Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

“Just get out!” Olsher bellowed.

Helen stood up. There was a tear in her eye. Olsher had always overseen her, taught her everything he knew. And this was how she repaid him. “I’m sorry, Larrel.”

“Get out!”

Helen left the house, got back into her car, and drove off.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Helen, first, stopped by the hospital, walked directly into the morgue to see if Tom was there. But the security guard stopped her. “You can go in and look around all you want, Captain. But Dr. Drake’s not here. He was scheduled to come on duty at eleven o’clock, but he never showed. Reception tells me it’s the first time he’s ever been late.”

Her fingers ached from nervously rubbing her locket. “He won’t be showing up at all,” Helen mouthed under her breath.

“What’s that, ma’am? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“Have a good night,” she told him and exited. He’s left, she realized. He knows we’re onto him, and he’s left. He’s probably crossing the state line right now, either that or Campbell and Dahmer are hiding him out.

What could she do?

Put out an APB? Eventually the DA would want to know her probable cause. She could sluff it, keep her fingers crossed, but it probably wouldn’t wash. She’d probably break right on the stand, like some old Perry Mason episode. I may not be a whole lot of good things, but I’m not a liar, and I’m not going to commit perjury. I can’t.

Chances were, even if the worst fell on her head, she’d get off with a dishonorable dismissal, a big fine, and PJB waived for community service. They wouldn’t put a state captain with going on two decades of exemplary service in jail.

At least probably not.

But since they knew she was onto them, she logically reasoned, they would also be onto her. She needed to protect herself, but she wasn’t sure how.

Wait…

An hour later she was driving home.

««—»»

The apartment seemed quiet as a crypt, and as dark. Helen lit another cigarette and walked down the hall, shedding her Burberry overcoat to leave it lie on the floor. Then she flicked on the lamp in the living room.

Damn.

Nothing. The dark looked back at her. A titter of nervousness touched her, like a skeleton fingertip etching almost imperceptibly down the nape of her neck. But this happened all the time, especially in the winter—power surges would trip the breakers. The end of her cigarette glowed red—a rat’s eye—as she glided to the kitchen cove, fumbled to light a candle, then reached to open the fuse box. Just as she would snap open the metal cover, the phone rang.

She looked at the clock. One a.m.

Then she looked at the phone.

Looked back at the clock.

On the third ring, she picked it up.

“Hello?”

An empty pause. The sound of someone swallowing, then:

“Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven… Yet thou shalt be brought down into hell, deep into the pit.,” Jeffrey Dahmer said.

The darkness seemed to shrink. The tendons of Helen’s knuckles stood out as she gripped the phone, and now that skeleton fingertip began to tickle her.

“Mr. Dahmer, listen to me,” she said, but her throat grated out the words. It wasn’t easy. She was talking to a serial killer, perhaps the most notorious in American history. “Turn yourself in to the state police. I give you my word you won’t be harmed. We’re going to get you eventually, so let’s do this the easy way. We know all about Campbell and Tom Drake. It’s only a matter of time before we take you down. You’re ill, Mr. Dahmer, more so now than ever before. You’ve recently suffered a psychiatric disorder known as a conative-episodic break, and you’re letting Campbell manipulate you with it… Mr. Dahmer, are you listening to me?”

Dahmer paused again. Did he chuckle? “Look behind you,” he said.

Helen dropped the phone, turned—

—and saw Campbell’s face grinning over an uplit flashlight. “Nice to see you again, Captain Closs.”

She began to scream but the effort was severed when the hot hand slapped across her mouth. The flashlight arched, cracked her in the temple.

Half her consciousness drained away as she collapsed.

Movement above her in the dark. A rustle.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Jeff wants to do that himself.”

Campbell then, a nimble shadow given flesh, straddled her, pinned her down, and jammed a hypodermic needle right into her neck.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Helen never fully lost consciousness. The blow to the head wore off, yet afterwards she lay completely unable to move. Of course. Succinicholine sulphate did not cause unconsciousness—it caused paralysis, and that’s exactly how she lay in the back of Campbell’s van. Conscious, hyper-alert…and totally paralyzed.

Back at the apartment, he’d thrown her over his shoulder, carried her out the back through the laundry rooms. A van sat waiting.

She could feel the tires humming beneath her, she could hear the motor drone. The only part of her body she could move was her eyes, and if she strained them to the left hard enough, she could see Campbell in the driver’s seat. He drove carefully, checking his mirrors, evenly accelerating and decelerating, using his signal at every turn.

He never looked back at her as he spoke.

“I know you can hear me. You just can’t move or talk. When I found out about North’s escort service being raided I figured it was only a matter of time before you caught up to him. I knew all about his little jaunts with Kussler during our frequent breakups, and it figures the jabbering little worm would tell North all about me. But I guess it all worked out better anyway. It helps make Jeffrey’s return all the more powerful, and that’s what this is all about, Captain Closs. Power.”

Power, Helen managed to think. She remembered what Dr. Sallee had said. Fear equals power.

“And he’s waiting for us right now, Jeffrey is, back at the house. So is Tom.”

Tom, she thought. The evil son-of-a-bitch.

“Won’t it be glorious when they find your body?”

««—»»

“Home again.”

The van decelerated, went over a bump, then seemed to move up an incline. A driveway, she guessed, and then the speculation was verified when Campbell clicked a button, and she heard a garage door rising. The van pulled into a lit garage, stopped.

Thunk

The driver’s door shut, then the windowless rear doors were pulled open.

“Do come in,” Campbell offered. “We simply love having guests over.”

Then he hoisted her up, flung her over his shoulder, and carried her into the house.

Helen felt like a feedbag as she was lugged up short steps, through a utility room, a dark kitchen, then—

Her breath was punched from her lungs as she was dropped onto the floor of another night-dark room.

She nearly vomited, she was so sick with fear.

A light flicked on. Barely audible footfalls could be heard crossing the carpet. Helen lay face down, a dropped doll, and part of her hoped she would remain that way until she died. She didn’t want to be turned over. She didn’t want to see.

“Upsy-daisy.” Hands slipped roughly into her armpits, jerked her upward. Her shoes fell off as her heels dragged; then she was dropped in a chair.

“Open your eyes.”

Helen didn’t want to. She knew what she would see… “I can’t,” she lied.

“Succinicholine doesn’t effect levator and optical muscle groups. Now, open your eyes, or I’ll cut your eyelids off with pinking shears.”

Helen gulped, opened her eyes, and looked at him in the light. He looked the same since she’d last seen him—the day he’d been masquerading as Kussler.