The Man From Milwaukee Read online

  He kept glancing toward Mother’s old room.

  She cocked her head and blurted, “Are you hiding something?” She said the words simultaneously with the thought occurring to her.

  He laughed, and it was weird—high-pitched, abnormal. She swallowed to try to produce some saliva. I wish I could leave! Liz, I want to come home!

  “What would I be hiding?”

  They still stood near the front door. Mary Helen walked to the couch, sat, hoping Emory would join her. He moved to the other side of the room, though, away from the front door and closer to the hallway that led to the master bedroom, Mother’s old room. He looked over his shoulder, fast, and then back at her. The color in his cheeks was high.

  Suspicious.

  “What’s going on, Emory?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do.” She patted the cushion next to her. “Come sit down, okay? I just want to talk to you, man.”

  But before he could respond in any way, by speaking or moving, a sound caused her to stiffen—a loud bang and then a muffled cry.

  The noises issued from Mother’s old room.

  Mary Helen leaped to her feet, eyeing her brother with new and more profound worry. “What’s going on?” she repeated. “Is there someone here?”

  A muffled scream made the fine hairs on her neck rise.

  Mary Helen stood, wary. Her hands trembled. Her heart began to pound and her breath to quicken. She took a couple of steps toward the sound, which had now morphed into a thumping as though someone were banging something on the floor over and over again. This noise was punctuated every couple of seconds by another garbled scream.

  “You need to go.” Emory wrung his hands, moving near her.

  And suddenly, Mary Helen was terrified of her brother, chilled at his nearness. The fight or flight instinct rose up and—coward that she cursed herself for—the flight aspect of the equation was winning out.

  She stopped and noticed the wildness in his eyes, the high color in his cheeks, and the line of sweat forming in beads along his hairline.

  “I’m not going,” Mary Helen insisted with every ounce of courage she possessed. She knew she wanted nothing more than to obey her brother, get out of this suffocating nightmare. “I need to know what’s going on here.”

  She drew in a breath, reaching deep within herself for courage she wasn’t sure was there, and forced herself to walk to Mother’s old room.

  “Don’t go in there!” Emory cried, yet he made no move to stop her. She expected his hands, yanking her back, strong-arming her out the front door.

  But Emory didn’t touch her.

  A shiver ran up and down her spine.

  All she could do right now was act even if it went against every self-protective instinct. Without hesitation, she opened her mother’s bedroom door and stepped inside.

  The grunting, muffled cries, and pounding were much louder here.

  They came from the closet.

  “Oh God, Emory, what have you done?”

  I can’t. I don’t wanna. That door stays shut. Run, run, run!

  She found it curious that Emory didn’t answer her question. She could sense him behind her, watching, waiting.

  “This has to end here, little brother. Now,” she said, her voice barely above a choked whisper. Oh God, what has he done? What am I going to see?

  Mary Helen flung open the closet door. She stuffed a fist in her mouth at what awaited her—a young man, naked, bound, duct tape over his mouth, pale eyes alive with terror. Those eyes begged her for help.

  “Oh no! No. This isn’t happening.”

  Mary Helen rushed into the closet, dropping to her knees to free the man, who suddenly went still, eyes even wider with terror as he gazed over her shoulder.

  She turned to see what had frightened him even more than this twisted nightmare where he took center stage.

  And her brother, the milquetoast, the weakling, the butt of her pity and scorn, stood above her, enraged, a heavy ceramic gargoyle Mother had once made, ready to bring it down on Mary Helen’s skull.

  She raised a hand and whimpered, too scared to think.

  Chapter Twenty

  She can’t. She’s going to ruin everything. This simply cannot happen. This is my house. My man.

  Emory brought the gargoyle up high, intent on smashing it down on Mary Helen’s skull. The thought of doing so made him sick, but the alternative was worse. She’d free Tyler. They’d go to the police. Just as with Dahmer, they’d never understand why he was keeping Tyler here. They’d say he was holding him prisoner, that he’d kidnapped him.

  No one but Dahmer could get what he was doing—simply trying to ensure Tyler, whom he knew cared deeply for him, to stay.

  That’s all—just stay with him, even if it was only for a little bit longer. Emory realized it was all he’d ever wanted—despite the hatred for himself that had hardened his own heart—a man to call his own.

  Yes, he knew it was a strange way to go about things, but it was the end result that mattered, wasn’t it?

  Mary Helen’s head was before him, her dun-colored hair, now grown out, no longer colored or spiky, a target. He imagined, for a moment, the skull opening, the blood that would pour out, perhaps even a glimpse of the gray matter that was her brain. In his mind’s eye, he watched her crumple to the floor, the whoosh of air, perhaps final, coming out. He saw the pool of blood widening beneath her head.

  He started to bring the gargoyle down—swiftly and hard—when she turned to look up at him, eyes wide, mouth open in a little circle of horror and fear. Speechless. Terrified. Hurt.

  He almost couldn’t halt the downward momentum, so set was his body on completing the motion that could well end in his sister’s death.

  My own sister.

  In an instant, like the reel of his own life that’s supposed to unspool in the mind’s eye in the moment before death, he saw scenes with Mary Helen and him growing up. He saw himself walking her in the burnt-orange-and-yellow floral-patterned stroller through the neighborhood. The boys would laugh, point, and snicker, but Emory, red-faced, tried not to care. He loved the little girl with all his heart. It was Emory and Mary Helen against the world. There they were at a carnival in a church parking lot on Sheridan Road, Emory’s arm wrapped protectively around his little sister as they rose high into the night sky on the Ferris wheel. They were surrounded by neon and the smells of cotton candy, popcorn, and fried food and the screams and laughter of other carnival-goers. Here they were, playing a game called “Daddy and Geraldine.” Emory would kneel on the hardwood floor of the living room, hold out his arms and cry, “Geraldine!” and Mary Helen would answer back, “Daddy!” and run into his waiting arms.

  “Stop, Emory. Stop.” Mary Helen was almost on her back on the floor next to Tyler, her trembling palms up and extended toward him. Her eyes were bright with fear and something else—the sting of betrayal maybe?

  She scooted back, and as she did, Emory lowered the gargoyle to his side.

  Nearly breathless, Mary Helen asked, “Were you—” She swallowed hard, groping for words. “Were you gonna hit me with that?” Her eyes, wide, welled with tears. “Were you gonna try to kill me?” Her eyes twisted shut for a moment as though her pain was too great to endure.

  Maybe it was.

  And like the air going out of a balloon, Emory’s rage left him, usurped by shame.

  He dropped to the floor, letting go of the heavy art object, where it left a dent and scuff in the wood. He put hands over his face and, beneath his palms, let out an unearthly scream. It almost sounded as though it came from someone else—Mother, perhaps, expressing her anguish at seeing her children like this, or a wounded animal.

  When the scream ended, he lowered his hands and stared at the two of them, cowering, lost-for-words, staring back. Both of them were trembling. In their eyes and through their eyes, he witnessed himself.

  And he understood their terror and upset.


  It’s because of you. They’re scared to death of you. Can you blame them?

  “Were you, Emory? Would you hurt me? Your little sister?”

  All Emory could do was move toward his flinching sister and gather her up in his arms. He began to sob as he whispered into her hair, “No, no, honey. I could never hurt you. I was crazy there for just a moment. I wish I could say I don’t know what came over me, but I do.” He looked away, glancing over at Tyler, who eyed him with revulsion and horror.

  Tyler will never be mine.

  “You’re my sister. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, hurt you. It was a close call. Forgive me, okay?”

  Mary Helen wriggled free from his embrace, which he realized was probably too tight, too painful. She stood on shaking legs, grabbing onto the bar for hanging clothes for support. She took a few deep, quivering breaths. Her face was white, slicked with a thin sheen of sweat. At last, she turned, leaving him alone on the floor with Tyler.

  He listened without moving as her rapid footfalls propelled her to the front door—and then the door opening and, after a beat, closing softly.

  He looked down at Tyler. “I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t,” he said. “You could see that, right?”

  If Tyler had an opinion, he wasn’t giving it. He couldn’t if he wanted to, anyway, with his mouth taped shut.

  Emory breathed in deeply and began loosening the bonds that held Tyler and pulling the duct tape off his mouth gently.

  “I’m so sorry for this,” Emory said, over and over, almost a litany. “I just wanted us to be together. My intentions were good, Ty. I like you.”

  Tyler, even with his mouth untaped, said nothing, only eyed Emory with the kind of look one might reserve for a murderer or a psychopath, cunningly revealing himself from the shadows in some lonely and deserted place. His face and his body language agreed—he simply wanted to escape this nightmare Emory had cast him in against his will.

  At last, gasping and with great effort, Tyler pulled himself to his feet. He paused for a moment and then asked, “Where are my clothes?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  Tyler left the closet.

  Emory found him after a few moments, getting dressed in Emory’s own bedroom. He was having trouble putting things on because his hands shook so badly. “Let me help you.” Emory reached out a hand.

  And Tyler pulled away, moving out of reach.

  “Stay. I can explain. Just let me talk to you.”

  Dressed, Tyler turned and began to move from the room to the front door.

  “You’re not going to the police, are you? You know I did this because I was lonely, because I wanted you in my life.”

  Tyler opened the front door and stood framed in the doorway for a moment. He shook his head. Emory was surprised to see the tiniest of smiles flicker across Tyler’s handsome face. Surprised and hopeful.

  But then he said, “Dude, you’re nuts.”

  And just like that, he was gone.

  Emory moved to the couch, thinking his entire world had just ended with the soft click of the front door closing.

  He swiveled, getting himself up on his knees on the couch so he could watch Tyler from the window. He dared not hope he’d return, and he was right. Tyler walked quickly away never once looking back until he vanished from view around the corner at Granville.

  Emory turned back once more, flopping almost supine on the couch, breathing hard. His stomach roiled. He was on the verge of tears.

  He wished he would vomit.

  He wished he would sob.

  But his body offered him no succor.

  I’ve ruined everything. I’ve driven away the very, very few connections I had to the human race. I’m lost! Lost!

  Briefly, he considered writing to Dahmer, but cast aside the idea almost immediately. Here in the harsh glare of the sun coming in through the windows, he knew at last what an empty gesture that would be.

  In his mind’s eye, he watched himself all those many, many times first writing to Dahmer and then, after a bit, penning his reply, not even bothering to vary the handwriting. He’d never seen himself with such clarity before. Somehow, a place in his brain had misfired and allowed him to actually believe the crazed cannibal serial killer, the man from Milwaukee, was actually paying attention to him, writing to him, Emory Hughes.

  He let out a short laugh at his own folly, his own capacity for delusion.

  And then he was silent—for many hours, breathing slowly as the quality of light in the room went through its many changes—dimming, dimming until at last Emory was alone in the dark, alone in the world too.

  And when the light was finally all sucked from the apartment—and his soul—Emory stood and crossed to where he’d assembled the bulletin board of clippings about Dahmer and, below, his ridiculous cache of so-called correspondence.

  He gathered all the paper together and carried the stack into the kitchen. He placed them in the sink and opened the drawer next to the gas stove, where they kept a box of wooden matches for the purpose of lighting the stove’s pilot light when it went out, as it often did.

  He gazed down at the pictures of Dahmer, the news items, and, worst of all, the letters for only a few moments before striking the match head against the red strip on the box’s side. He lifted the flame aloft and watched it flicker in the dark room, mesmerized. He let it burn down to just the moment before his fingertips would be scorched and then dropped it onto the paper.

  The pile started to blacken, and then the flames rose.

  Emory was stunned at how quickly the paper—and his dreams—went from solid and real to black ash in the kitchen sink.

  Mundane was the act of running water over the ashes, observing their progress to the drain, which Emory hoped wouldn’t clog.

  Part Four

  November 1994

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “In those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die…”

  Tyler put the Chicago Tribune from that morning aside because he needed to stop and think. The quote was from Revelations, chapter nine, verse six. The article, about the beating death of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, referenced biblical verse because it said that Dahmer, shortly before his killing at the hands of another inmate, had been meeting with a minister. The minister had been Dahmer’s only visitor at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin. Revelations was their latest foray into Bible study.

  The quote, based on what had happened, seemed apt.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Apt is a good word.” Tyler mumbled to himself. He sat in silence for a long time, long enough for the coffee at his side, once steaming, to go cold.

  He too felt chilled.

  The article went on to quote the minister, who told the Tribune that “Dahmer wanted to die.” The minister imagined Dahmer’s greatest surprise was that it had taken so long for death to catch up to him in a prison bathroom on a Monday morning.

  Tyler imagined waiting and wondering when death would come for a person. What a way to exist—calling that kind of existence “living” was a stretch.

  And then his thoughts turned to a face from his past…

  It had been years since Tyler had even laid eyes on Emory Hughes. Tyler believed he’d escaped from the man’s insane clutches in both literal and figurative terms. But this morning’s news had reawakened old ties. Tyler was under the mistaken impression he’d wiped those ties from his memory since that long-ago day when Emory had drugged and imprisoned him in his Kenmore Avenue apartment.

  Other than Emory’s sister, Mary Helen, Tyler assumed no one knew about his harrowing confinement and what might have happened if she hadn’t dropped by and heard his struggles. She’d rescued him and, in the process, had been nearly killed herself.

  The whole short period seemed now like a nightmare, surreal, something that maybe he’d read about in a newspaper account, rather than a chapter from his own life.

  Tyler could never bring himself to
contact the police although he knew he should have done so. It was the sane, rational move. But going through such channels would have made things real, and Tyler didn’t know if he could bear the crushing weight of the nightmare crime that had been his to bear.

  Tyler couldn’t even tell the man who would become his partner, Cole Hardwick, about what had happened during those fateful days. Cole had pressed and pressed shortly after Tyler’s release because he’d worried so much when Tyler had turned up missing, but Tyler had put him off with vague excuses—a family emergency morphed into time alone to sort his thoughts. Cole had never believed him, not really. But Tyler had been aware Cole could also see the grief talking about his own absence caused, and Cole had kindly left him alone, perhaps waiting until Tyler was ready to tell him the full story.

  He still wasn’t ready. He didn’t know if he’d ever be.

  He’d never told his family. They certainly would have insisted on police interference. They would have wanted vengeance.

  Tyler simply couldn’t do that to Emory. He pitied him way more than he hated him and knew he acted out of delusion and very, very weirdly, love for Tyler.

  And the result? Emory hadn’t been arrested, as far as Tyler knew. He could even be walking around today, a free man. A twinge of guilt went through him as his conscience reminded him that Emory could have done to some other hapless young man what had been done to Tyler.

  Yet, Tyler didn’t think so.

  With his thwarted attempt on his sister’s life, Emory’s steam went out of him. It was as though a switch had been flipped—it happened that fast. There was a kind of reckoning, remorse. Tyler could see it in Emory’s eyes, even though it didn’t stop him from getting away from the man as fast as he could.

  He’d thrown up at the corner of Kenmore and Granville that day, on and on until he was heaving, and nothing more came out of his mouth other than yellow bile and strands of spit. Typical of Chicago, none of the passersby stopped to ask if he’d needed help.