Dahmer's Not Dead

by Edward Lee

  “I am,” Helen replied in something like numbness. She was still thinking about Tom. “But whenever there’s good news, there’s always bad news too.”

  “No exception here. The bad news is you’re going to have to go in and look at the body. Hair and Fibers is finished, so I won’t make you dress up.”

  “Thank you, Jan.” Helen could feel relieved, at least, about one thing. She hated having to don those ridiculous bright-red polyester overalls and booties.

  Two state uniforms parted to make way at the door. Inside was a spacious, airy loft with veneered, old wood floors, throw rugs, and tasteful spartanish furniture. Several red-dressed technicians, a typical sight for Helen, went about their business, oblivious to the world. An immediate chill surrounded her: the windows were open. Helen wondered if the killer had left it open on purpose, to thwart a forensic effort to determine an accurate time-of-death margin by calculating an approximate drop in body temperature against the average temperature of the room. Her mind ticked.

  An opened, roll-top desk sat in one corner, but in the corner opposite rested a king-sized waterbed.

  The portly, naked body seemed to float there atop churning sheets. Helen paused for an unbidden glance.

  Her stomach hitched.

  “He tended bar at a place just down the block,” Beck said.

  “A trade bar?”

  “No, no. Place called Friends. Happy hour sort of place, big lunch crowd from the bizz district, and a lot of after-work meetings. Not a pickup joint at all is the word.”

  “Any current lovers or…relationships?” she asked the question through something like a heart palpitation. Lovers, relationships… Men.

  Then: Tom.

  At that precise moment, Helen felt as though she didn’t understand anything at all.

  “That’s your legwork, Captain,” Beck reminded her. “The first responders from Metro, along with some of our uniforms, did a quick canvass but that’s about it. Word is Dumplin was a nice guy. Landlord says he was quiet, courteous, and always paid the rent on time.”

  The corpse seemed unreal, like a finely realistic wax imitation. But what wax museum would display this? A dark-blonde ponytail, a chubby face, stubbled, just starting to settle. Helen couldn’t allow herself a direct glance at the groin: just a shriveled shape that seemed tiny. But something about the forehead, some odd and ugly mark, nicked at her vision.

  A clot of blood? A small-caliber bullet hole?

  “I guess an exact T.O.D. is out of the question.”

  Beck shrugged. “Yeah, the bastard left the window open, and it’s been below freezing all week. But the guy was at work two nights ago, so we know that at least. And the lividity is plain, so that ties up another twenty-four hours of slack.”

  Helen, then, noted the purplish hue of the corpse’s underside, the tell-tale tint of settled blood. “I need an hour, Jan, not a day.”

  “I should be able to give you, say, a three-hour margin by a potassium-point analysis of the ocular fluids.”

  The eyes, Helen thought. These forensic people were like butchers; no waste—they’d use anything they could. Anything on the body, even the humor of the eyes, could be drained, put into some obscure machine, and analyzed.

  But that anomaly on the forehead kept…nicking at her. Helen stuttered through the next question.

  “Was he shot? Is that a bullethole in his head?”

  Even Beck’s tone turned grim with the response. “I need to look at it closer, but it seems to be what we call a clockwise ‘torque’ penetration.”

  Helen shot a perplexed look. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It appears that the perpetrator…drilled a hole…through the decedent’s foreskull. More copycat stuff.”

  Yes. Sallee had reminded Helen of that. Jeffrey Dahmer, in his symbolic quest to keep lovers from leaving him, had crudely lobotomized several of his victims—

  By drilling holes in their heads and inserting pins and nails into the frontal lobe, hoping to disable them without killing them.

  “You’re saying the killer used a power drill on the victim? That would’ve made a lot of noise, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure, but Dumplin’s the only tenant on this floor. A good diamond bit would probably penetrate the cranial wall in less than a two or three seconds. Or maybe he used a manual drill, or some other tool.”

  “So it’s also your conclusion that Dumplin was drugged unconscious beforehand,” Helen asked if only for the record.

  “Had to have been.” Beck scratched an itch at the line of her showercap. Her beige-gloved finger looked mannequin-like. “I’ll run a mole screen for succinicholine sulphate once I get him for workup.”

  As if at a chill, Helen turned abruptly. “I can’t look at him anymore. Let me see the note.”

  Helen felt palsied following Beck from the bed to the roll-top desk. A marionette on block feet.

  “I haven’t got it in an e-bag yet,” Beck warned, “so don’t touch it, don’t get close enough to breathe on it, don’t even lean over it. We don’t want any dandruff or anything on it.”

  “I don’t have dandruff,” Helen complained.

  “I know, but in case you do. A fiber of your hair could fall on it, even invisible debris from your hairspray.” Beck glanced over her shoulder. “Lee, bring the Sirchie over here for the Captain.”

  But Helen’s eyes were already rooted to the neat, plain white sheet of unlined paper. Blue felt-tip ink briefly spelled out:

  Dear Friends:

  Fear is power.

  I bring my power unto you.

  Until next time,

  Jeff

  “Short and sweet,” Helen observed.

  “Um-hmm. And there’s the pen, or at least we think that’s the pen used to write the note.” Beck’s queerly gloved finger pointed to a small evidence bag containing one blue Flair pen.

  “Maybe there’re prints on the pen too,” Helen surmised.

  “Maybe, maybe not. The cap’s smooth, and it’ll take a good latent but the pen’s body is grooved, so all we’d be able to pick up would be chloride residuum, sweat, and maybe some alphas from the sebaceous oils.”

  Suddenly a buzzing wavered behind them; one of the latent technicians stepped up, waving the eerie blue-white light from the element of his portable ultraviolet lamp. He held it over the note.

  The white paper turned fluorescent purple, as did the white fabric of Helen’s blouse.

  “See it?” Beck said.

  Helen squinted to the point of headache, and…saw it. A slightly darker purple against the luminous paper. It looked like a triangle, with concentric triangles within. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Beck speculated.

  “No.” No, it didn’t. It looked so tiny, so minuscule; in fact, she found it nearly impossible to believe that this irreducible piece of a fingerprint could prove the killer wasn’t Jeffrey Dahmer. But it could also prove who the real killer was, provided said killer’s prints were on file.

  “But under our helium-osmium laser, that little smudge will light up like the Fourth of July,” Beck went on. “We’ll be able to get an absolutely pristine photograph of it. Then I’ll do a Neohydrin-Acetone trace on it for a back up. After that, it may only be a matter of hours before we have what we need.”

  The tech retreated, back to his business. Helen looked around. These people were automatons: death was their turf. Helen could easily note a sparkle of excitement in Beck’s eye. Nobody seemed to care in the least that there was a dead man in the room, a man who had suffered a death that beggared description.

  Rest in peace, Helen thought, casting a final sideglance to the corpse.

  Then, to Beck: “Move on this fingerprint stuff faster than you’ve ever moved in your life.”

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Who knew? He mustn’t be afraid.

  What would his father say?

  He leans back to relax, closes his eyes. He feels slaked. He f
eels powerful. In the peculiar darkness behind his eyelids, he sees himself—

  —digging up the bones of the little animals in his back yard in Bath, Ohio. Little toothpicks, they reminded him of. So fragile.

  He’d melt the little bodies in the corrosives he’d mixed from his chemistry set. His father had given him the set. Then he’d bury the bones where they’d be protected. He could dig them up any time, couldn’t he? He could look at them whenever he wanted.

  But he always knew that, one day, the bones would get bigger…

  ««—»»

  He’s been asleep. When he wakens, the darkness is nearly the same as the color behind his closed eyes. Anguloid shapes hover: like diamonds, like pyramids, and—yes—like tented arches…

  Eventually they dissolve as the moonlight brightens, brushing the rods in his eyes.

  He sniffs the light-diced air and smells death.

  ««—»»

  “It’s positive,” Beck said. “Across the board.”

  Helen and Olsher sat there like two defendants who’d just been sentenced to death by the judge. Olsher didn’t even bother commencing one of his typical emotional outbursts. What good would that do? Helen just sat there.

  Beck looked wrung out in her labcoat as she continued. “Everything. The second letter was written by Dahmer. Cellmark Labs came back with the DNA analysis, and the hairs on Arlinger’s body were Dahmer’s. And now this fingerprint. The optical interface gave us a 100-percent-probability match. Even the pore scheme’s between the ridges were clear enough to run. Jeffrey Dahmer put that letter on the desk.”

  “Three strikes and we’re out,” Olsher said.

  But Helen didn’t say anything. She couldn’t fathom what to say.

  “So we were all wrong,” Beck pointed out. “In a big way.”

  “And to make matters worse,” Olsher informed, “Dahmer sent a letter to the Tribune too. They’re running it tomorrow.”

  Finally, Helen spoke. “Did you screen Dumplin’s blood?”

  “Um-hmm.” Beck sat down exhausted in one of Olsher’s chairs. “Positive for succinicholine sulphate, point-zero-zero-nine mgs per deciliter. A sixteen-percent lower unit-per-deciliter dose, but Dumplin weighed more than Arlinger. Want to guess how much more?”

  “Sixteen percent,” Helen said rather than asked.

  “That’s right. So it’s a good possibility that it was an identical administration. Those point-four vials that were ripped off from the paramedic truck? An oral dose, slipped in a beer or something—point-zero-zero-nine mgs is a damn good approximation for a guy of Dumplin’s body weight.”

  “I just can’t see Dahmer pulling an ambulance heist,” came Olsher’s flustered offer.

  “I can’t see him doing a lot of this stuff,” Beck added. “But we’ve got no choice now but to accept the fact that he did.”

  “Yeah,” Olsher said.

  Helen looked at them both, squinting.

  Olsher unwrapped a cigar. “What’s your problem?”

  I love it when he’s in a good mood. But Helen couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “Am I having auditory hallucinations, or am I to assume that the both of you are asserting that Jeffrey Dahmer is still alive and committing murders?”

  “Are you dense?” Olsher objected. “You’ve seen the evidence. A positive DNA read, two positive graphology reports, and now a positive fingerprint. It’s Dahmer, Helen. None of us can deny that now.”

  Helen wanted to throw her arms up and scream. “All that stuff, Chief, even the fingerprint, can easily be attributed to a copycat.”

  “How?” Beck challenged.

  “A close associate. Like we’ve talked about? Somebody in league with Dahmer before he was killed at the Center. One of these ‘groupie’ people.”

  Beck and Olsher simultaneously glanced at each other. And frowned.

  “Come on, Jan,” Helen insisted. “You saw the body. We both did.”

  “We saw a body, Captain,” Beck retorted. “We saw a body beaten into unrecognizability. We saw a body with a mouthful of broken teeth that could easily have been Dahmer’s teeth in a substitute corpse. Take off those blinders for a minute and think.”

  Helen didn’t like that, and she wasn’t buying any of this. At least not yet. “Christ, I’ve got plenty of leads—”

  “You’ve got squat, girl,” Olsher told her. “What, some dope paramedic, and a prison electrician? That and a buck fifty’ll get you a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven.”

  “We agree, Captain,” Beck stepped in, “that Dahmer couldn’t have gotten out of the prison without help. But it’s pretty fruitless at this point to deny that he did escape, isn’t it?”

  Helen faltered, stared at them, blinked.

  “So quit putzing around,” Olsher added a final point, puffing the atrocious cigar. “And start doing your job.”

  ««—»»

  Start doing my job, huh? Helen simmered walking out of the office, and she simmered further on the road. They think I’m crazy…

  What came next wouldn’t be easy. Verifying the fingerprints of the corpse, and that could only be done via the man who had performed the post-mortem on the body that was allegedly Jeffrey Dahmer’s.

  Tom.

  St. John the Divine’s Hospital seemed to lay in static glitter when she pulled up and parked—a lit, quiet fortress. This late, there was little activity: an ambulance here, a crash cart there. But it was mostly empty hallways and nodding security guards that greeted her entrance.

  The basement felt frigid, sterile. She knew he was here because she’d seen his car in the state lot.

  Tom looked up from the autoclave when she pushed through the chicken-wire doors.

  “Uh…hi,” he said.

  “Hello, Tom.” She tempered herself, tried to push it all away: the deceit, the other…men. “This isn’t a social call.”

  “The Dahmer thing, then, right?”

  “Yes.” Her heels ticked around the anteroom. Thank God the autopsy platform lay empty tonight. “I’ve got serious heat on my tail, Tom. Everyone’s saying Dahmer’s still alive.”

  Helen quickly noticed the evening Tribune lying by the wash sinks. MORE NOTES, MORE DNA EVIDENCE, AND NOW—FINGERPRINTS! read the squashed headline. DAHMER IS STILL ALIVE!

  “He’s dead,” Tom clarified. “As in, like, a doornail. I weighed the guy’s liver, for God’s sake. I took his heart out and scaled the calculi lining his aorta. He’s dead. The prints off his dead hand matched Dahmer’s. The teeth in his dead mouth matched Dahmer’s.”

  “That’s just one thing I wanted to ask you about.” Helen had to stop and take a breath every so often. It wasn’t easy being businesslike with a man she used to be in love with, a man she’d planned to marry.

  A man, she thought, who cheated on me with…other men.

  No. It wasn’t easy at all.

  “The teeth. Why couldn’t Dahmer’s teeth have been placed in the mouth of someone else? Some dead person of the same approximate height and weight, same hair color, etc.?”

  Tom nearly reeled back and laughed. “You’re kidding me, right? That’s Alfred Fucking Hitchcock, Helen.”

  She stared him down. It wasn’t like him to use profanity, nor was it like him to so quickly dismiss her speculations.

  “What, Dahmer knocked his own teeth out and put them in another corpse? Come on. And let’s forget about the teeth just for one minute, okay? The corpse was fingerprinted, Helen, and the fingerprints matched Dahmer’s card from the detention center and Milwaukee PD when he was first arrested, and his Army prints.”

  “Fine,” Helen replied. “But maybe he had an accomplice. And maybe that accomplice had not only the technical skills but also access to such things as, say, fingerprint records.”

  Tom stared at her, incredulous.

  Helen continued. Her last comment proved the hardest, but it was something that had bothered for the last hour or so, since leaving Olsher’s office.

  No, this was no longer
a man she loved.

  This was business.

  “An accomplice,” she said, “who would not only have access to hospital records but someone who would also have access to controlled pharmaceuticals, such as succinicholine sulphate.” Helen closed her eyes for a moment. “Such a person, wouldn’t you say, would have to be a higher-ranking employee of a hospital, wouldn’t he? And maybe someone who works at night, when shifts are staffed by fewer personnel.”

  Tom gaped at her. “What are you saying?”

  “Do you know anyone, Tom? Anyone who fits that criteria?”

  ««—»»

  But he had a point. Just what was she saying?

  Helen pulled the Taurus in and parked in the side lot. The tacky neon sign glowed: THE BADGE.

  She’d only heard about the place, had never been here. Why on earth would a woman, much less a state police captain, want to go to a cop bar?

  She wanted a drink. She needed a drink, in fact. And she didn’t want to go home. Going home would only remind her of too many things. Especially Tom.

  Inside was smoky, dark. A room full of men, all obviously cops just off the three-to-eleven. People like me, Helen surmised. They don’t go home because there’s nothing to go home to.

  A few heads turned, eyed her, then turned away. Helen pulled up a seat at the bar as blue-note jazz eddied softly from the juke. She ordered a glass of house wine from a keep who was obviously off-duty tin. A Smith Model 25 was strapped to his belt just below his barkeep vest. But what was Helen thinking?

  Tom, she thought.

  Tom.

  Did she really suspect him?

  He did the post, she reminded herself. And he has easy access to succincholine sulphate. He had unrestricted access to the body, for the whole time. But…

  Big deal, she finally realized. Even if some way did exist to jink the fingerprint confirmation at the hospital, the body’s prints were also verified at the prison and the hospital in Portage.