Dahmer's Not Dead

fresh air.”

“Sure, I know. I just…like you.”

“Great. But what’s the score? We going or what?”

He nods. “Yes, yes, I’m interested,” he says a bit peevishly. But that’s not like him, is it? Not now. Not after his awakening. “I have…someone at my place.”

“A lover, huh?”

“Yes,” he says. But that’s not a lie, is it? “Can we go to your place? I…I don’t want to use a motel. I’ll even pay extra.”

“Don’t sweat it. I cop what every guy on the street cops—fifty bucks for head, a hundred for an hour. Two for all night.”

 From his wallet, then, he slips out four fifty-dollar bills, then slowly slides them across the bar.

“Straight up,” the guy says. He’s handsome: chiseled, poised but kind of tough, tight clothes, and all the right moves. “Yeah, man. This is solid. Let’s go.” Another smile, sexy and sly. “I’ll do you right. Count on it.”

««—»»

Helen needed to kill time. Well, she didn’t need to—she wanted to. It was essential she talk to Tom—about Rosser’s death—but talking to Tom wasn’t something she felt too comfortable doing right now. Have some guts, Helen, she told herself. But she drove around rather aimlessly. Waiting. Stalling.

No guts were forthcoming.

She even switched on her radio as an excuse, but the hourly news highlights only offered one pulpy report about Dahmer after the next. “—entire city locked in a reign of terror.” “—when will he strike next, and where?” “— in a fruitless search for associates who helped Dahmer escape incarceration.”

“I saw him,” some whack reported on a call-in show. “I saw Dahmer! It was up near Dudley Circle. He had a beard and dyed his hair, but I just know it was him!”

“Call in your Dahmer-sightings now!” the talk-show host implored.

Idiots. Helen switched the radio off, but at the same instant, she heard over her scanner:

“Federal Signal 12. This is a Federal response request. All available city, county, and state units in proximity to Perry Point Apartments, east grid, Madison, please respond. We could use your help to secure the scene.”

At least here was an excuse to put off seeing Tom. Helen didn’t know what a Federal Signal 12 was, but Perry Point Apartments? That was Madison, the northeast fringe. And it was just around the corner.

She parked by a wave of throbbing visibars, which turned the winter twilight into a stroboscopic blue-red world. First thing she saw was a Green van with the stenciled side panel T.A. TIRES. That much I do know, she thought. T.A. Tires was a phony acronym—for T.A.T.—the F.B.I.’s Tacticle Assault Team.

We must have a hostage situation here, she realized.

She flashed her badge and ID three times, trying to get through the phalanx of armed cops from multiple departments. Then a voice called out: “Captain Closs!”

Helen jerked around to see Special Agent Eules, the Bureau’s M.F.O. SAC Chief, trotting toward an opposing apartment building. “Come on!”

Helen trotted right alongside, impressed that she hadn’t yet lost her breath. Without realizing it, she had her Beretta .25 drawn. Eules huffed right beside her.

“Barricade situation?” she asked.

“Yep. It’s some guy our BR Squad had tagged for a month—bank jobs. He knocked over a First Federal this afternoon, and we been on his ass since. He ditched his getaway on Forest Avenue, jumped the fence and came here. Grabbed the first female he saw and dragged her up to her apartment. I got a cherry-picker in the unit facing him.”

Cherry-picker, she thought. More federal parlance, but Helen knew what a “cherry-picker” was. A sniper.

“What’s he packing?” she asked, trying to sound on Eules’s level.

“Right now, just a knife. He was toting a Glock when he took down the bank, but he emptied the clip at our guys when we surrounded him here.”

Aw, no, Helen fretted. She was no gun expert, but she knew full well that a Glock was an rather notorious, part-composite semi-auto pistol. With a big clip. Like fifteen or sixteen rounds. She dreaded the next question, as any cop would. “Did you…did you lose any men?”

“Naw, naw,” Eules casually replied. “All our people wear Kevlar jackets, Threat-Level III, with titanium rifle plates. He hit a few of my guys but they got right back up and dusted themselves off.”

Thank God.

Their footfalls pattered the steps. Three floors up, Helen followed Eules as he barged into a unit. “Behind you, guys,” he announced. “It’s Eules. Don’t pop no caps.”

Two men in suits greeted him with curt nods. Some relay equipment had been plugged into the apartment’s phone.

“You got that running yet?” Eules asked, pointing to one of the components.

“It’s up and running, sir,” one suit said.

The other suit: “We already called him. He says he’ll talk to you.”

“Good.” Eules smiled imperceptibly. “Put us on intercom—not now, but on my mark.”

“Yes, sir.”

In the apartment’s darkness, Eules led Helen on to the front family room plate-glass window. The glass had been intricately removed via a diamond cutter and suction frame, so not to risk shattering. Frigid winter air gusted in, and before the window’s opening stood a man in dark-blue utilities—FBI in pale gold letters stamped across his back—and a reversed blue ball cap.

 “Talk to me, Sandie?” Eules asked. “What’s the target’s status?”

“Nervous,” the sniper replied without taking his eye out of his rifle site. It was a long, black rifle, black grips, black stock, black barrel—a Beretta M82—fit with an array of sitting equipment at the rear of the muzzle. A high power scope and laser site, Helen guessed. The sniper continued, “Jerky, sweating, lot of nervous ticks. He’s high.”

“Still got the knife?”

“Yeah. He’s standing in front of the window like he’s got brass balls, got the knife to the female’s throat. He knows we’re spotting him.”

“Fuck him,” Eules said. “You say he’s nervous. Is he flashing the knife any? Moving it around?”

“Yeah. Every time he tries to ring us on the phone, he waves the knife around.”

“Good. That’s your firing mark.” Then Eules passed Helen a pair of Zeiss binoculars. In the infinity-shaped border, she saw the guy, strutting his stuff before the window, with a pallid-faced woman standing before him. Her cheeks were washed with tears. He held a large sheath knife to her throat, and every so often pulled it away to wave it at them. A neon-red laser dot hovered at his shoulder.

“You’re going to shoot this guy?” Helen queried.

“No. We’re going to play pattycakes with him. We’re gonna take him out for pizza and go for rides at the amusement park.”

“What I mean, Agent Eules, is isn’t it imprudent to lay fire on this guy considering his position. He’s got a knife. Even if you fire when he’s got the knife off her throat, the inertia from the round might knock him back.”

“Can’t happen,” Eules asserted, peering into his own set of binoculars. “Autonomic impossibility. My guy’s firing a custom-loaded .50 round, no deflection through the glass. We’re talking two-thousand feet per second, with a foot-pounds measure that would knock the Jolly Green Giant on his ass. We going for a head shot. Once he gets hit with that round, his brain synapses release a flood of stage histamines which instantly causes his entire nervous system to distend. He’ll drop the knife and be dead before he hits the ground.”

“Okay, fine,” Helen objected. “But how can you be absolutely sure?”

“Justice Department clinical statistics. They’re never wrong.”