death by starvation do you need to be to justify chewing off the skin or sucking the marrow out of another primate’s bones?
Cultures disagree.
So, really, it was a matter of societal preference.
Perhaps morally untenable, but still, a philosophical position that suited the Maneater.
The one wielding power.
He liked this woman and decided on the spot that he would cut out and eat her intestines.
She was the first one, the one he still remembered the most fondly to this day.
Now, tonight he was at a club. Trance music. Psychedelic cycling lights. Sweaty, pumping bodies. He was seated at the bar next to a woman who’d been flirting with him for the last twenty minutes. Even though it was just after ten o’clock, she’d made it clear what she wanted to do, but he hadn’t even gotten her name yet.
He decided to just go ahead, see where that might lead. “I don’t sleep with women I don’t know.”
“Well, then”-there was a breezy, alcohol-induced smile in her voice-“my name is Celeste.”
“Hello, Celeste.”
“And you are?”
He made up a name. “Ashton.”
“Well, Ashton”-she really was too tipsy for her own good, already, at this time of night-“do you need a last name, or is Celeste enough for you?”
“Celeste is plenty.” He smiled and with one hand he took hold of her barstool and pulled it closer to him.
“Mmm,” she cooed. “I like a man who’s got some strength. Do you have endurance too?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I can make things last for a long, long time.”
“Ooh. I like the sound of that.”
She finished her shot, turned the glass upside down and, somewhat unevenly, set it on the bar. “I also like a man who’s not all talk. Are you all talk?”
“I’m not all talk, no.”
She stood and swayed a bit. He rose as well and she put her arm in his.
He led her out of the club.
They went to her apartment. He enjoyed himself with her for a while, and as he did, the Maneater thought back to the events of the night, to the train yards, to killing Hendrich, a man whose identity he and Griffin had decided to use if there was ever a need.
And he thought of why he’d led Hendrich to that car and then killed him there, because of what he’d found in that other train car. Because of the man he’d followed and then identified and because of the phone call from Griffin warning him that the police were following up on Hendrich.
Why was Joshua doing this? Setting up these elaborate schemes? Dahmer? Now Gein?
Well, if that was the reason, it had worked.
The Maneater thought about what to do about that as he spent time with Celeste who, as it turned out, wasn’t so thankful that he could make things last for a long, long time.
Not thankful about that at all.
48
I stayed at the train yards until almost eleven. We had a dozen officers comb the woods. I even helped them, but we found nothing.
Everyone was focused, sharp. This was no longer just the case of a kidnapper’s twisted demands; with Hendrich’s murder, it was a full-fledged homicide investigation.
But then at last, just as in all investigations, it was time to go home.
But I had two stops to make first.
Many of the criminology students in my grad program at Marquette have other jobs-some work in law enforcement, others are city officials. I’ve even had two people from the District Attorney’s Office in some of my classes. Because of the diverse schedules of the students, the graduate office has a work area that’s open late, and it’s not unusual to find people studying at all hours of the night hunched over a computer or a criminology textbook.
On the way to my apartment I swung by to pick up a copy of Dr. Werjonic’s lecture notes, then snagged an extra-large fried potato and steak burrito from Henry’s Burrito Heaven, and headed to my apartment.
I spread out the paperwork on the kitchen table and as I dug into my late supper, I reviewed five pieces of information we’d come up with over the last few hours.
1. Adele Westin was the name of the woman we’d found in the boxcar. I hated to admit that the media had helped us out, but this time around the press had done an admirable job of getting the word out quickly. A man from Plainfield named Carl Kowalski, a man who’d been arrested for grave robbery while we were at the train yards, told the police about the finger. One of the officers in Plainfield had heard about it on the news and made the connection. A little serendipitous, but often that’s just the way things work in cases. Which led to #2:
2. Kowalski had not only desecrated his grandmother’s grave, he had also skinned the corpse and left it at the same hardware store where Gein had committed one of his murders four decades ago.
3. During the day, Ellen and Corsica had come up with sixteen unsolved missing persons cases in Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin spanning the last two years involving women who fit the general description (race, age, build, hair color, socioeconomic status) of the women killed in Illinois and Ohio.
4. Thompson reported that no Champaign officers had ever worked in the Waukesha area and the chain of custody forms didn’t raise any red flags.
5. When Ellen and Corsica had delivered the search warrant and picked up Griffin’s receipts and subscription list, Corsica had asked him for a physical description of Hendrich, hoping to find out if he really was the guy who’d dealt with him, or if someone else had impersonated him, but Griffin said they’d only communicated by mail or by phone. She’d also asked about amputation saws, but he claimed he’d never sold one-though he would like to get his hands on one if she had a contact.
I reviewed: Dahmer and Gein.
Two cannibals.
Two days.
And bad things come in threes.
Wonderful.
As both Radar and I had observed earlier, most killers escalate. I couldn’t imagine what our guy had in mind for later this week, not if he was moving up the ladder from Dahmer and Gein.
After going through the case files and filling out my police report concerning the events of the evening, I came to the place where I needed to tip my thoughts in a less visceral, less disturbing direction, take a break from all the grisly images-both the ones on the pages before me and the ones in my head.
It was late, but I tried calling Taci.
She didn’t pick up.
Maybe I could get some emotional distance from all of this by looking not at the specifics of the cases, but at the theories concerning how to investigate them instead.
I opened up the manila folder Dr. Werjonic had left for me and slid the papers out.
There was a note on top of the stack of papers:
I slowly set down the papers.
