Edward Lee - Dahmer's Not Dead

Campbell’s mouth twitched a bit. “A commendable speculation, Captain. And, again, you’re right. The amino acids left by fingerprint ridge patterns can last for years. I used Dahmer’s dead hands to leave prints on over a hundred pieces of blank paper, as well as kitchen utensils, to leave at future crime scenes.”

“So when that thing sitting in the chair rots down to a skeleton, you’ll still have latent evidence that he’s still alive and killing people.”

“Yes,” Campbell assented. “Right.” He paused, looked around in the dark. By now, though, Tom, bound and gagged in his own chair, had passed out. “You’re right about all of that, Captain, but any articulate person could make such speculations. The real instance of genius was the evidence that started it all. The handwriting evidence. Those letters left at the crime scenes were too specific to have been written by Jeffrey before his death. So how do you explain that? How do you explain the letters?”

“I’m not sure exactly how you pulled it off,” Helen said. “But it’s easy to guess how you did it in general.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

“You’re a computer expert. North told me that last week, and so did my tech at headquarters. I mean, Christ, you made a modem-based computer program from scratch that sideswiped all of Bell-Atlantic’s trace processors. Someone with that kind of skill could probably also find a way to duplicate Dahmer’s handwriting on a computer and then generate exact letters on a high-tech printer.”

“Again,” Campbell admitted. “I’m impressed.” The lit monitors behind him glowed like eerie static. A variety of printers sat to their side. “My secret correspondence with Dahmer provided me with an infinite inventory of his handwriting. I used a grid scanner, scanned each and every word into my CPU. It wasn’t easy, and it proved very time-consuming—quite different from traditional flatbed scanning. But eventually I had thousands of words, all written by Dahmer, that I could rearrange to say what I wanted, and then print.”

“Tell me this, though,” Helen asked, as much to bide time as to satisfy her curiosity. “As far as I know, even the most sophisticated computer printers use dry ink cartridges. Even if you used a color printer, our forensics people would’ve known after a single test that the notes were computer generated. How did you manage to print the letters in Flair ink?”

Campbell’s mouth twitched into another smile, and patted one of the printers, a large, clumsy looking one, plaqued with the name TEKMARK. “The very first printers capable of graphical output weren’t laser printers at all. It was a combination of printing technologies that were eventually developed in the systems of today—thermal firing heads and bubble-jet ink transference. They existed in the 70s, before personal computers even existed, and they were very expensive. But instead of dry ink, they used liquid ink that was sublimated before being transferred to the firing heads. I prepared a wash solution, using blue Flair pen filaments, and that’s what I use to fill the printer drum when I print out a letter from ‘Jeff.’“

Helen couldn’t help but acknowledge the man’s technological prowess. His plan was brilliant, and it had succeeded every step of the way. Realizing that, however, wouldn’t solve her more immediate problems, like trying to find a way to escape.

She thought again, If I could only move. But, hard as she tried, her hands only rose, perhaps, to the level of her bosom. And her legs? Her legs still felt as dead as logs.

She needed more time.

“You’re an industrious man,” she commented, “and a very smart one.”

Campbell winced, stiffening in his seat. “Don’t patronize me, goddamn it!”

“I’m not. How can I be patronizing you? Your plan worked right down to the last letter. You fooled my entire technical services division—my fingerprint experts, my programming specialists, all my hand-writing analysts and voiceprint technicians. You have an entire city—or I should say, an entire country —believing that Jeffrey Dahmer is still alive and maintaining his murder spree. And, to top it all off, you’ve got me. Your nemesis, your opponent. For the last month, I’ve devoted my entire life to finding you. And what do I get for my efforts? The rare opportunity to sit half-paralyzed in a chair and look a mass-murderer in the eye. We battled. You won. I lost.”

Campbell lost the rigid poise, relaxing. “Yes. Yes, I suppose you’re right. And it’s complimentary for you to admit that.”

“You’re going to kill me, right?”

“Of course,” he replied without pause. “I have to. I have no choice. But even if I did, I’d still do it. Because, as you’ve just pointed out, I am a mass-murderer.”

How true.

“Excuse me,” Campbell politely stated. “In all this frenzy, I’ve worked up an appetite.”

He disappeared behind her, and she could hear him opening the refrigerator. She kept her eyes well out of range of Dahmer’s partially rotten corpse, took several deep breaths, shut her eyes, and pushed . Not her body but her brain. She pushed every dram of energy and volition against the fading paralysis…and raised her arms.

“Would you like some?” Campbell offered when he returned. He reseated himself by his computers, holding a sandwich.

“I…think…I’ll pass.”

Campbell took a bite, munching. “But it’s all relative, isn’t it? Meat is meat. British expeditions to New Guinea over a hundred years ago reported that human flesh, when cooked properly, tasted nearly identical to pork. They called it ‘long-pig,’ in fact, for that same reason. Really, Captain. You mustn’t be so close-minded.” He mockingly held the sandwich out. “Sure you won’t join me?”

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

“And what is that you’re doing now? What’s that around your neck that you’re rubbing? A pendant?”

“It’s a silver locket.” Helen, in Campbell’s absence, had raised her hands to the locket. It was the most she could manage. “Some people bite their nails? I have this bad habit of rubbing my locket when I get nervous, and I guess I have pretty good reason to be nervous now, don’t I?”

Campbell blurted a laugh. “I should say so! Did Tom give it to you?”

“No. My father.” She couldn’t help the reaction: her fingers rubbed the locket so hard she thought she might wear off the finish. But still, she needed more time to let the antidote work its way through her system.

“Do you…hate me?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” Campbell answered. “You’re nothing like the others at all. I actually admire you. I admire your character. I admire your ability to accept defeat.” Campbell took another bite of the abyssal sandwich. “And I promise you, Captain Closs, I won’t make a spectacle of you, nor will I torture you. I will be merciful…and quick.”

“‘Blessed are the merciful,’“ she quoted scripture, “‘for the merciful shall be shown mercy.’“

“Amusing, but I’m afraid I was never quite the Bible scholar Jeffrey became. I loved him, yes, but in spite of my love, I could never bring myself to believe in a god such as yours.”

Kill time! Now her legs were regaining some feeling. Keep him talking! “But how can you love someone you’ve never met?”

“That’s what you don’t understand,” Campbell offered next. “Jeffrey and I did meet. I’ve known him since the first grade. We grew up in the same town—”

“Bath, Ohio,” Helen remembered.

“And I suppose I’ve loved him ever since. I remember when his father gave him the chemistry set—my father gave me one too, when I told him about it—and Jeffrey and I learned how to make our own corrosives. It was Jeffrey’s idea. All the little animals. Jeffrey loved them—so much in fact that that’s what impelled him. He killed them, of course, but he didn’t want to lose them. So we’d bury the bones in his backyard. Eventually I was the one who began to get the animals for him. Then…” Campbell seemed to sift into a daze. “Time went on. We got older, and my love for him grew stronger, but Jeffrey didn’t have the same kind of conception of love, I guess. I wanted to be part of his life, I wanted us to kill together, but he never understood that. Eventually his home life became so nebulous that he joined the Army; I tried to join right along with him, but the recruiters rejected me after the first battery of psychological tests. And since I was never officially recruited, my induction fingerprints were never taken.”