Dahmer's Not Dead

walks out of the hospital the next day.”

“Yeah, but I read one of the bullets hit his cock.”

“Good. It’s too bad they didn’t kill that bald-headed, ball-cap-wearin’, white- woman-rapin’, cop-shootin’ piece of shit street nig—”

Helen snapped, stuck her head in the locker room where these two cops were trading their banter. She remembered the two cops the other day, telling Dahmer jokes, but this was worse. It was all she needed to forget about Tom. Anything would do, and here it was. “Hey,” she said, “keep talking if you want to spend the rest of your career working the motor pool.” Helen glowered. “What were you going to say, Officer. Nigger? Is that the word you were going to use?”

 “Who the hell are you?” the first cop didn’t balk. He was fat, bending over to tie his black shoes.

But already his partner was paling. “Vince, shut up. She’s a fucking VCU captain—er, pardon my language, ma’am.”

“You’re right, Sergeant, I’m a fucking VCU captain, and I get really pissed when I hear cops acting like moron racists and making us all look like a bunch of fucking police-state supremacist assholes. I want a written apology on my desk tomorrow morning, from both of you. Otherwise you’re both out of here faster than shit through a city pigeon, and go ahead and see how far you get fighting it. And see what kind of duty assignments you get when I make deputy chief next year. I’ll have your asses staking out the public latrines in Brook Park from now until the day you retire.”

Silence fell like a guillotine. Helen walked out. She didn’t know Tu Pac Shaker from a six-pack of Bud, and she didn’t care. Racial slurs out of the mouths of cops were a pet peeve, and stepping on said cops’ tails gave her a distant satisfaction.

 Back up on the first floor, she meandered past reception and the DC wing. I’ll have an office here someday, she recited to herself. It went without saying that she’d make deputy chief within a year or two. But the realization, now, left her unimpressed. I don’t care anymore, came the next realization.

“Hi, Helen.”

She turned the corner into the automat, spotted Olsher’s bulk form retrieving a cup of coffee from the Macke machine.

“Good morning,” she dryly replied.

“Say, aren’t you off today?”

Helen sighed. “Yeah. But I got some paperwork to do so I figured I come in.”

“That’s what I call dedication,” Olsher joked. “You couldn’t get me in here on a day off if you had a riot gun to my head. Say, how’s Tom?”

The cursory question nicked her like a scalpel. What could she say? Tom? Oh, he’s just fine. This morning I caught him on the phone with his girlfriend. Instead, she lied. “He’s fine.”

“Tell him I said hi, will ya?”

“Sure.”

Olsher paused, wincing as he sipped the gruel that passed for coffee here. “Say, you feeling any vibes today?”

Vibes. Police jargon. The odd notion that something bad was going to break. But something bad already had broken today, hadn’t it? “No,” she said nebulously, “not really.”

Olsher’s face twitched momentarily. “I don’t know, I just got a funny feeling. We haven’t even had a shooting for two weeks. I don’t like it.”

“Maybe it’s just that the world’s getting better.”

Olsher blurted a laugh. “You think so?”

“Not for a second.”

“Thank God. You were starting to sound like an optimist.”

“There’s no such thing in a police department, is there?”

“That’s my girl,” Olsher laughed. “Later.”

 Olsher left. Helen got herself a cup of coffee, took one sip, then dropped it in the wastecan. Someone had left a copy of that morning’s Tribune on the microwave table. DAHMER’S BODY TO BE CREMATED THIS WEEK, a headline read. LEGAL DISPUTE OVER ASHES. Helen plunked the paper into the wastecan too, right after the coffee.

Back in her office, her desk lay clean. There was no paperwork. Boredom and stifled rage made her feel like a fat sandbag plopped in the chair. What am I doing here? she wondered. Get a life, Helen. You catch your asshole boyfriend cheating on you, and you act like it’s the end of the world. She dreaded going to Dr. Sallee’s tomorrow; she already knew what he would say. He’ll make me feel like a fool, which is probably what I am…

The office became a compressed pit in minutes. Printer clatter, ringing phones, and voices from the main hall sounded a world away. Why had she come to work today? To distract herself? That’s what she’d originally thought, but it was folly and she knew it. It didn’t matter where she fled to—her office, her apartment, the zoo—her blow-up with Tom would cook in her head like stew wherever she went.

Vibes, she thought next. Olsher was right; cops got fidgety when too many days passed without incident. But Helen didn’t believe in vibes, she only acknowledged why one might.

Then the phone rang.

“Captain Closs?”

“Yes?”

“This is Central Commo. Thank God you’re in your office. We’ve been paging you for an hour.”

“I—” Helen faltered, reached into her purse. Her pager wasn’t there. Goddamn it! “I—I’m sorry,” she bumbled. “I forgot to bring it.”

The female dispatcher made no comment. A captain forgetting her pager could be likened to a beat cop forgetting his service revolver.

All at once, though, Helen felt the invisible hairs all over her body suddenly rise, and she remembered again what Olsher had said in the automat.

Vibes.

“Captain Closs, we have a positive Signal 64…”

««—»»

The bright sunlight and clean, brisk air didn’t mesh with murder sites. Nor did Christmas decor. Streetlights, store signs, shop windows were all emblazoned with tinsel, ornaments, and spray-can frost. Helen drove the Taurus through the last trickle of rush hour, to P Street Circle. Central Commo had directed her to a side-street motel called The White Horse Inn. A call to P Street and vicinity was rare; the gay section of town had always existed close to crime-free—hence, Helen knew nothing about it because she never needed to come here.

The odd off-blue van was the first thing to greet her when she pulled up. STATE POLICE TECHNICAL SERVICES DIVISION. Beck’s here. She always beats me to the scene. An additional crime truck from the city sat parked, its crew smirking within. Obviously Beck had ordered them off once she’d assessed the 64. Two Metro cop cars closed off the north end of the street, uniforms rerouting traffic. Those guys should be securing the scene, Helen simmered. She couldn’t help but notice state cops, not Metro, cordoning off the motel entrance. Beck better have a good excuse, Helen avowed. State authorities could only order off local law enforcement if there was clear evidence of a Violent Crimes Inquest, and Beck had a tendency to over-interpret the criteria. I’m going to kick her butt if this doesn’t wash. But then she retraced the thought, as Dr. Sallee had taught her. Why are you feeling hostile toward Beck? Answer: Because Beck and Tom are friends, and because of that, you think you’re going to go in there and take it out on her. She counted to ten, took several deep breaths, then let the hostility go. It’s not Beck’s fault that Tom’s cheating on me.

Refurbished rowhouses lay inset along the street like an arrangement of tight gravestones. Helen ID’d herself to a stone-faced state uniform guarding the entry. WHITE HORSE INN a wooden scroll sign read. Then: VACANCY.