“Fuck you!” the perp bellowed back. “You’re bullshitting and you know it. I’m gonna cut this bitch’s head off if you don’t—”
“Got it,” the sniper said.
“Take your target.”
Wham!
It was like no gunshot she’d ever heard, more akin to a large door slamming. Nevertheless, the sonic distraction did not take Helen’s eyes away from the binoculars.
“Target down,” the sniper calmly replied.
But it had been something slower than a dream. Helen watched the whole thing. She saw the perp standing there waving the knife as he bellowed his objections into the phone. She saw the laser dot staying high on his forehead. Then came the report.
The perp’s hand opened before he fell backward, just as Eules had cited. The woman ran away. The perp fell to the ground faster than a demolitioned building.
“All units,” Eules barked into a Motorola radio. “Target is down. Enter the perimeter at will and clear the room. Watch for cross-fire.”
Out of nowhere, then, probably fifty cops rushed the building in the throbbing light. At the same time, unseen F.B.I. rappellers dropped off the side of the building and flew feet first into the apartment’s front room.
Eules watched intently until he heard a radio break: “Team Leader to Gunpost One. Perimeter secure. The target is dead. The hostage is okay.”
Eules set down his mike and popped a stick of gum in his mouth. He winked at Helen. “All in a day’s work, huh?”
Helen gulped. “I’m impressed.”
««—»»
“It’s good to see you,” Tom said.
Helen faltered hard. What could she think of him now? The hostage thing had been only a postponement of what she knew she must do. Go to him. Talk to him. Feel him out, she realized.
Tom frowned, snapping on surgical gloves over the corpse.
“Can you give me a C.O.D.?”
“What?” he objected. “Right now? Of course not. You ever hear of a post-mortem? I’ve got to do one of those first. Give me four hours.”
The body of Tredell W. Rosser, Columbus County Detent #255391, looked asleep on the guttered, tilt-lift morgue platform. Even in death, his skin shined dark as oiled obsidian.
“This guy was only a kid—twenty-five years old,” Tom said. “Can you believe it?”
Helen said nothing. She averted her eyes not only from the flawless corpse but from Tom too. Still, after all her ponderings, she had yet to decide what she thought of Tom.
He checked a cache of autopsy scalpels in the autoclave. “You know, there’s all kind of great rumors about this guy. They say he was a Ganser, faking religious delusions.”
“He probably was,” Helen’s words grated. “According to an array of psychiatrists, Rosser was indeed faking his delusion in order to bid for a transfer to the state hospital.”
“You believe that?” Tom’s face inclined from the ‘clave, an expression if absurdity.
“Yes, Tom, I do.”
“So I guess that means you believe the rest of it, huh?’
“The rest of what?”
Another coked brow. “The rest of the rumors.”
“I don’t care about rumors, Tom,” Helen lied. She had to get on with it, and get out of here. “All I care about is the verified cause of death. Is Beck on duty now?”
“This late? No, she’s on call.”
“Then call her down here to do the tox screen.”
Tom gaped at her. “Helen, I can do the tox screen. In fact, I’m more qualified than her to do a tox screen or any other clinical test on a dead body.”
Of course he’d say that, because it was true. But how much about him isn’t true. “I’d—I’d just like Beck to do the tox screen, if you don’t mind.”
Tom leveled a gaze. “I do mind, Helen. You’re not making sense. Is there some particular reason you don’t want me to do it?”
Yes! she thought. But there was no way she could say it. I don’t trust you! “Could you just…appease me here, Tom? Please?”
“Fine. It’s only midnight. Jan only works sixteen hours a day; I’m sure she won’t have any problem with me dragging her tail down here to do a tox screen.”
“Just…please. I’d appreciate it.”
Tom shrugged in lackadaise. “Sure, Helen. Whatever floats your boat.”
“Thank you.” An impulse urged her to turn and leave, but something hitched at her. “So, what about those rumors?’
Tom chuckled. “You just got done telling me you don’t care about rumors.”
“All right, I lied. I’d like to hear the rumors about Rosser.”
Tom snapped on the overhead, began to draw the y-section on Rosser’s muscular chest with a white paint pen. “It’s the prison grapevine, I guess. They’re saying Rosser was really friends with Dahmer, that he beat the crap out of Dahmer’s face at Dahmer’s request, as part of the escape scam. And they’re saying someone on the outside was in league with Dahmer too—some guy you’re calling Campbell. That it was some multiplayer conspiracy to get Dahmer out of prison alive so he could go on committing murders. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?”
Helen’s joints locked in place for a moment. She didn’t offer any answer, electing instead to turn and leave. But before she made her full exit from the morgue, she refaced Tom. “What’s so ridiculous about it, Tom? We know Dahmer’s alive. How did he get out? A ‘multiplayer conspiracy’ is the only answer.”
“Yeah, well—”
“And it’s quite ingenious, don’t you think? That Dahmer orchestrated a friendship with Rosser, and only maintained the premise that they were enemies? And Campbell, the outside conspirator, manipulating Kussler to keep him in contact with Dahmer? I don’t think there’s anything ridiculous about any of it. I think it holds water, Tom. In fact, I even think that maybe Campbell isn’t the only conspirator.”
Tom stared at her over the slab controls.
Helen went on, “Or maybe, just maybe, Campbell is an alias.”
“An alias?”
“Yeah. For someone else.”
And it was at that precise moment that Helen turned and left.
««—»»
“So what is that thing, anyway? Some kind of good luck charm?”
Hendrix playing rare blues eddied from the jukebox. “A red house over yonder…” What had brought her here, not to mention twice in the same week? The Badge, the cop bar. Right now it was half-full of the kind of people she least wanted to be around. Cops. And here was Nick, the Metro PD narc, divorced and lost and left with nowhere else to go to find companionship, to find anything remnant at all of something that might be called a life.
And here I am sitting right next to him.
“What was that?” she asked. “A good luck charm?”
Nick swigged his mug of Bud, and coarsely pointed at her bosom. “That silver locket around your neck. You’ve been rubbing it since you walked in here.”
Damn. He sounded worse than Dr. Sallee. And, yes, now that she thought of it, she’d been pressing it between her thumb and index finger, probably, for hours. “Yeah, Nick. It’s a good luck charm, and, believe me, right now I need all the luck I can get.”
“Tough case, huh? The Dahmer thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, let me tell ya, I’ve had my share of bad cases, and…” Nick’s snide cop voice faded, bringing Helen back to her thoughts.