Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

“That’s two completely different questions, Captain. Jeffrey had a higher than average IQ, but he scored very poorly on all the creative assembly batteries. The TAT, the Weschler Revised Adult Intuition Scale, the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test—Jeffrey scored shockingly low on them all.”

“Maybe he did it on purpose,” Helen considered.

“No, no, what you don’t understand is that these tests can’t be faked. Even if an inmate wrote down deliberately contradictory answers, the score scales would pick that up at once.” Willet took a moment to assess Helen’s questions. “Why do you ask, though?”

“I want to know if Dahmer was possibly devious enough to fake his docility.”

“No,” Willet responded. “Ask anyone who knew him. But that’s a strange suspicion, I must say. Why would Jeffrey wish to fake something like that?”

I wonder, Helen thought.

««—»»

“…so I’d like to know what you think about that, Father,” Helen was asking her next interviewee, Father Thomas Alexander, the prison chaplain. This was the man who’d performed the famous “baptism” of Dahmer, in the prison’s whirlpool. “The word is you were Dahmer’s only real friend and confidant.”

“Well that’s true,” the religious man answered. “I was his confessor.” Alexander seemed slightly stiffened behind his industrial gray desk, as though he had a back problem. Salt and pepper hair, a lean face that seemed weathered more by sarcasm than by age. Helen couldn’t quite say why, but there was something about the man that caused an immediate dislike.

“I need to know about Dahmer’s visitors and correspondents,” Helen was next asking. A bumper sticker adhered to the front of the desk read CHRIST ROCKS! And another: THE POWER OF JESUS IS INFINITE. Helen noticed this at the same instant a power fluctuation briefly dimmed the office lights. Too bad Jesus doesn’t run Madison Gas & Electric.

“Power flux,” Alexander observed. “For some reason we get them all the time, anywhere on the prison’s east sector. And in response to your questions, Jeffrey was a Level Five inmate. It’s a federal categorization scale, only goes up to Seven, Seven being the most critical, One being the least. The average inmate is a One.”

“So as a Five,” Helen speculated, “Dahmer was deemed significantly more dangerous than most inmates?”

“Yes and no,” the priest answered. But that fuddled Helen. Was he a priest? Or a reverend, or a minister? She wasn’t sure. But he went on, “Dangerous isn’t a word I would use to describe Jeffrey, in spite of the crimes he committed.”

Helen made an assenting nod. “Ms. Willet just got done telling me he was introverted, even docile.”

“Exactly. But he got the Level Five tag due to the nature of his crimes. It’s based on committed acts, not personality makeup, a bad rap for Jeffrey actually.”

Helen had a hard time commiserating. Poor Jeffrey. The big, bad government slaps him with a sensitive prison status.

“But getting back to what you were asking,” Alexander said, “as a Level Five inmate, Jeffrey was allowed no outside visitors other than direct blood relatives unless otherwise authorized by the Director’s office. His mother was the only one who ever came to see him, and the only exceptions I’m aware of were a few news interviewers.”

“Which the Director authorized?”

“Yes, but this was very rare. Two, three times. The only reason Dipetro allowed it, I suspect, was because he knew Jeffrey would speak positively of the center.”

Dipetro. The prison’s warden. A mover and shaker who liked to play hardball was what Helen had heard, and who was bucking to run the state’s department of public safety come the next election. “All right,” she said, “so Dahmer had no visitors other than his mother. What about correspondents?”

“That’s where the criteria is even more unjust,” Alexander told her, “based on the Level Five tag. Jeffrey was not allowed to send or receive mail. Period.”

Helen squinted. “Why?”

The minister shrugged, made a denigrating turn of his mouth. “I haven’t a clue. It’s unconstitutional if you ask me.”

“So is murdering and cannibalizing seventeen people,” Helen couldn’t resist saying.

“For one thing, you’ve been listening to too much right-wing press. Jeffrey didn’t cannibalize all of his victims,” Alexander defended.

“All right. But even if he only cannibalized one of them, why are you so quick to defend him?”

“Because the defenseless need defenders.”

“Defenseless?” Helen wanted to laugh. “He premeditatedly drugged and murdered innocent young men to pursue a sexual dementia.”

A frown drew deep lines into Alexander’s face. “On the outside, true, Jeffrey fell sway to the relegations of evil. But God forgave him of all that. And it’s inexcusable for persons such as yourself to maintain this right-wing, Pat Buchanan, lynch mob mentality.”

Now it was all obvious; the boil had been popped. “I maintain no such thing,” Helen responded, “I’m merely—”

“You’re merely acting like everyone else. No pity at all for the pitiable. It wasn’t Jeffrey’s fault that he became what he became. It was society’s. It was our fault.”

Helen didn’t buy that at all, but she saw little point in debating it. The reverend’s liberal sentiments could not be assailed. “We’re getting off track, Father. I didn’t come here to argue with you.” Then she remembered her own track.

Mail. Correspondence… Letters.

“I need to know why Dahmer wasn’t allowed to send and receive mail.”

““Ask Oc-Ther,” he said, “after, of course, you relieve yourself from my office. The door’s right over there.”

Helen rose from her seat, secured her purse. “You’re petulant and obnoxious, Father Alexander. But have a good day anyway.”

««—»»

“Groupies,” Wayne Edwards answered her question with the single word.

“ Groupies? ” Helen stretched the word. But Sallee had made a similar mention now that she thought of it.

Edwards was the Center’s Chief of Occupational Therapy, an attractive man with long dark hair and a beard, and a darker voice. He wore an open flannel shirt with a black t-shirt beneath. Oddly, behind him, hung a Doctorate in Economics. He smoked Marlboros, which caused a rare pang in Helen’s memory. Christ, that cigarette looks good, she thought. But what did he mean about groupies?

“Could you be more specific, please?”

Edwards tapped an ash in a stone tray. “There are a lot of whacks out there, Ms. Closs. Screwed up, obsessive, even pathological. They’re searching for some kind of identity but they’re too maladjusted to find it. It’s the same as rock stars, movie stars, writers, professional athletes—they all have groupies.”

“I still don’t get the significance of—”

“Serial killers have groupies too, lots of them. Pen pals, obsessive fans, like that. We call it ‘remote obsessional codependency,’ and it’s quite a bit more apparent than you would think. Those guidelines from the Bureau of Prisons recommend that any inmate labeled Five or above be barred from all out-of-house correspondence. That’s the only reason Dahmer got the tag: because he was so famous. Here at Columbus County Detent, we follow those guidelines, which I think is a good idea. A lot of prisons don’t. They don’t have to unless they’re a federal prison institution. Jolliette’s a great example, and so is Jessup and Fredricksburg and Lorton, and dozen’s of other local detention centers. They don’t like the federal government telling them what to do, so they’ll ignore any BOP recs. Gacy and Speck, for example, both Level Five convicts at Jolliette, were allowed to correspond with anyone they wanted to. Any letter mailed to them were delivered to them. And any letters outgoing were processed. Big mistake. A lot of these centers believe that the BOP mail restrictions are an infringement of a convict’s rights.”