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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “I wrote this in the dark” Down in the Dirt, v207 (5/23)  Order the paperback book: 
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An Acquired Taste
Ken Goldman
Lester Denton was both a breast man and a leg man, but no one would have ever called him a ladies’ man. He saw nothing mysterious in a woman’s eyes, nothing seductive about the way she crossed a room, and nothing entrancing in the proverbial cut of her jib. Denton could have cared less about the lilt of a woman’s voice, the warmth of her caress, or the scent of her secret places. He felt indifferent about the eternal mystery that comprised the ‘whole’ woman because in his mind the whole could never equal the sum of her parts.
Still, Lester’s passion for women burned with a white hot fury bordering on frenzy. This was the diagnosis Dr. Janice Matthews gave the Boston Police Department the night she interviewed Lester shortly after his arrest. The therapist would not have been incorrect had she added that Lester loved his women to pieces, although she would never have selected those exact words. There were not many words that would have made the night’s events palatable to cops who&mnsp;- until that night&mnsp;- thought they had had seen it all.
Earlier, arresting Officers McGuinty and Cooper had found Lester Denton on a park bench near the Tremont Street subway entrance of the Boston Common. Shortly after twelve o’clock they discovered him casually munching on his midnight snack of Miss Tamara Daniels’ left ear. The bulk of Miss Daniels remained in her dorm room back in Brookline where Lester had picked much of the Boston University coed’s flesh clean, carrying the bones that had been her fingers into the kitchen to wash his meal down with some Dr. Pepper.
No one in Precinct 37 asked Denton if he would like a sandwich before his interview with the psychiatrist.
Lieutenant Sal Muncey watched Dr. Matthews scribble her notes as she formulated her diagnosis, and he prepared himself for the fancy shmantsy double talk he knew was coming. Central headquarters always pigeonholed guys like Lester Denton because the public required those neat labels that explained their criminals’ misdeeds. The police commissioner demanded his ten cents’ worth of psychological buzzwords that would logically explain Boston’s atrocity du jour to John Q. Public. Maybe Lester’s mother rejected him? Call his craving for female flesh ‘Oedipal’. Maybe his girlfriend in junior high had spread the word that he was hung like a flea? Call his rage ‘displaced aggression’. Maybe a Big Mac just didn’t do it for him? Call his derangement ‘munchoid psychosis’. Then follow the papers for the next ten years as an army of shrinks argued about why the crazy bastard did it.
Headquarters wanted Boston’s badge and gun club to appear familiar with the psychobabble so the precinct cops would not come off like morons in front of the t.v. cameras. The commissioner’s goal was to wrap these recent killings inside a neat package, then present that package to the media by morning. The commish signed Janice Matthews’ paycheck personally and expected Lieutenant Sal Muncey to nod and smile accordingly with whatever diagnosis she offered.
Let’s label this one ‘case closed,’ guys. And how ‘bout them Sox?
“I realize it’s hard to understand after seeing what Mr. Denton did to the Daniels girl after he strangled her,” the therapist explained to the three men seated before her. They were together in the small office alongside Precinct 37’s interrogation room where Lester sat alone beneath a single dim light bulb. The woman spoke as they watched him through the two-way mirror.
“Denton envied women for the desire they created inside him and he coveted what he found alluring about them. Whether it was their fingers or their breasts, the secret ingredient was contained in their flesh. Lester Denton saw only a woman’s component parts and believed he could assimilate the best parts of each woman inside himself, thereby displacing everything which he found detestable in himself. Only an extremely weak ego would be capable of such sick stuff, but we’ve got a classic obsessive fixation here taken to its behavioral limits.”
“You are what you eat. Right, doctor?” mumbled Cooper, the oily-haired rookie. His eyes locked with Dr. Matthews’ as if he were encouraging an angry retort but she returned his stare without missing a beat.
“In his mind Denton meant those women no harm, Mr. Cooper. Any pathological obsession tends to blind one from reality, and there is no sense of having done anything wrong. Remember, every one of those women invited him into their homes. He helped Tamara Daniels with her groceries. Last month, he repaired a flat tire for that housewife he killed. Mr. Denton didn’t feel he violated any of those women. But then, how many sane men worry about that sort of thing?”
The young therapist crossed her legs and her skirt rode midway up her thighs. One of her shoes dangled from her toes. If the move were calculated then it worked, because Muncey noticed Cooper’s sudden rapt attention. But Lieutenant Muncey’s thoughts were not on Janice Matthews’ legs.
“For someone who meant no harm, I’d say ol’ Lester blew it big time, doctor,” he said. Beautiful as she was, this woman was also a pain in his ass. He envisioned Matthews providing Denton’s lawyer with the requisite insanity plea and the thought made Muncey want to upchuck his dinner all over her note pad.
“I’m not excusing the man’s actions, and I didn’t say he was rational, Lieutenant. That’s why we call his behavior pathological.”
The woman’s carefully selected words had a mathematical precision, as if Boston’s latest looneytoon had been a bothersome algebraic equation she had managed to solve. Even with that cannibalistic fruitcake seated within spitting distance from her chair, she spoke about him as if he were some kind of laboratory rat. The Lieutenant did not doubt that Dr. Janice Matthews also had a hypothesis regarding the symbolism of why cops carry those big guns.
An awkward silence followed. The woman used the moment to remove her high heels and reached into the large tote bag she had placed under the table to pull out a pair of flats. Lieutenant Muncey and the two arresting officers watched through the two-way as Lester fidgeted in his hard-backed chair and licked his fingers. The nondescript little wuss behind the glass hardly seemed worth six months of front page headlines in The Globe. The kid could pass for the bastard son of Dan Quayle and June Cleaver.
McGuinty whispered something to his partner and Cooper nodded. Muncey knew the senior cop had whispered “This is bullshit” although he had not heard him say the words. Muncey suspected the woman knew what he had said too.
The lieutenant lit a Marlboro without asking the young therapist if she minded that he smoked. He hoped that she did mind. Her lecture was pissing him off and he felt like returning the favor.
“Of course you could always argue that Lester’s biting off a woman’s fingers was his helpful way of saving her the trouble of doing her nails,” the lieutenant suggested, spitting smoke as he spoke. “Look, I don’t mean to sound out of line, Dr. Matthews, but last night that sick puke chewed off the Daniels girl’s nipples and left them in the ash tray like they were wads of bubble gum. A few months ago he strangled a young Beacon Hill housewife and made a gourmet meal of her brains. Her husband found what Denton left behind in the dog dish. It’s no sweat off my nose if your report explains how chowing down on that woman’s frontal lobe was that psychopath’s way of making himself smarter. But I want you to understand that just because he’s a sicko, your intellectualizing what he did doesn’t make it any less despicable. If this was my call I’d throw the switch on that bastard right now.”
“The law recognizes that Lester Denton has diminished capacity, Lieutenant. He’s a sick man who doesn’t understand what he’s done. That’s why—”
“—that’s why you call them pathological section 8 non compos mentis poop heads. Did I get that right?”
Janice Matthews shot the lieutenant a look that would have caused a Brahma bull to break eye contact. Possibly all her misguided professional sympathy for the loopy bastard masked the rage she really felt toward him, rage she redirected toward the easier male targets seated before her. More likely she was just too plain stupid to know what she was talking about.
Maybe she needed to see the photos of those women after Lester was through with them. Maybe she needed to study Tammy Daniels’ gutted remains down at the city morgue. Muncey suspected Dr. Matthews would feel differently if she suddenly had to dislodge her own tit from Lester’s maw.
The woman turned toward McGuinty and Cooper as if she were about to share the riddle of the sphinx.
“Let me put this into perspective for you gentlemen. The lieutenant here says Lester Denton should fry, and maybe he should. Most people probably would like to see him fried, baked, and filleted. But here’s something for you to think about. There isn’t a man who hasn’t done to women with his eyes what Mr. Denton has done with his teeth.”
“Yeah. That college girl looked so good, he just went and ate the whole thing,” mumbled Cooper. Muncey had to force himself not to smile.
Janice Matthews set a bead on the young cop like a cheesed off school teacher.
“Abnormal Psychology is a relative term, Mr. Cooper. You could apply it to a lot of men if you peeked through a few key holes. Show me a man who hasn’t mentally dismembered a woman’s breasts and buttocks every time he looks at a centerfold. Fetishists and voyeurs don’t foam at the mouth. Sometimes they sip martinis or guzzle beers. Misogyny isn’t restricted to psychopaths, and from what I can tell in this precinct it isn’t restricted to Lester Denton’s side of the mirror.”
The three men exchanged quick glances with one another, then aimed them right back at the therapist. She might just as well have accused them of masturbating to the photos of Denton’s most recent target. Muncey was beginning to regret that Dr. Matthews had not met Lester a few hours earlier. The lieutenant might have even passed him the salt.
Behind the glass Denton studied his fingers and smiled a silly little grin, the same idiotic grin he had flashed at the waiting reporters when the two officers had brought him in. His was not the smile of the cat who had swallowed the canary; it was the smile of the cat who had swallowed the canary’s beak and toes.
“This meeting is adjourned, folks,” said Muncey. “Coop, write this one up. McGuinty, make sure you find a clean shirt for ‘Good Morning America’ tomorrow. Dr. Matthews, thank you for your time. I’ve learned so much.”
The therapist did not bother with the amenities. She grabbed her tote bag and did not look back as she headed for the door.
It was 3:17 a.m.
