Iceman (12 page)

“Ever'body left.” She spoke slowly. “It was the oil boom."

“The oil boom."

“Yep. An’ then it just died out and, uh, they lost the bank and a bunch of businesses and stuff, uh, you know, just died out."

“When was that?"

“Huh?"

“When did the business die out?"

“Oh, few years back. I forgit rightly."

“When was the oil boom? I mean, could you put a year on it when the town was prosperous?"

“Nnn.” She made a noise as she shrugged. “There's always been wells n’ stuff. An’ people around here was, uh, you know, leasing their land for high prices. Specially up north a ways. An’ they had a lot of workers come in here and then the highway went around us and it really died then."

“When was that? When did the highway go around you?"

“The highway bypassed us in ‘76."

“You mean the town was prosperous until 1976, then?"

“Yeah.” He felt her unfreezing as he eased her into the details. “See, this was ole Highway 66."

“This was Route 66?” he said incredulously.

“Yeah. Was back then."

“Listen. I'm looking into a family that was here back before that. You ever hear of the Spodas?"

“Yep. I heard the name.” He saw something change in her weather-beaten, deeply tanned face.

“Can you tell me about them? Where they are now?"

“You a cop,” she said in a hard voice without the question mark on the end.

“Matter of fact, I am.” He nodded, again pleasantly, speaking in a soft, soothing voice and not whipping his gold out.

“No-goods."

He nodded. Tell me more. She didn't. So he said, “Tell me about them, please."

“I didn't know the woman. You hear things in a small town. I didn't really know her."

“You heard what sort of things?"

“There was all kinds of rumors about that family. It was the talk of this town for years. Sex things. They was supposed to be perverts."

“In what way?"

“She slept with everybody in town. Supposed to have slept with her own son. What was made him touched when he was little. He was off,” she said, tapping her head.

“Off. How?"

“I don't know what you call it. Touched in the head. They always said it was because o’ her. Somebody, a social worker or somethin', they found out about her and the boy. And then the half-sister too. He'd been messin’ with his own half-sister. She was off too. The whole family was off.” She shook her head.

“What happened to them?"

“She's been dead for years. The sister's in the looney bin. I heard the boy got into some trouble."

“The Iceman murders?” She nodded. “What do you recall about those murders?"

“Nothin'."

“But you just said you remembered he'd got in some trouble,” he said gently.

“That's all I ever heard. Somebody said he got into some trouble with the law. But I don't ever remember hearin’ anything about him goin’ to prison. I think somebody said they seen him in Las Vegas some years back. I don't rightly remember."

“In Las Vegas? Who saw him?"

“Oh, my stars, that's too long back. I don't recall. You just hear rumors in a small town.” She looked around like she wished a car would pull up wanting gas, oil, eats, worms, and a de xe cooler—something to get her away from the interrogation. But up and down the highway as far as you could see, Eichord and the woman were the only living souls.

“It's very important, Freda. Who told you he was in Las Vegas? Try to remember if you can."

“I told her,” a scratchy voice said, and Eichord jumped a little as he turned and saw the man who had come up silently behind him. He reminded Jack of the farmer with the pitchfork on the famous painting.

“Yes sir.” Eichord smiled. “Can you tell me a little more about the Spodas?"

“Just that the one they called Arthur never spent a day in jail. I seen him myself big as life at the California Club in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, wheeled right to the table like he owned the place."

“Pardon me? You say wheeled?"

“Yeah. He was in a wheelchair. Still is, I imagine."

“I didn't know he was handicapped."

“Heard his mama caught him an’ his sister together and took a ball bat to him, is what put him in a wheelchair. ‘Course that was just the stories at the time."

“When was this?"

“'bout the late 1960s sometime, I reckon. Probably a good thing too. He wasn't nothing but trouble."

“Do you know where I could find a picture of Arthur Spoda?"

“Nope. Sure don't."

“You remember what he looked like, though, right?"

The man breathed a tired sigh. “I ain't seen him for a long time. I think I'd know him but I can't swear I'd even know him if he stopped me onna street."

“If I'd get a police artist in here, would you be so kind as to help us get a composite drawing made of the way he looked—the way you remember him—the last time you saw him?"

“Sure. I reckon I'd be willing to try. He was a handsome rascal in the face. If you didn't know what the boy was like. He was a real fox in the henhouse, if you catch my meaning."

Eichord nodded, wondering who to call first, thinking about how they'd nail down the dates. The all-important dates. Did the Iceman killings stop consistent with the time when Arthur Spoda ended up in a wheelchair? A hundred questions screamed at him. How soon could he get Weyland down there? What should he do first? Who was Spoda's physician and were there records? Where is Arthur now? How who what where? WHY? That was the first question.

“Why didn't you give this information to the police?” Eichord asked the man.

“They never asked me.” Wonderful.

But he'd worked in enough provincial backwaters that he knew what the realities were. You don't just waltz in and get arrest warrants, pal. One learns early on that there are states with statues a hundred times more quirky and restrictive than any Supreme Court decision you ever hitched about.

E
ichord was driving a loaner, an old car with the windows rolled down to try to cool himself off after a heated conversation with the locals. He told them that it looked like they'd run an investigation to its conclusion twenty years ago, they'd solved the Iceman murders, then turned around and walked away from it. Why hadn't they arrested Arthur Spoda? They had. Then why had they turned him loose? They had to. A witness “zoned out.” But why not press for a murder charge? They hadn't even tried for a conviction. On what grounds? On any grounds. He'd boiled as the rules of circumstantial evidence had been taught him for maybe the hundredth time.

I grow old, I grow mold, I shall drive with the windows of my loaner rolled, he thought. In the headlights the lumps of dead things come and go, and the yellow line rests its blacktop upon the dead possums. He drove past such enticements as rattlesnake buckles, velvet paintings, pecan log rolls, Indian Jewelry Made by Real Indians, a chance to See Bigfoot, and then the snake-oil hucksters thinned and he found the road sign he'd been watching for and within minutes he was going up the front steps of the asylum where he'd learned the Spoda woman was an inmate.

“I'm here to see the director, please,” he said to the woman at the front desk, telling her his name.

Five minutes later he was greeted by a heavyset woman who smiled and introduced herself, “I'm Claire Imus. How can I help you?"

“Hello,” he said, showing her his shield and ID. “We spoke briefly on the telephone about Miss Spoda. Can you tell me some background on her?"

“Let's go in here, shall we?” She closed the inner office door and invited him to take a seat. “Precisely what do you want to know about Ellie Spoda, Mr. Eichord?"

“Were you here when she was institutionalized?"

“No. But I've been here over eight years. I'm quite familiar with her case history."

Eichord summarized what he'd learned about the family, asking if that much was accurate.

“The abuse by the stepbrother and by other males went back to her early childhood. Sexual abuse as you know, but a campaign of terror that her older stepbrother waged, from what we know about the family background, pretty much relentlessly. The incest would have been bad enough, but he apparently was a sadistic so-and-so who never missed an opportunity to frighten, hurt, or intimidate Elite. The ‘mother’ didn't offer much protection. Finally there was a series of sexual attacks that left her totally disoriented and so terrified of her environment—and her stepbrother in particular—that she became quite insane. Not long after that she was institutionalized."

“Can she carry on a conversation? I need to ask her some questions about those events,” he said quietly.

“I'm afraid not.” She smiled again. “Unfortunately Ellie Spoda hasn't said a word to anyone in years. Would you like to see her anyway?” The woman seemed open and helpful.

Eichord was always as interested in HOW something was said as much as what the words were, and his impression was that Claire Imus was being as helpful as the situation allowed.

“Sure—if it won't upset her."

The woman shook her head. “She's playing Bingo. I'll take you,” she said, and Eichord got up and followed as she walked heavily down the clean hallway.

They entered a room where an attendant was announcing a Bingo game to a room of perhaps thirty persons, many of them patients. A brunette woman in sweater and slacks was helping the Spoda woman with her card.

“B-five,” the attendant called out. “B-five."

“Hello, Ellie. This is Mr. Eichord, who has come a long way to talk to you."

Flat black eyes looked up at him from under an unruly shock of white hair. Ellie Spoda appeared to be a woman of about sixty-five years old.

“Ellie,” Jack whispered, “could we go talk about your stepbrother, Arthur?"

She tuned out on him immediately, her eyes looking down at the Bingo card in front of her.

“I-seventeen,” the attendant called, and there was a murmur of excitement.

Outside, Eichord asked Claire Imus how old Ellie was.

“She was born in 1950, Mr. Eichord."

E
ichord deplaned at McCarron International and managed to find both his luggage and a cab, and within minutes he was bound for Las Vegas Boulevard. He chose the option of coming in “unofficially,” at least for the moment. He planned to sniff around some on his own first.

Vegas was a nighttime town. No clocks. City of the perennial weekend. And the Strip had been designed for darkness—all light show and bright dazzle. But, God, it was a depressing vista in the daytime.

The gray smog layer clung to the skyline like dirty smoke and it was all you could see from the Tropicana clear over to the Hilton ... dirty gray sky and garish hotel architecture. Check-in was a nightmare of tourists logjammed through a maze of brass-tipped, velvet rope. Eichord found himself caught in a giggling, whispering hubbub of Japanese with cameras. The slow-moving line inched forward as he listened to the Japanese talk about going to Anaheim and Disneyland, and which shows to see first. Where did all these people COME from?

Finally Jack reached the front desk, checked in, and was whisked through the casino to an elevator, and before long was unpacking his rumpled clothing. His room had a sliding glass door and he walked out on a small balcony about the size of a coffee table. Everywhere he looked fabulous, fabled neon icons lit up the Nevada smog with promises of easy money and good times and no tomorrow.

But down on the rooftop adjoining the hotel's parking garage he spotted the yellow pages and a pair of white, high-heeled pumps. What scenario of anger, frustration, rage, and sad despair might account for such an irrational act? Did a drunken woman throw them herself? More likely it was a man's work. The Vegas phone directory is not an easy toss. An event for the Las Vegas Decathalon, the hundred-meter telephone book and high-heel throw.

He changed clothes and made his way back downstairs, taking a cab downtown to the California Club, as good a starting place as any. He was armed with a police sketch he didn't have much faith in, and less sense of purpose than he could remember.

The first thing he spotted in the casino was obvious giggle of three hookers. If it is a coven of witches, a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, an army of caterpillars, a school of fish, a pod of seals, and a flock of sheep, what do you call a trio of hookers? Oh, about $250, he imagined.

His cop eyes saw them the way he always saw people, registering overly tight maroon corduroy slacks and a bulge of green sweater with an invitation to all monied males, the middle one with a too-dressy black cocktail dress, the third with lots of poundage packed into another pair of tight slacks. All of them with high wedgies, frizzes, tons of makeup. The only obvious flaw other than a possible lack of scruples the set of the shoulders. They strode through the casino like jocks. In fact, when Eichord looked at the big one, he thought of Alex Karras reincarnated as a woman. Just your average middle linebacker working girls—what could be more inviting? Jeezus.

But in the same breath he saw something fantastic. A woman in the shortest, blackest, tightest clinging top of a material that revealed every outline and curve. Perfect, movie-starlet mammaries, nipples thrusting like hard fingertips, gorgeous blond hair, and a face without a hint of makeup—stunning, spectacular, smashing. But, of course, he told himself, I have something better at home.

But this WAS Vegas, after all, and Eichord spent the first ten minutes just checking out the chicks. With that important detective work done, he called a pit boss aside and asked to see the shift manager, waiting by the side of a 21 layout. An old man wandered over and tried to make some pitiful, erratic bet of some kind. It took the dealer three or four minutes to explain to him why he couldn't place the wager.

A hard-eyed, suspicious-looking man in a silk suit introduced himself and Eichord showed his tin and explained what it was he wanted and was told how totally impossible that would be. Nobody employed here at the club would have any way of identifying somebody from that long ago—not even from five WEEKS ago—in a wheelchair?—no big deal. We have handicapped in here all the time, the man informed him, looking around and seeing in fact a wheelchair rolled up to the craps table where a group of fifteen men were screaming at the moment.