Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

Beck removed a bottle of Snapple from the lab fridge. “You run the name against hospital records, especially this hospital?”

“That’s the first thing I did—here and Columbus County General, where Dahmer’s so-called body was first taken. It came up zilch. There are two Campbells working here, and one there. None fit the mold.”

“At least you’ve got things cooking. You got a DF on North, and that will probably give you more leads down the road, you’ve got Central Programming running Campbell’s name. And while all that’s going on—”

“I have too fill in the holes,” Helen muttered, staring absently around the lab. She felt like she hadn’t slept at all, which was essentially true. The nightmare had bitten her deep. I’m turning into on of those proverbial obsessed cops. No life outside of the job. The case takes over everything, even your dreams. “I think that’s the main reason Olsher’s not taking me seriously. My theory doesn’t explain how Dahmer was positively ID’d via fingerprints. Repeatedly, his prints matched. One, after the beating at the prison, two, on arrival at Columbus County General for the first official pronouncement of death, and, three, after transport here. Three times those fingerprints matched, but then we dig up the body, and it’s Kussler.”

Beck shrugged as she tended a peripheral printer connected to a spectrographic point-processor. “Those prints matched because the guy being transported was Dahmer. He was switched with Kussler’s body after he arrived here. I don’t see any other explanation.”

Helen blinked at the hypothesis. It just sounded too far-fetched. “But the same body ID’d as Dahmer was pronounced dead repeatedly, Jan. The prison physician, the chief of ER at Columbus County General, and several more doctors here.”

“And Tom too,” Beck reminded off the top of her head.

Yeah, Tom too. The name soured her mood at once.

Beck drew on, “In other words, you don’t understand how Dahmer could’ve been pronounced dead when he was really alive? That’s the easy part.”

Helen peered at Beck. “How is faking death easy?”

“You’re forgetting one of this case’s most unique constituents, Captain. Succinicholine sulphate.”

“A deadly poison.”

“A deadly poison is certain doses, yes. But the doses Dahmer used on Arlinger and Dumplin weren’t high enough to be fatal. I’ve already explained that in my tox reports. Those two guys died as a result of torture and extreme physical trauma. It wasn’t the succinicholine that killed them. All that did was paralyze them.”

Helen listened hard, strained her perceptions. “I don’t think I’m following you.”

Beck looked exasperated. “Captain, that’s the key word here— paralysis. Dahmer’s paralyzing his victims with a neurological agent. It stands to reason that Dahmer used the same neurological agent on himself, to feign his death after the beating at the prison.”

“Would that…work?”

“With succinicholine sulphate? Of course it would work. The right dose would lower Dahmer’s respiratory rate and pulse sufficiently enough to fool a standard check for vital signs.”

Helen hadn’t thought of that. “Wow,” she muttered. “You’re right, it does make sense. But that would mean someone would’ve had to procure the succinicholine previously—”

“Sure, Campbell,” Beck suggested. “He had to have been the one who ripped it off from that ambulance jacking.”

“But the jacking was more than twelve hours after the beating?”

“So? By then the plan was already in motion; Campbell was stocking up on it for the murders he knew he and Dahmer would soon be committing. He probably already had stolen a sample previously. Jackings are commonplace. This was obviously something they were planning for months, or even since Dahmer’s initial incarceration in 92.”

Helen nodded to herself. “And it had to have been Kussler who snuck the succinicholine into the prison, on Campbell’s orders. Campbell was using Kussler the whole time, exploiting the love affair with him in order to manipulate him through his job at the prison.”

“A job which gave him direct access to Dahmer. Trading notes back and forth so Campbell and Dahmer could maintain correspondence, and planning the whole scheme from start to finish. It was more than likely Kussler himself who injected Dahmer with the succinicholine directly after the beating. A phony clinical death solid enough to fool any stethoscope.”

Now Helen’s senses seemed prickling. “And according to the roster at the prison, Kussler was on duty that same morning. But…” Here was a snag. “Was it Kussler who beat up on Dahmer’s face, or Rosser, the guy who’s been charged?”

“It had to have been Rosser, Captain. At least that’s my guess. Because the beating verifiably took place in the rec unit, and the only guys in the rec unit at the time were Dahmer, Vander, and Rosser.”

“So Rosser must have been on it too, right?”

“Had to have been,” Beck agreed. “Rosser agreed to beat Dahmer bad about the face. A short time later, Kussler gets into the infirmary and injects Dahmer with the succinicholine, or maybe Rosser did the injection himself. The prison physician pronounces him dead ’cos he’s got no vital signs. And the prints match every time they ran them because, up until the time he arrived here, it was Dahmer they were transporting.”

“And Rosser beats Vander up too, to make it look like a psychotic break. And nobody’s the wiser.”

“Sure, it’s just a theory at this point,” Beck said, now fiddling with comparison microscope, “but I don’t see any other possible explanation that could account for Dahmer’s survival. And that’s one thing we know for sure now. Dahmer’s still alive, and he’s out there, right now, killing again.”

««—»»

Beck’s summation helped Helen see it all now, but why bother running it by Olsher? Waste of time, she thought. Not until I get more evidence or manage to find Campbell.

Campbell, she thought. Your picture’s going to be in the paper today. Try hiding from that, asshole.

Next duty on the agenda, of course, was to reinterview Tredell Rosser, who was upstairs right now in the precaution ward. But when she was crossing the lobby, she stopped in at the newsstand to pick up today’s Tribune. And—

“God damn! ” she complained loud enough for everyone in the lobby to hear. She tore through the paper, examining every page for the composite and announcement, and—

It’s not here!

Nowhere in the paper was there any sign of Campbell’s artist composite or the corresponding announcement she’d written revealing his last name.

Helen was on the pay phone at once, to Olsher.

“Damn it, Larrel! Why wasn’t my—”

“Save your breath,” Olsher told her over the line. “You want to know why the Tribune didn’t run you sketch and blurb, well I’ll tell you. The Commissioner’s Office said no way. Shit, Helen, the PC himself howled about it.”

“ Why? ” Helen griped.

“Because it’s a liability. Think, girl. You don’t have enough evidence on Campbell—whoever the hell he is, if he even exists at all—to add up to squat. You go running a guy’s likeness in the paper , along with his name, saying he’s wanted for questioning by the state police violent crimes unit? You know what he does then, Helen? He sues the department for fifty million and wins. It’s defamation of character. It’s an assault on his rights.”

“Aw, Chief, give me a break!”