Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

“Talk to me, Sandie?” Eules asked. “What’s the target’s status?”

“Nervous,” the sniper replied without taking his eye out of his rifle site. It was a long, black rifle, black grips, black stock, black barrel—a Beretta M82—fit with an array of sitting equipment at the rear of the muzzle. A high power scope and laser site, Helen guessed. The sniper continued, “Jerky, sweating, lot of nervous ticks. He’s high.”

“Still got the knife?”

“Yeah. He’s standing in front of the window like he’s got brass balls, got the knife to the female’s throat. He knows we’re spotting him.”

“Fuck him,” Eules said. “You say he’s nervous. Is he flashing the knife any? Moving it around?”

“Yeah. Every time he tries to ring us on the phone, he waves the knife around.”

“Good. That’s your firing mark.” Then Eules passed Helen a pair of Zeiss binoculars. In the infinity-shaped border, she saw the guy, strutting his stuff before the window, with a pallid-faced woman standing before him. Her cheeks were washed with tears. He held a large sheath knife to her throat, and every so often pulled it away to wave it at them. A neon-red laser dot hovered at his shoulder.

“You’re going to shoot this guy?” Helen queried.

“No. We’re going to play pattycakes with him. We’re gonna take him out for pizza and go for rides at the amusement park.”

“What I mean, Agent Eules, is isn’t it imprudent to lay fire on this guy considering his position. He’s got a knife. Even if you fire when he’s got the knife off her throat, the inertia from the round might knock him back.”

“Can’t happen,” Eules asserted, peering into his own set of binoculars. “Autonomic impossibility. My guy’s firing a custom-loaded .50 round, no deflection through the glass. We’re talking two-thousand feet per second, with a foot-pounds measure that would knock the Jolly Green Giant on his ass. We going for a head shot. Once he gets hit with that round, his brain synapses release a flood of stage histamines which instantly causes his entire nervous system to distend. He’ll drop the knife and be dead before he hits the ground.”

“Okay, fine,” Helen objected. “But how can you be absolutely sure?”

“Justice Department clinical statistics. They’re never wrong.”

“All right,” she went on. “But what about this? What if your sniper misses?”

Eules offered her a disapproving glance. “My men never miss.”

Helen shrugged, still watching the scene in her binoculars.

“What’s the problem, Captain?” Eules asked.

“No problem. I’ve never done a barricade situation before. I’m just wondering if some other scenario should be considered. Do you really have to kill this guy to terminate the situation?”

Eules lowered his binoculars. “I’d appreciate your input. You got a better solution?”

Helen watched further, watched the guy strut, laughing, pressing the knife to the crying woman’s throat. His other hand, then, came around her front, mauled her breasts and molested her pubis.

“Kill him,” Helen said.

“Dial me up,” Eules instructed the suit. “It’s time Uncle Eules had a talk with Mr. Scumbag. Put me on intercom.”

A rudely loud ringing was heard. Helen watched the perpetrator turn, then pick up the phone in the woman’s apartment.

“Yeah?” she heard over the intercom.

Eules, also a trained hostage negotiator, talked aloud, peering into his field glasses. “My name is Special Agent Eules; I’m with the F.B.I. Let’s talk a deal.”

“No deals, fuckface. I want safe passage out of here, or I cut this dizzy bitch’s head off and throw it at ya. I want a fuckin’ armored car here in twenty minutes, to take me to Canada.”

“That’s a long haul, man,” Eules said over the open line.

“I don’t give a shit. You do it or I start cutting.”

“Listen, pal. All you did was knock over a bunch of banks. You never hurt anyone. I’ll get you off easy if you drop your shit.”

“I hit some of your pigs, so don’t bullshit me!”

“They were wearing vests, man. You didn’t even muss their hair. We take you down our way, you’ll get twenty years max, parole in six or seven probably.”

“Open your ears, jackass! I ain’t going to the fucking can!”

“You drop the shank,” Eules continued, “let the woman go, and walk out of there with your hands up, and I guarantee you you won’t be shot. I’ll drop the assaulting-federal-officers charges, and I’ll even guarantee you don’t do more than five years. Keep your act clean, and you’ll be out in three on GB. You can do five years standing on your head.”

Helen watched. The perp seemed to consider this, and Helen was impressed by Eules’s resolve. At least he was giving it a shot.

Eules waved a finger, a flag for one of the suits to cut off the intercom. Then Eules told the sniper, “Watch for your mark. Tell me when you’ve got a good laser bead. It’s gotta be a head shot.”

The sniper stood still as a granite statue. Helen watched at the same time, and noticed the tiny red laser dot high right on the perp’s chest. It began to raise.

“Fuck you!” the perp bellowed back. “You’re bullshitting and you know it. I’m gonna cut this bitch’s head off if you don’t—”

“Got it,” the sniper said.

“Take your target.”

Wham!

It was like no gunshot she’d ever heard, more akin to a large door slamming. Nevertheless, the sonic distraction did not take Helen’s eyes away from the binoculars.

“Target down,” the sniper calmly replied.

But it had been something slower than a dream. Helen watched the whole thing. She saw the perp standing there waving the knife as he bellowed his objections into the phone. She saw the laser dot staying high on his forehead. Then came the report.

The perp’s hand opened before he fell backward, just as Eules had cited. The woman ran away. The perp fell to the ground faster than a demolitioned building.

“All units,” Eules barked into a Motorola radio. “Target is down. Enter the perimeter at will and clear the room. Watch for cross-fire.”

Out of nowhere, then, probably fifty cops rushed the building in the throbbing light. At the same time, unseen F.B.I. rappellers dropped off the side of the building and flew feet first into the apartment’s front room.

Eules watched intently until he heard a radio break: “Team Leader to Gunpost One. Perimeter secure. The target is dead. The hostage is okay.”

Eules set down his mike and popped a stick of gum in his mouth. He winked at Helen. “All in a day’s work, huh?”

Helen gulped. “I’m impressed.”

««—»»

“It’s good to see you,” Tom said.

Helen faltered hard. What could she think of him now? The hostage thing had been only a postponement of what she knew she must do. Go to him. Talk to him. Feel him out, she realized.

Tom frowned, snapping on surgical gloves over the corpse.

“Can you give me a C.O.D.?”

“What?” he objected. “Right now? Of course not. You ever hear of a post-mortem? I’ve got to do one of those first. Give me four hours.”

The body of Tredell W. Rosser, Columbus County Detent #255391, looked asleep on the guttered, tilt-lift morgue platform. Even in death, his skin shined dark as oiled obsidian.

“This guy was only a kid—twenty-five years old,” Tom said. “Can you believe it?”

Helen said nothing. She averted her eyes not only from the flawless corpse but from Tom too. Still, after all her ponderings, she had yet to decide what she thought of Tom.

He checked a cache of autopsy scalpels in the autoclave. “You know, there’s all kind of great rumors about this guy. They say he was a Ganser, faking religious delusions.”