by Edward Lee
Helen considered this, then agreed. “Okay, okay, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
“So there’s nothing to worry about with the press, is there?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Helen stalled. Her mind kept flicking back to Tom. Stop it! You’ve got a job to do! Forget about Tom! “So you were saying. How long before you can give me positive proof that the note wasn’t written by Dahmer?”
Beck’s dark eyes mused back in a quick mathematical surmise. “Well, the trace plate’s cooking now for, I guess, five hours. A trace plate is a computer enhanced photographic negative—real size—of the original letter. Once I get the plate out of the processor, I’ll put it in there.” Beck pointed to another anonymous machine on the other side of the narrow room. “That’s an A/N spectrophotometer. The A stands for assay. Want to guess what the N stands for?”
Helen’s eyes squinted down on a yellow-and-scarlet label stuck to the machine’s baseplate. WARNING, THIS DEVICE CONTAINS RADIOACTIVE ISOTOPES. STAND CLEAR.
“You’re kidding me? You’ve got a nuclear reactor sitting in here?”
“Not precisely,” Beck replied with a smile. “A beryllium shroud covers the active pit, so you’re not going to melt. The pit, a pellet of plutonium 235, activates any amino-acid residuum on the note. Then I’ll take the note and compare it to samples of Dahmer’s handwriting that Columbus County Detent has already couriered over. I’ll feed the works into a comparison computer index which files, in duplicate, line-quality, letter formation, letter- and word-spacing—in microns, mind you—clockwise, counter-clockwise, straight-line, and curvature motion, terminal strokes, and relative position, the entire graphological ball of wax. We don’t do it the old way anymore. A felt-tip pen won’t leave any measurable impactations—we don’t need any of that in this day and age. My computer analysis of the P-Street letter will give you what you need. And I can hand it to you in—” Beck looked a her watch. “Say, three and a half hours from now.”
Helen, however weary from all the forensic word salad, was impressed.
“That would be great, Jan. Thanks for hustling.”
“That’s my job.” Beck sipped more Snapple. “How’s Tom, by the way?”
The question wiped the slate of Helen’s mind clean. And without even a perfunctory thought, she blurted an answer:
“We broke up.”
The remark weighed Beck’s face down like a high g-force. “You—you’re kidding.”
“I mean, I think we broke up,” more bad water spilled out of Helen’s mouth.
Beck’s voice softened, and she leaned forward as if she were in a college dorm asking her roommate a sensitive question. “Why?” she asked.
I caught him cheating on m— Helen’s thoughts began. Gritting her teeth forced it back, to wordlessness.
But then a tear formed in her eye and she got up and turned very quickly. Her self-esteem, whatever remained of it, could not allow the chief of the technical services division see her cry.
“It just wasn’t working out,” she said and left.
««—»»
Two voices.
Two men in the dark.
“I feel so—”
“Shut up. Stop being such a pussy.”
Silence, for a moment.
“You’re gonna make me sick of you.”
“Please.” A gasp, a sob. “I can’t help how I feel. I would do anything for you.”
One shadow shape turned to the other.
“I know. And you already have.” A lean to the side. A kiss on the cheek and a crude caress. “And I thank you for that.”
Sobbing, in response.
“And you’ll do more from me, won’t you?”
A heated rustle beneath damp covers. An arm shot around the other’s shoulder. “Yes, oh yes! Anything!”
“Good.”
The one shadow stood up, wended through silken dark, through blackness like a sweet song. Metal clicked. Then the shadow returned.
In his hands dangled another shadow: handcuffs.
“You love me, don’t you?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Do you really?”
“Christ—yes!”
“It’s an easy thing to say. But are you willing to prove it?”
A whisper more fierce than the hardest shout:
“YES!”
“Good, that’s good.” Then more silence, and then: “Turn over and put your hands behind your back.” The ratcheted cusp of the handcuffs clicked open. “Just like last night and the night before that and the week before that and the month before that.” The cuffs snapped closed. “Just like every night from now on,” said the man who was once the boy from Bath, Ohio.
— | — | —
CHAPTER SEVEN
Helen didn’t leave her office.
Perhaps she should have.
She wanted to wait, for the verification of what she already knew. But why? To feel safe? And going home would only force her to face things she didn’t want to face. Easier to just sit here and act like I’m doing something, she supposed.
Headquarters quieted down after the 4 p.m. shift-change, the roar descending to a clatter. Cigar fumes left no doubt that Olsher hadn’t left either. What would he do when the state passed new legislation banning smoking in all workplaces? Probably retire. She’d passed his office a few times and seen him in there, fidgeting. He’s waiting too, she knew. Waiting for Beck…
The kings and queens waiting for the messenger.
Helen leaned back at he desk, tried to relax. But every time she closed her eyes she seemed to see her life strewn about before her like stray pieces of something. Not a puzzle, nothing like that at all. Something, once whole, broken to bits.
Was it more than just Tom? She still didn’t know how to deal with that. Turning forty had sounded some inner knell. No more second chances. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life alone but, lately, that’s all she saw: a wizened crone in the same apartment, cutting out coupons to stretch her retirement pay, watching soap operas depicting people with the kind of life she’d never had.
Distraction, pre-occupation, or full-fledged forgetfulness—she wasn’t sure. She seemed to be forgetting so much now. Damn it, damn it! she swore at herself when she realized she’d missed her appointment with Dr. Sallee again. It was too late to call him now. He must think I’m the biggest ditz on earth.
All I do is dwell on my problems, and when people like Sallee try to help me, what so I do? I forget to show up.
Muffled yelling broke the constant cycle of self-criticism. It seemed to erupt down the hall, a exploding barrel. It was Olsher.
The sick feeling had already begun to build in her stomach. She blanked her thoughts. When she entered her deputy chief’s malodorous office, she was not surprised to find Jan Beck standing there, with bright yellow folders under her arm. Evidence Section always used yellow folders…
“This is so fucked up!” Olsher was rolling again. His dark face seemed pinkened somehow. “We’re gonna get buried! The goddamn press is gonna make us look like idiots!”
Beck looked crestfallen.
“We are in a world of shit,” Olsher muttered.
“Larrel, Jan,” Helen began. “What’s—”
“Tell her!” Olsher barked.
Impossible, Helen was thinking before even being told. It’s impossible…
Beck didn’t need to consult her pretty folders. “I just finished the graphological analysis of the letter found at the White Horse Inn—”
—absolutely impossible.
“—and I’m afraid there’s no mistake. Computers don’t lie. We have a positive match. The letter was written by Jeffrey Dahmer.”
««—»»
Beck had gone on to explain her findings. “Even the best forgery in the world won’t beat the computer.”
“Ink-shading, hand pressure?” Helen asked. That was about all she remembered from the quick graphology courses she’d had in the academ
y.
“Shading and pressure aren’t even in the mix here,” Beck said, “because the note was written in felt tip. A ballpoint or a pencil would be different—they’re far more pressure-sensitive. But with felt tip, due to the more fluid nature of the ink, shading and indentation is far less readable, often immeasurable. That’s old world graphology anyway; comparison computers are much easier and much more accurate simply in their ability to anatomize the actual architecture of the writing and produce a percentage-point value of the likelihood of a forgery.”
Helen didn’t want to ask. “What was that percentage value here?”
“Zero-point-zero,” Beck said. “There are too many variables for mistake. Even if words were traced and transferred, the computer would pick up the inconsistencies in line quality and pen position. We call it tremor hesitation, and the P-Street letter doesn’t have it. Direction, relative position, terminal points and strokes, loop terminus—it’s all here.”
Helen just stared. “Jan, you and I both saw Dahmer’s body the day after he was murdered. This is impossible. I don’t mean to doubt your expertise, but we’re going to have to have a second opinion on this.”
“I know,” Beck agreed. “That’s why I’ve already fed-exed a duplicate evidence file to the FBI and to McCrone in Chicago.”
“How long will that take?”
“For the Bureau? Could be two days, could be two months. It depends on what kind of priority status they give the case.”
“Fat chance they’ll move on it,” Olsher offered. “Not with our luck.”
“McCrone’s a private contractor we use a lot, and they’ll be fast.”
“What about a negative DNA match?”
“There was no evidence of semen in Arlinger’s body, but we can still run a DNA test on the hairs.”
Hairs. Yes, Helen remembered Beck’s initial report. Some hair and fiber evidence had been found on or near Arlinger. “So you get a DNA test on the hair and can prove it’s not Dahmer?”
“Right, or I should say the hair-root cell. Several pubic and head hairs were on the contact perimeter.”
“But what do you have to compare it to?”
“Dahmer’s genetic profile. Any convicted felon in the state is indexed with a DNA profile upon conviction,” Beck said enlightened them. “I sent some of the hair-root cells to Cellmark Labs in Maryland; they do the best PCRs and RFLPs in the country.”
“How long?”
“A week or two.”
“And in the meantime,” Olsher interrupted, “we get broiled alive by the press if they find out the handwriting was positive match.”
And they will find out, Helen felt assured. All police departments had their inevitable leaks. She’d already talked to the papers, but that was before Beck’s graphological match. “Damage control is our first priority. The press is going to get a hold of this, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“How about we lie?”
Helen struggled not to roll her eyes.
“That’s the worst thing we can do, Larrel. We have to stand fast on our insistence—based on the conflicting m.o., that Jeffrey Dahmer is not alive.”
“Then who wrote the note?” Olsher asked.
“Jeffrey Dahmer.”
“She’s right, Chief,” Beck said.
Olsher scowled at both of them. “Did I miss something here, or am I just stupid?” “Dahmer wrote the note before he was murdered,” Helen attested. “This whole thing is some kind of a hoax.”
“A pen pal or something like that, someone on the outside,” Beck added the obvious.
“Right, or someone on the inside,” Helen went on. “One of the guards maybe, or an inmate recently released, and that should be easy to run down.”
Olsher’s lips puckered as if he’d just sipped pure sour mix. “You’re saying that Dahmer was in cahoots with someone before he was killed?”
“Yes,” Helen said. “There’s no other possibility. Exactly why, I’m not sure yet.”
Olsher scoffed, waved a pessimistic hand. “The press will never buy that.”
Helen, for the first time in quite a while, felt calmly at ease. All at once her work was cut out for her, wasn’t it? Here was what she needed, something to push the debris of her life out of the way. It was a lot of debris, true, but purpose could be a very compelling force.
And she never felt more confident when she said, “They’ll have to buy it, Larrel. Because I’m going to prove it.”
“How?” Olsher challenged.
“By doing what you’re paying me to do. By investigating.”
— | — | —
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I’m sorry I missed my appointment again,” she said at the door. A school girl apologizing to the home-room teacher for being late. “And I’m sorry to be disturbing you at home. But I really need to talk to you.”
“Come in,” Dr. Sallee replied. His eyes thinned, then he smiled minutely. Dr. Sallee was a leaning, balding man who seemed constantly buoyant in some subdued way, despite an equally constant physical awkwardness Helen could never decipher. He had a nice Colonial brick house in the East End full of bookshelves and portraits. Dark, cluttered. In the den hung a picture of Sigmund Freud, while over the mantle was a large portrait of Elvis Presley. At work, Sallee routinely dressed in fine slacks, shirt, and tie, covered by a cliched white labcoat. Now, though, off duty so to speak, he dressed simply in jeans and t-shirt. Dr. Sallee was the chief of the state police mental hygiene unit as well as the chief psychiatric consultant for the H. Andrew Lynch Evaluation Center, where all convicted state incarcerees were evaluated; whether they would officially be deemed criminals or mental patients was decided by this man. He showed her into a similarly dark and cluttered study and sat behind a teak desk identical to the one he had at his office. Helen sat down in an armchair opposite.
“And I can also tell,” he continued, “that your problems with Tom are not what you want to talk to me about.”
Helen felt flummoxed. “How did you know? What, you can tell just by looking at me?”
“Of course. It’s all kinesthetics, Helen. The way you walked to the door with a harried spring in your step. The very open way you’re sitting across from me right this moment. You generally sit with your knees together and your hands in your lap, a position of introversion and personal insecurity.” Sallee’s gaze drifted upward, in contemplation. “No, I’d say you’re here to talk to me about something completely irrelative to your personal life. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Helen admitted.
“Something work related?”
“Yes.”
Heaps of books threatened to overrun the desk top. Sallee had to nearly look over them to address her. “Let me take a guess. The Dahmer business that was in the papers today?”
For a third time, then, she said “Yes” to this uncanny man.
“Your contention, I presume, is that Dahmer is dead, and that someone else is pulling a copycat.”
“Exactly,” Helen said. “And I might need you to back me up with the press.”
“You doubt your own professional credibility?”
“I’m just a flatfoot, Dr. Sallee, but you’re a clinical psychiatrist, and the press is a different animal altogether.” Helen felt surprisingly collected, something she’d never felt before in the midst of Sallee. “We’ve got DNA tests going on some hair evidence found at the Arlinger murder site, and when they come back negative we’ll be off the hook. But that could take weeks.”
“And in the meantime, you’re worried that the newspapers will cause an undue level of fear by slanting their articles to suggest that Dahmer’s still alive?”
Helen nodded. “So that’s why I need your help. I’ll need to keep reiterating our conviction that Dahmer’s modus is completely different from the perp at P Street, despite minor similarities.”
“Minor similarities that the press will enforce as major. Some trace suggestions of cannibalism, cooking utensils. And an u
nbound victim who showed no signs of struggle. These are elements that any killer would be well aware of just by reading the papers two years ago. This is all easily conveyed, but the hard part is conveying it convincingly.”
“And that’s exactly why I need to know more details…about Dahmer.”
“Well, then I suppose I’m the man for the job, Helen.” Sometimes Sallee smiled in a way so subtle it was hard to even interpret as a smile. “But, I warn you—psychiatrists are only right ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“I’ll take the odds. You actually interviewed Dahmer, didn’t you? A long time ago?”
“Um-hmm. I was his first official clinical interviewer, to be precise. I evaluated him in 92, gave him his initial battery of TATs, Meyers-Kastles, and MMPIs. The most significant thing you can tell the press is that Dahmer’s psychiatric profile was existential—an existential costive, we call them—reclusive, complaisant, and completely lacking psychopathic and pathological behavior patterns. He never lied, either; pathological criminals always lie.”
Helen scribbled notes, then looked up leerily. “What about the, you know, the sexual element?”
“Let me elaborate more specifically. Dahmer was an existential stage-costive with an obsessive-thematic erotomanic impulse. He was subject only to an unsystematized longing-delusion—in other words he was not delusional in typical ways. Despite the mode of violence, he was actually very affectionate toward his victims. He loved his victims, which explains his attempt to lobotomize them.”
Helen’s expression twisted. “Lobotomize—”
“Oh, yes. On several occasions, Dahmer drugged his victims to unconsciousness and then drilled holes in their skulls, after which he inserted various types of needles into their brains—”
Helen paled.
“—and he did this, not to be brutal, but to try to damage their motor capabilities. He even claimed that one such victim survived for a short time after regaining consciousness. To put it more colloquially, he wanted ‘love-zombies.’ He wanted lovers who wouldn’t leave him. I recall him elucidating something to the affect: ‘I loved them all, and I wanted them to stay with me. When they died, I kept parts of them, so that parts of them would be with me always.’“