The Man From Milwaukee Read online

“This was what he wrote, just this morning. I told him all about you.” Emory smiled broadly at Tyler, but Tyler seemed to look right through him.

  *

  Dear Emory,

  Tyler sounds like a keeper. Love is hard to find in this world, but when we do find it, we have to do whatever it takes to hold on. It doesn’t always work. I’m living proof of that. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get someone to simply be by my side, to take this journey we call life together.

  I never thought it was too much to ask.

  I never believed I was hurting anyone. Well, at least until after it was too late. And I felt horrible! Emory, I really did. But there was something inside me—a little bit of hell that ate me up, that wouldn’t let go, even when I knew I was crossing the most dangerous and wicked lines.

  But back to Tyler. Take your time with him. Show him you care. If he doesn’t see this, make him see it. If your love for him is a pure thing, and I know it is, he’ll eventually see that and want to return it to you, maybe even tenfold.

  I wish you luck with this young man, my friend. Don’t worry about who you are. Don’t worry about what you are. Cling to the belief that love is possible.

  It’s all we have in this world, really.

  And Emory, I am so glad you’re there for me.

  I’m rooting for you, from all the way behind these prison walls.

  Love,

  Jeff

  *

  Emory set the letter on the floor and glanced over at Tyler to gauge his reaction. He thought it was a beautiful letter, charming in its own way. It stirred Emory’s heart. It proved that Jeffrey Dahmer, despite the horror of his crimes, wasn’t the monster the media made him out to be. He was simply a man caught up in dreadful circumstances, needing something desperately, but life hadn’t given him the clues regarding how to get it.

  He thought Tyler might see the same.

  After a time, Emory spoke, “Well? What did you think?”

  Slowly, Tyler turned to him. “About the letter?”

  “Of course about the letter!” Emory hadn’t meant to snap. But it was so obvious. What else would he have been talking about? His mother’s oatmeal?

  “Do you really think he wrote that to you?” Tyler eyed him with what looked like wariness, suspicion.

  And that question gave Emory pause. What an odd thing to say! “Who else would have written it?” Emory bit his lip hard, wishing he could call back the anger and upset in his voice.

  Tyler smiled, but the smile was as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s. “Come on, Emory.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Emory rose from the floor, feeling a little shaken, a little sick to his stomach. A weird chill and a flutter of dizziness passed through him, and he sat down quickly on the couch for a moment to compose himself. He turned his head to look out the window. The sun had come up full, shining brightly. The sky was a brilliant shade of blue, unobscured by even one cloud. The world outside was coming alive. It was real.

  He got up and moved to the kitchen where he’d left the duct tape. He came back to the living room, and when Tyler spied what he had in his hand, he flinched. “Emory. No. You don’t need to. I promise—I’ll be quiet.”

  Emory knelt and quickly bit off a piece of the tape.

  “No.”

  But Emory slapped the tape across Tyler’s lips, patting it into place along his stubbled cheeks. Tyler began to whimper beneath the silver tape.

  But Emory was unaffected. He moved to Tyler’s feet and roughly grabbed his ankles and dragged him across the living room floor, across his mother’s bedroom, and back into her walk-in closet. He wrestled Tyler onto the mattress and stood, out of breath.

  “I need to get your bedding washed up. And then you’ll be all warm and comfy.”

  He turned and wished he could close his ears to the pleading, crying, and screaming trying to emerge from beneath the duct tape. The noise both angered and hurt him. He was only trying to help.

  He quickly closed the door and locked it behind him. The sounds Tyler made weren’t quite gone, but they were muffled.

  Emory went into the living room, where The Mamas and the Papas Greatest Hits album was still on the old turntable. He switched it on and turned up the volume loud as “California Dreamin’” came on. If Tyler were to begin banging or kicking, Emory hoped the music would drown him out. He didn’t know his neighbors, never had any interest. And now would not be the time to start.

  He sat, listening for a moment. It had gone quiet in the closet. Then he leaned over, picked up the letter still on the floor with a trembling hand and stared at it.

  After a while, he rose and placed it with the other letters on his desk.

  He gathered up the soiled bedding and headed out to the laundry room.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mary Helen paced outside the redbrick high-rise on Kenmore Avenue that she’d once called home. She wished she still smoked, but Liz had convinced her to give up the habit about a month ago. Nonetheless, she longed for the way a cigarette would calm her nerves, make the conversation she was about to have a little easier to broach. Help me delay the inevitable…

  She sighed, gazing out at her old street. Cars ranging from rusting heaps to Mercedes Benzes and BMWs crowded the curbs. The strip of brown grass that ran along the edge of the sidewalk was littered with old cans and food wrappers. At the north end of the street, a Loyola University building stood, looking imposing. She felt as though she were standing in a canyon, the tall buildings drowning her in their sun-blocking shadows.

  The damp air had a faint fishy tang.

  Heavy storm clouds, gray, marched slowly across the sky. They reminded her she wouldn’t be able to linger out here too long before the deluge the weather reports were predicting began. The chill in the air seeped into her bones.

  But Lord, she didn’t want to go inside even if it was warm. She didn’t look forward to confronting her older brother to see what could be done.

  But she had to. He was family.

  She still ached with remorse for how she’d avoided her mother during her last days, rationalizing her guilt by claiming it was simply too painful to spend time with a woman who was being eaten alive physically, emotionally, and mentally by a virus. Pain? How about what Mother was going through? Mary Helen shook her head ruefully at her own negligence and thought the two saddest words in the English language—too late. Shame hung heavy, a mantle on her shoulders.

  She couldn’t allow Emory to wither on the vine. He’d quit his job long ago. Mary Beth honestly had no idea how he was supporting himself, what he was doing for food, for friends, how he kept up with utilities and rent.

  But those weren’t the things that bothered her most, the things that kept her up at night. Worries about practical matters weren’t what caused her to weep into her pillow in those long hours between midnight and dawn, when Liz would waken and spoon with her, trying to calm her despair.

  The thing that really plagued her was the simple fact she knew her brother was crazy. He’d been for a long time, and Mary Helen had watched his mental illness grow with annoyance, rather than concern. Again—a great wave of guilt and shame rose up. Was there something she could have done that might have prevented him from tumbling into the abyss she was certain he now occupied? Maybe not. But the fact she had done absolutely nothing to try to help weighed on her, made her feel unworthy of life itself.

  Only a couple days ago, she’d been to the apartment and found Emory gone. Who knew where? Certainly not to a job! But she’d used the time alone to snoop. She was both glad and horrified she did. What she’d discovered made her tremble, sick to her stomach.

  Because what she’d found was a nightmare.

  The letters from Jeffrey Dahmer and the bulletin board of newspaper clippings about him—it was nuts and macabre, going beyond what might be considered a normal fascination with true crime or popular culture. It seemed as though Emory had collected every single bit of news p
ublished about the man locally and was, in a bizarre way, memorializing the twisted tale of the cannibal killer. The bulletin board was a shrine. It made her heart ache in a literal way—a tightness she could feel.

  And the letters? She’d sat on the floor and read them all with growing horror. But when it dawned on her why they looked so familiar—that’s when the tears began, and she choked back sobs.

  They were all in Emory’s handwriting.

  It made her gasp to think he was so delusional that he was writing these letters to himself. Did he actually believe the infamous killer was his friend, regularly writing from prison?

  How sad and bizarre was that?

  My brother has Jeffrey Dahmer for an imaginary playmate.

  God! Emory’s so lonely. I knew that. I knew it for years. To think his loneliness has now morphed into something so, so—what? Pathetic? Sad? Terrifying? Mary Helen pondered for a long time before cluing Liz in on what she’d discovered that afternoon a couple of days ago. The admission wasn’t easy for Mary Helen to make—in a way she knew was illogical and unfair, she felt tainted by association anyway.

  Liz. She’d been so supportive, so loving, unlike anyone Mary Helen had ever known, save for her own sainted mother when she had been well, vibrant, and capable of love. Mary Helen had resisted Liz for a long time because she was twenty years older, because she wasn’t nearly as pretty as some of the other women she’d met at the Paris dance bar on Montrose Avenue. Hell, Liz had never even been to the dance club. She’d said she was too old for the place and besides, there were too many lipstick lesbians there for her taste.

  Mary Helen had met Liz at the grocery store, of all places. The Dominick’s on Broadway. They’d fought over the last package of Oreos in the shelf, for Christ’s sake. Their beginning was so disgustingly cute Mary Helen was embarrassed. She’d told people they’d met at The Closet, a bar farther south on Broadway.

  But Liz had kept after Mary Helen even though Mary Helen had been reluctant to even go on a single date with her. She’d told her to her face she was too old, too butch, too in the camp of joints like the Mountain Moving Coffeehouse for Womyn and Children, a place where a man needed special dispensation to simply get in the door. Separatist lesbian, that’s what Mary Helen had called her.

  Until she got to know her…

  Thank God, Liz had been persistent. Thank God, she saw something in Mary Helen that even Mary Helen herself hadn’t seen.

  “You’re a good person,” Liz had said once, early on. “You can hide behind the spiky punk hair, the makeup, patchouli, and a cloud of cigarette smoke, but I see you for the woman you really are. You don’t want to admit it, honey, but you’re a gal with heart.”

  Mary Helen, at first, hated Liz for her insight, thinking she could never live up to what this woman thought of her.

  But gradually, she began letting Liz in because she was someone who actually saw Mary Helen, not as a body to be exploited, as so many of her one-night stands did, but as a person of genuine value and character.

  And it was this person who’d responded when Liz told her, only last night, “You need to get up to Edgewater and make sure Emory’s okay. Or not. Well, we both know he isn’t. You’re his only family, hon. It falls on you to take care of him. Do that and maybe your tears at night will start to dry up. Because by taking care of someone you love, you take care of yourself too. In a way, you could even say it’s selfish. But I’ve learned that our only real happiness comes from reaching out toward others.”

  Once upon a time, Mary Helen would have rolled her eyes at the speech, would have snickered at the earnest words.

  But not anymore.

  In the recent past, Mary Helen had begun seeing herself through Liz’s eyes—with love. And her physical self then morphed. Gone was the heavy mascara and other war-paint-like trappings she hid behind. She’d begun to grow her hair out, allowing it to return to its natural reddish brown. It now hung in curls just above her shoulders. The spikes and peroxide were gone. Once upon a time, she’d thought her outrageous clothes, makeup, and hair were all designed to call attention to herself; now she realized they were a big shield, something to hide behind, a potion for invisibility.

  A fat raindrop fell all by itself and splatted on Mary Helen’s forehead, interrupting her reverie. The droplet reminded her she wasn’t here to ruminate or to glory in how she’d changed for the better.

  She was here for her brother.

  The raindrop was quickly followed by another and then another—faster, faster. Suddenly, with the flourishes of a flash of lightning and a deafening crack of thunder, the late afternoon skies opened and emptied a torrent of water.

  Mary Helen dashed under the awning that led to her old building’s front door. She paused, already soaked to the skin through her jeans, black T-shirt, and denim jacket, staring out at the street, which had become a watercolor blur, an obscured vision in gray. She panted even though she’d only run a few steps.

  The drumming of the rain on the awning above her head was loud, but also a comfort. She thought she could easily stand here throughout the storm, listening to its percussive and calming beats.

  She was delaying the inevitable because she was dreading it. Confronting Emory had seemed like a good idea when she set off from hers and Liz’s apartment a little more than an hour ago. Now it seemed like more of a challenge than she needed to take on.

  I mean, come on, I’m coping with Mother’s death too. I’m dealing with a new relationship and making it work. I’m trying to sort out my own issues, some possibly self-destructive, and need time and comfort to find my own way in the world.

  Liz’s voice chided her, “The only way to feel whole, to feel happy, is by being selfless and helping. You do need to take care of yourself first, true, and put your oxygen mask on before anyone else. But once that’s in place, sweetie, your brother needs you, whether he knows it or not.”

  Mary Helen reached into her damp front pocket, glad she’d held on to the keys to the building. She wrestled them out and went inside.

  At her old front door, she paused, deciding against using her key and simply barging in, justified as she might feel. Even though she could do that, she didn’t think it was right, even under these bizarre circumstances. She’d moved out. She had no right, not anymore.

  So she raised her hand and, for the first time in her life, knocked on that familiar front door. She inclined her head toward the scarred wood, listening. It was dead quiet in the apartment and she wondered if Emory was even here. The only sound was the rain still pouring down outside. The darkness filtering in through the window at the end of the hall made it seem later than it was, more like full-on night. And the sconces along the wallpapered corridor seemed unnaturally bright, almost eerie.

  Mary Helen felt a chill.

  An entirely illogical sense of foreboding made her want to turn and run—back to Liz, back to the safety of their cluttered little lair, back to where the world was normal.

  You’ve come this far. He needs you.

  She knocked again, harder and longer this time.

  And waited.

  She had a sudden vision of her brother inside, scrambling to hide grisly artifacts—a black plastic skull, a rubber hand, bloody stumps. More letters from his hero…

  Or worse.

  I don’t have a good feeling about this. Maybe I could go home and come back with Liz? She’s more level-headed. She’ll help me. This was a fool’s errand.

  She’d turned away from the door, comforted by this new plan. She was sorry she’d wasted her time on this one. She was already feeling a sense of relief as she imagined coming back later tonight with Liz when she heard the door creak open behind her.

  Emory peered out at her from the crack he’d made by opening the door maybe a foot at most. “Mary Helen? What are you doing here?”

  Mary Helen turned. It was hard to see Emory. For one, he’d only opened the door a crack, and for another, he was backlit by the overhead light in th
e apartment behind him. Mary Helen moved toward the door and, as she neared her brother, gently placed a hand on his chest to maneuver him out of the way as she stepped inside.

  She still had trouble believing the apartment was Spartan clean. Every surface practically sparkled. There was not one throw pillow, dish, picture frame, or knickknack out of place. The air smelled of Lysol and Murphy’s Oil Soap.

  “Wow,” was all she could manage.

  Emory said nothing in response. She looked him up and down, shocked at the difference in him. “What did you do to yourself?” she whispered. “What happened to this place?” She was mystified. Her brother looked like a skinhead, a thug, really, but one with really, really good personal hygiene. He seemed bigger, stronger than she remembered, as if he’d grown a couple inches since the last time she saw him.

  Emory didn’t say anything for a long time; then he said, “I’m just taking care of myself. Keeping everything clean. A clean body, a clean home—a clean mind.” He smiled, but the expression didn’t travel upward to his eyes, which were dead. Mary Helen shivered.

  Usually, she thought, keeping a tidy home and taking care of one’s own self would be signs of stability and mental health.

  But not in this case. There was something sterile and creepy about the way the apartment had changed, about how her brother had changed. There was an element of fanaticism to it that broke her heart.

  They stood for a while in silence near the front door. Mary Helen was uncertain what she should do next. She turned and peered out at the dim light beyond the rain-smeared windows. Now that she was here, she was clueless as to what she should do.

  Should she try to get Emory to come with her? Of course, that was her ultimate goal—to get him home, her home, and to see how she might help him. But how to accomplish that? I can’t just tell him I think he’s off his rocker, not even in the kindest way. I can’t simply drag his ass out of here, much as I’d like to.

  “Emory. Can we just sit down and talk for a bit? I feel like we don’t know each other anymore. I know some of that’s my fault—” She broke off midsentence when she noticed another aspect to his demeanor—he was nervous, shifting his gaze around the room, anywhere but on Mary Helen’s face, where he’d have to meet her gaze directly.