Dahmer's Not Dead

But Helen’s ire lost all its steam once Beck hung up and turned to her. The gray-voiced news was becoming commonplace.

“We’ve got another one,” Beck said.

««—»»

The northside of the Circle, the outermost skirts of what was known as the gay district. Efficiency apartment, cramped but neat, reported to the police by a Fed-Ex man delivering a package—a mail order poplin jacket from the Home Shopping Club. He’d knocked on the door, which was ajar, and saw the body lying in the window light on the bed.

Drug evidence was apparent: a gram of cocaine, a bag of pot, some cotton-covered thumb-caps of amyl nitrate.

“Paone,” Beck ID’d. “First name Norman. ID was simple. Twenty-nine years old, a street hustler on the Circle.”

“How do you know?” Helen asked, trying not to stare at the naked corpse. In spite of death, and in spite of winter, the body was tanned. Tanning salon, Helen guessed. Check out all the salons in town.

“We just ran the guy’s name through Mobile Search. Rap sheet longer than one of Olsher’s cigars. Non-distro drug possession, check kiting, multiple busts for solicitation.”

A prostitute, Helen thought.

“Did a year and a half in Mad County Detent.”

“Nothing at Columbus County?”

“No. It was a three-year hitch. Early probation after fourteen months. Same old, same old.”

“Any…” Helen glanced around. A tv, a VCR. North was in adult videos. “Any x-rated tapes on the premise?”

“Nope, at least none that we could find as of yet. We’re still doing the prelim sweep. Why?”

Helen felt too preoccupied to answer. Paone was a male prostitute. So is North…

“Case parities?” Helen reeled off.

“Identical m.o. I’ll do a tox workup, and Tom’ll do the post, but I can tell you right now it’s Dahmer.”

Helen’s nostrils tweaked. “Is that—”

“Cooking smells, Captain? Yes. Used utensils left in the sink. Nice of Jeff to leave them in the sink, huh? Like who’s going to clean them? Paone? The maid?”

Helen’s expression remained fixed.

Red-suited techs crawled on hands and knees, as Helen had seen so many times: vacuuming for hair and fibers, photographing schemes, dusting and fuming and UVing for latent fingerprints. Waste of time, Helen thought. It’s always the same.

“Evidence of makeshift lobotomization,” Beck said, “just like Dumplin. Evidence of deep-cut striations with a sharp, edged implement. Collops of lean-muscle mass removed from the biceps and thighs, probably the parts that were…”

Beck didn’t finish; she didn’t need to. The parts that were cooked, eaten, Helen finished in thought.

“Fresh prints on the utensils and the note.” Beck spoke as an existentialist now, immune to the effects of human tragedy. Just like Helen. “I got a latent classifier here who’s run the point-scale—they’re Dahmer’s. Dahmer was here, Captain, and he was here in grand style.”

“I need a crew of shoes out here to canvass,” Helen muttered more to herself. “Talk to the neighbors and all that. It must be Campbell at the very least picking Dahmer up afterwards.”

“Yeah. I agree. But ten-to-one nobody saw anything, just like the first two. Dahmer may not be smart, but Campbell is. Anyway, Captain, let me show you the note.” Helen followed the red-overalled woman to a cheap, put- it-together-yourself credenza. The note, as before, had already been sealed in lab evidence bag. But Helen could easily read the familiar, blue-felt penned handwriting.

Captain Closs,

He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.

“More Bible stuff,” Beck said. “Well have to get the college on it.”

“No we won’t,” Helen said, remembering her own theology classes. “It’s from Proverbs, a reference to adultery…and prostitution.”

Beck’s mouth turned down as if impressed. “There’s more.”

A whore is a deep ditch.

Helen remembered that bit of scripture too. “Proverbs again.”

And lastly:

Remember the Great Bear of the north.

“Don’t tell me,” Beck challenged. “You know that one too?”

“It’s a reference to Revelations—or I should say The Revelation of…St. John the Divine.”

“That’s uncanny. The same name of the hospital.”

“Yeah. But I don’t get the rest. Bible scholars have always referred to ‘The Great Bear of the north’ as a reference to Russia.”

Beck’s eyes drew wide with Helen’s. “Or maybe Dahmer isn’t referring to Russia at all—”

“North,” Helen whispered to herself. “The Great Bear of the north.”

“As in—”

“Matthew North.”

««—»»

So they were playing with her now—Dahmer and Campbell. Having a good laugh at her desperate plight.

Sons of bitches, Helen thought.

Matthew North was a prostitute, and so was Paone, the decedent. Both being in the trade of male prostitution, maybe they new each other. And the Bible reference—The Great Bear of the north—only completed the suspicion.

They’re dropping clues so easy it’s almost insulting, she reckoned behind the wheel of her Taurus.

It was night now—early evening. Winter bled the days quickly, like a vampire.

At a traffic light, she dialed Central Commo. “This is Helen Closs, Captain, Violent Crimes Unit. Get me the shift dispatcher.”