Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

This was all news to Helen. She’d never researched Dahmer’s bio history that well, just the modus stuff.

««—»»

—but none of that really mattered now, did it? No, he thinks.

“Dahmer told me that his childhood was normal,” Sallee continued, when he was growing up in Bath, Ohio. Of course, this was over two years ago, well before the episodic break he’s obviously experienced since then. Yet he admitted that he did indeed kill small animals—sometimes he would even dissolve the flesh off their bones with corrosives he’d concoct from the chemistry set his father gave him for his birthday. This boy was melting the flesh off dogs and birds and hamsters yet he referred to his childhood as ‘normal.’ He was oblivious. He said he did it because he loved the animals.” Sallee tossed his shoulders. “Beyond that, you tell me. We only have clinical criteria to go by, but every subject, in some way, is possessed of patented differences.”

Helen let the slew of words sink in. “But subjects like this, like Dahmer, or like anyone else with the background. Once they experience the flood of back memories, once they remember all the bad things that happened to them—is it common for them to go on killing sprees?”

Sallee sat poised, the thin blond hair gleaming on his balding pate. “Not only is it common, it’s nearly exclusive. As the old saying goes, opposites attract. People who suffer a conative-episodic break go from one opposite to the next—in personality, I mean. They’ve always been killers, yes. Dahmer killed animals as a child, a hitchhiker when he was eighteen, and seventeen other people before his apprehension. But its the perception of murder that changes. Introversion to aggression. Symbolic murder to murder based in a sense of retribution and revenge. A passive personality form which quickly changes over to an aggressive one. What we’re talking about here is a complete metamorphosis of character, and there is no doubt now that Jeffrey Dahmer experienced this metamorphosis quite recently, and used that new aggression, based on his resurfaced memories, to devise an intricate means to escape his incarceration and continue his murderous acts on a shining, new plane.” Sallee looked at her. “Jeffrey Dahmer’s only compulsion right now is to resurrect the power he once knew. And kill.”

««—»»

“Kill,” he thinks now.

In fact, that’s all he ever thinks about now.

Kill.

««—»»

Helen, in spite of her fatigue, tried to compute all of this at once. It wasn’t hard. “I think I understand it all now, Dr. Sallee. But let me ask you one thing. You mentioned that the episodic break is founded on some aspect of abuse from childhood, some—ideation? Is that the right word?—founded in the symbol of fear equaling power. Dahmer’s crime-scene letters have said the same thing. ‘Feel the fear.’“

“Yes. Exactly. So what’s your question?”

“I’m wondering about the absolute base-structure of this ‘fear.’ I mean, the locality. Dahmer’s heyday was in the city of Milwaukee— that’s where he thrived on his fear. But now he’s killing people in Madison. To retrieve this sense of power, I’d think he’d return to Milwaukee, his virtual hunting-ground of fear. Why the change of locales?”

“That’s simple,” Sallee said. “Dahmer’s already done Milwaukee. Now he wants someplace new. A new locale, new fuel for his power. New meat.”

— | — | —

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The darkness damped the room to perfect silence. Her lover slipped beside her into bed.

Helen gasped, in passion.

His hand gently molded the contours of her breasts, then slid lower. It touched her with such precision—the hand seemed to know her. A blurred face lowered, lips touched her lips and kissed. The room’s warm dark hid her lover’s face like a veil.

What’s…happening? Helen lamely thought. A tightness spired at her loins like an over-wound spring—any moment it might snap. The hand continued gingerly to investigate her.

“Darling,” Tom whispered.

Helen lay in a momentary shock. A cloud passed the window, letting winter moonlight fall into the room, beaming on Tom’s face.

Tom…

Short of breath, Helen moaned. Tom had come back to her… She pulled him naked atop her. Her nipples swelled so thoroughly they ached; she felt the veins beat in her breasts. She sensed an earthy purgation, a primal flux of feelings that demanded to be loosed.

But had she ever felt so overjoyed? She looked up into Tom’s face, saw his unmistakable smile and the familiar love in his eyes. The clean sweat of passion made his flesh shine, his big bright eyes gazing right back into hers.

“I love you, Helen.”

“I-I…love you too.”

There. Is wasn’t so hard to say, was it? She knew she loved him, it was just that she’d said it so infrequently, it seemed uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry things got so messed up between us,” he whispered.

“Me too.”

“We’ll work them out.”

“Yes. I want to.”

And she did, she did. In spite of all the things that had happened, and all the things she didn’t understand—she wanted to work things out. She needed to.

The feel of his weight on her, and its immediacy, parched her voice. She opened her legs, pulled him tighter.

“Make love to me,” she pleaded.

“Mm-hmm.”

Helen winced. The voice was different now, and then came the impact: the stench, so familiar from being in Tom’s lab—

Formalin. Disinfectant. Embalming fluid.

Helen screamed.

The face was plain in the moonlight, despite its broken-toothed smile and crushed facial bones.

It was no longer Tom who lay atop her. It was Jeffrey Dahmer.

The paralysis of nightmare locked her down on the bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, so not to have to look at this abomination, but dead fingertips plucked them back open.

“Look, look. See?” the morgue-cold corpse said.

The corpse-face was gone, its ravagement smoothing over, its bruises and contusions dissolving like white sand pouring, until it had blended completely into the face she’d seen so many times in the nightmares of her of past. A blank white face smooth as a featureless mask. Then the knife-slit mouth leaned down to kiss her, the vaguest tip of a grub-white tongue slipping between the lips…

Helen awoke thrashing, shrieking soundlessly. The winter moon remained in her window, the room remained warm and dark as the dream. Was it really over?

She nearly fell out of bed reaching for the lamp, then nearly knocked the lamp over turning it on.

And there she lay in the sweat of her own horror, her nightgown glued to her skin as she waited for her heart to beat down.

She didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

««—»»

“I buy it,” Jan Beck said the next morning in the lab. Helen had just explained her theory: that Campbell was, without a doubt, the man who arranged Dahmer’s escape. “Can’t see why Olsher doesn’t, but you got to admit, he’ll never win any awards for speculative thinking. He’s brass. Brass can’t think past their noses.”

I’m brass too, Jan, Helen thought in response but said nothing. A tabloid lay on the counter; DAHMER WAS WRITING A COOKBOOK! the header boasted. Helen felt a quick twinge. “It’s still got plenty of missing pieces, though, and the only way I’m going to find them is to—”

“Find Campbell, sure,” Beck agreed. “No easy task either. You running his name?”

“I just started. It’s going to take a while. There are over 30,000 people in the state of Wisconsin named Campbell. I’m cross-reffing with prison and mental hospital releases going back three years, plus a general search on anyone named Campbell with a rap sheet for any sexually related crime. I haven’t got my hopes up, though. Sallee says guys this smart, and with this profile, probably haven’t been caught.”