Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

“Stop screwing with me, Chief.”

Olsher spared the smallest hint of a smile. “Who’s screwing with you? And why do you want a DF on this guy North?”

“To track his whereabouts on the board. Then the computer inputs any locations and stores them in a database. Any repeated lokes North travels to will come up on the cross reff. North is probably going to continue turning tricks. I want to know who any of his other steady johns are so I can question them. They might’ve known Kussler too, or people who did, and from that I might be able to get more on Campbell.”

But by then Olsher was barely listening. “Sure, a DF request—go do it. Have Supply and Central Commo call me for the authorization.”

Helen left when Olsher lit the odiferous cigar. His head must be harder than the wall. She stalked downstairs to the armorer in the Property and Supply Depot, who quickly verified the request with Olsher over the phone. A DF transponder (the DF for direction-finder) was a piece of surveillance hardware not new to larger and more modern police departments; they were tiny tracking devices generally planted on cars without the owner’s knowledge. The device emitted an exclusive frequency processed by a set of radio triangulators, and pinpointed the target vehicle’s location at any time on the DF board at Central Communications. Helen had already run North’s name through MVA and found out what he drove: a gold 87 Dodge Colt, two-door. A surveillance warrant wasn’t necessary—at least not in this state—because tracking a person’s public whereabouts was not deemed an invasion of privacy.

Hawberk was the armorer/property officer’s name, according to his tag, a beat street cop waiting out his pension papers. He had a complexion like a sponge. “A DF transponder, huh? They run on nickel-cads. They’ll pipe a freq transmission for ten to fourteen days before you have to replace it,” he told her nearly incomprehensibly. “But cold weather like we’re having now? I’d change the battery once a week during the job.”

“Okay, just let me have it.”

“Which series? We have two.” This was probably making Hawberk’s day; he reached under the counter and produced a pair of small hinged boxes like he was a jeweler showing her watches. One unit was the size of a dime, the other a nickel. “This big one here,” his stubby finger pointed to the latter. “It’s a two-way unit, has a distress signal. We use them mostly for guys working undercover who can’t wear a wire, you carry it around in your pocket with your change. The DF board’ll be tracking you the whole time, but if you run into trouble”—he picked it up and offered a mock demonstration—”you press down real hard on this little grid on the side, and it sends out a distress beacon. The board reads the distress code, and since they already know exactly where you are, they can dispatch a response team immediately.”

“But I’m not going to be carrying this,” she pointed out, already overwhelmed. “I want to track a car.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so? You don’t need the two-way unit, you need the one-way.” Now Hawberk picked up the dime-sized transponder. “The batteries in these are tiny, so bring it in to me whenever you need a change.”

“What’s the best place to plant it?” she asked. “Under the hubcap?”

“No, no,” he objected. “What if the person you’re tracking gets a flat tire? He’ll go to change it and find the damn thing. Best place is up under the bumper, but a lotta these new cars? They have plastic bumpers so it won’t work—the attachment base is magnetic.”

Helen rolled her eyes wearily. All this tech stuff—she was sick of it. Just give me the damn thing and tell me where to stick it! I don’t need a technical dissertation!

“Up under the bumper if it’s a steel bumper,” he went on. “Or some secure location in the undercarriage. Just make sure it sticks. You don’t want this baby dropping off onto Rowe Boulevard the first time he hits a pothole.”

“Fine, great. The undercarriage. Make sure the magnet sticks.”

Hawberk closed the box, then filled out an inventory release. “Take this to Central Commo, and they’ll activate the tracking frequency with the DF board. It’s sixteen-point-six-five megahertz, very reliable.

“Yes, yes, thank you.” Helen grabbed the box and form, turned hastily to leave.

“Any place in Greater Madison your suspect goes to, they’ll read it on the DF board, and feed the grids into the computer.”

Helen pulled away. “Right, yes, I understand that.”

“Then all you have to do is call up the grids, which will already be converted to city plat numbers.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

“Use the city grid map to match the plats, and you got the exact locations of everywhere in town your suspect parks his car.”

“ Fine. Have a good day.”

“And don’t forget to change the battery every week,” Hawberk reminded over her. “This kind of cold weather drains them—”

Helen glided out; her mind stuffed to overflowing with details. Next she activated the frequency with Central Communications, gave the transponder along with North’s address and MVA specs to a plainclothes in Intelligence Branch, and sent him out to plant the device on North’s 87 Dodge Colt.

What a pain in the butt, she thought, only now, for the first time all day, taking a few minutes to sit down and have a cup of coffee. Computers, DF transponders, city plats and grid conversions? One day, she suspected, the world would be so cluttered with technology, specs, and frequencies that everyone would go completely insane.

The DF would help a lot, though. More grist for Helen’s investigative mill. North, now that his escort service had been closed down, would very likely solicit a new one, and finding out where that new service was would give Helen a brand-new client base to check out. Clients who may have known Kussler, and any other prostitutes Kussler may have solicited, all whom, in turn, might know more about Campbell. Additionally, since Kussler regularly solicited North, he may have recommended North to friends.

But Helen’s coffee didn’t even have time to get cool before she was up and out. It took two hours with the police artist and IdentiKit technician to get a good digital composite on what she remembered of Campbell’s face. Another hour at the Police Commissioner’s Office to process a press-release request for the composite to be published in the papers. And yet another hour at the assistant district attorney’s office getting North’s active charges dropped in place of probation before judgment. And after all that, the day was almost done. But she still had one more thing to do, didn’t she?

She had an appointment, with Dr. Sallee.

««—»»

“I’m sorry, Helen. I remember telling you psychiatrists were only right ninety-nine percent of the time. Well, here’s the one percent. I called it wrong.”

“So did I,” Helen said. Only now, in Sallee’s office, did she feel wound down from all the rigors of the day. The office was tranquil, blissfully sedate. Sallee’s voice gave her solace.

“I was convinced, as you, that Dahmer was genuinely dead, and that the perpetrator was a copycat,” he said. “But at least, in your discoveries today, you have a positive link to the accomplice. A name, a face, all in one day? That’s fast work.”

“Not fast enough. It’s only a last name, and a sketched composite face. Not a whole lot in the thick of things.”

“There you go again, as always, Helen. Downplaying your skills, self-effacing the efforts of your own ingenuity.”

Helen audibly moaned.

“Any more dreams?”