squeal pierced the room. “Just what we need, a little burst of cherry pie. When do we meet her?”
Shantee turned back to her mirror. “She’s coming in tomorrow to show us what she’s worked up. She’s young, and I don’t want her corrupted.”
“At least not right away,” S’Fonda retorted, as she turned back to her own mirror.
“Bitch,” Shantee whispered.
“Soccer-mom slut,” S’Fonda quietly shot back.
An unsettling silence choked the angry whispers until Sugah burst into the room and slammed down a fistful of dollars onto her dressing table. “That’s some cheap-ass lovin’ out there tonight. Not even enough to fill Sugah’s thong.” After finishing her brief tirade, she immediately turned to the other girls. “And not a single catty word from any of ya, else Sugah rip ya face right out from undah yo makeups.”
S’Fonda stood. “Well girls, let’s see if I can cut open the purses a bit.”
As the first strains of her number sang over the speakers, S’Fonda walked out onto the stage to entrance the audience.
“I don’ like that ho.” Sugah attempted to keep her venom in control but had little luck.
Shantee slid over to Sugah’s side and whispered. “I don’t know about you, but I want that queen out of here. Miss Heels has damaged and threatened her last girl. Are you with me?”
Sugah Brown looked over and gave Shantee a secretive wink.
TWENTY-FOUR
He sat staring in the mirror. Halfway through applying his makeup, he was gripped by fear and sorrow. The recent losses to the community he belonged to were tragic. A picture of him and Tye Siam was propped up against his makeup kit. They had been friends for a long time. He had gone to Tye on
a number of occasions when the confusion of being transgendered was too much to bear. And Tye always managed to get him through.
Now a killer was on the loose, preying on the cross-dressers and drag queens, as if they were nothing more than a plague to be eradicated. As if having gender dysphoria wasn’t enough!
He put a lipstick to his lips and attempted to fill in his pucker with color. His hands were shaking enough to keep him from succeeding. At first, he told himself he wouldn’t let the death affect him. Although Tye Siam was one of his closest friends, he had so many others in his circle and would not hesitate to call on them to hold him up when needed.
“Well, Jean,” he spoke softly into the mirror, “are you even going to be able to make an appearance tonight?”
Before he could make another attempt with the lipstick, the phone rang, startling him enough to drop the tube of BeneFit Curtsy. “Oh, damn blast it!” The exclamation flew from his lips as he picked up the phone. “Hello?”
On the other end was Cindi Leigh of the Southern Belles. “Hi honey, this is Cindi. How ya doin’?”
“I’ve certainly been better. I’m so shaken up I can’t even put on my lipstick.” He bent over and picked up the dropped tube which had broken in the fall. “Oh shoot, my best lipstick broke. This has just been one horrible day.”
“It’s been a horrible week, honey. For all of us.” Although Cindi’s voice had a tone of levity, it was obvious to Jean Ann that there was horror underlying every word. “I’m calling a special meeting for the Belles tonight. One of the detectives on the case contacted me and asked if he and his partner could attend a meeting. I told them they certainly could, but that they had to honor our anonymity.”
“What did they say to that?” Jean Ann’s concern was apparent.