Dahmer's Not Dead
Page 21
“Can you give me a C.O.D.?”
“What?” he objected. “Right now? Of course not. You ever hear of a post-mortem? I’ve got to do one of those first. Give me four hours.”
The body of Tredell W. Rosser, Columbus County Detent #255391, looked asleep on the guttered, tilt-lift morgue platform. Even in death, his skin shined dark as oiled obsidian.
“This guy was only a kid—twenty-five years old,” Tom said. “Can you believe it?”
Helen said nothing. She averted her eyes not only from the flawless corpse but from Tom too. Still, after all her ponderings, she had yet to decide what she thought of Tom.
He checked a cache of autopsy scalpels in the autoclave. “You know, there’s all kind of great rumors about this guy. They say he was a Ganser, faking religious delusions.”
“He probably was,” Helen’s words grated. “According to an array of psychiatrists, Rosser was indeed faking his delusion in order to bid for a transfer to the state hospital.”
“You believe that?” Tom’s face inclined from the ‘clave, an expression if absurdity.
“Yes, Tom, I do.”
“So I guess that means you believe the rest of it, huh?’
“The rest of what?”
Another coked brow. “The rest of the rumors.”
“I don’t care about rumors, Tom,” Helen lied. She had to get on with it, and get out of here. “All I care about is the verified cause of death. Is Beck on duty now?”
“This late? No, she’s on call.”
“Then call her down here to do the tox screen.”
Tom gaped at her. “Helen, I can do the tox screen. In fact, I’m more qualified than her to do a tox screen or any other clinical test on a dead body.”
Of course he’d say that, because it was true. But how much about him isn’t true. “I’d—I’d just like Beck to do the tox screen, if you don’t mind.”
Tom leveled a gaze. “I do mind, Helen. You’re not making sense. Is there some particular reason you don’t want me to do it?”
Yes! she thought. But there was no way she could say it. I don’t trust you! “Could you just…appease me here, Tom? Please?”
“Fine. It’s only midnight. Jan only works sixteen hours a day; I’m sure she won’t have any problem with me dragging her tail down here to do a tox screen.”
“Just…please. I’d appreciate it.”
Tom shrugged in lackadaise. “Sure, Helen. Whatever floats your boat.”
“Thank you.” An impulse urged her to turn and leave, but something hitched at her. “So, what about those rumors?’
Tom chuckled. “You just got done telling me you don’t care about rumors.”
“All right, I lied. I’d like to hear the rumors about Rosser.”
Tom snapped on the overhead, began to draw the y-section on Rosser’s muscular chest with a white paint pen. “It’s the prison grapevine, I guess. They’re saying Rosser was really friends with Dahmer, that he beat the crap out of Dahmer’s face at Dahmer’s request, as part of the escape scam. And they’re saying someone on the outside was in league with Dahmer too—some guy you’re calling Campbell. That it was some multiplayer conspiracy to get Dahmer out of prison alive so he could go on committing murders. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?”
Helen’s joints locked in place for a moment. She didn’t offer any answer, electing instead to turn and leave. But before she made her full exit from the morgue, she refaced Tom. “What’s so ridiculous about it, Tom? We know Dahmer’s alive. How did he get out? A ‘multiplayer conspiracy’ is the only answer.”
“Yeah, well—”
“And it’s quite ingenious, don’t you think? That Dahmer orchestrated a friendship with Rosser, and only maintained the premise that they were enemies? And Campbell, the outside conspirator, manipulating Kussler to keep him in contact with Dahmer? I don’t think there’s anything ridiculous about any of it. I think it holds water, Tom. In fact, I even think that maybe Campbell isn’t the only conspirator.”
Tom stared at her over the slab controls.
Helen went on, “Or maybe, just maybe, Campbell is an alias.”
“An alias?”
“Yeah. For someone else.”
And it was at that precise moment that Helen turned and left.
««—»»
“So what is that thing, anyway? Some kind of good luck charm?”
Hendrix playing rare blues eddied from the jukebox. “A red house over yonder…” What had brought her here, not to mention twice in the same week? The Badge, the cop bar. Right now it was half-full of the kind of people she least wanted to be around. Cops. And here was Nick, the Metro PD narc, divorced and lost and left with nowhere else to go to find companionship, to find anything remnant at all of something that might be called a life.
And here I am sitting right next to him.
“What was that?” she asked. “A good luck charm?”
Nick swigged his mug of Bud, and coarsely pointed at her bosom. “That silver locket around your neck. You’ve been rubbing it since you walked in here.”
Damn. He sounded worse than Dr. Sallee. And, yes, now that she thought of it, she’d been pressing it between her thumb and index finger, probably, for hours. “Yeah, Nick. It’s a good luck charm, and, believe me, right now I need all the luck I can get.”
“Tough case, huh? The Dahmer thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, let me tell ya, I’ve had my share of bad cases, and…” Nick’s snide cop voice faded, bringing Helen back to her thoughts.
The whole scene with Tom back at the state morgue: what could’ve been more rigid and uncomfortable? The screw-up with the composite, and Olsher’s sudden lack of support only made it worse. And now I’m sitting in a boring-as-hell cop bar, next to a boring-as-hell cop named Nick, and I’m getting plastered. Talk about someone without a life.
“…and then those kooky rumors.”
Helen perked up. “What rumors?”
“Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting, you’re the gal whose name is in the papers every day but she doesn’t bother to read ‘em.”
“I hate newspapers, Nick.”
“Hey, I hear ya. Bunch’a liberal rubberneck schmucks who don’t know real life. Let ‘em get mugged once or twice, let ‘em get car-jacked by a crackhead at a traffic light. Let ‘em find out it’s their own sons and daughters getting addicted to rock by playground pushers. Then maybe they’ll sing a different tune. You know. When it happens to them.”
Helen didn’t care in the least with Nick’s sociological views. “The rumors, Nick. What’s that about the rumors?”
“Oh, yeah, guess I got off track, ya know. The evening Tribune says that guy Rosser died in his cell, you know, the guy—”
“The guy accused of killing Dahmer.”
“Yeah, but since it’s obvious now to anyone with half a brain that Dahmer’s still alive, the rumor mill is talking up this shit about Rosser being in on it. That Rosser did the face job on Dahmer because Dahmer asked him to, just to get Dahmer into the infirmary.”
“Let me ask you something, Nick. Do you think that’s preposterous or far-flung?”
“Me? Hell, how do I know? I mean, if I wanted to bust out of a secure detent like Columbus County, probably the only way is through the infirmary. Get real sick or something, and they transport you to the hospital. Then you escape because security’s not as tight. But, Christ, they’re saying Dahmer had no vital signs when they checked him at the prison infirmary, so how can that be?”
Because the part about the succinicholine sulphate wasn’t in the papers, that’s how, Nick. “But I mean the ‘conspiracy’ angle. Forget about anything else.”
“Well, shit, Helen—pardon my French—I ain’t exactly a Harvard grad, but Dahmer must’ve had help to get out. And it had to be several guys helping him, not just one.”
Helen looked into her beer. Even Nick buys it. So why doesn’t Olsher? Why doesn’t the Police Commissioner?
“You’re empty,” Nick pointed to her glass. “Hey, chief, the lady needs another mug’a suds.”
“No, no, Nick—thanks for the offer, but—”
“What’s’a’matter?”
Helen shrugged. “I gotta go home. I’m drunk.”
“Ah, well lemme tell ya something. I’m not drunk—serious, I only had three beers, and you had five or six just since you walked in.”
Helen felt groggy, wobbly. “What are you saying, Nick?”
“Best to let me drive you home. I mean, that wouldn’t look to good in the papers for a state police VCU captain to get pinched on a DWI, would it?”
No, no it wouldn’t.
“So, hey. Can I drive ya home, Helen?”
Her brain, suddenly, was reeling, and she thought she might throw up. “Yes, Nick,” she said. “I’d appreciate it.”
««—»»
Why shouldn’t women be imprudent? Men were imprudent every day. Men slept around whenever they felt like it, marriages notwithstanding. I’m just letting some beat narc drive me home, she thought. It’s not like I’m going to sleep with him.
Nick, evidently, had some other plans. While he was driving her home in his unmarked Metro car, his right hand had somehow found it’s way to her knee.
And Helen didn’t even care.
She was not the least bit attracted to Nick—not that he was unattractive. He just wasn’t her type. He was pure-bread career cop, and that was no prize as far as she was concerned. She rubbed her locket further when she deliberated, Maybe a distraction is what I need. Some guy I’m never gonna see again? Who cares? Men don’t care. Why should women? Why is it that men can have indiscriminant sex and that’s cool, that’s macho, that’s just men being men, but when a woman does it, she’s a slut? It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.
I don’t even give a damn any more, she thought.
When Nick’s hand had progressed to the point of the middle of her thigh, she pushed it back. “Let’s take things a little easier, huh, Nick?”
“Aw, sorry. I mean, I thought that maybe, you know maybe—”
What she said next astounded her. “You want to go to bed with me, Nick? All right.”
“Yeah?” he replied, his voice rung with enthusiasm.
“But one thing I don’t really need is a gynecological exam in the front seat of your unmarked. So cool down a little, will you?”
“Sure, yeah, sure…”
But even Nick, a stereotypical cop, when he parked in front of her apartment—even he had the rare decency to offer, “Hey, down to the wire huh? Well, look, Helen, I gotta tell you, I really think you’re a beautiful woman, and—well, you know—you turn me on, and I’d think it’d be great if we went up to your joint and, you know, had a good roll in the hay. But, you know, I just wanna make sure it’s all cool. I mean, you said you were drunk, and I’d hate for anything to happen, and then in the morning you hate my guts ’cos you think I took advantage of you. I don’t want you thinkin’ I’m just some rubberneck cockhound—er, pardon my French.”
Helen looked at him cock-eyed. “You know something, Nick? You may not be the best mannered guy I’ve ever met, but that’s pretty thoughtful.”
“Hey, can I help it I’m good-looking and thoughtful?”
Helen let out a long breath. “Come on, Nick. Let’s go upstairs.”
««—»»
It was some facsimile of anticipation that made her pulse race, she felt weak. I am weak, she thought, facing him in the dark murk of her own apartment now. Weak or stupid. She’d avoided involvements with cops for her entire career because she’d seen the stuff so many times. Cops made the worst one-night stands, and that’s exactly what this was. And they blabbed their bed adventures to every other tin in the squad room the next morning. Cops had sex the same way they lived: on the edge, tense, animal-like. Maybe that’s all this was—some primal flush, some need in her psyche that almost never popped up. At least he works for another department, she thought.
“How about some lights?” he said.
How about some diversity? she replied with her thoughts. Instead of turning on any lights, she lit some candles which threw their shapes onto the walls like flittering ghosts. Next thing she knew, they were embracing…
Talk about breaking the ice.
“I want you,” Nick said. Helen nearly laughed at the corniness of it. It all just felt so dumb. Light stubble whisked against her face when he kissed her. She could taste cigarettes and beer. She responded to the kisses only half-aware, the other half still trying to reckon this. This isn’t working, it first occurred to her, but then his hands began to change her mind. Intent and rather rough hands squeezing her body with hesitation. Any other time it would’ve been too fast for her, but maybe she simply didn’t care. He took off her skirt and blouse akin to a greedy kid opening a present. When his hands slipped up her belly to her bra’d breasts, an eruption of glitter seemed to fill her head.
“Christ, you’re beautiful…”
Helen didn’t know how to respond to the comment. Was he saying it merely for the sake of formality? Maybe he means it. Maybe he really thinks I’m beautiful. But—
What now?
She sought some other diversion because, well, she felt awkward just standing here in the middle of her dark living room being gropily kissed by a man she barely knew.
I know—
A few moments later cool water rained down on them; they were in the shower, their clothes, garment by garment, leading a trail to the bathroom. It was still dark, though, which she liked. Only a single candle lit the bathroom as they continued to embrace. The water at least partially sobered her up, refining her senses. She couldn’t really see his body; Nick was just a wet shape in there with her, an attendant shadow.
Neither of them spoke; all she could perceive was the detailed hiss of the water and the sensation of his hands sudsing her body, beguiling her. This was a shocking luxury, standing there in the small torrent and being so intimately investigated. Then he pulled her head back by her hair, licked her ear. Helen felt her body betray her. The contrast of cool water and warm lather made her nipples stand up, right away, and now his hands were smoothing suds over her breasts. The slow, radiating pleasure infuriated her in a way. He turned her, pressed her breasts together, and offered them to the water.
She felt the trail of suds course down her legs. More and more, Helen felt thinly wired, like a rosined bowstring fit to snap. Nick’s hands slid down her hips. An exciting impulse brought her up on her tiptoes. The hands continued to inch lower, toward her…
««—»»
Afterward, she felt delightfully worn out. She lay in bed as if dropped there. The sheets were damp; they hadn’t even bothered drying off after the shower. Nick’s attentions had surprised her, a see-saw of divided sensuality: gentle and affectionate one moment, primitive and rough the next. Everything he’d done had burned her fuse down a little further until the detonation had occurred. Quite a detonation indeed. Yes, her climax had felt like a bomb going off. And now—
He stood at the bedside, in the dark. After all that had ensued, she’d never really seen his body. Just glimpses in candlelight, and vague outlines.
The sound of clothes being put on now, the clink of a belt buckle.
He’s leaving, she realized, and that was good. She didn’t feel used at all—if anything, she’d used him. But for him to stay the night with her, to sleep with her…
That would’ve felt too strange.
“Can I see you again?” he asked, the first words he’d spoken since he’d told her she was beautiful.
Her thoughts snagged. “No, I-I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said too quickly.
“Another guy, huh?”
Her mouth opened, closed. Not anymore, she thought. But it would hurt his f
eelings to say so. He’d actually been very considerate, he’d even had condoms. Instead she lied, “Yeah, something like that. I’m sorry, Nick. It’s nothing personal. I mean, it was… It was a good time. I just feel kind of weird about all this.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Don’t be mad.”
“Naw. Don’t worry about it,” he said as easily as he said anything. “But I’ll call you some time, you know, down the road, in case you change your mind. I won’t bust out into tears like some rubberneck if you tell me to bug off.”
Helen had to laugh. “Goodnight, Nick. I really did have a good time.”
“Yeah, me too.” Then his form leaned over in the dimming candlelight, kissed her a final time, and he was gone.
««—»»
Later, she gazed out the window. Madison seemed dead at four a.m., and that was roughly how she felt. Her previous tipsiness, and the revitalization from the shower and love-making, was now corroding to a state of hangover. She couldn’t imagine what Dr. Sallee would say about this; she doubted she’d even tell him. You need help, she scorned herself. Picking up a cop in bar? Then going to bed with him? The guy was a perfect stranger. And— Christ! My car’s still at the bar! She’d have to take a cab to pick it up in the morning. And with her luck it would be up on cinderblocks, stripped. And all for what? A quick roll in the hay, to use Nick’s sophisticated locution.
Well, at least he had condoms, she thought in some cheap consolation.
She rubbed her locket in the open V of her robe, still peering out her window into frigid night. Was it guilt? Did she feel guilty about going to bed with a man she just met? Helen didn’t think so, though she felt certain Dr. Sallee would disagree. He’d probably say something like: A retrograde anxiety complex, Helen. At the core of your subconscious, via a lifetime of preconceived ideals and learned experience, you feel overwhelmed with guilt. Even though your relationship with Tom is over, you feel dirty, deceitful. You feel as though you’ve cheated on him.
To hell with Tom. Cheating on him? What a joke. He cheated on me a dozen times—with men. Why should I feel guilty?