Dahmer's Not Dead Page 5

  Then the figure’s gloved right hand gestured the DieBold med safe.

  “Open it,” he said very coolly.

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure,” Goodwin replied. He fumbled for his ring, then fumbled for the key to the safe, not even realizing that he’d urinated in his county pants.

  ««—»»

  “Helen, look at this,” Deputy Chief Larrel Olsher called out from his office. “It’s unbelievable.”

  Helen had just been crossing the hall. She stuck her head in. “How did you know I was in the hall? You couldn’t possibly have seen me.”

  “Your high heels, they’re the dead giveaway. Come in here and take a look at this.”

  Helen, rather reluctantly, eased in. She liked Olsher, she just didn’t like going into his office, for all the smoke. Cigar smoke, the worse kind. Her clothes and hair would reek of it after just one minute in her immediate supervisor’s office. Helen could hardly talk, though; she’d smoked cigarettes until just last year, when she’d first met Tom. He’d invited her to the state morgue, offered to show her around, and when she asked if she could smoke, Tom said nothing but instead pointed across the room. “Look in that white bucket there. The one on the end, third shelf.” Helen’s fingers touched the plastic lid, but didn’t move. “Go on,” Tom said. “Open the bucket. Look inside.” Helen raised the lid and looked in. Settled in the bottom of the bucket were two blob-shaped objects which resembled giant moldering leeches. They were brown-black and glistening, flecked minutely with white. Tom smiled grimly. “You know what those are, Helen? They’re metastacized human lungs. Small-cell lung cancer is what I’m talking here. Look at them.” “I’m… looking,” Helen complained. Tom went on: “That’s what your lungs will look like one day if you don’t quit smoking.” He washed his hands in the sink, thumping a pink-filled soap dispenser like an inverted service bell. His lab coat bore a craggy reddish stain the shape of West Virginia. “A small-cell metastatic mass? It’s the worst. Lung cancer’s like rotting to death, slowly, from the inside out.” Helen had quit that very instant, and hadn’t even been tempted to light up since then.

  But more smoke haunted her now. Deputy Police Chief Larrel Olsher’s face looked as rigid as a black marble bust of Attila the Hun as he brutally crushed out his current cigar stub. He was black and ugly and bad. Some called him “the Shadow,” for his 6’2”, 270-pound frame tended to darken any hallway he chose to traverse. Olsher had risen to his status the hard way, by kicking ass and taking names and putting a lot of perps up for life. Beneath the veneer, though, was an unselfish man who cared about people. He and Helen had climbed up the hierarchal ladder together, had been friends for years. In fact, Olsher may have been one of Helen’s only true friends on the department.

  Maybe he’s got a case for me, she hoped. All everyone was talking about, still, was Dahmer, and after having seen the body, she hoped she never heard the man’s name again.

  “Look at this picture of Dahmer,” he said. “It’s unbelievable that they could print that in a newspaper.”

  Helen frowned at her own bad luck, took up the sheet of newsprint. FIRST OFFICIAL PHOTO OF DAHMER’S BODY the headline raved. Christ, he’s only been dead two days, she realized, but then she frowned more deeply when she noted the source: The Weekly World News.

  “This isn’t a newspaper, Larrel, it’s a tabloid.”

  “Yeah, well—so?” Olsher replied a bit defensively. “The picture’s all that matters. Christ, Dahmer’s body is custody of the state, and there he is lying flat out on our morgue slab. And it’s your lovey-dovey doing the autopsy, ain’t it? How’d a picture like that get out of St. John’s Hospital?”

  Then the image registered, and Helen couldn’t help but laugh. “For one thing, Larrel, this picture wasn’t taken in St. John’s. Second, it’s not Dahmer.”

  “Sure, it’s Dahmer.” Olsher crudely pointed to the paper. “That’s his face, right there. Everyone knows what Dahmer looks like.”

  Olsher’s naivete absolutely astounded her. Here was a man who’d been shot twice, and had probably come face to face with every conceivable kind of crackpot, killer, car-jacker, junkie, and street freak. But…this? Helen laughed again, she couldn’t help it. The photograph was ridiculous. A grain-ridden black & white: a shirtless body lying prone and Dahmer’s placid face attached. Black graphic wedges covered the top of Dahmer’s skull, with white letters. CENSORED!

  “Larrel, you’re kidding me, right? You believe this is for real?”

  Olsher diddled with a big cigar, lines pinched up in his dark face. “What’s not to believe? That’s him. Right there, in that picture.”

  Helen issued yet another laugh.

  “And what’s so goddamn funny?”

  She shimmied to retrieve her composure. “Come on,, Larrel. It’s obvious. They took a picture of some guy lying on his back with his shirt off and cropped Dahmer’s head on it. That’s not Dahmer. That’s not even St. John’s autopsy room.”

  Olsher’s big hand took back the clip. His brow furrowed, staring at it. “How do you know?

  “Because I just came from St. John’s. I saw the state of Dahmer’s body, and that’s not it. And that room isn’t anything close to the morgue at St. John’s. It looks like somebody’s kitchen…and probably is.”

  “You saw it, huh? You saw Dahmer’s body?”

  “Yes! The face wasn’t recognizable at all, it was beaten to pulp.”

  Olsher made a smirk, then stuffed the tabloid clipping into his desk. “Oh,” he said. “Well. I didn’t really believe it, either.”

  Yeah, right. She could tell he was embarrassed, so she changed the subject, gave him a break. “So what’s on the hopper today?”

  “For VCU? Nothing.” Olsher lit an El Producto. Gobs of smoke obscured his face, which Helen was grateful for. “You can go Christmas shopping today for all I care. Just thank God the state of Wisconsin’s not like California.”

  “Thank God for Tommy Thompsen.”

  Olsher shrugged hugely. “Same difference.”

  “Talk to you later, Larrel.” Helen got up, prepared to leave.

  “What? I forget to use my Right Guard today?”

  “Let me just put it this way, Larrel. Have another cigar.”

  “Oh, so you’re saying my cigars stink?”

  “Later.”

  Unbelievable is right, she thought, her high heels ticking down the hall. At least Olsher’s foolishness served to distract her. When she’d left the state morgue, she turned very briefly at the end of the exit hall. She’d seen Tom, coming back to the recept cove. He was talking to a nursing assistant, a petite blonde, and he’d been smiling. Flirting, was more the way Helen saw it, but then she tried to catch herself. Dr. Sallee’s wisdoms never failed to haunt her. “Tom is a healthy, functional adult. He’s allowed to converse with other women, he’s allowed to be friends with other women. Your insecurity in this matter is just more proof of your spiraling paranoia, Helen.” Spiraling, she thought obtusely. Shit. Could she help it that she didn’t care to see her lover yacking enthusiastically with younger, more attractive women? Was that really paranoia?

  Now her mood was ruined, at once. It happened that fast these days, it always did. Blank-faced uniforms passed this way and that; the main hall down from reception was a cacophony she’d long grown used to. She didn’t hear it any more. Shiny beige tile and drab white walls led her toward her own office.

  Two cops swapped jokes from the Intelligence squad room right next door.

  “Hey, what did Dahmer say when Tredell Rosser tried to take his broom?”

  “What?”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Hey, what did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit?”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to eat that?”

  Helen’s ticking heels stopped. Her furor rose—she had to take it out on someone, didn’t she? She ducked her head in.

  “Next man I hear telling Dahmer jokes gets transferred to Warehouse
Division in the morning.”

  Two shocked faces glanced up, blanched white when they saw who it was.

  “Dahmer murdered seventeen people, he perpetuated a lot of tragedy,” Helen reminded them. “There’s nothing funny about it, is there?”

  “No, ma’am,” one of the uniforms answered.

  “Start acting like cops instead of high school punks,” Helen advised the both of them, then left.

  The instant she sat down at her own desk in her own office, she mused, No more Dahmer. Please. I’ve had enough. Then she picked up a statewide telex laying in her IN box.

  00210-OP

  FLAG: FYI

  001//112994

  29 NOV 94, 1440 HRS.

  DE: WISCONSIN BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  TO: WSP VIOLENT CRIMES UNIT

  STATUS: FYI, ALL RELEVANT PERSONNEL

  READ:

  ON MONDAY, 28 NOVEMBER 94, AT 0811, WISCONSIN SERIAL KILLER JEFFREY DAHMER WAS PRONOUNCED DEAD BY THE MEDICAL UNIT AT COLUMBUS COUNTY DETENTION CENTER IN PORTAGE. C.O.D.: MASSIVE

  FRONTAL CRANIAL CONTUSIONS. A SUSPECT, INMATE TREDELL ROSSER, SERVING A 90-PLUS-YEAR SENTENCE FOR 1ST DEGREE MURDER, IS BEING HELD AS THE PRIMARY SUSPECT. ROSSER IS SUSPECTED BY STATE PSYCHIATRIC AUTHORITIES OF MAINTAINING A GANSER SYNDROME WITH RELIGIOUS CONNOTATIONS.

  ADVISE: N/A

  00-33-00

  Of course, she hadn’t seen it until now due to her working night shifts for the week. It had been sitting here the whole time. She recalled the image, though: Dahmer’s actual body on the tilt-lift autopsy platform, bruised facial tissue and a clotlike mask of dried blood. It was even more disgusting than the drained-pale face of her nightmare.

  Helen threw the fax into the waste can. The last thing she needed right now was another reminder of Jeffrey Dahmer. It was, in fact, the last thing she’d ever need.

  ««—»»

  “—mbus County correctional authorities, along with Sheriff Tritt J. Tuckton of the Columbus County Sheriff’s Department, aren’t entirely ruling out the possibility of a recently rumored multi-person conspiracy in regard to the brutal Monday morning murder of convicted serial-killer Jeffrey Dahmer.”

  Helen stared flabbergasted at the radio as she parked the Taurus. Dahmer, Dahmer, Dahmer…

  “Dahmer’s body is scheduled to be cremated on Thursday—”

  click.

  It just never ends, does it?

  Helen let herself into Tom’s with the key he’d given her a year ago; they’d exchanged keys, “for convenience’s sake,” but Helen had to admit it was more for her own convenience. Lately she felt so tired. Her own apartment was in the Madison outskirts, closer to Monona, while Tom owned a nice condo in the south side just down from McGinnis Circle. A much closer drive, in other words, for Helen. And the way she felt just now, she couldn’t have driven to her own place in a million years.

  Her frequent fatigue was just one of many of her self-formed jinxes—the fates reminding her she was getting old, and they seemed to remind her with a fury. To hell with the fates, she thought. To hell with getting old. The assertion, however, didn’t help her feel any better.

  She expected, as always, to hear the familiar sounds of Tom’s computer video games squawking when she entered. Pseudopod, Doom II, Dark Seed, and his newest, Sniper Joe vs. the Alien Bikini Snatchers—he had them all. But the condo lay quiet now. She knew he was home because she’d seen his Bonneville in the lot; he typically got home off work before she did.

  “Tom?”

  No answer, yet she could see him standing there, within the open sliding door which led to the balcony. Cold air blundered into the apartment.

  “Tom?”

  “Oh, I’m out here. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Helen dropped her purse and briefcase, kept her Burberry coat on as she went to him. His tone of voice seemed undistinguished, leeched, somehow, of the verve she’d come to know quite well.

  “Dr. Sallee called,” Tom went on, still gazing into the sky.

  “Dr. Sal—…, oh, damn. I missed—”

  “He said you missed your appointment this afternoon.”

  She had indeed. “I completely forgot,” she admitted, but said no more. Helen always felt hard-pressed to down-play her weekly appointment with Sallee, who’d been counseling her now for several years. She felt inhibited to admit that she was seeing a psychiatrist. This Tom easily sensed, and rarely asked about it. Goddamn nightshifts, she blamed. The rare but damnable alternate shifts stole all the form from her week, and made it all the more difficult to keep her schedule set in her mind. It was no big deal at any rate. Since Sallee had taken her off Prozac in favor of hormonal therapy, she honestly did feel better more of the time now. But…

  What was wrong with Tom? Here on the balcony he seemed to wear a caul of sullenness, which was completely unlike him.

  “Is something wrong, Tom?”

  “No, no,” he nearly stammered. “I’m just…looking at the sky, thinking.”

  The black sky seemed to shine, winking in a cloudless sea of stars. An egg moon hovered low on the horizon. “Thinking about what?” she asked, and put her arms around him.

  “Dahmer,” he said.

  Helen’s wince strained against her face. “Why bother thinking about that schmuck?”

  Tom didn’t turn but instead remained rigid where he stood. “I don’t know. It’s just…weird.”

  “What’s weird, honey?”

  Silence. Staring. The stars flickered. “Even the gods have a sense of irony, don’t they? It’s weird, what I did today, I mean. I mean, that guy cut up over a dozen people, and today I cut him up. Christ, I weighed the guy’s liver; it weighed 1501 grams. I cultured some of his brain cells and sent them to NIH. I held his heart in my hand. It just seems so weird.”

  “You mean because it was Dahmer.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I guess that’s it.”

  Even Tom, she supposed, a happy go luck and a morgue jokester, had his doldrums. But Helen could fathom where he was coming from. In this job victims were statistics—-they could never be anything else. But when they had names? When they had faces you’d seen in the papers? It changed the whole mix.

  Helen tightened her embrace.

  “Come inside.”

  “Yeah, good idea. It’s cold.”

  “Let me warm you up.”

  ««—»»

  God… Oh, shit…

  Tom made love to her in a keen ferocity, or at least that’s how it began. Generally, their lovemaking was on the lazy side, low-key and laid back, which was what Helen liked. Slow, slothy stress-relief after a long day.

  But tonight…

  No trimmings, no precursory glass of wine nor touchy foreplay and cuddles. Helen herself had to admit an odd spark. Perhaps it was diversionary. Perhaps seeing the body of a serial killer lying on a morgue slab posted some crude, inner-conscious primacy. At first she felt put off, even shocked, at the immediacy by which Tom commenced: tugging at her clothes as they stumbled out of the living room, one hand venturing unabashed up the back of her skirt to molest her buttocks, the other pawing her breasts. They never even made it to the bedroom. The floor would have to do. Tom, Jesus! she thought as he hauled her down. Pinning her down with his weight, he unbuttoned her blouse, nearly popping off the buttons. Then he quickly shucked her breasts out of the 38C brassiere, kneading them quite urgently. All the while, in spite of her initial silent objections, Helen felt her sexual fuse ignite. Soon, she was perspiring, breathing hard. Her heart thudded for more, and then he gave her more, pushing up her dress. He pushed her legs up, pulled off her shoes and sent them clunking back into the living room. Rough fingers tickled her belly, plucked at the delicate elastic band, then peeled off her pantyhose. Speechless, Helen watched the hose sail away into surreal darkness like some gossamer bird. “Slow down, slow down,” she whispered, but Tom didn’t hear her, nor, by then, did she even want him to. Her panties, then, were hauled down and left to dangle off an ankle. God… Oh,
shit… Suddenly she felt like a woman in a pornographic film, half-stripped and hauled down to be spread open and humped. The fantasy titillated her. Coarse breath resounded in the dim light. A belt buckle clinked, a zipper rasped. Then her knees were pushed back nearly into her face. She didn’t have time to touch his penis or even see it; she was simply folded in half and entered. The minor discomfort of the position, and the floor beneath her, retreated after only the first few thrusts. He’s so hard, she thought. Then the thrusts stepped up, deepened. Helen’s breath expelled through pressed lips, her eyes seeing only through slits now: Tom’s pent-up, determined face, his still shirted chest hovering over her.

  He moaned once, then uttered, “God, I love you, Helen…” but the sensation of being so deliciously skewered forestalled any reciprocal reply. Her breasts, large to begin with, felt twice their normal size, filling up with tingling heat. Her sex flooded onto the floor. “Harder,” she caught herself imploring, “Do it harder.”

  Tom obliged.

  Sweat dripped off his face onto her bosom. No, this wasn’t lovemaking… He’s fucking my brains out! came the crudest thought, and again she considered her earlier surmise. Sometimes the pressure of their jobs—which could often be grim at the very least—built up like steam in a cooker. Now, it was being released. Their intercourse chased away the images: Dahmer’s bruise-swollen face, the crustlike mask of blood, the stiff body, as well as every other ghastly thing she’d ever seen. Only now did she fully realize that this was what she needed. It was what they both needed.

  His hips pummeled her. His erection felt larger than she ever noted, and it was kindling her right now to the point of something close to mania. Helen had never been particularly orgasmic—once in a blue moon was about all—but that never bothered her. In the best of moods, the feeling was enough, along with knowing that her body could give Tom pleasure. Now, though, an abrupt climax seized her. It felt like something belting out of her. She moaned so loudly she feared the neighbors would hear. The pleasure bloated her face, knocked more breath out of her. Christ Almighty—