Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

“But aren’t you evil too, Mr. Rosser?” Helen piqued. “You murdered a Conservation Corp worker in cold blood, shot him in the head.”

“Shee-it. That weren’t me. That were the machination’a the Devil. I’se been persecuted by the state, just like Jesus were persecuted by Rome and the Jews. I’se am the million-year-old Son’a God, ma’am. I’se walked the field of blood. I’se trod the plains of Troy and Knossos and Nineveh.”

“Oh, really? And Nineveh was the capital of what ancient country, Mr. Rosser?”

“A holy land. God, He say he’d destroy Nineveh for its sin, but then He change his mind ’cos they got their act straight.”

The answer to Helen’s question was Assyria, though she had to commend Rosser for his knowledge of Biblical history. God, according to the Bible, had indeed condemned the city of Nineveh, but retracted His promise of destruction once the population sought faith. The most famous contradiction in Bible prophesy.

“All right,” she went on, “you killed Jeffrey Dahmer because he was in league with the Devil—”

“He were a myrmidon.”

Helen didn’t exactly know what the word meant, but she didn’t say it. “Fine,” she said instead. “Then why did you attack Vander too? Was he also a…myrmidon of the Devil.”

“No, he were but a vassal.”

“Word is, Mr. Rosser, you killed Dahmer because his victims were mostly black. You did it for popular status on the cellblock. And the same goes for Vander. He’s in intensive care, by the way, really bad shape. You tried to kill him too, because he was a Nazi, and he murdered his wife but told the police it was a black man.”

“‘Lying lips are an abomination’a the Lord.’“ He paused to look at her more closely, his fervent eyes the color of burnt nuts. “Whys are you here?”

“I wanted to meet you, Mr. Rosser. You’re an interesting man, I must say. But there’s a rumor I wanted to ask you about. They say that you may have been assisted, that certain detention officers arranged for you to be in the prison rec unit with Dahmer and Vander, and they looked the other way so you could do the job. Can you verify that, Mr. Rosser? You have nothing to lose in telling me. It would help me to know this.”

Rosser’s blaring white smile never waned. “‘Thou shalt not…bear, false witness…against thy neighbor.’ I’se did it, juss me. No ones else.”

“All right, Mr. Rosser, I believe you. But I also believe you’re what we call a Ganser. You’re faking delusions to try to get transferred into a mental hospital.”

“Believe what you like,” Rosser said. “‘Thou shalt not put any other God aboves me.’“ The smile beamed; Rosser’s head inclined. “Earliers, you ax me why don’t I break these chains if I’se really the Son’a God.”

“Yes,” Helen acknowledged.

“Watch.”

Rosser stood up. The small psych cell seemed to shrink in his rising; Helen felt like a dwarf before this 6’3” killing machine. Rosser’s stout arms snapped upward, strained the cuffs connected to the waistchain. Suddenly he was sweating, the skin of his well-developed arms and shoulders like veneered black marble. His biceps shimmied…

Don’t wet yourself, Helen. It doesn’t matter how strong he is. That’s tempered steel. He can’t possibly break it—

snap!

His cuffed hands broke the waistchain link. Then, after another few moments of more exertion—

snap!

The link joining the cuffs broke too.

Helen stared at him. She’d had to turn over her service weapon before coming onto the unit. All she had to defend herself with was…her purse.

Rosser smiled. “These hands”—he raised them up—”coulds kill you, right now.”

Then he sat back down.

It was all Helen could do not to call out for the orderlies. Hold your ground, hold your ground. “Well, Mr. Rosser, in that case, thank you for not killing me. It’s been nice talking to you.”

“Haves a good day.”

Helen, stiff-backed and suppressing her terror, left the psych cell. Somehow, she knew she could feel Rosser’s arcane, bright smile following her out. “Just for your info,” she said to the orderlies, “that walking meat-rack in there just broke out of his cuffs.” The orderlies’ faces blanched, and they rushed in. Helen let herself be escorted off the wing by the security super.

“They do that sometimes,” he said. “Brains all messed up, gives them incredible strength. You know, like the old wive’s tale of the skinny woman lifting a car up off her husband.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that guy’s brain.”

The guard shrugged. “That’s what a lot of the docs say, say he’s faking it.”

“He is, and he’s doing a good job. I’ll bet anything he winds up in a cushy state psych ward.”

The guard took Helen back off the wing, to the recept desk, then took her Beretta .25 out of the locker and gave it back to her.

“I hear Vander’s in ICU,” she said. “How do I get there? I need to talk to him too.”

The guard’s brows popped. “Good luck talking to him. Didn’t you hear? Vander died today. Hematoma.”

Shit, Helen thought.

««—»»

She remembered Sallee’s words, as she was leaving the hospital for the frigid parking lot. I’m an ostrich… She’d deliberately left via the basement, where the morgue was.

Where Tom was.

I’ve got to try to fix things up, she thought.

She stood in front of the door. She paid no mind to the security guard at the sign-in desk.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Uh, uh, no,” she said.

One last glance through the chicken-wire glass showed her Tom milling about inside.

Helen lost her nerve and left the building.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TEN

Helen spent the next day interviewing one correctional staff face after another, until the faces all seemed to blur together. Of Dahmer, they all related similar if not identical versions of his makeup. Introverted, docile, full of remorse. And completely ingenuous.

“Was he suicidal?” Helen asked the prison’s psychologist, an unenlivened if not dull woman named Bernice Willet.

“Not actively,” the demure, dark-skinned woman replied. A mane of coal-black hair draped her shoulders over a nougat cashmere sweater. “He did have an active death wish, though.”

“To what degree of detail?”

There was a hint of an accent Helen couldn’t place. “He believed that he deserved to die for his crimes.”

So did the rest of the world, Helen thought.

“But guilt reversions such as this are quite common,” Willet continued, “among incarcerated serial-killers. The un common thing about Jeffrey was the absolute certainly with which he believed he was going to die.”

“You’re saying he predicted his own death?”

“In a sense, yes. Jeffrey was well aware that quite a few inmates wanted to kill him. This was well-known throughout the center’s inmate population, that someone, eventually, was going to get to him. This is the only aspect of Jeffrey that can be likened to a suicidal tendency. It was a passive one. He knew he was a marked man, yet he went out of his way to qualify for a domiciliary transfer from protective custody to the general prison block.”

This was interesting. He knew someone was going to get him eventually, Helen paused to think. Could he have…

“How vengeful was he?”

“Vengeful? Jeffrey?” The psychologist nearly smiled. “He wasn’t vengeful or aggressive at all. If anything, he was close to narcoleptic.”

Helen tried to focus. What was she thinking? “How smart was he, then, how creative?”