“Get up, straighten yourself out,” Helen ordered. There was no other demeanor she could maintain. If she didn’t keep up the bad-ass routine, these kids would never take her seriously.
“This is a real bad 64, Captain.”
“I know it’s a bad 64, Sergeant, I know it’s a baby, but we’re all out here to do a job. Were supposed to be in charge, and I can’t have my officers keeling over on the scene like a bunch of greenhorns straight out of cadet school. You’re a Wisconsin State Trooper, start acting like it. If you can’t do your job, say so, and I’ll have you relieved.”
Farrell, trim and large, rose to his feet. He gulped hard. His embarrassment was plain. “What should I do, ma’am?”
The moon shone like a pallid face over the dead cornfield. Helen strode off the hardtop, then marched awkwardly into the ravine. She felt a bit silly; this was a rural murder site and here she was wearing Nine West pumps, a $400 Burberry topcoat, and a merle sheath dress from Carole Little.
Helen could never discern why, but she knew that Jan Beck, the TSD field chief, didn’t like her. She refused, for instance, to call Helen by her first name, which was perfectly appropriate for two female employees of the same pay grade. But then it occurred to her more clearly that
“Hi, Jan,” Helen said to the slim, crimson-garbed figure. Jan Beck’s silhouette seemed to disgorge itself from the lights. She had thick glasses and frizzy black hair like a witch’s.
“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.
“Oh, come on, Captain!” Beck snapped. “It’s a one-year-old
“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?”
“
“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.
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…
