by Edward Lee
“You’re lying to me. Who was it?”
Tom leaned against the wall, arms crossed in exasperation. “It was Joycelyn.”
Helen gaped. “Who?”
“Joycelyn, the new pathology intern. She just got a shipment of formalin concentrate at the morgue and she didn’t know if it needed to be refrigerated or not. So she paged me for instructions.”
“‘I’ll light you up real good’?” Helen quoted. “I heard what you said, Tom. You weren’t talking about any goddamn formalin.”
Tom’s expression drooped. “Helen, you were tossing and turning all night, you were having nightmares. Whatever is was you think you heard me say, it wasn’t real. It was from the dream.”
“Bullshit,” she repeated. “You’re sleeping with someone else.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Helen, please don’t start this crap again—”
Helen’s hand raised, as if to emphasize an immediate point. “So you’re trying to tell me it was the hospital that paged you just now?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit,” she said yet again. It was becoming an important word in her index of lexicon. “The hospital prefix is 266, the prefix on your pager is 224.”
The span of time with which Tom paused at this statement was impossible to calculate. But any pause, even a fraction of a second, was all this aspect of Helen Closs’ psyche needed to be convinced.
“Just get out,” she said
“Helen, it was the annex—”
“Bullshit, bullshit!”
“—where the supply contractor drops off their deliveries!”
Her face, in an instant, turned red. “Get out of my apartment! You’re a lying son of a bitch!”
Tom brushed by her, snatched up his pager, and went to the bedroom. Snippets of self-muttering could be heard: “—you’re absolutely ridiculous—” “—can’t hack this anymore—” “—don’t need the headache—”
Helen tremored from her stance in the kitchen. “If I give you a headache, then take a goddamn aspirin and get the hell out!”
“Don’t worry, I’m going,” his voice griped back from the bedroom.
“No wonder you never want to fuck me!” she bellowed. “You’re too busy fucking some other woman!”
The apartment door slammed so hard the walls shook.
Helen remained where she stood for a full ten minutes. The more she tried to let herself cool down, the hotter she felt. Like meat on a turning spit. Like a sucker goose cooking. Paralyzed—that’s how she felt. Her fists clenched and her teeth grinding. Her temples throbbing till she thought her head might burst.
««—»»
“I— I need to talk.”
“All right.” Dr. Sallee’s voice sounded taut and nasally over the phone. Helen could never put the man’s face to that voice. “You missed your appointment, by the way. Did you get my message?”
“Yes, I did. I’m—I’m sorry I missed it. I was working nighters and when I work nighters I sometimes lose track of—”
“Fine, I understand. But what seems to be the problem now, Helen?”
Tom, the name surfaced. An obtuse thought, strangely alien and surreal. The name sounded the same way something odd and unfamiliar might taste on her tongue.
“Is it Tom?”
“Yes,” Helen said. “I think he’s cheating on me.”
“Helen, you’ve always suspected that every man you’ve ever been involved with has been cheating on you. It’s becoming a paranoic compulsion.”
I know. But this is different. It was always different, though, wasn’t it?
“I caught him this time. Well, I mean, I think I did. The phone number on the pager, the city prefix, the—”
“Helen, I’m not following you, you’re talking too fast. I’m with a patient right now, but I want you to come and see me tomorrow, okay?”
“Yes, yes,” she blurted.
“The usual time, okay?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget.”
“I— I won’t.”
She hung up. She felt absurd, standing there with tears dried on her cheeks, her head pounding. I’m out of control, she suspected.
She dialed the info number at the hospital, a 266 prefix. “My name is Helen Closs, I’m a Captain with the Wisconsin State Police.”
“Yes, ma’am? How can I help you?”
“Are there any 224 phone prefixes for the hospital?”
The question seemed to take the receptionist aback. “No ma’am. All hospital prefixes are 266.”
“Including the annex?”
“The…what?”
“The annex,” Helen repeated. Her temples throbbed.
Time ticked as the question was weighed. “I’m sorry, Captain Closs. There’s no annex on my directory index.”
Helen hung up again. All she could see in her mind were the most lewd images: Tom with another woman, Tom making love to another woman…
««—»»
Work was her only salvation, the only thing to turn her mind away from her calamities, or so she thought. She walked into HQ in a daze, a shroud of fuzz draped about her head. It was probably a mistake coming here—she hadn’t had a real case in weeks. She wasn’t even scheduled to work today. But she needed…something…to put her in a safer mode.
She prowled the lower level, passed Fleet Maintenance, the property vault, Requisitions. Halfway down the main hall toward the locker rooms, she heard:
“Yeah, man, fucking two-pack shaker.”
“No, no, man, it’s Tu Pac Shah-kur.”
Excitedly: “And they shot the son of a bitch five times, and he didn’t die!”
The name, in a moment, rang a bell to Helen. Some famous rap star had been shot by muggers in New York a few nights ago. It was the first bit of news that seemed to ebb the Dahmer tide in the press. Helen only half-listened as two unseen cops continued their rant.
“The piece of shit. Shoots those two off-duty cops in Atlanta, and got charges dropped, for Christ’s sake. Goddamn judges. Bet the judge was black.”
“You can count on that. What kinda muggers they got in New York anyway? Shoot a guy five times and he walks out of the hospital the next day.”
“Yeah, but I read one of the bullets hit his cock.”
“Good. It’s too bad they didn’t kill that bald-headed, ball-cap-wearin’, white-woman-rapin’, cop-shootin’ piece of shit street nig—”
Helen snapped, stuck her head in the locker room where these two cops were trading their banter. She remembered the two cops the other day, telling Dahmer jokes, but this was worse. It was all she needed to forget about Tom. Anything would do, and here it was. “Hey,” she said, “keep talking if you want to spend the rest of your career working the motor pool.” Helen glowered. “What were you going to say, Officer. Nigger? Is that the word you were going to use?”
“Who the hell are you?” the first cop didn’t balk. He was fat, bending over to tie his black shoes.
But already his partner was paling. “Vince, shut up. She’s a fucking VCU captain—er, pardon my language, ma’am.”
“You’re right, Sergeant, I’m a fucking VCU captain, and I get really pissed when I hear cops acting like moron racists and making us all look like a bunch of fucking police-state supremacist assholes. I want a written apology on my desk tomorrow morning, from both of you. Otherwise you’re both out of here faster than shit through a city pigeon, and go ahead and see how far you get fighting it. And see what kind of duty assignments you get when I make deputy chief next year. I’ll have your asses staking out the public latrines in Brook Park from now until the day you retire.”
Silence fell like a guillotine. Helen walked out. She didn’t know Tu Pac Shaker from a six-pack of Bud, and she didn’t care. Racial slurs out of the mouths of cops were a pet peeve, and stepping on said cops’ tails gave her a distant satisfaction.
Back up on the first floor, she meandered past reception and the DC wing. I’ll have an office here someday, she recited t
o herself. It went without saying that she’d make deputy chief within a year or two. But the realization, now, left her unimpressed. I don’t care anymore, came the next realization.
“Hi, Helen.”
She turned the corner into the automat, spotted Olsher’s bulk form retrieving a cup of coffee from the Macke machine.
“Good morning,” she dryly replied.
“Say, aren’t you off today?”
Helen sighed. “Yeah. But I got some paperwork to do so I figured I come in.”
“That’s what I call dedication,” Olsher joked. “You couldn’t get me in here on a day off if you had a riot gun to my head. Say, how’s Tom?”
The cursory question nicked her like a scalpel. What could she say? Tom? Oh, he’s just fine. This morning I caught him on the phone with his girlfriend. Instead, she lied. “He’s fine.”
“Tell him I said hi, will ya?”
“Sure.”
Olsher paused, wincing as he sipped the gruel that passed for coffee here. “Say, you feeling any vibes today?”
Vibes. Police jargon. The odd notion that something bad was going to break. But something bad already had broken today, hadn’t it? “No,” she said nebulously, “not really.”
Olsher’s face twitched momentarily. “I don’t know, I just got a funny feeling. We haven’t even had a shooting for two weeks. I don’t like it.”
“Maybe it’s just that the world’s getting better.”
Olsher blurted a laugh. “You think so?”
“Not for a second.”
“Thank God. You were starting to sound like an optimist.”
“There’s no such thing in a police department, is there?”
“That’s my girl,” Olsher laughed. “Later.”
Olsher left. Helen got herself a cup of coffee, took one sip, then dropped it in the wastecan. Someone had left a copy of that morning’s Tribune on the microwave table. DAHMER’S BODY TO BE CREMATED THIS WEEK, a headline read. LEGAL DISPUTE OVER ASHES. Helen plunked the paper into the wastecan too, right after the coffee.
Back in her office, her desk lay clean. There was no paperwork. Boredom and stifled rage made her feel like a fat sandbag plopped in the chair. What am I doing here? she wondered. Get a life, Helen. You catch your asshole boyfriend cheating on you, and you act like it’s the end of the world. She dreaded going to Dr. Sallee’s tomorrow; she already knew what he would say. He’ll make me feel like a fool, which is probably what I am…
The office became a compressed pit in minutes. Printer clatter, ringing phones, and voices from the main hall sounded a world away. Why had she come to work today? To distract herself? That’s what she’d originally thought, but it was folly and she knew it. It didn’t matter where she fled to—her office, her apartment, the zoo—her blow-up with Tom would cook in her head like stew wherever she went.
Vibes, she thought next. Olsher was right; cops got fidgety when too many days passed without incident. But Helen didn’t believe in vibes, she only acknowledged why one might.
Then the phone rang.
“Captain Closs?”
“Yes?”
“This is Central Commo. Thank God you’re in your office. We’ve been paging you for an hour.”
“I—” Helen faltered, reached into her purse. Her pager wasn’t there. Goddamn it! “I—I’m sorry,” she bumbled. “I forgot to bring it.”
The female dispatcher made no comment. A captain forgetting her pager could be likened to a beat cop forgetting his service revolver.
All at once, though, Helen felt the invisible hairs all over her body suddenly rise, and she remembered again what Olsher had said in the automat.
Vibes.
“Captain Closs, we have a positive Signal 64…”
««—»»
The bright sunlight and clean, brisk air didn’t mesh with murder sites. Nor did Christmas decor. Streetlights, store signs, shop windows were all emblazoned with tinsel, ornaments, and spray-can frost. Helen drove the Taurus through the last trickle of rush hour, to P Street Circle. Central Commo had directed her to a side-street motel called The White Horse Inn. A call to P Street and vicinity was rare; the gay section of town had always existed close to crime-free—hence, Helen knew nothing about it because she never needed to come here.
The odd off-blue van was the first thing to greet her when she pulled up. STATE POLICE TECHNICAL SERVICES DIVISION. Beck’s here. She always beats me to the scene. An additional crime truck from the city sat parked, its crew smirking within. Obviously Beck had ordered them off once she’d assessed the 64. Two Metro cop cars closed off the north end of the street, uniforms rerouting traffic. Those guys should be securing the scene, Helen simmered. She couldn’t help but notice state cops, not Metro, cordoning off the motel entrance. Beck better have a good excuse, Helen avowed. State authorities could only order off local law enforcement if there was clear evidence of a Violent Crimes Inquest, and Beck had a tendency to over-interpret the criteria. I’m going to kick her butt if this doesn’t wash. But then she retraced the thought, as Dr. Sallee had taught her. Why are you feeling hostile toward Beck? Answer: Because Beck and Tom are friends, and because of that, you think you’re going to go in there and take it out on her. She counted to ten, took several deep breaths, then let the hostility go. It’s not Beck’s fault that Tom’s cheating on me.
Refurbished rowhouses lay inset along the street like an arrangement of tight gravestones. Helen ID’d herself to a stone-faced state uniform guarding the entry. WHITE HORSE INN a wooden scroll sign read. Then: VACANCY. You can say that again, Helen thought. She stalked up quiet, carpeted stairs. From outside, the place looked like a typical city fleabag motel, but inside she found nice decor, a quaint, Colonial feel. A lot of antiques, dark paneling, ornately framed portraits of Madison County governors from the 1800s. Another uniform let her into the unit.
The room was cozy, uncluttered. A suite, with a sitting room. Flashes popped beyond the connecting entry. A tech was fuming doorknobs, squinting over a Sirchie portable UV. He said nothing as Helen proceeded into the bedroom.
“Hello, Captain.”
“Jan.” Helen hitched at a momentary shiver. Beck stood as if in wait, dressed in her typical red utilities, acetate gloves, and elastic booties. She was even wearing a hairnet, as were the other techs in the room.
“You’re not going to make me suit up, are you?”
“No, not necessary. We’re pretty much finished in here.”
In here. Helen felt it at once—the room had “the feel.” Any bad 64 had it, the mystic backwash of atmosphere projected into the investigator’s perceptions. Its tightness rose in Helen’s gut; she felt more static on her skin, even beneath the heavy Burberry coat. Yes, she knew even before she saw it. The feel was all over the place.
“White male, 28,”” Beck announced. “Stewart Arlinger.”
“He had his ID on him?” Helen asked.
“Yep, and he signed in at the front desk.”
Helen paused for a quick scan. Another tech in red overalls was shooting the bedroom with a modified Nikon F. The flash snapped like lightning and left ghosts in Helen’s eyes. New blood swam in the air, and a strange kitchen-like redolence. Death in here, the feel itched in Helen’s head. Come on in, take a look around.
Helen stepped fully into the room, looked down and blinked. “Aw, Christ,” she croaked.
She felt nailed to the wall. The blood shouted at her, bellowed into her face. It was everywhere. Helen blinked fiercely with each pop off the tech’s flash, and the image seemed to lurch closer. This was more than murder, it was a fete. She needed only to see it for a moment—the sprawled, naked body on the bed—to know that the crime warranted a VCU hold. She dare not even look directly at the corpse—the corners of her vision were more than sufficient. Another blink, then, and another image: a long, ugly groove across the abdomen. Things glimmered in the groove. Chunks seemed to have been scalloped out of one arm…
Helen swallowed hard. �
��Any prints?”
“Plenty, for all the good they’ll do.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a gay motel. There are two different guys in this room every night. We’ve got some hair and fiber on the contact perimeter, though. But no prints in the blood.”
Great, Helen complained.
“We’ll know more once we get him into the shop.”
“What about…semen?”
“Don’t know yet, Captain. There was no robbery motive, though, I can tell you that.”
“Wallet left? Money?”
Yep. Couple hundred in cash, credit cards, some butyl nitrate caps, plus a nice watch.”
“What time did he check in?”
“Three-fifteen or so, according to the log. And at least you’ll have some things to run down. The desk clerk knew the guy, didn’t see the perp come in with him, but he did tell us that Arlinger worked bar at a tavern called P Street Station, just down from the Circle.”
Helen nodded. Legwork was how most homicides were solved, and there’d be plenty of legwork here. She struggled to keep her eyes averted as more preliminary questions ticked. “The clerk saw Arlinger come in but not the perp. So they didn’t come in together. Why?”
“Maybe the meeting was prearranged and Arlinger got here first.”
“Okay. But then how did the perp get in without the clerk seeing him?”
Beck’s shoulder rose as if the question were of little importance. “Side door maybe. Maybe he waited till the clerk got up to go to the bathroom. Could be any number of ways. I would imagine gays are just like straights when it comes to motel romance. The perp probably asked Arlinger to let him in through the back door at a certain time, didn’t want the clerk to see him because maybe he knew the clerk, or knew that the clerk knew friends of his, a steady lover perhaps.”
Helen nodded again. She felt dizzy and sick. In her mind all she could imagine was what went on in here last night. Red hands reaching out, cutting.
“The victims isn’t bound, isn’t gagged.”
“Bindings and a gag could’ve been removed after the fact, but I see what you’re driving at, Captain,” Beck acknowledged. The woman seemed antsy, though, where as she generally walked through these things cool as a cucumber. “How is it that Arlinger just lay there while the perp was cutting on him? How come nobody heard any screams?”