Ronald Tierney - Good To The Last Kiss - Crimes of the Depraved Mind Series

The bed was in the middle of the room. On the wall opposite the bed was one huge bookcase with big, heavy books – Matisse, de Chirico, Ruscha, Rauchenberg, O’Keefe. Most of the names he recognized, though that was about all he knew about them. There were also books on photography. Some names Gratelli recognized. However, there were two books laying on top of the rows he didn’t recognize.

He pulled them out. One was called Teenage Lust and thumbing through it noticed they were all photographs of street kids, male and female, caught, it seemed candidly, in some mix of sex and violence.

McClellan came over to get an eyeful of the second book – photographs of some guy named Witkin who seemed to specialize in women with penises and snakes and rotting vegetables.

‘Christ,’ McClellan said. ‘We got a sick boy here.’

Gratelli shut the book and carefully put it back where he had found it.

‘He’s an artist.’

‘Yeah, well…’ he shook his head. ‘Our boy’s also got some leather threads in the closet. Some kind of harness, leather pants, jacket.’ McClellan examined the pants. ‘Buttless,’ McClellan said.

The alcove where Bateman had her bed in the other apartment, Chang had a large artist’s table. On it was a huge piece of cardboard, on which ripped photographs of body parts were being assembled into some larger, more abstract picture.

‘The kid’s kinda kinky, don’t you think?’ McClellan asked. ‘Maybe we got a candidate.’

‘Come on, she knows the guy.’

‘Gay boy too.’ McClellan pointed to a greeting card with a male nude smiling back. Inside were the handwritten words, ‘Keep your Wednesdays open, Bradley.’

‘That pretty much rules him out, don’t you think?’ Gratelli suggested.

‘It’s a question of how bent is bent. You been around long enough to know these things.’ McClellan picked up a book with no cover. There were sketches and some notes scribbled in pencil.

‘… to examine the edges of existence,’ McClellan read out loud. ‘How far one steps out, not knowing if you’ve gone too far, if there’s a way back, is the distinguishing characteristic that separates art from craft.’

McClellan’s face twisted into a caricature, mocking sophistication. ‘Some pretty highbrow words. Just an excuse to be kinky. The boy is bent. Bent enough?’

‘Can’t see him breaking a girl’s neck.’

‘I can.’ McClellan said, going through the bureau drawers next to the alcove. ‘Pretty stuff.’ McClellan said it with disgust, holding up a pair of leather shorts. Then he extracted a book from loose underwear and socks.

He opened it to the first page. ‘Chapbook #23,’ it said.

McClellan flipped through it. There were ragged and torn pieces of photos and incomplete sketches, some as innocuous as a photo of Barbie and Ken dolls. Others were naked bodies and body parts. There were words inscribed at random it seemed. Some were in poetry form. Some were narratives.

McClellan started to read from the top of a left-hand page.

‘Get this,’ McClellan said, reading a sentence. “Just as pain is less desirable than joy, pain is more desirable than numbness. Feeling something – anything – is better than the anesthesia, a state of nonexistence.” The guy’s into some serious shit.’

McClellan flipped a few more pages.

‘Clippings,’ he said. ‘Dahmer. And here’s some on that guy who cut off his son’s head on the highway in New Mexico. The kid in the alley off Polk. Christ, this guy is…’

He didn’t finish the sentence. Then he picked it up again.

‘Listen to this: “Dahmer had been left alone too long. Absent a world in which to belong, he created his own and was unable to escape it. He juggled two worlds. Successfully for a while. Then they collided.” What the hell does that mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gratelli said. ‘You are pondering the imponderable.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘OK, you tell me what this means. He’s still writing about Dahmer,’ McClellan said, reading another page, ‘“the sickness in our hearts comes from hate and the hate from fear. And when the fear becomes too much, we are left with our sickness, alone with our sickness. We feel powerless. We feel we are dying. We seek whatever it is that will make us feel alive again. If necessary we create new worlds, one in which we become God, if necessary, to make sense of it.”’

Gratelli waited for another comment from McClellan. But he grew silent. He turned away. Then, as if he’d decided something he came back and began to look at the book.

Gratelli didn’t say anything.

McClellan continued leafing through the little book.

‘This collection of body parts Chang has and lots of tattoos in his photos and this killer’s engraving of flowers on girls’ legs… I mean, maybe this is all connected.’

‘These are his thoughts, McClellan. You see anything in there that resembles a rose tattoo?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You can’t arrest a man for his thoughts. You don’t even know what he means by it all. Maybe he’s writing a story.’

‘What do the lawyers say on TV? Goes to state of mind.’

‘Can’t use anything in here anyhow. No warrant.’

‘No, but we’ll have a warrant next time and we’ll know just where to look if I need one.’ He carefully put the book where he found it. ‘That was Chapbook number twenty-three,’ McClellan said. ‘Where’s the other twenty-two? Or number twenty-four? Maybe we got a rose tattoo in there somewhere.’

They went back to Julia’s apartment. Gratelli noticed the curtain across the alley shift again.

McClellan followed Gratelli back down the stairs, then out through the first floor garage and on to Ivy Street. Gratelli looked up at the back of the apartment house where he’d seen the drapery move, trying to make sure he could get the right place once he was inside. There was no way through though. The two cops went to Franklin, then to the front of the apartment.

A woman was leaving as they hit the front door, allowing them entry without having to talk to the super. It was a frame building. The hallways were dark, narrow and musty.

‘Who is it?’ came a voice after McClellan pounded his big fist against the door.

‘Police.’

‘Just a minute.’

‘Now!’ McClellan bellowed.

There was a click. The door opened, caught itself on a chain. A relatively young black face peered through the narrow divide.

‘What is it?’

‘We’d like to talk to you,’ Gratelli said.

‘What about?’ the face replied.

‘May we come in?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ the voice said.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Anthony.’

‘Anthony, I suppose you got a last name,’ McClellan said.

‘Jones.’

‘Jones?’

‘Jones,’ Anthony responded.

‘Mr Jones, Inspector Gratelli and I would like to talk to you and we’d like to talk to you inside.’

‘Why can’t we talk like this. What’s this about?’

‘It’s about somebody across the alley over there who nearly died,’ McClellan said.

‘We’d like to talk to you about that,’ Gratelli said, keeping his voice calm. ‘We’d like to be able to see what you can see from your window. You know what I mean?’

‘Can you come back please?’

‘All this just makes us want to come in and talk with you all the more.’

The face backed away. The two cops could hear the kid take a deep breath. The chain dropped and the door opened.

The guy was maybe twenty, wiry and wearing a towel around his waist. The shine on his body suggested it had been oiled. In the small bay window, there was a chair facing out – though the draperies had been pulled and the room dark, there was a strange sacredness about it. Perhaps a dark and evil one. On the floor by the chair was a pool of clothing. On the table beside the chair were a pair of binoculars and a bottle of almond oil.