Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

No surprise, either. 224-9855, BILKER MEDICAL SUPPLY ANNEX, 959 Bilker Street, N.W.

He was telling the truth.

Yeah, screw up a little more why don’t you, Helen? Chase every man out of your life forever. Paranoid bitch.

She wanted to get up just then, run after him, apologize and plead with him. I love him, she realized. I’ve got to tell him.

At the same time, though, her printer began to percolate, paper feeding automatically as her search request was finally answered.

M:\> MAC SEARCH SYSTEM REQUEST

FR: CLOSS, H. WSP VCU, CRED #/ID 455

DE: PROXIMAL THEFT REPORT/FED CONTROL #51995/ SUCCINICHOLINE /SCHILLER INC>/LOT #42239SV/EXP. 3-97/LICENSED UNDER U.S. PATENT #4,315,926

CASE NUMBER TH 1514 MADISON PD

M_INIT ALLOCATE SPEC MEMORY

STATE SIGNAL CODE 84CV/ COUNTY EMT VEHICLE #154 REPORTS THEFT OF CONTROLLED PHARMACEUTICALS ON 1500 BLOCK, UTAH STREET, MADISON.

Utah Street, Helen paused to muse. A ghetto block. It was more than that, though. The 1500 block, part of Madison’s Precinct Five, was the worse crime district in the city.

PARAMEDIC COOPER, C., REPORTED DEAD ON ARRIVAL TO ST. JOHN THE DIVINE’S HOSPITAL VIA MULTIPLE GUNSHOT WOUNDS TO THE ABDOMEN AFTER LONE ARMED ATTACKER ENTERED VEHICLE #154. DRIVER GOODWIN, D., SUFFERED HAIRLINE CRANIAL FRACTURE AND CONCUSSION AND NOW LISTED ON COMP LEAVE IN GOOD CONDITION. PHARMACEUTICAL VAULT REPORTED RANSACKED.

M:\>FIND [……………GO TO NEXT]

AMONG FDA CONTROL SUBSTANCES REPORTED STOLEN:

SEARCH OBJECT:

CARTON, ONE, TWELVE (12) .4 MG INTRAMUSCULAR VIALS OF PARALYTIC AGENT SUCCINICHOLINE SULPHATE (SOLUTION) [SEE LOT # ABOVE FOR MNFR REC.]

END OF SEARCH SYSTEM REQUEST

How do you like that? Helen thought, creaking back in her chair. An ambulance jacking. It happened all the time these days. Drug addicts would frequently make phony 911 calls to some remote, dark alley, overpower the paramedics, and steal any drugs that the vehicle might be carrying.

And this perp stole a carton of succinicholine sulphate?

An interesting find but it was useless to her without the date. Quickly she punched in the cited Madison PD case number, waited, stared at the screen at moment later.

FIND: MADISON PD CASE # TH 1514, PREC 5

CITED: SIGNAL 84CV/THEFT OF PROPERTY FROM REGISTERED COUNTY EMERGENCY VEHICLE

The date blinked back at her.

2304 HRS/11-29-94

“November 29th,” she whispered to herself.

Just one night after Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered.

— | — | —

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Circles.

Squares.

Triangles.

Planes.

Me, he thinks in the dark.

««—»»

The heat swooshes on. The curtains move. White moonlight winks in the vaguely moving gap.

It is in this gap that he sees it all, his destiny.

Me, me…

From the nightmare, he hears a voice—

A man’s gotta grab life by the balls, his father said once afterward. Moonlight looked like ice in the window panes.

Real men take what they want.

His father’s face smiles through a scarlet grin.

The little boy’s hand quivers.

It’s take or be taken. One day you’ll understand.

««—»»

Back to the present—the world full of his fodder. He gets up, strays to the window—

One day you’ll be a taker. That’s why I’m doing this…

—then looks back with shimmering eyes at the dead man he’d been lying in bed with.

««—»»

Helen glanced at her office clock. Five minutes, she thought. He better not be late. She passed the time by reading one of the tabloids Olsher had inadvertently left. GOD TOLD ME TO DO IT, the top headline read. WHY I KILLED DAHMER, by Tredell Rosser. She flipped to the story, unable to believe that Rosser would’ve been granted an interview with any newspaper much less a tabloid. But when she read the “article,” she plainly saw that he hadn’t. Sources close to the Star have revealed— Helen didn’t bother reading further. Sources close, my ass, she thought. They just made it up, fabricated the whole thing. True, no one with a brain believed anything printed in a supermarket tabloid, but she just couldn’t understand how writers, however corrupt, could be allowed to fabricate “news.” Whatever happened to fraud? Whatever happened to libel? When the Founding Fathers had instituted the premise of free speech in the Constitution, Helen doubted that they meant it was okay for journalists to invent stories and cite anonymous “close sources” as verification.

It wasn’t even worth thinking about. A few minutes later, a man entered, and he didn’t look happy.

“Mr. Goodwin,” Helen greeted from her desk. “Thanks for coming. Please have a seat.”

Daniel Goodwin seemed to scowl in response to the greeting. “I sure don’t understand why I have to be dragged down here,” he said, seating himself. Nondescript in appearance, medium build, early 30s, but Helen could see the chip on his shoulder. Daniel D. Goodwin had been employed by the Madison County Rescue Squad for two years. He was also the lone survivor of the November 29th robbery of EMT Unit #154.

“You weren’t dragged down here, Mr. Goodwin,” Helen pointed out. “You were merely asked to avail yourself for some questions.”

“Avail myself, huh? I already talked to the Narcotics Unit. My partner gets killed, I get a concussion and hairline fracture, and they treat me like I’m the bad guy.”

“And why might that be?”

Goodwin’s face creased to a frown. “Because of the bum rap I got at Falks County FD, which I’m sure you know all about.”

Indeed she did, and a curious consideration, but Helen wasn’t quite sure what she thought about it yet. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Goodwin, and I’m sorry about your partner. I’d just like you to reiterate some points for me. You say you were assaulted by a lone gunman on the night of November 29th, at a few minutes after eleven?”

“That’s right, 2304, like it says in the report. I was cracked on the head.”

“With what?”

“The butt of his gun.”

“And this was after you opened the unit’s med safe.”

“Yeah. I don’t feel too good about it, but when somebody points a gun in your face and tells you to do something, you do it, especially after the same guy just shot one of your friends.”

“I’m sure I would’ve done the same thing, Mr. Goodwin,” Helen suggested. “Nobody expects you to risk your life protecting county pharmaceuticals. Ambulance jacking is rampant these days. Sixteen incidents already this year, and that’s just the southern district. But tell me a little more about your attacker.”

“It’s all in the report. The guy shot Cooper twice before I could even blink; he was waiting for us inside the truck when we came back from the address. The guy was smart. The average jacking’s always near an alley, never in the middle of a street; he put a lamp inside a closed rowhouse, made it look occupied. So the whole thing looked legit when we responded. But when we got back to the unit, the guy’s already in back waiting for us with the gun.”

Helen scanned the initial report filed by Madison Metro PD. “And the assailant had a pistol with a sound-suppression device?”

“A street silencer,” Goodwin elucidated. “A plastic soda bottle hose-clamped to the barrel; it’s big with dopers and street gangs. They used to use the big two-liter bottles until the soda companies came up with the bright idea of making twenty-ounce ones.”

“You seem to know a lot about it, Mr. Goodwin.”