She looked at the clock. One a.m.
Then she looked at the phone.
Looked back at the clock.
On the third ring, she picked it up.
“Hello?”
An empty pause. The sound of someone swallowing, then:
“Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven… Yet thou shalt be brought down into hell, deep into the pit.,” Jeffrey Dahmer said.
The darkness seemed to shrink. The tendons of Helen’s knuckles stood out as she gripped the phone, and now that skeleton fingertip began to tickle her.
“Mr. Dahmer, listen to me,” she said, but her throat grated out the words. It wasn’t easy. She was talking to a serial killer, perhaps the most notorious in American history. “Turn yourself in to the state police. I give you my word you won’t be harmed. We’re going to get you eventually, so let’s do this the easy way. We know all about Campbell and Tom Drake. It’s only a matter of time before we take you down. You’re ill, Mr. Dahmer, more so now than ever before. You’ve recently suffered a psychiatric disorder known as a conative-episodic break, and you’re letting Campbell manipulate you with it… Mr. Dahmer, are you listening to me?”
Dahmer paused again. Did he chuckle? “Look behind you,” he said.
Helen dropped the phone, turned—
—and saw Campbell’s face grinning over an uplit flashlight. “Nice to see you again, Captain Closs.”
She began to scream but the effort was severed when the hot hand slapped across her mouth. The flashlight arched, cracked her in the temple.
Half her consciousness drained away as she collapsed.
Movement above her in the dark. A rustle.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Jeff wants to do that himself.”
Campbell then, a nimble shadow given flesh, straddled her, pinned her down, and jammed a hypodermic needle right into her neck.
— | — | —
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Helen never fully lost consciousness. The blow to the head wore off, yet afterwards she lay completely unable to move. Of course. Succinicholine sulphate did not cause unconsciousness—it caused paralysis, and that’s exactly how she lay in the back of Campbell’s van. Conscious, hyper-alert…and totally paralyzed.
Back at the apartment, he’d thrown her over his shoulder, carried her out the back through the laundry rooms. A van sat waiting.
She could feel the tires humming beneath her, she could hear the motor drone. The only part of her body she could move was her eyes, and if she strained them to the left hard enough, she could see Campbell in the driver’s seat. He drove carefully, checking his mirrors, evenly accelerating and decelerating, using his signal at every turn.
He never looked back at her as he spoke.
“I know you can hear me. You just can’t move or talk. When I found out about North’s escort service being raided I figured it was only a matter of time before you caught up to him. I knew all about his little jaunts with Kussler during our frequent breakups, and it figures the jabbering little worm would tell North all about me. But I guess it all worked out better anyway. It helps make Jeffrey’s return all the more powerful, and that’s what this is all about, Captain Closs. Power.”
Power, Helen managed to think. She remembered what Dr. Sallee had said. Fear equals power.
“And he’s waiting for us right now, Jeffrey is, back at the house. So is Tom.”
Tom, she thought. The evil son-of-a-bitch.
“Won’t it be glorious when they find your body?”
««—»»
“Home again.”
The van decelerated, went over a bump, then seemed to move up an incline. A driveway, she guessed, and then the speculation was verified when Campbell clicked a button, and she heard a garage door rising. The van pulled into a lit garage, stopped.
Thunk
The driver’s door shut, then the windowless rear doors were pulled open.
“Do come in,” Campbell offered. “We simply love having guests over.”
Then he hoisted her up, flung her over his shoulder, and carried her into the house.
Helen felt like a feedbag as she was lugged up short steps, through a utility room, a dark kitchen, then—
Her breath was punched from her lungs as she was dropped onto the floor of another night-dark room.
She nearly vomited, she was so sick with fear.
A light flicked on. Barely audible footfalls could be heard crossing the carpet. Helen lay face down, a dropped doll, and part of her hoped she would remain that way until she died. She didn’t want to be turned over. She didn’t want to see.
“Upsy-daisy.” Hands slipped roughly into her armpits, jerked her upward. Her shoes fell off as her heels dragged; then she was dropped in a chair.
“Open your eyes.”
Helen didn’t want to. She knew what she would see… “I can’t,” she lied.
“Succinicholine doesn’t effect levator and optical muscle groups. Now, open your eyes, or I’ll cut your eyelids off with pinking shears.”
Helen gulped, opened her eyes, and looked at him in the light. He looked the same since she’d last seen him—the day he’d been masquerading as Kussler.
Fine, sandy-blond hair; a tight, wired physique like a feather-weight boxer. The lean face reminded her of something lupine. Bright gray eyes narrowed in calculation—behind their brightness, though, she could see the madness, just as calculative. Aglow, like gray gems from hell.
If I could only move, she thought.
“So what now? Is that what you’re thinking?” His mouth twitched into a smile. “Should I rape you? That would be easy, wouldn’t it? What could you do?”
As Helen’s head lolled, all she could do was point her eyes up and see his face…
“Throw you back onto the floor? Tear your clothes off? But, no, we’re not interested in women—you know that by now.” Now the mouth twitched into something of a frown, a persnickety criticism. “What power could be gained in that? Women’s lives are so pale, and so predictable. Such frail beings, you are. No spark, no vitality at all.”
You motherf—
“This is a world of men, and you’ve let yourselves be our servitors since we were apes. Why waste our power on such petty things like women?”
Helen knew she was a hair’s width away from death, but even in her fear, she longed to retort. I’ll show you frail, I’ll show you petty, you psychopthic asshole. You and your buddy Dahmer. I’d take both of you down with my bare hands if I wasn’t paralyzed.
And her adrenalin just then, surging with her hatred, made her feel white hot. She could do it—she knew she could. Grab this wiry monster by the throat and squeeze until his neck cracked…
If, came the irrevocable reminder, I wasn’t paralyzed.
“But it wouldn’t be gentlemenly not to give you your due, would it?” he mocked. “How rude of me!”
He moved out of her field of vision, leaving her to stare at a flank of computer equipment: several CPUs, several big monitors. Of course. North had told her he was a computer fanatic, and the commo tech had verified it. Only someone with quintessential programming skills could’ve prevented the phone calls from being traced.
A sharp pain stung her neck—so sudden and harsh she wanted to scream. But no scream found its way to her paralyzed lips.