Free Rivers to Blood by Michael Lister

opened to the painting “Young Virgin Autosodomized by her Own Chastity” when DeLisa Lopez walked into my office.
    “What’s that?” she asked.
    “Salvador Dalí painting,” I said. “What the rapist is doing reminded me of it.”
    She leaned over the desk to study the painting. I turned the book toward her so she could see it better.
    In the Surrealist painting of subconscious shapes juxtaposed with recognizable ones, a young woman with wavy blond hair, naked except for sheer seamed stockings and 1950s-style black patent ballerina shoes, is leaning out of a window-like box, holding herself up by a dancer’s bar. Several horn-shaped objects are floating around, two of them merging with her butt cheeks, one directly behind her upturned rear end ready for penetration.
    The caption on the page next to the painting quotes Dalí saying, “The horn of the rhinoceros, at one time the uniceros, is in reality the horn of the legendary unicorn, the symbol of chastity. A young virgin can rely on it, or play moral games with it, as well as she would have done in the days of courtly love.”
    “Bizarre,” Lisa said. “But most of his stuff is, isn’t it?”
    “I like Dalí,” I said.
    “You do?”
    I nodded.
    She looked back down at the painting. “I can see why it made you think of our sicko.”
    “If you’re going to use psychological jargon I won’t be able to keep up,” I said.
    She smiled.
    “So what does it mean?” she asked, nodding toward the image.
    I shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly.”
    She gave me a wide-eyed expression beneath arching brows as she sat down in the chair across from me.
    “You just gonna sit and stare at the picture until it comes to you?” she asked.
    “It would have already if you hadn’t interrupted me.”
    She smiled again. “Sorry.”
    “Since you’re here,” I said, “how about answering a few more questions.”
    “It’d make me feel better about interrupting such important investigative work,” she said. “Did you talk to Dil?”
    I nodded.
    “And?”
    “And I have some more questions for you,” I said.
    “Sorry,” she said. “Shoot.”
    “How many men would you say have confided in you about this?” I asked.
    Her eyes narrowed and she looked up toward the ceiling. “I’m not sure exactly. Five maybe—but they’ve all told me there are others.”
    “Why haven’t you reported it?” I asked, the surprise showing in my voice.
    Like me, she was required by law to report all crimes or plans to commit crimes.
    “Wasn’t sure I even believed the first couple,” she said. “They wouldn’t submit to a physical. I thought they might be lying—especially since it was the same story. Then the next couple made me swear I wouldn’t and their confidence in me is more important than me keeping my job. Besides, I told you and you’ll catch him.”
    “And they all told pretty much the same story?”
    She nodded.
    “Did they all have a mark on their neck?”
    She nodded again. “They call it the mark of the beast.”
    “That would have been helpful to know,” I said.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    “After they did what he told them to,” I said, “to themselves, did he rape them anyway?”
    She shook her head. “If he did they didn’t say so.”
    “None of them?”
    “None. I got the feeling the guy’s impotent.”
    I thought about it.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “I talked to a victim who said he did everything the guy told him to and he still raped him.”
    “Who talked to you?” she asked.
    I frowned at her. “I can’t say.”
    “Right,” she said. “Well, maybe he’s able to sometimes. And maybe some or all of the men I’m seeing are lying about that part of it.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Were your guys all attacked in the same place or various locations?”
    She pursed her lips as she thought about it. “Different places.”
    “The guy I talked to said it happened in the back hallway of Medical.”
    “Well now, wait a minute,” she