Deviant by Harold Schechter Page A

Green Lake County Sheriff’s Department.
    By seven o’clock, the street in front of the hardware store was filling up with squad cars, their red revolving lights flashing on the gathering crowd of Bernice Worden’s neighbors. Uniformed officers and taut-faced farmers huddled in the frigid fall night, their breath rising in puffs as they talked bitterly about the fate of the widow—another woman snatched from their midst, just like Mary Hogan. Only this time, there was a name attached to the mysterious abductor. The name of Eddie Gein.
    Over at the Hills’, Gein was warming himself with the last few mouthfuls of Irene’s coffee. He had, in fact, seemed chilled all evening, and neither the warmth from the kitchen stove nor the Hills’ kerosene space heater seemed to make any difference. Irene wondered if the little bachelor was coming down with the flu.
    Eddie had moved over to the davenport and was horsing around with one of the Hills’ younger children when Jim Vroman, Irene’s son-in-law, rushed into the house and began talking excitedly about Bernice Worden’s disappearance and the commotion downtown. Eddie sat there listening intently until Vroman was finished, then shook his head and said, “Must have been somebody pretty cold-blooded.”
    Irene looked at Eddie and suddenly remembered how he had been dining at her house a few years before when the news of Mary Hogan’s abduction reached them. “Ed,” she said, “how come every time somebody gets banged on the head and hauled away, you’re always around?”
    Eddie just grinned the way he did and gave a little shrug.
    Like any teenager who has just heard the news of some big local trouble, Bob Hill was itching to see the excitement for himself and asked if Eddie would drive him downtown.
    Eddie, always obliging, agreed.
    The Hills kept their store open late, and it was time for Irene to relieve her husband, who had been taking care of business while the rest of the family ate. As Gein and Bob got ready to leave, Irene bid goodbye to her visitor, then hurried across the snow-encrusted yard to the little grocery. She removed her coat and sent Lester home for his meal.
    She hadn’t been there more than a few minutes when the front door swung open, letting in a blast of frozen air and two grim-faced men, Officer Dan Chase and Deputy Poke Spees.
    Chase had been dispatched to find the suspect and, after making a quick stop at the Gein farmstead and satisfying himself that no one was home, had proceeded to the Hills’, where Eddie was known to be a frequent visitor. As soon as the two officers stepped inside the store, they asked Irene if she knew where Eddie was.
    “He’s sitting in his car right there in my driveway, unless he’s taken off,” Irene told them. “He’s driving my son downtown to see what’s going on.”
    Sure enough, when Chase and Spees went around to the house, they found Gein’s car still there, engine idling, tail pipe spewing exhaust vapor into the cold. The Hills’ porch light was burning, and in its glow Chase could see Eddie sitting behind the wheel of his Ford with Bob Hill beside him.
    Chase tapped on the driver’s window, and Gein rolled it down. “Eddie,” said Chase, “I’d like to talk to you.”
    Obediently, Eddie stepped out into the yard and followed the two officers to their squad car, where he got into the back seat with Spees. Positioning himself up front, Chase swiveled to look at the stubble-cheeked little man, who sat there smiling weakly, his watery blue eyes peering out from beneath the peak of the plaid deerhunter’s cap planted sideways on his head.
    Chase asked Gein exactly how he’d spent the day, from the time he woke up to the present moment, and Eddie proceeded to tell him.
    When he finished, Chase asked him to run through the events of the clay one more time, beginning with his visit to Worden’s. Gein repeated his account.
    “Now, Eddie,” said Chase after a moment. “You didn’t tell the same