Then: Tom.
At that precise moment, Helen felt as though she didn’t understand anything at all.
“That’s your legwork, Captain,” Beck reminded her. “The first responders from Metro, along with some of our uniforms, did a quick canvass but that’s about it. Word is Dumplin was a nice guy. Landlord says he was quiet, courteous, and always paid the rent on time.”
The corpse seemed unreal, like a finely realistic wax imitation. But what wax museum would display this? A dark-blonde ponytail, a chubby face, stubbled, just starting to settle. Helen couldn’t allow herself a direct glance at the groin: just a shriveled shape that seemed tiny. But something about the forehead, some odd and ugly mark, nicked at her vision.
A clot of blood? A small-caliber bullet hole?
“I guess an exact T.O.D. is out of the question.”
Beck shrugged. “Yeah, the bastard left the window open, and it’s been below freezing all week. But the guy was at work two nights ago, so we know that at least. And the lividity is plain, so that ties up another twenty-four hours of slack.”
Helen, then, noted the purplish hue of the corpse’s underside, the tell-tale tint of settled blood. “I need an hour, Jan, not a day.”
“I should be able to give you, say, a three-hour margin by a potassium-point analysis of the ocular fluids.”
The eyes, Helen thought. These forensic people were like butchers; no waste—they’d use anything they could. Anything on the body, even the humor of the eyes, could be drained, put into some obscure machine, and analyzed.
But that anomaly on the forehead kept…nicking at her. Helen stuttered through the next question.
“Was he shot? Is that a bullethole in his head?”
Even Beck’s tone turned grim with the response. “I need to look at it closer, but it seems to be what we call a clockwise ‘torque’ penetration.”
Helen shot a perplexed look. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It appears that the perpetrator…drilled a hole…through the decedent’s foreskull. More copycat stuff.”
Yes. Sallee had reminded Helen of that. Jeffrey Dahmer, in his symbolic quest to keep lovers from leaving him, had crudely lobotomized several of his victims—
By drilling holes in their heads and inserting pins and nails into the frontal lobe, hoping to disable them without killing them.
“You’re saying the killer used a power drill on the victim? That would’ve made a lot of noise, wouldn’t it?”
“Sure, but Dumplin’s the only tenant on this floor. A good diamond bit would probably penetrate the cranial wall in less than a two or three seconds. Or maybe he used a manual drill, or some other tool.”
“So it’s also your conclusion that Dumplin was drugged unconscious beforehand,” Helen asked if only for the record.
“Had to have been.” Beck scratched an itch at the line of her showercap. Her beige-gloved finger looked mannequin-like. “I’ll run a mole screen for succinicholine sulphate once I get him for workup.”
As if at a chill, Helen turned abruptly. “I can’t look at him anymore. Let me see the note.”
Helen felt palsied following Beck from the bed to the roll-top desk. A marionette on block feet.
“I haven’t got it in an e-bag yet,” Beck warned, “so don’t touch it, don’t get close enough to breathe on it, don’t even lean over it. We don’t want any dandruff or anything on it.”
“I don’t have dandruff,” Helen complained.
“I know, but in case you do. A fiber of your hair could fall on it, even invisible debris from your hairspray.” Beck glanced over her shoulder. “Lee, bring the Sirchie over here for the Captain.”
But Helen’s eyes were already rooted to the neat, plain white sheet of unlined paper. Blue felt-tip ink briefly spelled out:
Dear Friends:
Fear is power.
I bring my power unto you.
Until next time,
Jeff
“Short and sweet,” Helen observed.
“Um-hmm. And there’s the pen, or at least we think that’s the pen used to write the note.” Beck’s queerly gloved finger pointed to a small evidence bag containing one blue Flair pen.
“Maybe there’re prints on the pen too,” Helen surmised.
“Maybe, maybe not. The cap’s smooth, and it’ll take a good latent but the pen’s body is grooved, so all we’d be able to pick up would be chloride residuum, sweat, and maybe some alphas from the sebaceous oils.”
Suddenly a buzzing wavered behind them; one of the latent technicians stepped up, waving the eerie blue-white light from the element of his portable ultraviolet lamp. He held it over the note.
The white paper turned fluorescent purple, as did the white fabric of Helen’s blouse.
“See it?” Beck said.
Helen squinted to the point of headache, and…saw it. A slightly darker purple against the luminous paper. It looked like a triangle, with concentric triangles within. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Beck speculated.
“No.” No, it didn’t. It looked so tiny, so minuscule; in fact, she found it nearly impossible to believe that this irreducible piece of a fingerprint could prove the killer wasn’t Jeffrey Dahmer. But it could also prove who the real killer was, provided said killer’s prints were on file.
“But under our helium-osmium laser, that little smudge will light up like the Fourth of July,” Beck went on. “We’ll be able to get an absolutely pristine photograph of it. Then I’ll do a Neohydrin-Acetone trace on it for a back up. After that, it may only be a matter of hours before we have what we need.”
The tech retreated, back to his business. Helen looked around. These people were automatons: death was their turf. Helen could easily note a sparkle of excitement in Beck’s eye. Nobody seemed to care in the least that there was a dead man in the room, a man who had suffered a death that beggared description.
Rest in peace, Helen thought, casting a final sideglance to the corpse.
Then, to Beck: “Move on this fingerprint stuff faster than you’ve ever moved in your life.”
— | — | —
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Who knew? He mustn’t be afraid.
What would his father say?
He leans back to relax, closes his eyes. He feels slaked. He feels powerful. In the peculiar darkness behind his eyelids, he sees himself—
—digging up the bones of the little animals in his back yard in Bath, Ohio. Little toothpicks, they reminded him of. So fragile.
He’d melt the little bodies in the corrosives he’d mixed from his chemistry set. His father had given him the set. Then he’d bury the bones where they’d be protected. He could dig them up any time, couldn’t he? He could look at them whenever he wanted.
But he always knew that, one day, the bones would get bigger…
««—»»
He’s been asleep. When he wakens, the darkness is nearly the same as the color behind his closed eyes. Anguloid shapes hover: like diamonds, like pyramids, and—yes—like tented arches…
Eventually they dissolve as the moonlight brightens, brushing the rods in his eyes.
He sniffs the light-diced air and smells death.
««—»»
“It’s positive,” Beck said. “Across the board.”
Helen and Olsher sat there like two defendants who’d just been sentenced to death by the judge. Olsher didn’t even bother commencing one of his typical emotional outbursts. What good would that do? Helen just sat there.