It was every effort to reach out and press the CALLS button:
“You’ve reached Helen Closs,” she heard her own dry, spiritless voice. “I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave your name and number after the beep.”
BEEP
Silence.
Then:
A man’s voice. Atonal. Emotionless. A voice…she’d heard before, but never in person.
A voice she’d heard on tv tabloid shows and the news.
“It’s me,” the voice introduced itself.
Helen’s eyes slowly opened, listened further—
“It’s Jeff.”
—and further.
“Pleasant dreams.”
The line severed with a click, and Helen’s heart seemed to come to sluggish, thudding halt.
— | — | —
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“We got a ten-scale, one-hundred-percent match,” announced the tech, all spit and polish in his TSD monkey suit. A Gaines Systems Model 6-P Series Voice-Stress Comparator switched off. “It’s Dahmer’s voice.”
It was just past six a.m. now, Helen, Beck, and Olsher stood moodily in the Criminal Evidence Section’s cramped EA lab—the EA for Electronic Analysis.
Olsher chewed an unlit cigar. “Shit. Why should we even be surprised?”
“Right, Chief,” Beck agreed, “but the surprising part is how he beat the line-trace.”
Helen felt like she’d just been dumped out of a cement mixer: her hair messed, her clothes crumpled, her eyes sandy with lack of sleep. She hadn’t had time to even shower before hustling the cassette cartridge from her answering machine down to CES. And, no, it was no surprise that the voice on the tape matched Dahmer’s voice-print specs equalized out of his last tv interview. But beating the line-trace was a surprise. The days of telephone traces taking minutes were long over. It was all automatic now, every phone relay in the country fed through an array of traceable microprocessors, and each and every connection stored. It had only taken a Bell-Atlantic systems technician a matter of seconds identify the source of the call. And the source was this according to their relay computer: No source found. Source cell and service point not identified.
“I always thought it was impossible to beat a line-trace in this day and age,” Helen grumbled.
“Not impossible,” the tech corrected, shutting down his unit. “But damn near.”
“How could it be done?” Helen asked.
“It could be done with an encrypted mobile phone,” the tech postulated, “but that’s not likely in this case. We’re talking military-grade scramblers, stuff the Defense Department uses, and the C.I.A. This call here?” He tapped on the box. “Had to have been an on-line call fed through a particular S/C program.”
Helen didn’t want to hear anymore technical stuff. “S/C program?”
“A computer program with a shift-conversion utility,” the tech explained to no further comprehension.
“We’re all dummies here, partner,” Olsher said. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a software program—probably made from scratch—that acts as a single-channel frequency shift-converter. Now, a call like that could be placed through any run-of-the-mill 9.6 baud telephone modem—something you can buy in any computer store. But the program itself? You can’t buy them anywhere; they’re banned by FCC, so that’s why I’m telling you the program was made from scratch, and by someone with serious computer expertise. A teckie, an expert hacker.”
Olsher gnawed on his cigar, perplexed, turning to Helen. “Any evidence to suggest Dahmer was skilled with computers?”
A memory floated, and a word. Computers. “No, Larrel,” she said. “Not Dahmer. But one of the first things North told me was that Campbell was a computer fanatic.”
“Here we go with Campbell again.”
Beck interjected. “Chief, face it. There is a Campbell, and he is directly involved. He helped Dahmer get out of prison, and right now he’s helping Dahmer continue his murder spree. Everything in this case points to an active conspirator. Campbell’s used his craft and ingenuity to do everything so far, and it’s obvious he’s the one who arranged this call and made it untraceable.”
Thank you, Jan, Helen thought.
“So why would Dahmer call Helen?”
Beck made a frown. “Helen’s name is in the newspaper almost every day. They’ve broadcasted the fact that Helen’s running the investigation.”
Olsher chewed on these considerations along with the cigar.
“Look, I never said I didn’t believe your theory about a conspirator. I just wasn’t too hip on this Campbell guy, considering the source.”
Now it was Helen’s turn to frown, but she said nothing.
Beck went on, “And it’s starting to seem to me that maybe Campbell’s not the only conspirator.”
“Why?” Olsher grunted.
“Because there’s no Campbell at St. John’s Hospital,” Helen said, “and there can be no doubt that St. John’s is the location where Kussler’s dead body was switched with Dahmer.”
“She’s right, Chief,” Beck plodded on. “Someone with hospital access has to be in on it too. Not only to take Dahmer out and leave Kussler’s body in his place after the ident process, but also because of Rosser.”
“Rosser died in the same hospital,” Helen pointed out.
“And I just got finished determining the cause of death.” Beck waved a dot-matrix printout from a tox-screen analysis. “Helen ordered me to do a blood run the minute we knew Rosser was dead. He was killed with a massive oral dose of succinicholine sulphate—the same drug being used to paralyze the victims.”
Helen smiled to herself, while Olsher stared. “Good work, both of you,” he admitted. “Keep it up and keep me posted.” Then he left but from the lab entry waved Helen out into the hall.
“What is it, Larrel?” Helen asked.
“This bit about a second person, a second conspirator with hospital access?”
“It makes a lot of sense, Chief. Look, you didn’t buy the part about Campbell and now you’re admitting he exists. The same goes for a second collaborator, someone specifically tied to St. John’s.”
Olsher rubbed his face. “I know, and that’s what bugs me. You know who fits the bill, don’t you?”
Helen swallowed before she could answer. “Tom. I know. I’ve given that a lot of thought. He did the autopsy, he was the duty pathologist for Dahmer’s post, and he’d have access to the psych wing med unit. Rosser was on a lithium compound to treat his hyper-activity. Someone could easily have slipped into the nurses’ station and spiked Rosser’s lithium with succincholine.”
“Shit,” Olsher said, impressed. “You have thought about this.”
Helen felt less than resplendent revealing the rest. “He’s also had…affairs with men.”
Olsher gaped at her. “Are you shitting—”
“No, I’m not, and one more thing. He’s big into computers.”
By now Olsher had nearly chewed the cigar to wet shreds. “Yeah. Keep an eye on him, Helen. And I mean a close eye.”
««—»»
Everything was coming out to dry now. Beck had no problem accepting the credibility of Rosser’s lithium dose being poisoned with succinicholine. The precaution ward, true, had a nurses’ station behind the locked ward door and a 24-hour security guard, but the drug prescriptions for every patient on the unit were prepared at the main nurses’ station at the floor entrance. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a hospital employee to get in there quick, locate Rosser’s med cup, switch the real lithium capsule with a spiked one, and get out. It would only take a matter of seconds, Helen realized.