Steven James - Opening Moves

“What’s wrong in one country might not be wrong in another. That’s the way the world is. I think a person’s morality, her set of values, is determined by what culture she grows up in. We shouldn’t judge other people’s values.”

The politically correct answer, but an obviously untenable moral position.

After all, in the 1940s it was culturally acceptable in Germany to kill Jews by the millions. In some tribes in Africa, raping women is considered normal and acceptable-at least by the men. But nobody who’s being raped or tortured to death just shrugs it off and accepts that the person doing it to him is simply following his or her cultural values, so, oh well, what’s right for him is right for him, no big deal.

No. Nobody who’s on the short end of justice wants to be treated subjectively. Relativism and equity just don’t go hand in hand.

The Maneater had an extraordinary memory. He didn’t like to call attention to it to others and he didn’t take any pride in it himself, but it was there and he couldn’t help but make use of it. And that night he’d thought of the passage this woman had just referred to: Godley’s 1921 translation of The Histories by Herodotus, Book 3:38, an excerpt he’d read twice and remembered word for word:

When Darius was king, he summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price they would eat their fathers’ dead bodies. They answered that there was no price for which they would do it. Then Darius summoned those Indians who are called Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried aloud, that he should not speak of so horrid an act. So firmly rooted are these beliefs; and it is, I think, rightly said in Pindar’s poem that custom is lord of all.

Custom is lord of all.

Morality is not etched in stone but written, as it were, on a rubber band.

Simply the result of cultural mores.

What an attractive, attractive idea for those wielding power.

But this wasn’t the time to debate the determinants of ethical action with his date, it was actually his chance to agree with her. “You’re right about that,” he said, “and, well, those dead people up on the slopes of that mountain in the Andes weren’t really people anymore actually. They were only meat that was going to rot eventually or just freeze and lie there indefinitely. I mean, right? And in a situation like that, what choice did the survivors really have? I mean what else could they be expected to do?”

He watched her carefully, searched her eyes to gauge her reaction, to look for hints of what she might say, what she might be thinking. “So, what do you think? Could you have done it?”

“Done it?”

“Yes.”

“You mean eaten someone?”

“To survive. Yes.”

“Well, I suppose, if I was on the brink of death, I guess I might have.”

But really, that begged the question. How close to the brink of death does a person have to be, really, before it would be okay? How much desperation would justify cannibalism? Do you really need to be starving to death? What about famished? What about simply hungry? Or just sitting down for supper? How many hours away from 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.

Pindar’s poem is right: custom is lord of all.

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?

To get your attention?

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.

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: