Dahmer's Not Dead

by Edward Lee

  “That’s not necessary, Chief. This is my mess. I won’t drag you down too.”

  “Just get out!” Olsher bellowed.

  Helen stood up. There was a tear in her eye. Olsher had always overseen her, taught her everything he knew. And this was how she repaid him. “I’m sorry, Larrel.”

  “Get out!”

  Helen left the house, got back into her car, and drove off.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Helen, first, stopped by the hospital, walked directly into the morgue to see if Tom was there. But the security guard stopped her. “You can go in and look around all you want, Captain. But Dr. Drake’s not here. He was scheduled to come on duty at eleven o’clock, but he never showed. Reception tells me it’s the first time he’s ever been late.”

  Her fingers ached from nervously rubbing her locket. “He won’t be showing up at all,” Helen mouthed under her breath.

  “What’s that, ma’am? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “Have a good night,” she told him and exited. He’s left, she realized. He knows we’re onto him, and he’s left. He’s probably crossing the state line right now, either that or Campbell and Dahmer are hiding him out.

  What could she do?

  Put out an APB? Eventually the DA would want to know her probable cause. She could sluff it, keep her fingers crossed, but it probably wouldn’t wash. She’d probably break right on the stand, like some old Perry Mason episode. I may not be a whole lot of good things, but I’m not a liar, and I’m not going to commit perjury. I can’t.

  Chances were, even if the worst fell on her head, she’d get off with a dishonorable dismissal, a big fine, and PJB waived for community service. They wouldn’t put a state captain with going on two decades of exemplary service in jail.

  At least probably not.

  But since they knew she was onto them, she logically reasoned, they would also be onto her. She needed to protect herself, but she wasn’t sure how.

  Wait…

  An hour later she was driving home.

  ««—»»

  The apartment seemed quiet as a crypt, and as dark. Helen lit another cigarette and walked down the hall, shedding her Burberry overcoat to leave it lie on the floor. Then she flicked on the lamp in the living room.

  Damn.

  Nothing. The dark looked back at her. A titter of nervousness touched her, like a skeleton fingertip etching almost imperceptibly down the nape of her neck. But this happened all the time, especially in the winter—power surges would trip the breakers. The end of her cigarette glowed red—a rat’s eye—as she glided to the kitchen cove, fumbled to light a candle, then reached to open the fuse box. Just as she would snap open the metal cover, the phone rang.

  She looked at the clock. One a.m.

  Then she looked at the phone.

  Looked back at the clock.

  On the third ring, she picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  An empty pause. The sound of someone swallowing, then:

  “Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven… Yet thou shalt be brought down into hell, deep into the pit.,” Jeffrey Dahmer said.

  The darkness seemed to shrink. The tendons of Helen’s knuckles stood out as she gripped the phone, and now that skeleton fingertip began to tickle her.

  “Mr. Dahmer, listen to me,” she said, but her throat grated out the words. It wasn’t easy. She was talking to a serial killer, perhaps the most notorious in American history. “Turn yourself in to the state police. I give you my word you won’t be harmed. We’re going to get you eventually, so let’s do this the easy way. We know all about Campbell and Tom Drake. It’s only a matter of time before we take you down. You’re ill, Mr. Dahmer, more so now than ever before. You’ve recently suffered a psychiatric disorder known as a conative-episodic break, and you’re letting Campbell manipulate you with it… Mr. Dahmer, are you listening to me?”

  Dahmer paused again. Did he chuckle? “Look behind you,” he said.

  Helen dropped the phone, turned—

  —and saw Campbell’s face grinning over an uplit flashlight. “Nice to see you again, Captain Closs.”

  She began to scream but the effort was severed when the hot hand slapped across her mouth. The flashlight arched, cracked her in the temple.

  Half her consciousness drained away as she collapsed.

  Movement above her in the dark. A rustle.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Jeff wants to do that himself.”

  Campbell then, a nimble shadow given flesh, straddled her, pinned her down, and jammed a hypodermic needle right into her neck.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Helen never fully lost consciousness. The blow to the head wore off, yet afterwards she lay completely unable to move. Of course. Succinicholine sulphate did not cause unconsciousness—it caused paralysis, and that’s exactly how she lay in the back of Campbell’s van. Conscious, hyper-alert…and totally paralyzed.

  Back at the apartment, he’d thrown her over his shoulder, carried her out the back through the laundry rooms. A van sat waiting.

  She could feel the tires humming beneath her, she could hear the motor drone. The only part of her body she could move was her eyes, and if she strained them to the left hard enough, she could see Campbell in the driver’s seat. He drove carefully, checking his mirrors, evenly accelerating and decelerating, using his signal at every turn.

  He never looked back at her as he spoke.

  “I know you can hear me. You just can’t move or talk. When I found out about North’s escort service being raided I figured it was only a matter of time before you caught up to him. I knew all about his little jaunts with Kussler during our frequent breakups, and it figures the jabbering little worm would tell North all about me. But I guess it all worked out better anyway. It helps make Jeffrey’s return all the more powerful, and that’s what this is all about, Captain Closs. Power.”

  Power, Helen managed to think. She remembered what Dr. Sallee had said. Fear equals power.

  “And he’s waiting for us right now, Jeffrey is, back at the house. So is Tom.”

  Tom, she thought. The evil son-of-a-bitch.

  “Won’t it be glorious when they find your body?”

  ««—»»

  “Home again.”

  The van decelerated, went over a bump, then seemed to move up an incline. A driveway, she guessed, and then the speculation was verified when Campbell clicked a button, and she heard a garage door rising. The van pulled into a lit garage, stopped.

  Thunk

  The driver’s door shut, then the windowless rear doors were pulled open.

  “Do come in,” Campbell offered. “We simply love having guests over.”

  Then he hoisted her up, flung her over his shoulder, and carried her into the house.

  Helen felt like a feedbag as she was lugged up short steps, through a utility room, a dark kitchen, then—

  Her breath was punched from her lungs as she was dropped onto the floor of another night-dark room.

  She nearly vomited, she was so sick with fear.

  A light flicked on. Barely audible footfalls could be heard crossing the carpet. Helen lay face down, a dropped doll, and part of her hoped she would remain that way until she died. She didn’t want to be turned over. She didn’t want to see.

  “Upsy-daisy.” Hands slipped roughly into her armpits, jerked her upward. Her shoes fell off as her heels dragged; then she was dropped in a chair.

  “Open your eyes.”

  Helen didn’t want to. She knew what she would see… “I can’t,” she lied.

  “Succinicholine doesn’t effect levator and optical muscle groups. Now, open your eyes, or I’ll cut your eyelids off with pinking shears.”

  Helen gulped, opened her eyes, and looked at him in the light. He looked the same since she’d last seen him—the day he’d been masquerading as Kussler.
<
br />   Fine, sandy-blond hair; a tight, wired physique like a feather-weight boxer. The lean face reminded her of something lupine. Bright gray eyes narrowed in calculation—behind their brightness, though, she could see the madness, just as calculative. Aglow, like gray gems from hell.

  If I could only move, she thought.

  “So what now? Is that what you’re thinking?” His mouth twitched into a smile. “Should I rape you? That would be easy, wouldn’t it? What could you do?”

  As Helen’s head lolled, all she could do was point her eyes up and see his face…

  “Throw you back onto the floor? Tear your clothes off? But, no, we’re not interested in women—you know that by now.” Now the mouth twitched into something of a frown, a persnickety criticism. “What power could be gained in that? Women’s lives are so pale, and so predictable. Such frail beings, you are. No spark, no vitality at all.”

  You motherf—

  “This is a world of men, and you’ve let yourselves be our servitors since we were apes. Why waste our power on such petty things like women?”

  Helen knew she was a hair’s width away from death, but even in her fear, she longed to retort. I’ll show you frail, I’ll show you petty, you psychopthic asshole. You and your buddy Dahmer. I’d take both of you down with my bare hands if I wasn’t paralyzed.

  And her adrenalin just then, surging with her hatred, made her feel white hot. She could do it—she knew she could. Grab this wiry monster by the throat and squeeze until his neck cracked…

  If, came the irrevocable reminder, I wasn’t paralyzed.

  “But it wouldn’t be gentlemenly not to give you your due, would it?” he mocked. “How rude of me!”

  He moved out of her field of vision, leaving her to stare at a flank of computer equipment: several CPUs, several big monitors. Of course. North had told her he was a computer fanatic, and the commo tech had verified it. Only someone with quintessential programming skills could’ve prevented the phone calls from being traced.

  A sharp pain stung her neck—so sudden and harsh she wanted to scream. But no scream found its way to her paralyzed lips.

  Campbell stepped back into view. “I case you’re wondering, I just injected you with half a cc of Trexaril, a half dose. It blocks all sulfer-based cholinergic agents. You’ll be able to talk in a few minutes. You’ll even be able to move a little.”

  Move, she thought. Something in her mind froze. Move a little.

  But would it be enough?

  “Jeff?” he called out. “We’re back, and I’ve got her. Start getting ready, okay?” Then Campbell sat a his work desk, revolved around on the chair to face her. “North, obviously, told you my name, but I guess there are quite a few Campbells in the Wisconsin phone book, hmm? Even if you’d located me from my job, my employer has a phony address in my records file, and I’m sure you also know that my fingerprints aren’t on file, either. No doubt you dusted Kussler’s apartment.”

  Helen’s throat tightened through a wallow. Then…she was able to nod. The injection was working—already she could tip her head around and minutely move her fingers and toes.

  And when she tried to talk:

  “Where do you work?” she slurred. “At the hospital?”

  “Of course.”

  Her mouth felt like wet clay as she struggled to continue speaking. “We record-checked everyone at every hospital in the state…and none of the Campbells match the prints you left at Kussler’s apartment.”

  “Of course they didn’t,” Campbell informed her. “All state and county hospital employees are fingerprinted upon employment.”

  “Then how could you possibly beat it?”

  “Because, unlike Kussler, I work for a private contractor. Custodial services—a drab job, I know—but one that gave me access to the hospital without an ID on file.”

  How simple, yet effective. Most hospitals did contract out for janitorial and maintenance services—to private sector contractors. Therefore a name-check would come up negative because Campbell wasn’t a hospital employee, he was a sub-contractor employee who worked for the hospital.

  “Which,” he went on, “and as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, gave me access to most of the premise. Janitor’s have key access, to any wing on the maintenance roster. Nightshifts, less staff, less security, less patient/treatment traffic. And, yes, it was rather easy getting into the main nurses’ station to switch Rosser’s meds with a fatal dose of succinicholine. Getting Jeff out of the morgue before the autopsy and putting Kussler’s body in his place—well, that was a bit more difficult.”

  Just then Helen’s ear felt pricked. She heard a sound, a tiny clatter, coming from another room.

  Dahmer, she thought. She leaned up in the chair. “You killed your own lover. You used him as a body to make the switch.”

  Campbell chuckled, a silhouette before his lit monitors. “I used him for quite a bit more than that, Captain. The perfect dupe, the perfect patsy. Kussler’s love was like a woman’s. He was weak, manipulable. He was absolutely pathetic.”

  Helen staid a more proper response. Her fingers were moving almost freely now, and her forearms twitched too, when she tried to move them. If she could only have full use of her hands… “But you had help,” she contested. “There was no way you could’ve gotten Dahmer out of the hospital and left Kussler’s body in his place at the morgue on your own. It was Tom, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, Tom was very helpful indeed,” Campbell replied. “A deputy medical examiner, he was the highest ranking staff member on duty most nights.”

  Helen wasn’t absolutely sure she caught his meaning. Much more important, she knew, was regaining the use of her hands without letting him realize it. If I could use my hands, she realized, then I could…

  “You used Tom too, didn’t you?” she suggested, “just like you used Kussler. For your own end. Once you didn’t need Tom anymore, you killed him, didn’t you?”

  Campbell’s voice leveled in its tenor. “As I’ve said, it’s all about power, Captain Closs. I use people—yes—to suit my own needs. And I make no apologies for it.”

  Her eyes struggled to reckon him, to see the machine behind the madness…

  “But it’s time now, isn’t it?” Campbell’s silhouetted form stood up before the flanks of monitors and CPU chasses. “It’s time you met Jeff.”

  Campbell disappeared, a spirit in a dark breeze. Helen used his absence to test her muscle response. Her fingers turned into claws and her teeth ground as she strained to move her forearms. They moved, perhaps, two inches before they fell back down.

  Shit…

  She took fast, deep breaths, to raise her heart-rate and cycle more of her blood through her metabolism, worked the Trexaril faster through her system. But as she did so—

  My…God…

  Her eyes wandered, strayed to the kitchen, then stopped and stared. A plastic drum, like the big industrial drums Dahmer had used to dissolve flesh off bones with mercuric and sulphuric acid, sat beside the entry next to the counter. A black lidded pot simmered gently on the range. Helen could’ve sworn she smelled the aroma of something like pork chops. Then—

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Hanging on a pegged towel rack was—

  Jesus Christ!

  —something she at first took to be a tan chamois or dish towel. But a closer squint showed her what it realy was:

  A large, irregular cutting of human skin, complete with abundant chest hair, and tiny shrunken nipples.

  click

  A door-latch opened. Helen jerked her gaze to the right. A dark doorway now stood before her, and in that doorway, two figures took slow, deliberate steps. “Come on,” Campbell’s voice insisted. “You can do it. She wants to see you…”

  Helen’s eyes felt pried open by surgical stitches as she stared. Campbell attentively assisted his slow-stepping companion.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” he said. “One step at a time.”

  It’s him, s
he thought. It’s really him… I’m about to meet Jeffrey Dahmer…

  Campbell aided his companion toward the long work desk, then sat him down in the silhouette shadows cast by the monitors. Helen’s eye peered forward, unblinking, as the shadow seemed to stare back at her. She could feel its black gaze on her face, she could sense the vision on her.

  Campbell moved toward a lamp. “Captain Helen Closs, I’d like you to meet—”

  The light snapped on.

  Helen’s eyes bulged at the sight of the person sitting in the chair.

  “—Tom Drake,” Campbell finished. “Tom, say hello to Captain Closs.”

  In the light now, Tom’s face tremored, his eyes bulging at hers. His hands were bound in front of him by the wrists, a gag tied through his teeth.

  “Tom’s a dupe just like most people,” Campbell announced. “Naturally you’d suspect him of complicity since it’s well know amongst my clan that he sometimes prefers the company of a man. The magazine article about your fetid relationship only tipped me off to what I already had heard. And he was the perfect pawn to draw you off of me.”

  Tom’s face strained toward her, tears in his eyes, terrified as he sat helpless in the chair.

  Campbell continued, “I planted the succincholine in Tom’s apartment, which I knew you’d eventually find. Never trust a bisexual man, hmm? And it was me who made the phony call to North’s new escort service and sent North to Tom’s address. Why? Because I knew you’d have surveillance cops watching his every move.”

  “Not surveillance cops,” Helen corrected. “I planted an electronic device on North’s car, that could monitor his movements through our communications office.”

  “Such technology!” Campbell exclaimed. “Big Brother just keeps getting bigger.” Campbell came away from the desk, approached her, and leaned over into her face. “But do you want to know about technology, Captain Closs? I can tell you all about it. Do you want to know about the dental match? Do you want to know about the DNA match in the hair, the handwriting match on the letters, and the fingerprints? Do you, Captain Closs? Are you ready to confess to me that I am your intellectual superior? Are you ready to admit to me that I had you, and everyone else, fooled all along?”