A sly smile and a nod.
“Well, sometimes an author, or maybe a painter, will produce a piece of work to honor a previous artist, one who has passed away. Let’s say, write a new Philip Marlowe crime novel, or a new Sherlock Holmes story or copy the strokes of Picasso. Or, I suppose, possibly film a movie in the style of Hitchcock. It’s called a pastiche.”
“A way to pay homage to ’em.”
“Exactly.”
He considered that. “And what-you think that’s what our guy’s doing here? A pastiche to Dahmer?”
“There’s no way to know for sure, but it’s something to think about, especially with the amputation and the location of…” I considered something that hadn’t occurred to me before. “That pier where Colleen was found. It’s just down the street from the chocolate factory where Dahmer worked. They might very well have shipped goods from there. I’d say it wasn’t a mistake our guy left her at that pier. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
He eyed me. “Really?” To my surprise he sounded skeptical.
“Course not. Coincidences are just facts looked at out of context. You study a case from the right perspective and you’ll see that they don’t exist.”
“But…” He tapped a thoughtful finger against the air. Obviously we were not on the same page here. “Coincidences happen all the time. You think of someone you haven’t thought of in years, then ten minutes later you get a phone call from him. You dream of an event and then two days later it happens. What about deja vu? Life is full of coincidences.”
“I would say there has to be a scientific explanation for those things.”
“Why?”
“Because…well…” As I debated how to answer, I found myself at a loss for words. His question really was a sweeping one, encompassing the breadth of a person’s beliefs about the nature of reality, God, miracles, the supernatural-a lot more than I felt ready to delve into at the moment. “Well…”
The server returned. I prefer Cherry Coke, but the only cola on the menu here was Pepsi. She refilled Ralph’s coffee and my soda, giving me a moment to consider my response.
“Pat, there’s a limit to what science and reason can explain. For example, no philosopher yet has ever been able to prove that we’re not all just brains in a jar.”
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
