Dahmer's Not Dead

down the road, in case you change your mind. I won’t bust out into tears like some rubberneck if you tell me to bug off.”

Helen had to laugh. “Goodnight, Nick. I really did have a good time.”

“Yeah, me too.” Then his form leaned over in the dimming candlelight, kissed her a final time, and he was gone.

««—»»

Later, she gazed out the window. Madison seemed dead at four a.m., and that was roughly how she felt. Her previous tipsiness, and the revitalization from the shower and love-making, was now corroding to a state of hangover. She couldn’t imagine what Dr. Sallee would say about this; she doubted she’d even tell him. You need help, she scorned herself. Picking up a cop in bar? Then going to bed with him? The guy was a perfect stranger. And— Christ! My car’s still at the bar! She’d have to take a cab to pick it up in the morning. And with her luck it would be up on cinderblocks, stripped. And all for what? A quick roll in the hay, to use Nick’s sophisticated locution.

 Well, at least he had condoms, she thought in some cheap consolation.

She rubbed her locket in the open V of her robe, still peering out her window into frigid night. Was it guilt? Did she feel guilty about going to bed with a man she just met? Helen didn’t think so, though she felt certain Dr. Sallee would disagree. He’d probably say something like: A retrograde anxiety complex, Helen. At the core of your subconscious, via a lifetime of preconceived ideals and learned experience, you feel overwhelmed with guilt. Even though your relationship with Tom is over, you feel dirty, deceitful. You feel as though you’ve cheated on him.

To hell with Tom. Cheating on him? What a joke. He cheated on me a dozen times—with men. Why should I feel guilty?

The answer, actually, was simple. She felt guilty because this was not like her by any means. Picking up men in bars? Anonymous, even emotionless sex? It wasn’t Helen’s style. If anything, she’d done it for distraction, and maybe even—in some symbolic way—to feel that she could still be attractive and desirable to men, almost as if she needed to prove something to herself. Worst part was, though, now that she’d gone and done it, she didn’t even care. She’d responded, she’d even climaxed, and she didn’t care…

The bed still smelled like his cologne when she heaped the covers over herself. I’m never drinking again, came a dim thought behind the headache. I’m so stupid! It would be morning soon—technically it already was—and she’d have to drag herself up and into work. To reface vague evidence and Olsher’s sudden lack of confidence. And Dahmer.

He’s out there, right now. And Campbell’s probably with him, helping him, staking out locations for him, driving him, maybe even picking up the new victims for him. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Most people knew what Dahmer looked like—especially now with his picture in every paper and tabloid. Unless Dahmer had disguised himself, he couldn’t walk the street.

 More support for her conviction that Campbell was the operative. The obsessee assistant, the apprentice who’d manufactured Dahmer’s “death,” orchestrated Dahmer’s escape, provided Dahmer with refuge, transportation, and the tools of his trade of murder.

Dahmer, she thought, pining for sleep. But there was no safety even in sleep, was there? Dahmer ruled her life by day, and now he even marauded her sleep.

She turned angrily in bed, and noticed only then the blinking red light on her answering machine. She didn’t even want to play it, didn’t care who had left the message.

Tom? she wondered half-awake. Again, to hell with him. And why would he call anyway? Or—

Damn it. Probably Beck. Maybe she’s got the tox screen done on Rosser’s blood…

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