Beck looked wrung out in her labcoat as she continued. “Everything. The second letter was written by Dahmer. Cellmark Labs came back with the DNA analysis, and the hairs on Arlinger’s body were Dahmer’s. And now this fingerprint. The optical interface gave us a 100-percent-probability match. Even the pore scheme’s between the ridges were clear enough to run. Jeffrey Dahmer put that letter on the desk.”
“Three strikes and we’re out,” Olsher said.
But Helen didn’t say anything. She couldn’t fathom what to say.
“So we were all wrong,” Beck pointed out. “In a big way.”
“And to make matters worse,” Olsher informed, “Dahmer sent a letter to the Tribune too. They’re running it tomorrow.”
Finally, Helen spoke. “Did you screen Dumplin’s blood?”
“Um-hmm.” Beck sat down exhausted in one of Olsher’s chairs. “Positive for succinicholine sulphate, point-zero-zero-nine mgs per deciliter. A sixteen-percent lower unit-per-deciliter dose, but Dumplin weighed more than Arlinger. Want to guess how much more?”
“Sixteen percent,” Helen said rather than asked.
“That’s right. So it’s a good possibility that it was an identical administration. Those point-four vials that were ripped off from the paramedic truck? An oral dose, slipped in a beer or something—point-zero-zero-nine mgs is a damn good approximation for a guy of Dumplin’s body weight.”
“I just can’t see Dahmer pulling an ambulance heist,” came Olsher’s flustered offer.
“I can’t see him doing a lot of this stuff,” Beck added. “But we’ve got no choice now but to accept the fact that he did.”
“Yeah,” Olsher said.
Helen looked at them both, squinting.
Olsher unwrapped a cigar. “What’s your problem?”
I love it when he’s in a good mood. But Helen couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “Am I having auditory hallucinations, or am I to assume that the both of you are asserting that Jeffrey Dahmer is still alive and committing murders?”
“Are you dense?” Olsher objected. “You’ve seen the evidence. A positive DNA read, two positive graphology reports, and now a positive fingerprint. It’s Dahmer, Helen. None of us can deny that now.”
Helen wanted to throw her arms up and scream. “All that stuff, Chief, even the fingerprint, can easily be attributed to a copycat.”
“How?” Beck challenged.
“A close associate. Like we’ve talked about? Somebody in league with Dahmer before he was killed at the Center. One of these ‘groupie’ people.”
Beck and Olsher simultaneously glanced at each other. And frowned.
“Come on, Jan,” Helen insisted. “You saw the body. We both did.”
“We saw a body, Captain,” Beck retorted. “We saw a body beaten into unrecognizability. We saw a body with a mouthful of broken teeth that could easily have been Dahmer’s teeth in a substitute corpse. Take off those blinders for a minute and think.”
Helen didn’t like that, and she wasn’t buying any of this. At least not yet. “Christ, I’ve got plenty of leads—”
“You’ve got squat, girl,” Olsher told her. “What, some dope paramedic, and a prison electrician? That and a buck fifty’ll get you a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven.”
“We agree, Captain,” Beck stepped in, “that Dahmer couldn’t have gotten out of the prison without help. But it’s pretty fruitless at this point to deny that he did escape, isn’t it?”
Helen faltered, stared at them, blinked.
“So quit putzing around,” Olsher added a final point, puffing the atrocious cigar. “And start doing your job.”
««—»»
Start doing my job, huh? Helen simmered walking out of the office, and she simmered further on the road. They think I’m crazy…
What came next wouldn’t be easy. Verifying the fingerprints of the corpse, and that could only be done via the man who had performed the post-mortem on the body that was allegedly Jeffrey Dahmer’s.
Tom.
St. John the Divine’s Hospital seemed to lay in static glitter when she pulled up and parked—a lit, quiet fortress. This late, there was little activity: an ambulance here, a crash cart there. But it was mostly empty hallways and nodding security guards that greeted her entrance.
The basement felt frigid, sterile. She knew he was here because she’d seen his car in the state lot.
Tom looked up from the autoclave when she pushed through the chicken-wire doors.
“Uh…hi,” he said.
“Hello, Tom.” She tempered herself, tried to push it all away: the deceit, the other…men. “This isn’t a social call.”
“The Dahmer thing, then, right?”
“Yes.” Her heels ticked around the anteroom. Thank God the autopsy platform lay empty tonight. “I’ve got serious heat on my tail, Tom. Everyone’s saying Dahmer’s still alive.”
Helen quickly noticed the evening Tribune lying by the wash sinks. MORE NOTES, MORE DNA EVIDENCE, AND NOW—FINGERPRINTS! read the squashed headline. DAHMER IS STILL ALIVE!
“He’s dead,” Tom clarified. “As in, like, a doornail. I weighed the guy’s liver, for God’s sake. I took his heart out and scaled the calculi lining his aorta. He’s dead. The prints off his dead hand matched Dahmer’s. The teeth in his dead mouth matched Dahmer’s.”
“That’s just one thing I wanted to ask you about.” Helen had to stop and take a breath every so often. It wasn’t easy being businesslike with a man she used to be in love with, a man she’d planned to marry.
A man, she thought, who cheated on me with…other men.
No. It wasn’t easy at all.
“The teeth. Why couldn’t Dahmer’s teeth have been placed in the mouth of someone else? Some dead person of the same approximate height and weight, same hair color, etc.?”
Tom nearly reeled back and laughed. “You’re kidding me, right? That’s Alfred Fucking Hitchcock, Helen.”
She stared him down. It wasn’t like him to use profanity, nor was it like him to so quickly dismiss her speculations.
“What, Dahmer knocked his own teeth out and put them in another corpse? Come on. And let’s forget about the teeth just for one minute, okay? The corpse was fingerprinted, Helen, and the fingerprints matched Dahmer’s card from the detention center and Milwaukee PD when he was first arrested, and his Army prints.”
“Fine,” Helen replied. “But maybe he had an accomplice. And maybe that accomplice had not only the technical skills but also access to such things as, say, fingerprint records.”
Tom stared at her, incredulous.
Helen continued. Her last comment proved the hardest, but it was something that had bothered for the last hour or so, since leaving Olsher’s office.
No, this was no longer a man she loved.
This was business.
“An accomplice,” she said, “who would not only have access to hospital records but someone who would also have access to controlled pharmaceuticals, such as succinicholine sulphate.” Helen closed her eyes for a moment. “Such a person, wouldn’t you say, would have to be a higher-ranking employee of a hospital, wouldn’t he? And maybe someone who works at night, when shifts are staffed by fewer personnel.”
Tom gaped at her. “What are you saying?”
“Do you know anyone, Tom? Anyone who fits that criteria?”