by Josh Thomas
“You’re special, all right. You haven’t got an ounce of self-esteem, you know you’re scum.”
“Those guys I killed? They were gullible, man. They’re lucky I got to ’em first. They were accidents waiting to happen. Suppose it had been Roger who got ’em, huh? At least I strangle them after they’re unconscious; no pain that way. If Roger found ’em, he’d have stabbed ’em and made them bleed to death. My guys don’t feel any pain. If you were going to be murdered, wouldn’t you rather be strangled, after you got high on some quality reefer? Or would you rather be shot, or stabbed to death, or run over by a truck? They don’t suffer. They’re faggots living in misery, lonely, poor, addicted half of ’em, rejected by their families. I just put them out of their pain. They’re so beautiful when they die; lying there, their faces completely peaceful as I send them to the other side. Like they knew I’d make love to them as I send them away. And they never complain; they never say it hurts, stop, don’t do that, I don’t like that. And nobody knows, nobody finds out a fucking thing. It’s priceless, man, I love it. Killing a man is the most exquisite joy you’ve ever seen—until you’ve killed twelve of ’em. I can do anything. I’m like God!”
After that bravura performance, Jamie looked back at the campsite where Mr. Ferguson’s remains were recovered; and silently promised the man he’d do his best.
He sat back down on the picnic table and apologized to the police officer. “No problem, that was great. Puke-worthy, but eye-opening.”
“The rationalizations, like he’s doing them a favor. The twisted logic. His intimate familiarity with the victims’ psychic pain. But most victims had family and friends who were concerned about them. So who is living in misery, lonely and rejected? Who’s rehearsing his own death, committing suicide by cop?”
“The killer with a diseased mind. And I get to find him.”
“Is it possible to induce the manic phase? Better yet, what phase is he in right now?”
“He just killed somebody. He’s still manic?”
“So now’s the time to nail him.”
“Deal! You’re great at this, Jamie. You’d be an asset to any department.”
“Every resource I have is at your disposal. Please catch this guy, whether Ford or someone else. You can do it.”
Kessler clasped Jamie’s shoulder. “Thanks. Let’s go. We’d better head to Jasper County.”
“Is there a real task force now? Are you the head of it?”
“Yup, with the title of Commander, by order of Major Slaughter. Anything else you know about Ford?”
They walked. “Just odd details. He’s foul-mouthed. There was a definite schizoid quality that first time.”
“What do you mean, schizoid?”
“Zig-zag conversation. Jumping back and forth from topic to topic: Schmidgall, Crum, the strangulations, my coverage, IU vs. Purdue basketball—he’s for the Chair Thrower, naturally—homophobic cops, Schmidgall, homophobic media, Schmidgall, how he’d watch the Jerry Lewis Telethon and get all teary, or the little Christmas cartoons every year; what a good job I was doing, and on the other hand I got it all wrong, Schmidgall had nothing to do with it. And he was very careful with his syntax.”
“Break that down for me.”
“Sorry, his choice of words. He’d be cautious, very polite, but at other times his speech was pressured, out of control. Manic. Foul-mouthed. Inconsistent. He’s inadequate, frustrated, angry. The other thing I’ve been told is that he hangs out at a certain Gay bar in Indianapolis, one that passes for a leather bar.”
“A leather bar? Motorcycle gangs? Gay Hell’s Angels?”
Jamie smiled. “Not exactly; more like opera-queen toughguys.” He had to ponder how to explain this one. “You’ve heard of sadomasochism?”
“People who like to get beat up?” Kessler curled his upper lip.
“Sort of. It’s a lot more complicated. In the Gay community it’s very ritualized, very safe. Not that there aren’t a few crazies out there like Tommy Ford; but over time Gay men—a few women too—have created a subculture around dominance and submission, developed a set of rules for it. The theme is universal, where people fit in the pecking order. It doesn’t mean the frightening things you think. It’s consensual and safe.”
“If you say so. That’s one more of these things I’m gonna learn about. But I’ll tell you, it—well, it sure sounds perverted to me.”
“You’re certainly allowed to feel that way. You don’t have to like Gay people, you just have to realize we’re human. You’re doing a great job with your questions.”
“So what’s the name of this place where Ford hangs out, they wear leather and,” Kessler chuckled, “safely beat each other up?”
Jamie smiled, “Chez Nous.”
“Will you take me there?”
“Sure, if you want to go.”
Kessler looked far away to a darkened high-rise. “If that’s where my suspect is, that’s where I go. What will I find there?”
“Guys who are looking for sex and will step into any stranger’s car to do it.”
“Gosh, that’s dangerous.”
“How does the killer gain control of the victims? A positive inducement. If he uses animal tranqs, he’s not overpowering them with violence, there are no signs of a struggle. He uses a passive double-cross.”
“He can’t pick ’em up on his own?”
“He can’t even fuck ’em till they’re passed out. He snaps their neck at the moment of orgasm.”
They both endured a wave of nausea. “Let’s shove off for Jasper County. I want to see the sheriff ’s pictures.”
They neared the squad car. Jamie, definitely cold now from the wind and the conversation, used his fastest New York walk, but Kessler said, “Wait.”
Jamie stopped, turned around, squinted at the officer. The wind was-n’t doing Jamie’s contacts any good.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Kessler said, stopping a foot from him. Jamie could smell Right Guard. Big hands grasped his shoulders.
“What is it?”
“How do you… I mean, why?”
Jamie looked at the trooper blankly. “Why what?”
Kessler stared, incredulous. He twisted away like a Brooklyn Italian, then back, his chin three inches from Jamie’s nose. “Why do you do this?”
Jamie searched his files for the right answer, but all he came up with was, “Do what?”
Kessler let go, kicked a rock, made a fist and frowned, got back in Jamie’s face,grabbed his shoulders again. “You little jerk,I get paid to be a target. I got a badge, I got a gun, I got a whole team of people behind me if I get in trouble. What have you got? You ain’t got squat!”
Jamie looked right and left, trying to figure out the answer to an unknown question.
“Why?” Kessler shook him fiercely, Jamie’s neck in a little whiplash.
He got scared. This cop was turning violent and there was no one else around. His heart started to pound. He searched the trooper’s face.
Then the eyes told him—oh, that why. An old, quiet feeling replaced his fear. The man seemed to be caring about him.
Jamie’s face softened. He stepped away, his mouth opened, his hands moved to help him talk. “Kent, it’s because…” It felt good to say the man’s name,but he shook that off and began again.“It’s because of people fired from their jobs, bashers beating us to death with two-by-fours; 380,000 dead of AIDS while Reagan and Bush let us die so they could get the radical right off their backs. Now we’ve got this Yalie yahoo from Arkansas, who only talks a good game.
“It’s because of Karen Thompson, who had her lover stolen from her by the courts after the lover was almost killed by a drunk driver; two women in Pennsylvania on a camping trip and some guy shot one of them to death because they’re Lesbians. It’s because of all those scrub-faced Gay folks in the military with perfect records, getting their lives ruined because of their thoughts, their feelings, they don’t even have to do anything. It’s
because of Olympic Park bombers who target our bars, emergency personnel and abortion clinics, killing offduty police officers. Turn on the TV, read the papers!”
“But you could be in danger.”
How to tell this ignoramus? “Kent, it’s because of Gay kids like me, who grow up in places like this—Nowhere, Indiana in Nowhere, USA—with no one their whole lives long to value them for just one minute for who they really are. Getting called queer in Little League before they even know what the word means.”
Kent looked befuddled.
Jamie tried this. “If you see a car wreck, you’re obligated to try to help the people, right?”
“Morally, yes. Not legally, but morally, darn right. No matter who you are, Jamie. Call 911.”
Jamie’s hands spread out, palms up. “That’s the only reason, Kent. Gay life can be a car wreck waiting to happen. Anti-Gay hatred kills people, worldwide, and it has for centuries—as everyone knows, but won’t admit. But nowadays some of us fight back, try to put an end to all this needless destruction. We’re stopping at the car wreck and trying to help.”
Kent heard all this for the first time in his life.
Jamie glanced away a second, struggling to articulate a volcano of emotions. “This killer isn’t just a wreck, he’s a multicar pileup, only he gets to drive away—and he’s still out on that highway, waiting to take out someone else. It’s my job to follow him. I know what others don’t, that he’s a killer. I have a moral obligation.”
“But what if he targets you?”
“Man, I don’t want to do this; I just don’t have a choice about it. I’m supposed to stop following a story because it’s inconvenient?”
Jamie stepped away for a final glare at the woodpile where Glenn Archer Ferguson, a young man with a lover and the world laid out before him, had been strangled, dumped and left to rot.
It filled Jamie with rage. There is no why, ultimately, only people to care about.
Still Kent looked at him. “It’s more than inconvenient. It’s dangerous. And you do have a choice now, Jamie. I’m on it. You always had a choice maybe.”
Jamie looked at the cop with the dark curly hair. All he could see was Riley Jones with dark curly hair, smiling in the photo, handsome with his mustache from the clone days. He disappeared from a club over the Indy 500 weekend, told his friends he’d catch a ride with someone he met there. His friends never saw him again. “Do you know how much trust that takes? ‘Well, Kent’s on it, so don’t worry about it?’ Shit. If ordinary cops could solve it we wouldn’t even be here. Mr. Ferguson would be at home with his lover, arguing over the phone bill.”
“Man, I respect what you’ve done.”
Jamie snorted. “In some abstract way, I suppose there always was a choice. But when I learn about a massive injustice, I tell the world. I wasn’t raised to walk away when someone’s in trouble. Not by my mother, not by my father, not by this town. In a place like this you take care of each other when there’s a crisis. My family was on the receiving end of it one cold December morning. My father totaled his car and his body, driving home in the fog. As soon as people found out, casseroles arrived every five minutes. You don’t think that stays with a ten-year-old at his Grandma’s house?
“It is the one fine thing about growing up in Nowhere, Indiana. The only fine thing—but a fine one indeed. I’m proud as hell to be from this fucking homophobic small-minded little town, where people still care.”
“Will you be my partner on these murders? Help me with them, so we can give these families some peace?”
“Families and friends,” Jamie insisted.
Kent touched Jamie’s shoulder. “Families and friends.”
“Glenn Ferguson had a lover who turned in a missing person report the minute your damn system would accept it. His lover is the first in line when it comes to bereavement. It makes no difference that he’s a man. He is the one you solve it for—not the parents, not the sister; the lover, the one Glenn Ferguson was in love with. Listen to your victim. He’ll tell you who’s important. He’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Right,his lover.Okay,partner? I need you.Will you help me?”When Jamie didn’t answer, Kent gave Jamie’s shoulder another little rub. “I need you.”
So Jamie found himself co-opted again, an hour after he didn’t even want to be friends. He stopped kidding himself. “Sure, Commander. I’m here to help.” He strode off.
“Wait.” Jamie stopped, didn’t turn around, but cocked his head to listen. “It’s Baseball’s fault you can’t be open.”
Jamie turned, looked into warm brown eyes; and threw him a pretend popup. The centerfielder shagged it and tossed it back to his shortstop.
17
Wave
They headed for State Line Road. Jamie was sorry to be leaving, he liked remembering his childhood. He gazed at the scenery dreamy-eyed. Suddenly he said, “Stop the car.”
Kent did. “What is it?”
“See this ditch over here? This stream?”
“Yeah. So what?”
Jamie got out. Kent followed. They walked to the stream. Jamie said, “We think we know that the killer picked Campsite 16, in the water behind the woodpile, deliberately. But look at all these other good spots.” He walked west along the streambank. “See, this flows under the road and into Illinois. The water is running fast. This stream probably meets up with the Kankakee at some point, and then goes into the Illinois River, Peoria and beyond. The Quincy Strangler has a history of dumping his bodies in water, but why go all the way back there?”
Kent thought about it. “If he just wanted to get off the main road, he could have…”
“It would have been just as easy. And the body could have ended up in another state if he worked it right. Illinois is thirty feet away.”
“So?”
“So you’re a serial killer. The more jurisdctions you involve, the less likely the local cops are to connect the murders. It’s called linkage blindness, Steve Helmreich coined the term. This killer’s taken advantage of it repeatedly. He knows cops don’t really share information, that all crime is local, reporting is voluntary. The Illinois cops have never heard of these murders. If you’re the killer, why not cross the road and send the body to Peoria? Why was he even here? Illinois would have been much better.”
“These roads are deserted. Why go into the park, find the woodpile at campsite 16? It’s a good question. But it doesn’t tell us anything yet.”
“We don’t have to know why a killer does what he does, but what it is he did.”
“And the fact is, he was here, he wasn’t in Illinois. Sometimes you get so caught up in why here, not there, that you…”
“Fail to notice what is here?” Jamie finished.
“It happens all the time.” Kent looked at the little guy. A bad feeling started in his gut.
“With all these options, how did he decide? Any one of them’s perfect. If he had a hard time deciding, maybe someone around here saw something. How much talking to the neighbors has been done?”
“Not much yet. Not with any results.”
Jamie watched a cardinal light on a tree, perch and stare at something.He turned back to the car. “Let’s go.Oh,wait a minute.I need pictures of you.”
“Okay. What for?”
Jamie got out his camera, touched his panic button slightly to improve the auto-focus. He got good shots, horizontal and vertical. “I would do this anyway, but you’re good-looking. It’s a Gay newspaper, you figure it out. You want tips, we’re going to use every edge we’ve got. Now off with the hat, please. It makes you look like Smokey the Bear.” He snapped half a roll, then stopped before he fell in love with photography.
“Can I ask you a question? Why do you wear a uniform? Detectives wear suits, not uniforms, it’s part of your higher status.”
Instant raw nerve. Kent was embarrassed, but finally smiled a little. “Ain’t been to the laundromat lately. All my dress shirts are dirty. Everybody at the
post teases me about it. I ain’t much of a housekeeper.”
You’re single, then. “I’m not fond of laundry either.”
Finally avoidance stopped working. Kent leaned over the roof of the car, staring softly. “There is a reason why here, Jamie. Illinois would have been better. He didn’t want Illinois.”
Jamie’s gut turned over; he fiddled with his camera gear, put things back in his bag. “I know,” he admitted, not looking up. “That stupid, dramatic little kicker.”
Kent made State Line Road, put on his signal to head left. “Go right,” Jamie directed.
Kent paused at the park entrance. “Okay, but we’ve gotta get to Rensselaer. This is originally their case. If I’m up here, I should fill them in. The longer I wait, the more likely that Johnson will be called out.”
“All these roads lead to Rensselaer if you know where you’re going. Do we play trooper politics, or do we find a witness? At least talk to someone, so the neighbors know we’re interested. Screw the Rensselaer post, it’s not their case anymore. You’re the Commander. Command them to wipe their own butts.”
Kent smiled, steered the Crown Vic right. Soon the pavement ran out, as Jamie had remembered, and Kent slowed the car to adjust for gravel. They drove a mile or so past nothing. “What are we going to find here?”
“This is Hopkins Park, Illinois, not so much a town as a mindset. There will be a cluster of houses on the left, owned by Black folk for a hundred years. Farmers, most of them; others work in Momence or Kankakee. They’re surrounded by Whites. Very little money, some folks have more than others. They’ve been here as long as we have—Civil War or a little later, refugees from the South. Came up here looking for cheap land the same as we did, so they could raise their crops and feed themselves in the Land of Lincoln. The only thing any of us could afford was this old sloughland. Their culture is a lot like ours—but African-American too, so unique.”