Buried Dreams (42 page)

“I never thought anything of it,” said the neighbor woman. “Not until this happened. Now I suppose this was probably one that got away from him. And lots of times, I heard crying at night. Crying and screaming: one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock. At night. I’d wake up my boy and say, ‘Where does that come from?’ He says, ‘I can’t tell.’ I say, ‘This is
terrible, terrible, all those screams. The sound is close by.’ But we can’t tell where it comes from and we think, Well, the neighbors, someone who is closer to it, they can tell where it comes from. They will call the police. At night you can’t tell where it comes from, a screaming sound like that. But the dog was always barking and the screams would fade away, so maybe it was just my imagination. The next day and the day after, I’d listen to the news and they never said anything about screams, so I thought, It’s my imagination. Another week would go by and the dog would start barking late at night, and I’d wake up and I’d hear it again: these terrible high-pitched screams.”

Those night screams from the Gacy house strongly suggest—despite John’s vehement statements to the contrary—that many of the murdered boys were tortured before they died. The most horrifying bit of evidence supporting that theory comes from the forensic pathologist, Dr. Edward Shalgos. Dr. Shalgos, who provides professional services to coroners outside Cook County, was asked to autopsy the body found floating in the Des Plaines River on November 12, 1978. The next day Dr. Shalgos began to work on the body. The victim, Frank Landingin, had been dead for some time before the body was thrown in the river. Dr. Shalgos also noted “something being very firmly packed into the mouth of the individual effectively plugging . . . his airway. . . .” This clothlike object was “pushed up against the backward opening of the nose and also pressing backwards and downwards on the tongue.”

Dr. Shalgos “struggled a great deal to remove this object, which was wound and forced into the mouth very, very strongly. It took a great deal of effort to get this object out.” When he was finally able to extricate the cloth, Dr. Shalgos discovered that it was “a pair of intact bikini pants, dark blue with a marginal rim of red, white and blue, quite narrow.”

In trying to ascertain the cause of death, Dr. Shalgos examined the contents of the stomach and found “a very generous amount of rather well-digested food, including varied vegetables” and small fragments of meat. John Gacy—or a manifestation of Jack—often fed the boys he picked up; John liked to think of himself as “the perfect host.”

Dr. Shalgos also examined the victim’s seminal vesicles, which were very firmly contracted and had no content, indicating that “within a few hours of death, the individual had
had sexual relations.” Aside from those findings, the pathologist could find no traumatic abnormalities: the upper respiratory tract was intact and undamaged, indicating that “there was no strangulation. . . .”

What Dr. Shalgos found were food elements, similar to those found in the stomach, in the upper respiratory tract. He found well-digested food that completely filled the bronchial tubes. “The individual,” Dr. Shalgos concluded, “died of asphyxia related to regurgitive occlusive aspiration of gastric content, all related to the mouth gag that had been placed.” In effect, the boy drowned in his own vomit. It was impossible to say if the sickness, the vomiting, had been caused by the gag or by some unbearable external stimuli.

Thirteen of the thirty-three victims attributed to John Wayne Gacy were found with clothlike material stuffed into the back of the mouth and pushed deep into the throat. John insisted, in his early statements, that if he had placed anything in the victim’s mouths, he “must have” done so after the death of the individual. John “rationalized” that because of his work with corpses in the Palm Mortuary—because of his firsthand knowledge of the various indignities of death—he “probably” gagged the victims to prevent “fluids leaking out.” The gags were a sanitary precaution, placed after death to save the rugs. John gagged the corpses he found in his house because they were messy and he is a very neat man.

None of the victims, John said, had been hurt before their deaths, none of them were tortured as far as he could remember and as intently as he could rationalize. John was a gentle man, a “completely nonviolent” person. And yet the boy found floating in the Des Plaines River on November 11, 1978—one of the victims definitely attributed to John Wayne Gacy—had been alive when the gag was stuffed into his mouth.

John didn’t remember killing any victims aside from the first, and for that reason, he said, he obviously couldn’t remember gagging anyone while that person was alive. But if he did—and the evidence from Dr. Shalgos is incontrovertible—then he must have done it for a reason.

There is only one reason to gag someone—to silence that person. Jack may have been a murderer, but he apparently shared John’s concern for the neighbors. Too much noise too late at night sets the dogs to barking; people who hear screams in the dark of the night end up calling the police.

So if the man in chains is truly living through the pickup—living through a murder scene—he certainly hears the dog barking outside when he says, “Yeah, this is my place.” He’s expansive but modest, not at all overbearing, like some well-to-do people. He’s a nice man, an authority figure certainly, but almost more of a father than a cop. “I do all right,” he says. “You want a drink?”

“Yeah,” the boy says. “Whatcha got?”

“I got beer, I got Scotch. . . .”

“I’ll try the Scotch,” the kid says, and the man in chains goes through the motions of fixing a couple of drinks. He extends his hand, as if offering a drink.

“You hungry, kid?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m starved.”

“Want a sandwich?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I got some ham, I got some cheese.”

“Sounds okay.”

“You want ham and cheese?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

“No.” The man sounds annoyed. “You said it sounds okay, but maybe you want only ham, maybe you want only cheese. Maybe you want both, but you didn’t say, did you?” There is a warning here: Just don’t piss me off.

“I want both,” the kid says. And then, because this cop blows hot and cold, because any little thing seems to set him off, the kid adds carefully, “I’m sorry. I should have said I wanted both right away.”

“That’s okay,” the man says, smiling slightly. He likes it when they know their place. “You know,” he says, “I’m a cop, but I got a construction business on the side.”

“Yeah?”

“I got four trucks on the street. A lotta guys your age work for me. I pay good.” The man is cutting thin slices from a large ham. “I’m always looking for good help,” he says mildly, planting another seed. He smiles vaguely and glances affectionately over his shoulder. He really seems to like this kid.

“What kinda work is it?” the boy asks.

“All kinds of contracting.”

“Whatta ya pay?”

“I pay good. We can talk about it later if you’re interested.”

“I’d be interested,” the kid says. There seems to be a
contract in the making. The job may or may not be offered later, after the boy does whatever it is the man wants. “I’d be interested,” the kid says again, and there is, in the voice, the slight hint of a hustler who smells money. “I’d like to talk about it . . . later.”

“Later,” the man says, while slicing cheese for the boy’s sandwich. The boy is wandering around the house, and he stops in the den, looks for a moment at the walls, and shouts to the man in the kitchen, “Where did you get all these pictures, man?” The boy is looking at a series of oil paintings. The paintings are all of clowns, and many of the clowns, under their makeup, seem to be terribly sad, melancholy. Some of them look to be at the point of tears. It is a blatant and obvious sort of imagery: the clown who presents a happy face to the world, who makes people laugh; the clown who is really lonely and sad inside, racked by some secret sorrow. It is an image that obviously appeals to the man, this idea of the clown of sorrow.

“I collect clowns,” the man says. “See, I do a lot of clowning myself. I entertain at hospitals, for sick kids. I do parades, shopping-center openings. Stuff like that. You like clowns?”

“Sure,” the kid says. Who doesn’t like clowns? “When I was real young, I wanted to run away with the circus.”

“No shit.” The man is pleased to hear this. “You wanted to be a clown, huh?”

“Sure did.”

“Well, that’s funny, because right now I got so many jobs booked I need an assistant clown. See, I’m Pogo the clown, and my assistant is Patches. If you’re interested, we’ll talk about it—”

“Later,” the kid adds, knowingly.

“Right,” the man says in a gruff, somewhat deeper voice. He doesn’t like smart-ass kids who go around completing sentences for him. Shit like that makes him angry. He is not really himself when he’s angry.

“Right,” the man says again, “and if you’re real nice to me, maybe I’ll show you my trophies.” The man frowns: what an odd thing to say. “I keep ‘em downstairs.” His voice trembles a bit, as if to smother a sudden sob, or, more probably, an unbidden laugh. “I keep ‘em in my crawl space.”

“What did you get ‘em for?”

The man stares into the distance, as if searching for
something, a thought perhaps, the outline of an idea he can no longer recall. “Never mind,” he says. Secret sorrows imply the glimmerings of dark knowledge.

There is something vaguely sexual here. The boy knows what the man wants, he just doesn’t know what form it’s all going to take. He can play along, maybe make some money—maybe even score a job—or he can get all prissy and take a chance that this cop will bust him. Maybe this guy has a sex thing about his trophies.

“I’d really like to see ‘em,” the kid insists, and there is, in his voice, the slight hint of a hustler’s feigned fascination and passion.

“Maybe later, kid,” the man says sharply, an obvious attempt to change the subject. The boy seems to sense something beyond his understanding, seems to think this man is somehow making fun of him. He doesn’t like older people humoring him. “You almost done with that sandwich?” he asks coldly. “I’m starving, for Chrissake.”

The man in chains continues cutting, but his movements are suddenly tight, furious. They are the gestures of a man pushed to the limits of his very considerable tolerance. “Dumb son-of-a-bitch,” he mutters under his breath. The voice is somewhat rusty, a rasping whisper. “I bring you to my house, I offer you a job, I try to feed you, you . . . son . . . of . . . a . . . bitch. . . .” The tone falls quickly into a deeper register—this is the voice of a man falling, falling into darkness.

The knife stops cutting. The man looks about, angry and inexplicably confused.

“Jack,” he says suddenly, and there is no one there.

“Jack,” he says, as if calling for help.

“Jack,” he says, and there is a catch in his throat, a whining note to the new deepness in his voice.

“Jack, the motherfucker’s trying to take advantage of me,” he says, pulling the trigger.

The man raises his arms as far as the chains will allow and stares down at the palms of his hands. “Oh, God, look at my hands.” He holds them out away from his torso and stares as if he has never seen them before, as if they don’t belong to his body at all. “Look at them. They’re getting bigger, stronger. Look! Look!

“Oh, my God,” the man says as if in terror. These are Jack’s hands: not the Jack who splits from John, the one who
“knows what he wants,” who “cunningly traps ‘em,” who really “isn’t such a bad guy.” These are a killer’s hands, Jack’s murdering hands, the huge, powerful hands that gripped the plunging knife the very first time. The trigger has been pulled, and these are the killer’s hands.

“God,” he shrieks.

The man’s eyes roll in their sockets. “My head,” he mutters. “My head hurts.” He doubles over, trying to put his head into his chained hands, but suddenly straightens up, quickly, stiffly. He stares down at his hands in horror. The fingers are spread far apart, and now they slowly curve into the palm until they look like talons. “Oh, God, Jesus, my head,” he whimpers.

“Jack!” A man dying of thirst might call for water in the same tone.

“Jaaaaaaack!” It is a deep, guttural call, very much like the sound of sickness, of a man vomiting.

Suddenly the man stiffens, makes a quarter turn, and steps forward as if his knees are locked. His arms are bent at the elbows, his fingers hooked like talons. He takes one more step—the man moves like a movie monster: a powerful zombie, a Frankenstein’s monster—and picks up the knife off the cutting board.

“I’ll take over now,” Jack says, a new Jack who spews out his weakness in a hoarse groan of delirious agony and anger. He slams his fist down as if plunging the knife deeply into the cutting board, then turns and lunges forward, muttering, growling, his knees stiff. His elbows are at his sides, and he holds his hands before him, the fingers hooked and lethal, powerful.

A boy’s voice, frightened, quavering, bursts out of the twisted mouth in Jack’s contorted face. “Hey, whatta ya doin’? Man? Hey, man—”

But Jack has the boy in his invulnerable hands, and he is shaking him. “Shut up,” he growls, and there is, in his voice, the rumble of something not entirely human, a guttural growl: something dark and bestial heard from a distance in the jungle at night. “You fucking little bastard.”

From the same mouth, from the same throat, there is a sud-den, strange sound, almost a whimper. “Man . . . hey, please . . .”

“Dumb bastard,” Jack grates. “Dumb stupid bastard, think we’re all assholes, just so dumb and stupid.” But he has
stopped shaking the boy and is simply holding him in those huge hands. “Just like all the rest,” Jack says, and his voice is less rasping, more human, “trying to take advantage . . .”

“I’m not,” the boy says weakly. “You . . . you offered me a job, man.” Jack takes his hands off the boy and stares at them for a moment, as if he has never seen them before.

“What did I do?” the boy whines. “Really, man, I want to work with you. I want to be your assistant clown, really.”

“Okay,” the man says. He turns his head to the right as if looking for someone who isn’t there. His voice is less deep, less harsh. “Okay, yeah, sorry . . . I . . . I must have got you confused with someone else. . . . I . . . I’m sorry.” Jack is a busy fellow, and if he sounds a bit distracted, it may be that he is in the process of making up his mind about some niggling matter of minor importance, some nasty bit of work that has to be cleaned up right away.