Dahmer's Not Dead

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Merrimac, just off Route 12. About halfway between Madison and the Correctional Center in Portage, and only a twenty-minute drive for Helen. A decent middle-class suburb, with blocks of apartment complexes on the outskirts. And the building in question, in some odd way, reminded Helen of Dahmer’s building on North 25th Street in Milwaukee.

“Mr. Kussler?”

A timid face showed in the door’s chained gap. “Uh, yes?”

Helen held her ID up. “Helen Closs, State Police. May I have a word with you, please?”

Back at HQ, even Helen’s marginal data-processing skills had gotten her what she wanted. It had only actually taken a few minutes for Dipetro’s Records technicians to copy the logs and rosters to the State Police Macro Analysis Computer. From there, Helen had input a simple search and retrieve command identifying Dahmer, Jeffrey as the proximity subject. There had to be a human common denominator in there somewhere, some person during the course of prison duties who came in regular contact with Dahmer or Dahmer’s cell. Helen would’ve guessed it was a detention officer, but she was wrong. What the computer handed her instead was this:

M:/>RETRIEVE/COMMAND FILE RELAY FROM WSP MAC FILE AUX:

KUSSLER, GLEN, A.

DOB: 30 JULY 60

FILE ADDRESS: 2900 SHIPMASTER, UNIT 4, MERRIMAC, WI

OCC STAT: PHYSICAL PLANT DEPARTMENT, COLUMBUS COUNTY DETENTION CENTER.

OCC SPEC: ELECTRICIAN

EVAL RATING: GOOD STANDING

Helen didn’t need to print out the whole file; this was all she wanted. A quick call to Portage informed her that Mr. Glen A. Kussler, a civilian employee, was off today.

So she went to his home.

“What, what’s this all about?” Kussler let her into the apartment. Nice place for low rent, clean and well decorated, with plush carpet on the floor and stark art-decoish furniture. The place even smelled nice—Carpet deodorizer, Helen guessed. Like the brand she used.

“I need to ask you about your service log at the prison,” she said.

He looked dismayed in response. Glen Kussler brought a meek if not insecure air with him: thin, gangly, over-reactive gray eyes and a twitching mouth. Thinning hair the color of mature straw sat very fine on his head. He wore heather-blue running sweats but obviously hadn’t been running.

“My service log?” he questioned.

“That’s right, Mr. Kussler.” Why waste time? She laid it on the line. “I need to know why you ‘serviced’ Cell 648 roughly twice a month for the last year and a half.”

Kussler peered at her. “648? Six Block. Isn’t that—”

“Jeffrey Dahmer’s cell,” she told him. “According to your service orders filed with the Physical Plant supervisor, you worked on Dahmer’s cell nearly twice a month since shortly after his incarceration. The average repair or service call per cell is only once every three or four months. Why did you need to service Cell 648 so many more times than normal servicing?”

“To change the running bulb. Each cell is equipped with what we call a running bulb that’s controlled by the central block command console. It’s turned on in the morning at 6:30 and turned off every night at ten. By the DO. The inmates themselves have no control over it.”

“You’re telling me that you changed a light bulb in Dahmer’s cell twice a month but only changed them in the other cells every three or four months?”

“Yes, Miss Gloss. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“It’s Closs, not Gloss.” Helen felt slightly taken aback by a sudden inkling of arrogance in Kussler’s tone. “Why? For what reason would Cell 648 be that unique? Why would Dahmer’s running bulb burn out so many more times faster than the running bulbs in a typical cell?”

She watched the man’s face closely, for a giveaway tic, a wavering of eye movement, any gesture of negative-impulse response. Sallee had taught her this and it worked.

But not today.

“Did you check the circuit blueprints?”

“Well, no,” Helen admitted.

“You should have, then you’d know the answer to your own question, Miss—”

“Closs. Captain Helen Closs,” she repeated.

Kussler’s eyes drifted up. “Oh, yes. I read your name in the newspaper today, didn’t I?”

He probably had. She hadn’t even checked for herself yet, but she suspected the venerable Editor Tait had lambasted her after the graphology reports had come in. “Perhaps,” she ducked out of it. “But what’s that about blueprints?”

“The architectural schematics. You’re an investigator, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then certainly, since your undue questions involve electrical maintenance at the center, you would’ve thought to investigate the prison’s blueprints with regard electrical layout.”

This guy turned into an prick real fast, Helen thoughts snapped. He was, very indirectly, putting her down and doing a solid job. It was obvious. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Kussler, I didn’t think to do that at all because I can surmise no reason.”

“Ah, well. Surmise this then, Miss Gloss—”

You dick, Helen thought.

“It should come as no surprise, even to a novice, that the longevity of, say, lightbulbs are dependent upon such things as resistance, ohms, and variables that exist between the industrial transfer of low- and high-tension current. If you’d made obvious inquiry, and first inspected the prison’s architectural blueprints, you would have easily noted that Cell 648 is the last cell on the east tier. You would have also noted that the prison was constructed to run by ten electrical phases and that the east tier runs precisely parallel to phase seven which happens to service the center’s administrative wings. An anomaly in construction, by happenstance, placed the last cell on the east tier—Cell 648—on the same domestic power line that runs the seventh electrical phase.”

“How could I have possibly known that, Mr Kussler?”

“Simple, Miss Gloss. By investigating. You are, as you’ve stated, an investigator.”

Helen found it difficult not to unload on his sarcasm. This guy’s worse than Tait at the Tribune, she thought.

“—and likewise,” Kussler continued, “you would then not find it necessary to harass county employees.”

“I apologize, Mr. Kussler,” Helen steeled herself to say. “You feel that I’m harassing you by asking a few questions?”

The lines around Kussler’s eyes slackened. “Perhaps harassment is too harsh a term. Indispose—is that a more accurate term? Or inconvenience?”

Helen took a breath, counted to ten very quickly. “I apologize for the inconvenience then, Mr. Kussler. But would you be so kind, in lieu of my obvious investigative ineptitude—”

—to tell me what the FUCK you’re talking about, you snide, pompous ass!—

“—to explain to me exactly what you mean?”

“I’d be delighted.” Kussler sat down on a stark polycarbonate-framed couch that Helen would sooner kill herself than have in her own apartment. “It’s like this. By an accident of construction, Cell 648 is the only cell in the prison that is fed by an electrical phase-line run outside of the cellblock phases. Phases One through Six serve those cellblocks. Phases Seven through Ten feed the rest of the prison, the administrative wings. Jeffrey Dahmer’s cell, in other words, though it should’ve been connected to Phase Six was actually connected to Phase Seven, and Phase Seven suffers an anomaly of its own. A dreadful incidence of high-tension power fluctuations.”

Helen opened her mouth to object, then closed it a moment. Father Alexander, the equally snide prison chaplain, had mentioned much of the same. A lot of power fluxes, she remembered.

“So,” Kussler continued, “that is the reason the running bulb burned out twice a month in Cell 648, where as the running bulbs in typical cells only burned out two or three times a year.”

“Then how come there aren’t an equally high number of service calls to the admin wing, Mr. Kussler?” Helen was happy with herself for thinking of.

“Because the running bulbs in the cells,” Kussler answered just as quickly, “are incandescent, while all the administrative fixtures are fluorescent tubes, which typically last twenty to thirty times longer.”

This guy is making a fool out of me, and there’s nothing I can do about it, Helen realized. But her questions, she had to admit, were satisfiably answered.

Helen rebuttoned her overcoat. “I guess that’s about it then. Thank you for your time, Mr.—” Helen’s worse judgment couldn’t resist—”Mr. Kuntler.”

Kussler’s face turned up, incised. “I’m sorry, but what was that?”

“I said thank you for your time, Mr. Kussler.”

Kussler nodded, eyes thinned. “That’s what I thought you said.”

Helen turned for the door. “And have a good day—”

—you DICK!

Helen went back out to her Taurus, but she scarcely had time to start the ignition before her pager went off.

The number on the tiny screen she knew at a glance.

It was Jan Beck. And the suffix after the number struck her with even more alarm:

URGENT.

««—»»

“That’s something though, ain’t it? I mean, Christ—Dahmer.”

“You can say that again. And did you read the Tribune? Some high-brass state cop walked in there yesterday and swore they had proof it was a hoax, guaranteed that the letter was phony. Then a couple hours later their crime-lab people are saying it’s Dahmer’s handwriting.”

Bar chatter. Barkeep and lone patron at the rail. The man, the only other customer in the place, sat at a back cocktail table, in the dark.

The man liked the dark.

Friends, the place was called. Low-key hangout. Just a clean, simple bar, not an action joint like the places on the other side of the block where you could pick up some trade in less time than it took to order a beer. He sipped a bottle of Holsten and listened to the two up front continue their dull banter.

If they only knew…

He looked at them from his place. They were nearly stereotypes: the rail guy in tight jeans, a candyass black leather jacket, short dark hair and mustache. The keep was fat and meek, wire-rim circular spectacles and a short blond ponytail.

“Lemme have a Windex,” the rail guy asked.

“Windex, sure. A little of the old Blue C., a little of the old Stoli, and—damn, where’s that sour mix?” The keep stooped, hunting in the small reach-ins behind the bar. “Come on, sour mix, where are ya? I know you’re hiding in here somewhere—”

The man’s eyes went out of focus, wide and blank like diminutive moons in the barlight—

—and the words turned echoic, sounds struggling under water—

—the words—

—digging deep, deep, deeper until he was drowning in them—

««—»»

“I know you’re hiding in here somewhere.”

He’s back, he’s home, thinks the boy from Bath, Ohio. He thinks this in a way that’s terrifying yet somehow complacent.

Because he’s used to it.

The closet, the kitchen cabinets, under the bed—it doesn’t matter. Dad thinks it’s a game. Once he even hid in the attic, during the summer. He’d passed out it was so hot up there. But when he’d wakened, he’d been in Dad’s bedr—

He stifled the thought, shut it right down.

Today he’s under the bed again, only this time the bed in the guest room. Maybe he won’t think to come in here, the boy prays…

But that was one thing about prayers. They were never answered.

Silence. Stillness. Shadows of legs lay long across the guest room carpet. And next—

The entire bed rises. His father glares down.

“There you are,” he says.

««—»»

“There you go,” the keep said, sliding the translucent-blue Windex shooter to his patron.

“Thanks,” said the rail guy.

The keep glanced across the dark room. “Hey, friend. You ready for another Holsten?”

“Yes. Please.”

What next? he thought.

The way he felt, so full and brimming—he knew he had to do something soon.

“There you go.” The keep put the beer down on the table. “Care for anything to eat? We’ve got a great special today. Chicken Tenders in Mustard Sorrel Sauce.”

“Hmm. That sounds wonderful.” The offer sounded tempting. A good sorrel sauce would make any meat come alive.

Any meat.

“Thanks,” the man said, “but to tell you the truth, I’m not that hungry now. I think maybe I’ll try to whip that up myself later, when I have more of an appetite.”

««—»»

“Take a look.”

Jan Beck handed Helen a short, tractor-fed sheet of multi-colored graphical printing paper. What was printed on it might as well have been Druidic glyphs.

3 - [-3 - (-succinate-2) - 4 -(chloro- N -(2-chloroethyl)- C₅H₁₁C₁₂. -(₄-sulph—HN₂)-0

“What’s this?” Helen asked. “It looks like something kicked out by the SEM. Some drug?”

“It’s a mole-chain, a chemical designation,” Jan Beck replied. “The last leg of my tox screen of Arlinger. And, no, it’s not from an SEM. Christ, scanning-electron microscopes are thirty years old. The only people who use SEMs these days are flunky novelists who don’t do their research. We haven’t used ours in years. This is from an AFM—that’s Atomic Force Microscope. They’re state of the art and brand new.” Beck rested a hand on a respectably sized machine to her right, with a face plate that read: TopoMetrix. “It’s ten times faster and ten times smaller than an SEM.”

“And ten times more expensive, I suppose?”

“Well, no, actually it’s only about twice as expensive. You’re looking at about four hundred grand here. But if you want fast results, like we do, we pay.”

We? Helen wondered. Yeah, that’s right—the taxpayers. “So why did you page me? What’s this all about?”

“That mole chain came from the tox screen I was just telling you about,” Beck went on.

“A chemical analysis of Arlinger’s blood?”

Beck gave a nod. “It’s a paralytic agent by the trade name of succinicholine sulphate. This guy ingested a massive dose shortly before death.”

“You’re telling me that this stuff is what killed him?”

“No, no, when I say massive dose I don’t mean massive enough to kill him. Point-zero-three would be enough to kill, not much but from what I can tell, it was orally administered, probably put him under in about twenty minutes. My read tells me it was a dose of approximately 0.01 mgs per deciliter.”

A…paralytic agent? “In other words, Arlinger was paralyzed before he was murdered?”

“That’s a fact.”

Helen couldn’t help but acknowledge the impact of this. “But Dahmer did the same thing too, didn’t he? Back in 90?”

“Yes and no. He frequently drugged his victims, but not with anything like this.”

“Barbiturates,” Helen said, remembering.

“Right, street barbiturates to be exact. Quaaludes, Valium, and other benzodaizepam off-shoots. He bought them from pushers on the street, in the Milwaukee dope districts.”

The last thing Helen needed was another m.o. similarity, and with this, she didn’t see much of a difference. “Valium or Quaaludes or this stuff? What’s the difference?”

“That’s where you lucked out. The dissimilarity is just too apparent. Succinicholine sulphate isn’t something you buy from a pusher on the street; it has absolutely no use as a recreational narcotic.”

“Then—” Helen wondered. “Where did the P Street killer get this…succinicholine sulphate?”

“Only two places possible: a drug manufacturer or a—”

“A hospital?”

“Right,” Beck assented. “SS doesn’t produce any kind of a high, it merely paralyzes the skeletal musculature. And that would explain why Arlinger’s body showed no signs of struggle. He couldn’t struggle, not with a cardiovascular system full of this stuff. What it all boils down to, Captain, is that your man knocked his victim out, just like Dahmer did, but with the least likely and the least accessible substance. The only place you’ll find a lot of SS are in ambulances and ERs. They use the stuff for sudden seizure traumas.”

But Helen, based on what she’d just been told, was already contemplating the worst implication. “Paralyzes the skeletal musculature… You mean—”

“What I mean, Captain, is that Arlinger couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even flinch. But one thing he could do was feel. It’s the ultimate torture. Arlinger felt everything while the killer was cutting on him.”

Helen blanched.

Everything, she thought. Everything…

“And there was nothing he could do about it,” Beck finished, “except lie there and take it till he died.”

— | — | —