Opening Moves (11 page)

I’d read about that famous philosophical dilemma before: “I think, therefore I am.” But how do you know you’re not just a mind thinking that you’re a person with a body? It’s the quintessential question of how we know we truly exist and I couldn’t think of any good response.

He folded his hands. “I want to hear more about this deal with you and coincidences, but right now, finish up with what you were saying a minute ago. Pastiches. The alley. Dahmer.”

“Right. The timing and nature of the previous homicides to what we have here certainly makes it appear that they’re related.”

“But we studied the case files all morning, didn’t find anything solid. It’s possible they’re not.”

“Correct. So let’s just take the crimes last night for a sec. They go much deeper than just some teenager finding out that alley is next to where Dahmer used to live, and then spray-painting profane graffiti on a wall or leaving a chopped-up mannequin in the alley. We’ve had that before.”

“I can only imagine.”

“No, our guy was all in, playing for keeps: threatening a woman’s life, forcing Vincent to drug and abduct another man, strip him, leave him out there in that specific alley.”

“Not to mention cutting off Colleen’s hands.”

“Not to mention that.”

He paused. “So, we hold back from assuming that the cases are connected, dial in as much as we can on the Dahmer angle, maybe explore any other possible Dahmer pastiches in the past, or things at the first two homicides that we might have missed that could be related to Dahmer’s crimes. Maybe pastiches to other killers.”

“Yes. Locations in particular. When he was a teenager, Dahmer murdered his first victim in Bath Township, Ohio, just over an hour north of where the first body was found down near White Oak. There might be more there that we can look into.”

“Interesting.”

And that’s when our food arrived.

16

Honestly, I was ready for a respite from thinking about cannibals, amputations, and dead bodies—especially now that I had a juicy cheeseburger in front of me. Ralph must have been thinking something along the same line because, as he went at his beef goulash, he asked me about my hobbies, my background, steering our conversation away from the case.

“I grew up not too far from here, in Horicon. I like to rock climb, get out west to Yosemite when I can. I was a wilderness guide for a while in college, got my criminal justice degree: UW–River Falls. Ended up attending the police academy two weeks after I graduated.”

He eyed me. “And you’re what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”

“Twenty-five.”

Mentally, he did the calculations. “Then how are you a homicide detective already? A department as big as Milwaukee’s, it must usually take what, at least six, seven years on the force for that?”

I wasn’t really sure what to say. “I notice things. Thorne noticed that.”

Ralph gazed across the restaurant and gestured toward a man in a gray business suit four tables over, his empty dishes in front of him. “So, Armani over there; what do you notice about him?”

I glanced at him momentarily, then back at Ralph.

“He was expecting a petite woman whom he knows well, and whose company he enjoys, to meet him here more than twenty minutes ago. He’s disappointed that she never showed and is still holding out hope that she will. He ordered the fish and chips and a large Pepsi, drives the black Ford Explorer parked outside, isn’t a very big tipper, and is about to get a parking ticket.”

“What the—?” Ralph stared at me. “How do you know all that?”

“There were two menus on his table when we first came in. Two waters, but no one else ever showed. He ordered her a cup of coffee. He checked his watch four times and finally ordered his meal.”

“So he was expecting someone, okay, but how can you tell that it was a petite woman that he likes?”

I pointed to the main entrance on our left. “Whenever anyone comes in, he looks that way, but the door is backlit from the outside, so from where he’s sitting it’s not possible to see people’s faces when they enter. You’re left with—”

“Ah. Posture and frame.” Ralph caught on. “So, when a group of people or a man, or maybe a tall or large-framed woman enters, you’re saying he doesn’t look as closely at them.”

“But when a shorter, slimmer woman enters—”

“He watches her until she steps away from the door and isn’t backlit,” he concluded.

“Where he can see her face. Yes.” The door opened as we spoke, Armani looked that way as a six-foot-four guy lumbered in. Our man in the suit promptly glanced down at his watch.

“And you just happened to notice this while we were sitting here talking?”

“Yes.”

A pause. I took a bite of my cheeseburger. It really was good.

“But you said he knows her well. What tells you that?”

I swallowed, wiped some ketchup from my chin. “Remember the coffee on the table?”

“Yeah, he ordered it for her. So what?”

“You typically wouldn’t order coffee for someone you’re meeting for the first time and he knew she took cream and added it. You wouldn’t do that unless you’re expecting someone momentarily.”

“Cools it too quickly.”

“From what I hear, yes. And you don’t add cream to a woman’s coffee unless you know her well—it’s a bit of an intimate act. People are pretty protective about their coffee and what they put into it to…calm it. So he has—”

“A close relationship with her and he expected her right away.”

“So it seems.”

“And the Ford Explorer…Let me guess, his keys there next to the newspaper. You saw the vehicle parked out front when we came in. Guessed it was his?”

“Didn’t have to guess. You can tell by the key fob that he’s driving a rental. The Explorer out front has Maine plates and an Enterprise agreement form lying on the passenger seat.”

He blinked. “You saw that when we passed by?”

“Yes. He’s tanned; it’s November in Wisconsin.”

“And in Maine. So he’s not from either state.”

I shrugged. “Can’t tell for sure, but it helps give context.”

“And why’s he about to get a ticket?”

“Parking is strictly enforced in the blocks surrounding police headquarters.”

“Okay, I get that.” We both ate for a moment, then he stopped and lowered his heaping spoonful of goulash. “You said he had fish and chips and a Pepsi. There’s an empty tartar sauce packet on his plate, that’s easy enough. And now that I think about it, the menu lists only Pepsi products and there’s a little dark-colored pop left in his glass, so—”

“Soda.”

“What?”

“We don’t call it pop here; that’s more of a Michigan deal. We call it soda. You should also know we call drinking fountains ‘bubblers.’”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. It’s a Milwaukee thing. And yes, Pepsi is the only dark-colored soda being served today. Nowhere near as good as Cherry Coke.”

“You still haven’t explained how you know he isn’t a big tipper.”

“The cost of that meal, drink, and a coffee plus tax compared to the bills he set on the table. Only an eight percent tip.”

Ralph examined the man’s table once again, this time even more closely. “But there aren’t any bills there.”

“His server already picked them up.”

He looked at me incredulously. “You’re saying she came by before I even asked you to prove that you notice things?”

“Yes.

“And you calculated all that then—the tip, everything?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know any of that would be pertinent to anything?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how—”

I notice things.

I shrugged. “Luck, I guess.”

He opened his mouth as if he were going to reply, then closed it again and chose to go for some beef goulash instead.

Moving past the topic of the guy at the table and following along with our discussion from earlier, I asked Ralph what he did before joining the FBI.

“I was in the Army for a while. Rangers. Bunch of missions in the Middle East.” He was wolfing down his goulash in between words. “Man, I can’t believe you counted up what bills he laid on the table.”

Earlier, he’d referred to a guy watching a chick flick with his wife, and he wore a wedding ring. “So, married?”

“Yeah. Three years.”

“Kids?”

“No. You?”

“No kids, no wife. I am seeing someone though. Actually, today is the one-year anniversary of when we first met.”

He raised his coffee cup. “In that case, lunch is on me.”

I thought again about how I would be having dinner with Taci tonight, discussing something that she wanted to talk about in private, but I didn’t mention that, simply accepted Ralph’s toast. “Thanks.”

We were both well into our meals now and I brought up the topic I’d been curious about since we first met in the police headquarters lobby. “Ralph, I gotta ask you something.”

“Shoot.” He was in the middle of a bite of goulash.

I indicated toward his turtleneck. “No overstarched oxford. No tie.” I figured maybe he didn’t wear one because of the thickness of his neck and his broad chest—that any tie he wore would’ve ended up looking like a clown tie and his supervisors didn’t want that. “Isn’t it pretty much a uniform for guys who are Feds?”

“Got an exemption. I can’t stand the idea of wearing a giant arrow pointing to my groin all day.”

“Oh.”

He looked at me slightly suspiciously. “I mean, can you?”

“Um, no. Of course not.” Man, was I glad I didn’t have a tie on today either. “And when you put it that way, I don’t think I’ll ever look at ties the same way again.”

He took a giant mouthful of food. “It seems kind of desperate to me, a pretty blatant invitation to draw people’s attention to…Well, it’s kind of like—” He was talking with his mouth full of goulash again. “So, my wife, her best friend has this teenage daughter.”

“Right.”

“The kid is always wearing shorts with words written on the butt. What is that about? ‘Syracuse’? Are you serious? I could never respect a college that’s so desperate for students that it needs to advertise itself on the butts of teenage girls.”

Hmm. That was actually a pretty good point.

“And then she wears these sweatpants with ‘Cute’ back there. Is that supposed to be referring to…?”

“Um…Probably. Yeah.” I thought of a time I’d seen a girl wearing shorts with
ALL-STAR
imprinted on the rump and I realized I didn’t even want to know what she was trying to tell the world.

He shook his head. “I’ll just say this: I’d be at a loss with a teenage daughter. They’re a complete mystery to me. I’d be clueless.”

“You and me both.”

Ralph finished inhaling the goulash and I polished off my cheeseburger. We ate quickly so we could get back to the department, then headed out the door, past the Ford Explorer by the curb.

There was a parking ticket tucked beneath the windshield wiper.

17

Plainfield, Wisconsin

Joshua parked the car in the pull-off at the end of the dirt road.

Barren, leafless trees ready for winter bordered him on both sides.

A sign on a leaning wooden pole beside a small clearing announced
NO TRESPASSING
.

The house that used to stand here was long gone.

Joshua wasn’t sure exactly when it’d burned down, but he knew it was within a couple months of Ed Gein’s arrest in November of 1957, and he was pretty sure the fire hadn’t been accidental. Just like the people of Milwaukee who tried to purge the memory of Dahmer from their consciousness by razing his apartment building, the good people of Plainfield had undoubtedly hoped to sear the memory of their most infamous inhabitant by getting rid of the place he’d called home.

Joshua stepped out of the car and stretched his legs, then removed the cooler from the backseat.

It’d taken a fair amount of research, but eventually he’d been able to locate the precise spot where the house had stood.

Ironically, or at least conveniently as far as Gein would have been concerned, it was less than five miles from the nearest graveyard—the same graveyard where things would happen this afternoon, during the
next chapter
of the saga Joshua had recently been putting into play.

Honestly, it’d never been his intention to kill Colleen Hayes. Cutting off her hands had been all he was planning to do to her, even from the start.

In fact, murdering her might actually have been counterproductive to what he was hoping to accomplish.

Well then, what about Petey Schwartz back on Friday?

No, nobody would connect the two crimes.

Besides, that wasn’t planned. It was spontaneous and had nothing to do with the Hayes kidnapping or what he had in mind for Adele today.

Still, you remember what you did, remember how you—

Enough with those kinds of thoughts.

Joshua walked to the place where Ed Gein’s kitchen used to be, set down the cooler, and took a seat beside it.

The view before him was the same one Ed Gein would have had if he were looking out his kitchen window.

Joshua pulled a bottle of cream soda out of the cooler, uncapped it, and took a long refreshing swallow.

Last night it hadn’t been easy, doing to Colleen what he’d done. And, unquestionably, it would have been easier on her if he’d knocked her out beforehand, but somehow, though the deed itself was disturbing, her screams had brought him a degree of pleasure that’d surprised him.

It was a bit disconcerting.

That hadn’t happened before, but then again, he’d never done something like that to someone and let the person live.

It’d led him to acknowledge a certain yearning rising to the surface, one that’d been birthed in him long ago in the cellar beneath the barn.

While he was listening to Colleen cry out, enjoying watching her suffer, he’d had a revelation of sorts, an epiphany about who he truly was, what he was becoming.

A voice of reason, of conscience:
Go to God for forgiveness, Joshua. Turn yourself in! Don’t live in the den of the damned!

More cream soda.