“Captain Closs.”
“How’s it look?”
The phantom techs roved behind her, wielding their portable UVs. “White/male infant, about a year old. Full body contusions, looks like an impact death.”
“Beaten, you mean?”
“No, I don’t think so. Looks to me like the baby was thrown from a moving vehicle.”
Helen’s eyes indicated the latent techs. “Then what are they doing with the UVs?”
“Checking the skin before we move the body to the shop.”
“Any signs of violence?”
Beck frowned. “Aside from being thrown out of a moving vehicle?”
“No signs of battery, no signs of sexual abuse? Come on, Jan, you know what I mean.”
“I can’t really make a positive determination on that until I get the baby to the lab at St. John’s.”
Helen knew what Beck was driving at. But I have rules, and I’ve got to go by them. “Jan, there’s no way I can give this 64 a VCU status—”
“Oh, come on, Captain!” Beck snapped. “It’s a one-year-old baby, for Christ’s sake! Some Dane County redneck threw a naked baby from a moving vehicle!”
“I realize that,” Helen replied without any change in her tone. “But you know the rules. I can’t authorize VCU status unless it’s a repeat m.o. in multiple jurisdictions, a multiple homicide, sex related, or suspected of involving the murder of a police officer.” Helen bit her lower lip. “If I write this as a VCU priority, Olsher will have the paperwork torn up before he has his first morning coffee. We can’t carry everyone, Jan. Dane County has a department, they have people. They’re gonna have to investigate this themselves. I don’t like it any more than you do, and if I caught the guy that did this, I’d park my front tires on his head. But you know the rules.”
Beck avoided a deleterious facial affect, which she was very good at. “So what do I do? Can I at least transport the baby’s body to the state morgue?”
“No, Jan,” Helen ordered. “Pack up your stuff and your team. Dane County’s going to have to take the corpse to their own hospital and have it autopsied by their own medical examiner, and, I might add, at the expense of their own tax dollars.”
“Great. You’re the boss. So are you going to tell this to those Dane guys, or am I gonna have to do that too?”
“I’ll take care of that, Jan.” Helen’s face suddenly flushed with embarrassment and self-disgust. But she was only doing her job. Why couldn’t Beck understand that? Olsher would pull the plug on this first thing in the morning; arguing about it was a waste of time. “There’s nothing I can do, Jan. And you know that. So stop breaking my chops.”
Beck made the most minute of nods. “Christ, it’s just that sometimes I get so sick of it.” She glanced back at the techs hovering over the baby. “I can’t believe the things that people do.”
“Neither can I,” Helen feebly replied.
Beck managed a twisted smile. “Well, at least we got some payback today, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. The Dahmer thing.”
Helen winced against a chilling waver of wind. “What? What about Dahmer? That son of a bitch is locked up for the next thousand years.”
“Didn’t you hear?” Jan Beck asked. “We all got the telex this morning.” She seemed to thrive on the cold, she seemed enlivened by it, or perhaps she was only enlivened by the news she’d heard.
“Jeffrey Dahmer,” she explained, “was murdered in prison today.” Another tiny twist of a smile. “He was bludgeoned to death by another inmate.”
— | — | —
CHAPTER TWO
“…bludgeoned to death by another inmate,” the radio squawked. “James Dipetro, director of the 676-man Columbus County Detention Center, where the infamous cannibalistic murderer was serving a 936-year sentence, told reporters that he fears the suspect, one Tredell W. Rosser, may now be regarded as a celebrity by the prison’s other minority inmates. ‘We fear,’ Dipetro said, ‘that Rosser will become a prison folk hero of sorts, and not just by Columbus inmates but by every Hispanic and African American convict in the country…’“
Helen, in pre-8 a.m. rush hour, switched the radio station. Dahmer, Dahmer, Dahmer, her thoughts complained. The news dominated every radio station she turned on, and morning tv hadn’t been any better. Jesus Christ, is that all anyone cares about? Dahmer? I’m absolutely SICK of hearing about him!
But if that were really the case, why was Helen driving to the state morgue to see the body?
««—»»
The man walks down the sun-lit street, in Madison, Wisconsin. Bright light but cold, like his heart. The chill air whips his face, yet he feels numbly warm. The city seems to swarm around him, not part of him, and he not part of it. But that’s how it always is. He ducks out; he doesn’t want to be on the street too long. He doesn’t want to be seen.
Some time later, he finds himself walking up a flight of stairs, each footfall slow and plodding and deliberate. He feels different now, like some odd toggle in his brain has been switched. Nevertheless, each step he takes upward takes him back…
««—»»
BATH, OHIO, MAY, 1971
The boy from Bath, Ohio.
What a dumb name for a town, he always thought. But right now he was thinking about things far more crucial.
Spring heat cooked his back. His sweat drenched his shortsleeve, plaid shirt as he ran, yes, ran in spite of the prickling heat—hoping to get home before his father did. He cut through yards, the long way, to get home from school every day. He couldn’t stand to be taunted by the other kids. Faggot, they called him. Pussy. In phys ed, the captains had been choosing up teams. Gil Valeda, who was probably the best athlete in the fifth grade, if not the best in all of Summerset Elementary, laughed when the boy had jerked his hand up, wanting to be, for once, on a winning team. “No way,” Valeda had said. “You’re a weakling, a little faggot.” The boy had been chosen by the other side, last pick. They’d lost the softball game 11 to nothing. His other teammates had blamed him, of course, for striking out three times, for dropping a ball in right field.
He pretended not to hear, and not to care.
But he really did care.
And one day, he knew, he would show them all…
««—»»
I’m free, he thought.
And he was hungry.
««—»»
“…bludgeoned to death with a broom handle,” another radio announcer was spewing in an automaton’s voice. “Authorities say that the murder occurred at approximately eight a.m. yesterday, when Dahmer was on a custodial detail in the gymnasium of the Columbus County Detention Center. Prison guards discovered a bloody broom handle nearby, and another inmate, reportedly a friend of Dahmer’s, was beaten also, and is now listed in critical condition at St. John the Divine Hospital in Madison. Officials say that Dahmer’s face was beaten so severely that—”
Helen changed radio stations yet again, trying to edge her way to the state employees lot. Tom had left a message on her answering machine. “Hi, Helen, it’s me. I won’t be getting off at seven this morning, I’ve been ordered to stay on. You’re never gonna believe this—Greene’s on vacation, so I’m the Acting Chief Medical Examiner while he’s gone. What I mean is I’m the one who’s going to autopsy Dahmer’s body! See ya tonight!”