gained in that? Women’s lives are so pale, and so predictable. Such frail beings, you are. No spark, no vitality at all.”
“This is a
Helen knew she was a hair’s width away from death, but even in her fear, she longed to retort.
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…
“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.
Campbell stepped back into view. “I case you’re wondering, I just injected you with half a cc of Trexaril, a half dose. It blocks all sulfer-based cholinergic agents. You’ll be able to talk in a few minutes. You’ll even be able to move a little.”
But would it be enough?
“Jeff?” he called out. “We’re back, and I’ve got her. Start getting ready, okay?” Then Campbell sat a his work desk, revolved around on the chair to face her. “North, obviously, told you my name, but I guess there are quite a few Campbells in the Wisconsin phone book, hmm? Even if you’d located me from my job, my employer has a phony address in my records file, and I’m sure you also know that my fingerprints aren’t on file, either. No doubt you dusted Kussler’s apartment.”
Helen’s throat tightened through a wallow. Then…she was able to nod. The injection was working—already she could tip her head around and minutely move her fingers and toes.
And when she tried to talk:
“Where do you work?” she slurred. “At the hospital?”
“Of course.”
Her mouth felt like wet clay as she struggled to continue speaking. “We record-checked everyone at every hospital in the state…and none of the Campbells match the prints you left at Kussler’s apartment.”
“Of course they didn’t,” Campbell informed her. “All state and county hospital employees are fingerprinted upon employment.”
“Then how could you possibly beat it?”
“Because, unlike Kussler, I work for a
How simple, yet effective. Most hospitals did contract out for janitorial and maintenance services—to private sector contractors. Therefore a name-check would come up negative because Campbell wasn’t a
“Which,” he went on, “and as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, gave me access to most of the premise. Janitor’s have key access, to any wing on the maintenance roster. Nightshifts, less staff, less security, less patient/treatment traffic. And, yes, it was rather easy getting into the main nurses’ station to switch Rosser’s meds with a fatal dose of succinicholine. Getting Jeff out of the morgue before the autopsy and putting Kussler’s body in his place—well,
Just then Helen’s ear felt pricked. She heard a sound, a tiny clatter, coming from another room.
Campbell chuckled, a silhouette before his lit monitors. “I used him for quite a bit more than that, Captain. The perfect dupe, the perfect patsy. Kussler’s love was like a woman’s. He was weak, manipulable. He was absolutely pathetic.”
Helen staid a more proper response. Her fingers were moving almost freely now, and her forearms twitched too, when she tried to move them. If she could only have full use of her hands… “But you had help,” she contested. “There was no way you could’ve gotten Dahmer out of the hospital and left Kussler’s body in his place at the morgue on your own. It was Tom, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, Tom was very helpful indeed,” Campbell replied. “A deputy medical examiner, he was the highest ranking staff member on duty most nights.”
Helen wasn’t absolutely sure she caught his meaning. Much more important, she knew, was regaining the use of her hands without letting him realize it.
“You used Tom too, didn’t you?” she suggested, “just like you used Kussler. For your own end. Once you didn’t need Tom anymore, you killed him, didn’t you?”
Campbell’s voice leveled in its tenor. “As I’ve said, it’s all about power, Captain Closs. I use people—yes—to suit my own needs. And I make no apologies for it.”
Her eyes struggled to reckon him, to see the machine behind the madness…
“But it’s time now, isn’t it?” Campbell’s silhouetted form stood up before the flanks of monitors and CPU chasses. “It’s time you met Jeff.”
Campbell disappeared, a spirit in a dark breeze. Helen used his absence to test her muscle response. Her fingers turned into claws and her teeth ground as she strained to move her forearms. They moved, perhaps, two inches before they fell back down.
She took fast, deep breaths, to raise her heart-rate and cycle more of her blood through her metabolism, worked the Trexaril faster through her system. But as she did so—
Her eyes wandered, strayed to the kitchen, then stopped and stared. A plastic drum, like the big industrial drums Dahmer had used to dissolve flesh off bones with mercuric and sulphuric acid, sat beside the entry next to the counter. A black lidded pot simmered gently on the range. Helen could’ve sworn she smelled the aroma of something like pork chops. Then—
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Hanging on a pegged towel rack was—
—something she at first took to be a tan chamois or dish towel. But a closer squint showed her what it realy was:
A large, irregular cutting of human skin, complete with abundant chest hair, and tiny shrunken nipples.
A door-latch opened. Helen jerked her gaze to the right. A dark doorway now stood before her, and in that doorway, two figures took slow, deliberate steps. “Come on,” Campbell’s voice insisted. “You can do it. She wants to see you…”
Helen’s eyes felt pried open by surgical stitches as she stared. Campbell attentively assisted his slow- stepping companion.
“That’s it, that’s it,” he said. “One step at a time.”
