The Man From Milwaukee

by Rick R. Reed

  He’d tried, from that day on, to get on with his life as though nothing had happened, as though he hadn’t been cast in the victim role in one of those horror movies that gets its value not from supernatural monsters, but from the terrors that walk on two legs in and out of our everyday lives—movies like Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and, of course, Psycho. Tyler had once enjoyed horror movies, got a little kick from them and had even enjoyed them with Emory himself.

  But no more. These days, Tyler’s speed, when it came to cinema, was more for romantic comedies, family dramas, and what Cole referred to as “chick flicks.”

  He didn’t care. Cole didn’t know about the nightmares that had never completely gone away, that horror of waking up screaming and having to reassure himself he was okay, that it was only a dream. Only a dream seemed a weak excuse—when the terror that visited him at night, in his slumber, was something monstrous.

  After a while, Tyler drew in a deep breath, got up to get himself some hot coffee, and sat back down with his newspaper. He was glad Cole was at work because news of Dahmer’s passing reignited his trauma and fear.

  And pity.

  Where was Emory now?

  He read on and learned how Dahmer had been beaten to death by another inmate. The suspect was a high school dropout who was also serving a life sentence at the prison for the execution-style slaying of a Wisconsin Conservation Corps crew chief. The suspect had been laid off from the Corps’ carpentry training program.

  One sentence from the article caused the coffee to roil sickly in Tyler’s gut.

  “The way Dahmer died has renewed the lurid attention that ensures he will continue to live, at least for a while, in notoriety.”

  Did Emory continue to live? In obscurity?

  Where was he now?

  Tyler learned this was the second attempt on Dahmer’s life in fewer than five months.

  Did Emory still believe Dahmer had written to him? That he was his friend—a confidante?

  What made Tyler finally stand and take the newspaper outside, where he could deposit it in the dumpster behind his building in the Rogers Park neighborhood, was the report that Dahmer had been discovered on “the floor of the staff bathroom next to the gym at 8:10 a.m., unresponsive and bleeding from massive head wounds. A bloody broom handle lay nearby.”

  The reference to the massive head wounds caused a memory, like some Technicolor nightmare to arise—that of Emory about to swing a heavy gargoyle sculpture down on his sister’s head.

  As he let the paper flutter onto the plastic trash bags, he saw that Dahmer had died at a hospital in Portage. Its name? Divine Savior.

  *

  It was getting close to evening when Tyler finally returned home, the horizon behind him a mix of navy, purple, lavender, and tangerine. The air had a snap to it. A cold front was moving in from the north. The smell of snow was in the air.

  Soon, winter would be upon them, the edge of the lake fringed with ice. The darkness would seem endless, the bitter winds and the snow a bad dream from which there was no escape—spring a bitter promise on the horizon, disbelieved.

  Tyler entered the small lobby of the two-flat apartment building he shared with Cole. The owners, an older gay couple he and Cole referred to Lucy and Ethel when they were out of earshot, lived on the first floor and had converted the basement into a suite with a bedroom, bathroom, and office; the first floor was their living area. They were good landlords, minded their own business, but they were characters, to be sure. One had a doll fixation and collected Barbies and the other never left the house, staying inside and reading books by people like Jane Austen and Emily Bronte.

  The mailbox was empty, and Tyler concluded that meant Cole was home. He unlocked the door to the staircase that led up to their apartment and trudged wearily up the stairs.

  It was time.

  If he couldn’t share what Emory had done to him with Cole, then what was their relationship, really? The period Tyler was confined, bound and naked, on that closet floor were the worst hours of his young life. He really believed he might die.

  He now knew he needed to unburden that darkness with the man he loved.

  Cole was in the kitchen, humming tunelessly. Their biggest pot was on one burner and a smaller saucepan on the other. Cole was in the pantry. When he came out, he smiled at Tyler as though nothing was wrong.

  Why would he believe anything was wrong?

  Even with Dahmer’s murder splashed luridly all over the news, what difference did it make to them, a young gay couple in Chicago?

  It makes all the difference.

  “Hey,” Cole said, drawing near and giving Tyler a quick peck. “I’m just getting started on dinner. I wondered where you were. Out for a walk? I’m keeping it simple tonight, just some spaghetti and jarred sauce. And I can whip up a salad. There’s still some romaine in the fridge and we have those cherry tomatoes—”

  Tyler put a hand on his chest to stop the blather. “Please,” he whimpered. Suddenly, he felt very close to tears. There will be time for those later. “Please,” he repeated. “We need to talk.”

  Cole stepped back as though he had struck him in the chest, rather than just placing his hand there. Cole clutched that same hand now, squeezing it. He cocked his head and asked Tyler, “What is it?”

  “Let’s go in the living room. Sit. Okay?”

  He probably thinks I’m going to break up with him. Isn’t that what the other half of a couple always thinks when someone says something about needing to talk?

  Cole followed him into their spacious living room. It was full dark outside now, but the yellow/gold light from the streetlamp outside filtered in through the ivy partially covering their bay windows. Tyler plopped down on the forest-green couch they’d found at Howard Brown and put his feet up on the coffee table. He supposed he might appear relaxed, but inside, he was shaking so hard he thought he might implode.

  Cole sat near him, worry causing his thick, dark eyebrows to furrow together with concern. “You gonna break up with me?”

  A short, near hysterical bark of laughter escaped Tyler’s lips because of what he’d thought just a minute before. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at the man who’d been beside him for the past couple of years. “Is that what you think? Really?” Tyler didn’t wait for an answer but shook his head. “There’s something I need to tell you about.”

  Cole sat back a little more, now that he knew he wasn’t being dumped, and settled into the couch. “Everything okay? You’re okay, right?”

  Tyler smiled. “Will you just shut up, and let me tell you?”

  Cole eyed him but said nothing more.

  And Tyler told him—everything. He started with meeting Emory at work, their odd relationship (if it could even be called that), and ended with Tyler’s drugging and confinement. At last, he revealed the dumb luck of Emory’s sister unwittingly coming to his rescue.

  When he was finished, he sat there, breathing a little harder, but relieved to have finally shared his trauma with someone else. It felt like something at last coming to a head and breaking open. He let his head slide onto Cole’s shoulder.

  They said nothing for the longest time. The little sounds in the apartment rose up—the steam heat coming on, causing the old radiators to clank and moan, the distant roar of the L train over at Western and Lincoln, the footsteps of their landlords below, and dimly, their laughter. Tyler could even hear, if he listened very closely, the wind moving through the naked boughs of the maple tree outside.

  After a long time, Cole spoke, “You know, he—that Dahmer guy—was just killed in prison. By another inmate.”

  Tyler nodded. “I know. It’s what brought everything to a head for me again.”

  They were quiet again for a while, long enough to make Tyler wonder what was going on in his partner’s head. He was about to ask, rather than speculate, when Cole spoke.

  “It’s all so terrible.” He dre
w in a breath, and it came back out, shaky. “This really happened to you? Honey, it makes my heart hurt. It makes me sick.”

  “I wouldn’t joke about a thing like this, Cole.”

  “No. No, of course you wouldn’t. Part of me wishes you were, sweetheart. Because then it wouldn’t be true. You wouldn’t have lived through that.” He turned a bit so he could take Tyler in his arms and hold him. Tyler clung to him, extracting whatever warmth and comfort he could from the hug.

  When they pulled away, Cole asked, “You never reported this? You didn’t go to the cops?” He shook his head. “Christ, Tyler, what he did was kidnapping. It was assault. Maybe even attempted murder?” He eyed Tyler, and Tyler felt a chill—it was as though Cole had never seen him before.

  “I know. I know what I should have done and what I failed to do. Right or wrong, I made my choice, and I don’t know that you could ever understand.”

  Could anyone?

  “No. I don’t think I can understand.” Cole shrugged and stared off into the distance. And then he surprised Tyler by saying, “But I know you, and I trust your judgment, even if I personally don’t get it. I’m not gonna question why you didn’t do this or that, but just try to have faith that you made your choices based on something, right? Something that made sense to you.”

  Tyler was tempted to make a joke about his choice being based on insanity, but that wasn’t true. “I could see his pain, you know? I could see how lonely he was. How he had no one, Cole. No one at all. He was this weird guy, and his neediness radiated off him like a smell.” Tyler sighed, thinking how inadequate words were. “Here’s why I didn’t tell on him—I believed back then, shaken up as I was, that he wouldn’t do it to someone else. That was first and foremost, you understand. If I thought for a minute he would have, I’d have gone to the authorities. I’m not so selfish that I’d see someone else go through what I went through.

  “But here’s the thing. I saw the change in him when he was about to slam that gargoyle into Mary Helen’s head. I saw the remorse and the pain. It was like he woke up. It’s hard to describe, but I think he saw the light, saw that he was sick and that he was going about everything all wrong.”

  Tyler stood up. “Let me finish making dinner, okay? It’ll relax me, as much as I can be relaxed.”

  “There’s that shiraz we opened last night.”

  Tyler smiled. “That’ll relax me too.”

  He turned in the archway separating the living room from the dining room as he headed for the kitchen. “I couldn’t tell on him because I felt like it would have been cruel. I couldn’t do that to him.”

  Cole regarded him, and Tyler felt hopeless. Even the most sympathetic human in the world could never comprehend his motivation and could certainly feel no empathy toward him.

  But Cole once again surprised him. “And this,” he said, “is why I love you.”

  To staunch the flow of tears, Tyler hurried away, into the kitchen, where he could drink wine, cook, and think about what he should do next—if anything.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Interstate 55 south thrummed beneath their feet, Mary Helen’s little red Sentra eating up the gray pavement and leaving its gravelly trail in their wake.

  It was a bright morning in early December, and Mary Helen was glad for the shades on her face. They hid the red moistness of her eyes.

  She’d been crying since she first heard from her passenger, Tyler Kay, whom she hadn’t seen since that fateful day in her mother’s closet. He’d called her just a couple of days ago, out of the blue. But when is anything, really, out of the blue? Liz always says everything happens for a reason, that our lives are unfolding just as they should. Usually, Mary Helen thought the woman she regarded as her wife now was regurgitating her Science of Mind teachings, but today, on this crisp, cold, sunny morning, she realized there was truth to her pronouncements. Maybe life isn’t so random, after all.

  When she’d picked up the phone the other day, right after hello, a male voice said, “This is Tyler Kay. I don’t know if you remember me, but a few years ago, you saved my life.”

  At the sound of this, Mary Helen’s arm jerked in a spasm, so hard the cordless in her hand clattered to the hardwood floor. She picked it up, seriously contemplating simply replacing it in the charging cradle without saying a word.

  Of course she remembered him.

  The day they’d shared would be forever seared into her memory as though branded on the soft pink tissue of her brain. It was a day she’d forget if she could—yet when she came close to obscuring it, it rose up in a nightmare or an actual memory of turning to see her brother about to bash her head in.

  She still couldn’t believe it. Any of it. Not the attempt on her life. Not the fact that poor Emory, poor misguided, love-starved and lonely Emory, had followed in a notorious killer’s footsteps and had attempted to keep the man he was fixated on a prisoner.

  Other than Liz, she’d never shared with anyone what had happened that day.

  She assumed those events could be buried below the surface. Never out of reach, but maybe, when she was really lucky, out of mind.

  The news of Dahmer’s death reignited the terror and the nausea.

  Tyler Kay’s phone call made it as real as if the bad things had occurred only yesterday.

  When she found her voice, she asked how he’d found her.

  “You’re in the book. MH Hughes. The MH was a giveaway. Women tend to use initials when phones are in their name.”

  Mary Helen chuckled nervously because that was exactly why she’d listed herself that way. “I think it was the other way around, Mr. Kay. You saved my life.”

  Tyler didn’t respond for a moment. Then he said, “Let’s just go with we saved each other.”

  “And I’m grateful. Grateful we can talk today.”

  Mary Helen wasn’t so sure she was grateful for this last part. How can I ask him what he wants without being rude?

  It was as though he’d read her mind. “You’re probably wondering why I’m calling after all this time.”

  “Crossed my mind.” Mary Helen searched automatically for her cigarettes. She’d quit a long time ago, but this was an occasion when the urge rose up, making her crave one again, for the comfort, for having something to do with her hands.

  “I suppose you saw the news about Jeffrey Dahmer.”

  Just the mention of Dahmer’s name made the fine hair on the back of her neck rise. She shivered. “Yeah, I saw something about it on the news. Another inmate, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  I’m still wondering why you called me.

  “It got me thinking. Thinking about your brother—and wondering.” Tyler drew in a shaky breath, and Mary Helen wondered if he was about to cry. Don’t cry. I can’t handle that. I’ll hang up.

  Mercifully, he must have pulled himself together because when he spoke again, he sounded a bit more composed. “Wondering what’s up with Emory, if he’s okay.” He paused for a long moment. “See, despite everything that happened, I really cared about your brother. In spite of it all, I don’t hate him or wish bad things on him.”

  “No one would blame you if you did.”

  “No one would blame you.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.” In her mind’s eye, she pictured Liz, reminded herself how forgiving she was, how she’d held the key to Mary Helen’s relationship with Emory and how that key was one simple word—forgiveness. “How can I ever forgive him?” Mary Helen had cried one of those long, dark nights when she’d woken, screaming. “He was gonna kill me.”

  And Liz told her that forgiveness was not an act that was for Mary Helen’s brother, but for Mary Helen herself. “You’ll never feel any kind of peace until you can forgive. This isn’t for him, baby doll, it’s for you.”

  How did Mary Helen get so lucky to have someone like Liz in her life?

  Tyler interrupted the memory with a question. “Is he? Is he okay?”

  “Not really,” Mary Helen
had answered.

  And she told him all about Emory, bringing him up to date.

  *

  And now, they rode in companionable silence south, away from Chicago and toward the Morton Psychiatric Hospital and Resident Inpatient facility, across the Illinois River from Peoria.

  As they drew closer to the institution, Tyler asked her for the second time, “How is he? What should I expect?”

  Mary Helen felt like blurting “Expect the unexpected!” And then laughing uncontrollably, hysterically, as though she was the one who should be in an institution and not her brother. She stared out the window at the bland, flat landscape going by for a moment before responding. The sky was dirty gray, the sides of the road lined with mounds of blackened and graying snow and mud. She sighed. “He’s been at Morton since that day it all went down—you know the day.” Mary Helen regarded Tyler out of the corner of her eye, but he stared out the window. She could get no gauge. “After we both left him there, I had to go back. I’m his fucking sister, after all. And you know as well as I do that he had no one, not back then and not now either.” The thought of this state of protracted aloneness caused her heart to seize up a bit and a lump the size of a tangerine to form in her throat. She sniffed. “I came back after dark and let myself in.”

  She turned off the main road to head up the long drive to the institution’s fieldstone façade. It looked almost gothic—and foreboding. But at least her brother was safe there. It doesn’t really matter where he is. He’s in a cocoon of his own making. He’s trapped, or staying, in his own head.

  “He was still in the closet.” As she spoke, she realized her voice came out more and more monotone, as though it were robbed of emotion, even though what was going on inside was the opposite. Her lips turned up in a half-hearted grin. “And I don’t mean that metaphorically. He was literally still in the closet, in the dark. When I came upon him, he was simply laying on the floor, in a fetal position, rocking himself.

  “He wouldn’t speak. Hell, he wouldn’t even look at me. That’s when I made the call and had him taken to the hospital where he was admitted for a psych evaluation. It didn’t take them long to realize he needed much more treatment than a simple overnight stay might provide.” She let some air rush out of her and wished once more for the cigarettes she once smoked.