Helen frowned at her own bad luck, took up the sheet of newsprint. FIRST OFFICIAL PHOTO OF DAHMER’S BODY the headline raved. Christ, he’s only been dead two days, she realized, but then she frowned more deeply when she noted the source: The Weekly World News.
“This isn’t a newspaper, Larrel, it’s a tabloid.”
“Yeah, well—so?” Olsher replied a bit defensively. “The picture’s all that matters. Christ, Dahmer’s body is custody of the state, and there he is lying flat out on our morgue slab. And it’s your lovey-dovey doing the autopsy, ain’t it? How’d a picture like that get out of St. John’s Hospital?”
Then the image registered, and Helen couldn’t help but laugh. “For one thing, Larrel, this picture wasn’t taken in St. John’s. Second, it’s not Dahmer.”
“Sure, it’s Dahmer.” Olsher crudely pointed to the paper. “That’s his face, right there. Everyone knows what Dahmer looks like.”
Olsher’s naivete absolutely astounded her. Here was a man who’d been shot twice, and had probably come face to face with every conceivable kind of crackpot, killer, car-jacker, junkie, and street freak. But…this? Helen laughed again, she couldn’t help it. The photograph was ridiculous. A grain-ridden black & white: a shirtless body lying prone and Dahmer’s placid face attached. Black graphic wedges covered the top of Dahmer’s skull, with white letters. CENSORED!
“Larrel, you’re kidding me, right? You believe this is for real?”
Olsher diddled with a big cigar, lines pinched up in his dark face. “What’s not to believe? That’s him. Right there, in that picture.”
Helen issued yet another laugh.
“And what’s so goddamn funny?”
She shimmied to retrieve her composure. “Come on,, Larrel. It’s obvious. They took a picture of some guy lying on his back with his shirt off and cropped Dahmer’s head on it. That’s not Dahmer. That’s not even St. John’s autopsy room.”
Olsher’s big hand took back the clip. His brow furrowed, staring at it. “How do you know?
“Because I just came from St. John’s. I saw the state of Dahmer’s body, and that’s not it. And that room isn’t anything close to the morgue at St. John’s. It looks like somebody’s kitchen…and probably is.”
“You saw it, huh? You saw Dahmer’s body?”
“Yes! The face wasn’t recognizable at all, it was beaten to pulp.”
Olsher made a smirk, then stuffed the tabloid clipping into his desk. “Oh,” he said. “Well. I didn’t really believe it, either.”
Yeah, right. She could tell he was embarrassed, so she changed the subject, gave him a break. “So what’s on the hopper today?”
“For VCU? Nothing.” Olsher lit an El Producto. Gobs of smoke obscured his face, which Helen was grateful for. “You can go Christmas shopping today for all I care. Just thank God the state of Wisconsin’s not like California.”
“Thank God for Tommy Thompsen.”
Olsher shrugged hugely. “Same difference.”
“Talk to you later, Larrel.” Helen got up, prepared to leave.
“What? I forget to use my Right Guard today?”
“Let me just put it this way, Larrel. Have another cigar.”
“Oh, so you’re saying my cigars stink?”
“Later.”
Unbelievable is right, she thought, her high heels ticking down the hall. At least Olsher’s foolishness served to distract her. When she’d left the state morgue, she turned very briefly at the end of the exit hall. She’d seen Tom, coming back to the recept cove. He was talking to a nursing assistant, a petite blonde, and he’d been smiling. Flirting, was more the way Helen saw it, but then she tried to catch herself. Dr. Sallee’s wisdoms never failed to haunt her. “Tom is a healthy, functional adult. He’s allowed to converse with other women, he’s allowed to be friends with other women. Your insecurity in this matter is just more proof of your spiraling paranoia, Helen.” Spiraling, she thought obtusely. Shit. Could she help it that she didn’t care to see her lover yacking enthusiastically with younger, more attractive women? Was that really paranoia?
Now her mood was ruined, at once. It happened that fast these days, it always did. Blank-faced uniforms passed this way and that; the main hall down from reception was a cacophony she’d long grown used to. She didn’t hear it any more. Shiny beige tile and drab white walls led her toward her own office.
Two cops swapped jokes from the Intelligence squad room right next door.
“Hey, what did Dahmer say when Tredell Rosser tried to take his broom?”
“What?”
“Over my dead body.”
“Hey, what did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit?”
“What?”
“Are you going to eat that?”
Helen’s ticking heels stopped. Her furor rose—she had to take it out on someone, didn’t she? She ducked her head in.
“Next man I hear telling Dahmer jokes gets transferred to Warehouse Division in the morning.”
Two shocked faces glanced up, blanched white when they saw who it was.
“Dahmer murdered seventeen people, he perpetuated a lot of tragedy,” Helen reminded them. “There’s nothing funny about it, is there?”
“No, ma’am,” one of the uniforms answered.
“Start acting like cops instead of high school punks,” Helen advised the both of them, then left.
The instant she sat down at her own desk in her own office, she mused, No more Dahmer. Please. I’ve had enough. Then she picked up a statewide telex laying in her IN box.
00210-OP
FLAG: FYI
001//112994
29 NOV 94, 1440 HRS.
DE: WISCONSIN BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
TO: WSP VIOLENT CRIMES UNIT
STATUS: FYI, ALL RELEVANT PERSONNEL
READ:
ON MONDAY, 28 NOVEMBER 94, AT 0811, WISCONSIN SERIAL KILLER JEFFREY DAHMER WAS PRONOUNCED DEAD BY THE MEDICAL UNIT AT COLUMBUS COUNTY DETENTION CENTER IN PORTAGE. C.O.D.: MASSIVE
FRONTAL CRANIAL CONTUSIONS. A SUSPECT, INMATE TREDELL ROSSER, SERVING A 90-PLUS-YEAR SENTENCE FOR 1ST DEGREE MURDER, IS BEING HELD AS THE PRIMARY SUSPECT. ROSSER IS SUSPECTED BY STATE PSYCHIATRIC AUTHORITIES OF MAINTAINING A GANSER SYNDROME WITH RELIGIOUS CONNOTATIONS.
ADVISE: N/A
00-33-00
Of course, she hadn’t seen it until now due to her working night shifts for the week. It had been sitting here the whole time. She recalled the image, though: Dahmer’s actual body on the tilt-lift autopsy platform, bruised facial tissue and a clotlike mask of dried blood. It was even more disgusting than the drained-pale face of her nightmare.
Helen threw the fax into the waste can. The last thing she needed right now was another reminder of Jeffrey Dahmer. It was, in fact, the last thing she’d ever need.
««—»»
“—mbus County correctional authorities, along with Sheriff Tritt J. Tuckton of the Columbus County Sheriff’s Department, aren’t entirely ruling out the possibility of a recently rumored multi-person conspiracy in regard to the brutal Monday morning murder of convicted serial-killer Jeffrey Dahmer.”
Helen stared flabbergasted at the radio as she parked the Taurus. Dahmer, Dahmer, Dahmer…
“Dahmer’s body is scheduled to be cremated on Thursday—”
click.
It just never ends, does it?
Helen let herself into Tom’s with the key he’d given her a year ago; they’d exchanged keys, “for convenience’s sake,” but Helen had to admit it was more for her own convenience. Lately she felt so tired. Her own apartment was in the Madison outskirts, closer to Monona, while Tom owned a nice condo in the south side just down from McGinnis Circle. A much closer drive, in other words, for Helen. And the way she felt just now, she couldn’t have driven to her own place in a million years.