by Steven James
Ralph eyed me curiously. “And that is?”
“Because they believe it will make them happy.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Everything they do?”
“Yes. Just like us.”
“Come on, Patrick.” Corsica sounded like she was mimicking a schoolteacher reprimanding a child. “Even you don’t believe that everything everyone does is just because they’re trying to be happy. You’re just trying to be provocative and this isn’t the time or place for those kinds of games.”
Alrighty, then.
We could do this.
I took a breath and picked up the gauntlet that’d been tossed at my feet.
13
“Annise, no one ever chooses to do something that he thinks will make him miserable. Whether it’s drugs, murder, workaholism, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter-even suicide-people act in ways they believe will bring relief, pleasure, or satisfaction. It all boils down to the desire for happiness. Happiness is the end to which we all aspire.” I wasn’t the first one to point this out; philosophers have noted it for centuries. For some reason, law enforcement has been slow to pick up on it.
But now I could tell it wasn’t just Corsica. Ellen remained skeptical as well: “But people punish themselves all the time, Patrick. Mentally, emotionally, psychologically, physically. You’re saying that they’re doing it because they believe mental illness or social isolation makes them happy?”
“No. But why do people torture themselves emotionally?”
“Because of guilt or shame or low self-esteem,” she answered, “or any number of reasons.”
“But what is the goal? People don’t dwell on their guilt or shame, beat themselves up emotionally, or isolate themselves socially in the hopes that they’ll feel worse, but because they hope it’ll eventually make them feel better-maybe about their penance, or as a way to quantify their guilt, or to quiet their consciences or to distract themselves or rationalize away their pain, or, as you just said, for any number of reasons. But ultimately, they want to be happy.”
Ralph seemed to be right with me. “And you’re saying it’s the same for the guy who killed these women?”
“Yes. Criminals aren’t essentially different from other people. They might commit crimes we can’t imagine ourselves doing, but all of us are capable of the unthinkable, given the right circumstances, mental state, and precipitators.”
A nod. He agreed. The nineties have been a violent decade. Milwaukee had 127 homicides last year, and I’d worked 29 of them, but considering how many cases the NCAVC assists with each year, I guessed that Ralph might’ve already been involved in more homicide investigations than I would be in my entire career.
“So,” he said, “the secret to finding this psycho-if it’s even the same guy in all three cases-is to find out what he thinks will make him happy.”
“If we knew that,” I admitted, “it would be helpful. Yes.”
“Motive.” Corsica looked triumphant.
I was ready to reply when Radar interjected, “But at this point that’s not possible to determine.”
“Once again,” I reiterated, “I think that right now we should focus on what happened rather than spend time speculating on why it did.”
It looked like everyone except Detective Corsica was satisfied, ready to move on.
Ralph aimed the tip of his pen at me, signaling that I was up. “I understand you and Radar spoke with Colleen Hayes this morning. What do we know?”
“The offender is Caucasian, large frame, approximately six feet tall. Brown eyes, unless he was wearing colored contact lenses. He only said four words when I spoke with him last night on Vincent’s portable phone and I didn’t note any distinctive accent. Colleen doesn’t think she could recognize his voice again. I’m not sure I could either. She knew of only one offender, and he took her someplace near or just past the breweries and then to the pier where she was left. The car he used has a trunk. The space he took her to was cold, like an unheated garage or cellar.”
In my mind I was following the possible travel routes a person might drive from the Hayes residence to the valley where the breweries are. “Based on the nature and sophistication of the crime, it’s probable that the offender has a history of violence. He might already be in the system.”
“Prints?” Ellen asked.
Thorne shook his head. “No incriminating ones. Not on the cuffs, not at the house. Nothing.”
Detective Corsica turned to me. “You sent out a call last night that the suspect had gotten away when you actually had him in custody.”
“Based on the information we had at the time, we thought a woman’s life might be in imminent danger.”
“Based on the information you had at the time.” Her tone was condescending and I was getting tired of dealing with Detective Corsica’s attitude.
“It seemed prudent to let officers search the neighborhood for a few minutes if it meant buying some time to protect Colleen Hayes. I made a judgment call.”
“So,” she said, “you initiated a waste of time and resources and-”
“With all due respect, Annise, I don’t consider anything done in the line of protecting innocent life to be a-”
“What you did was-”
Thorne raised a hand, a stop sign to cut us off. “Alright, alright, you two. Easy.”
Annise’s eyes seared the air between us. I let her glower.
One more thing needed to be said. “There are still enough questions here that I think Vincent needs to remain a person of interest in this case.”
“Agreed,” Ralph acknowledged, then turned to Thorne. “But don’t release that to the press. If he’s innocent, the last thing we need is having them run him through their meat grinder.”
Considering the cannibalistic behavior related to these crimes, Ralph hadn’t perhaps chosen the best phrase there, but I figured it was a slip of the tongue. It didn’t sound like he was a fan of the press. I wasn’t one either and I agreed unreservedly with his suggestion.
We spoke for a few more minutes about which direction to take the investigation and then Thorne said, “So where does all this leave us?”
Ralph spoke up. “I’ll bring Pat up to speed on the other cases from Illinois and Ohio. Beyond the obvious connection to Dahmer and dismemberment, we can try to see if we can identify any other ties to what happened last night.”
Yes, the comparative case analysis I was thinking of earlier.
Thorne slid the papers on his desk into a single stack, straightened it punctiliously. “I assigned Thompson, Holdren, and Lyrie to this. I’ll brief ’em on what we talked about here. They can start following up on the tip list-last I heard we’ve already had seventy-two names called in, plus four confessions. You know how these false confessions go, but we’ll check ’em out. And we’ll scan the DMV records for names of sedan-owning large-framed male Caucasians with brown eyes.”
“I’ll look at names of felons living in the area,” Radar offered, “see what I can come up with for people with past convictions of assault, or, well, a history of maiming others. Amputating their limbs.”
I had a feeling that last criterion would make it a short list. At least I hoped it would.
Detective Corsica motioned toward Ellen. “We can review open kidnapping and missing persons cases in the Midwest. Look for any connections. The FBI will have a lot more on those than we do here.” Ellen nodded.
Ralph stood. “Good, let’s see what we can get done on this thing, meet up again after lunch, say one thirty, unless any solid leads come in before then.”
If we met again at one thirty, it might not give me the chance to catch Dr. Werjonic’s three o’clock lecture and I began to prepare myself for the eventuality that I wouldn’t make it today.
As important as my grad classes were, from the start I’d put my work here at the force first. Most of my professors were more than happy to provide me with printed copies of their lecture note
s if I missed class. I hoped Dr. Werjonic wouldn’t mind doing so as well.
The rest of the team went their separate ways while Ralph joined me at my desk to talk through the files he’d brought with him concerning the two unsolved homicides.
And as he outlined the cases, the uncomfortable thought scratched around in my head that a cannibal in the vein of Dahmer might be visiting, or possibly be operating out of, my city.
14
The training took place in the barn on the edge of their property at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
The lessons started when Joshua was eight years old. At the time, some of the things his father told him and did in front of him and taught him were frightening.
At the time.
And sometimes still.
He didn’t know how old the barn was, but it’d looked old ever since they first moved to the property when he was five. That much he knew.
The rusted metal roof had probably been painted red at one time, but to him it looked like it might have been covered in dried blood. The tall wooden slats that made up the sides of the barn had mostly been bleached by the sun. The paint that was left was cracked and peeling or flaking away.
His father had been careful to keep the doors working, though their natural tendency was to tilt awkwardly and groan from their huge rusted hinges. Sometimes Joshua had helped with the important job of oiling them.
“Everything dies, Joshua,” his father told him one day. They were walking through the field that ran alongside the barn. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. Everything dies.”
“It’s the way of the world, the way things have been since the beginning. Trees, grass, animals, people. Even rivers can die. And mountains. Did you know that?”
Joshua stared long and hard at the mountains rising wild and rugged against the horizon. Of all the things he would have ever guessed could die, he never would have thought of mountains.
“Can mountains really die?”
“Yes.”
“But how?”
“Sometimes they’re killed by wind and rain, sometimes by people, sometimes by God.”
“God kills mountains?”
Despite the recent oiling, the barn door gave a weary creak as his father leaned against it. “Over time he does. He wears them out with the years. He destroyed some and formed others in the Great Flood.”
As the door opened, Joshua smelled the familiar scent of old hay and dried manure and a hint of leather from the saddles hanging on the boards near the horse stalls. The barn was mostly quiet, except for the tiny scuffling of mice beneath the hay. The air tasted dusty and dry.
“God kills mountains and rivers, animals and people,” his father went on. “Even planets. In the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy, God says, ‘I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.’ Everything dies in the end, son, and since God is in control of life and death, he could stop it, but he doesn’t. This universe started in the dark and it will end in the dark and until then, we breathe, we live, we do our best to love each other. We try to cherish what we can.”
Joshua had never heard his father speak like this and it felt like he was becoming a part of something very special, a part of his father’s grown-up world, almost as if he was being let in on a great secret, and he found it thrilling to know such big and hidden things.
His father led him toward the far side of the barn and Joshua thought he might have heard another sound in addition to the mice, but he wasn’t sure. He was old enough to know that barns, even when they’re empty, always seem to whisper, as if the animals that have lived and died inside them have never left. Animal ghosts, he thought to himself, that never sleep.
Sunlight crept through the narrow cracks between the boards on the sides of the barn. Shafts of light, cutting through the darkness. The streaks of sunlight were filled with dust motes and wandering flecks of hay disturbed by their movement as the two of them passed through the barn.
“Even the sun?” Joshua asked.
“The sun?”
“Will God kill the sun?”
“Yes. Someday far in the future. Even the sun. There will only be darkness at the end of all things.”
Joshua thought about that. “But what matters then? I mean, if everything just dies? What we build or make or learn, if it’s all just gone?”
His father didn’t answer right away. “This moment matters.”
“And I guess it’s okay, though, if we go to heaven, right? To be with Mom?”
His father didn’t reply and Joshua took it as some sort of rebuke, that mentioning his mom or heaven was somehow something bad and he did not bring them up again.
He stood beside his father, half in the sunlight that would one day die, half in the shadows that would not.
“Son,” his father said, “I’ve never shown you the place beneath the barn. The cellar. You can keep a secret, can’t you?”
Another secret.
“Yes, sir.”
His father paced across the stale, dry hay. Tiny slivers of straw dusted up in small clouds around his feet as he walked.
Joshua followed him to the corner of the barn.
It lay mostly in shadows. Joshua watched as his father swept his boot across the straw and, instead of simply hearing the crinkle of it brushing aside, he also heard the rough clatter of a wooden plank.
And then he heard something else. A muffled sound, somewhere beneath the boards.
“This is a very special place, Joshua. No one knows it’s here.”
Joshua wondered if his mother had known about it before she died three years ago. Wondered, but said nothing.
“But,” his father went on, “I want you to know about it. You’re the only one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re big enough to keep a secret?”
“Yes, sir.”
Joshua’s father brushed some more of the straw away, revealing a wooden trapdoor about three feet wide and three feet long. He uncovered a latch that had been padlocked shut, then removed a key from his pocket and slipped it into the lock. “I’m bringing you here because it’s time you learned about the special things. You’re old enough now.” His father clicked open the lock and set it aside. “Aren’t you, Son?”
He looked at Joshua expectantly.
“Yes, sir.”
His father slid the last bits of straw aside, revealing a large metal ring attached to one of the boards. Then he grasped it firmly, yanked open the trapdoor, and stepped to the side.
A black square gaped open in the ground before Joshua. Wooden steps descended and then disappeared into the cool darkness.
The sounds Joshua heard were coming from somewhere far below. They were louder now. At first Joshua thought they might be coming from some kind of hurt animal. He took a step back. “What’s down there, Daddy?”
“I’m going to show you. This is where we’re going to have the lessons.”
“Is it an animal?”
“Death is natural,” he replied, and Joshua knew that was not an answer, but he said nothing. “You understand this, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everything dies.”
“Yes, sir. Everything dies.”
“We have to kill to stay alive, Joshua. That’s the way it is in the world. We kill cows and pigs and chickens to have meat, we kill plants to have fruits and vegetables. Just to stay alive. The life of one being depends on the death of another. This is natural. This is the way of the world.”
Joshua had never thought of it like that before. It seemed to make sense, but it also made him feel sad, almost guilty, as if he’d done something wrong just by being alive. Killing so many things.
His father drew a heavy flashlight out of his jacket pocket, clicked it on, and directed it into the darkness. “In the Bible God says, ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an a
tonement for the soul.’”
Joshua didn’t quite know what that meant, but it sounded important-it had to be important or else his father never would have mentioned it, or else it wouldn’t be in the Bible. He didn’t want to sound dumb, so he stayed quiet, acted like he knew what his father was talking about.
Atonement for the soul.
The blood.
They started down the steps.
His father held out his free hand to Joshua. The dark air of the barn seemed to wrap around them, surrounding them like a quiet blanket. And those shadows, that eternal darkness that would last as long as God, held Joshua for a moment. Then he took his father’s hand as he walked beside him to the cellar.
The sounds continued.
Joshua was starting to get scared.
They reached the floor of the secret place.
Dirt. Packed down and trampled. In different places there were dark splotches on the ground. Wooden beams were propped against the walls to support the earth, kind of like in the mines his father had taken him to once in the mountains west of Denver, not far from their home.
From behind them, sunlight slid down the steps and filtered through the air, but the darkness didn’t seem to want to let any of it into the cellar itself.
Only after his father directed the flashlight beam across the cellar did Joshua see the man. He was standing with his back against the support beams about fifteen feet away. Some kind of metal chains had been attached to the wood and the man’s wrists and ankles were locked in the chains. There was something in his mouth to keep him from making too much noise. He was fat and extra folds of skin rolled out from beneath his shirt.
“Who is he?” Joshua’s voice caught.
“His name is Kenneth.” His father drew a long hunting knife out of a sheaf on his belt, then held the knife’s handle toward Joshua. “Take the knife, son.”
But he didn’t take it.