Iceman (26 page)

“Some boys found a box in Mt. Olive Park,” the man told him. “Just a head in it. Female Cauc with multiple wounds. Looks like an icepick again."

He'd had plenty of time to go look at it. Come back. He was waiting for Dana and Monroe to return to the station. Sitting at his desk going through options. Don't go off half-cocked, he told himself. Go slow. He'd had plenty of slow.

His desk was the physical center of hoyt-graham-lennon, which was now a major-crimes priority case. To the left of his desk rested the main body of hoyt-graham-lennon, which was a well-developed female file standing 34 1/2 inches, weighing thirty-nine pounds, brown boxes in configuration, ruddy complexion labeled TDK T-120HS, running from Amarillo through Nicki Dodd ("a well developed male ... “), the suicide, now there would be more.

The rest of the regional investigation that “Special Agent Jack Eichord was coordinating” for the task force covered the walls of the Homicide squad bay and the surface of Jack's desk, overflowing into a chair. Brown-skinned accordion-fold expanding files held secondary suspects and spoda, norway and nevada, las vegas metro and diane taluvera, primary suspects, and hand of christ.

On top of all this was his beat-up attaché case, open, crammed with papers, and the base for his tangibles/intangibles. This was a display he'd pasted to white shirt cardboard and it sat there taunting him, unfolded like a diorama of man complete with geneological chart. Some of the headings were:

sensory alive/motor dead? (see nerves)

bicycle? (Wheelchair lab check track at Graham crime scene made by tread of a foreign bicycle.)

hazy records (ancient car wreck, Norway cover, move to UK, no Inland Revenue trace, no Interpol, no Scotland Yard, see voiceprinting/fingerprinting)

betty baylos (32—dresses like child—sexually? See KSP file)

retarded-brother ploy (relatives, medical)

Another note simply said:

could anybody be that clever? (sperm)

He vaguely remembered the day he'd got off the phone with the circuit attorney's guy, realizing now on the supraliminal level what he'd been going for as he tried to force through his wild and crazy fake-DNA-trace hypothesis.

“If they can trace blood, sperm, tissue—okay, you got the AIDS thing—we pay a prostitute to obtain a sample of this guy's sperm, or we—” He remembered the scenario. What if he found out that Betty Baylos, this thirty-two-year-old sexpot who dressed like somebody's teenybopper sister, had just happened to work at the place where—say—Freidrichs just happened to give blood? Wouldn't that be an interesting coincidence?

“Get what I'm saying?” Wink wink, nudge nudge, he'd tried to bait the guy.

“No. I don't understand where you're going at all.” He was going back to Keith Freidrich's mean stare. A good-looking cripple. A real hater. New City Arcade would be the kind of business a gambler might invest in. And the retarded brother ... Oh, baby, what a sweet touch for somebody cunning enough to plan a scene that was seamless, airtight, waterproof, and cop-proof. What if he was smart enough to move to a city where a wheelchair-bound guy with Arthur Spoda's initials was living with a beautiful woman? Oh, man. You could get so lost in these.

A woman in the church saw a tall woman “leaving with Tina Hoyt.” Nicki had set up Diane Taluvera and Nicki was Schumway's private stock, but the wheelchair was a bicycle, so how much wood could a woodchuck chuck? And why was Elvis’ name misspelled on his tombstone, and when alien spacecraft land on the planet, why do they only allow imbeciles to see them? You know how it is with inquiring minds, baby.

All of that by the wayside as the other calls came into his ear, the telephone ringing and Eichord assuming it was Dana telling him they got tied up or whatever, or maybe the doc from St. Louis returning his call, and he picks it up and hears only a buzz. Then, faintly, “Jack? Can you hear me?"

“Doc?” Eichord called all doctors Doc if he liked them.

“Wally Tulare in St. Louis. Can you hear me?” always with the fucking phones. And for five minutes Jack lets more poisons seep into his hand and arm and this time into the ear. Tulare told him more about Spoda than he wanted to know, but by the time they hung up, he was more convinced than ever that Al Schumway and Arthur Spoda were the same man. He just couldn't fucking PROVE it.

Shortly after that another call—somebody motioned at a winking hold line, and he picked it up and a woman said, “Jack Eichord?"

“Speaking?"

“Jack, this is Amy (mumble) in Las Vegas.” Was this a lady pit boss he'd interviewed?

“Sorry. I didn't catch your name.” She repeated it, but he still couldn't understand and he just said, “Oh, yes?"

“Jack, can you hold on for just a second? I'm trying to reach your party for you and they are prepaid. Can you hold?"

“Sure.” Click. Whirring noise. Click. Touch tones. Cross talk. “Jack? Still there?"

“Yes."

“One moment.” Could be anybody. Something on the Vegas sheets. He had his fingers crossed.

“Hello. Is this Jack Eichord speaking?"

“Yes."

“Good day, Jack. I'm calling for Super Tech Industries in Las Vegas. Congratulations! You've just won a prize that could be worth thousands of dollars. I need to validate your prize number, Jack. Could you read me the expiration date on your credit card, please?"

“You've called a police officer. I'm not interested in any boiler-room scams."

“But this promotion is—” He hung up. If he hadn't been so busy, he would have traced it and given it to the MLVPD guys. Not that there was much anybody could do with the annoying things. It was all getting too big. Too insulated. You could never do anything about anything. What a melluva hess.

“Another call,” somebody said, “on three."

“Eichord.” Bring me the head of Alexander Graham Bell.

“I'm at X-L Office Equipment.” It was Dana. “I think I got something. The sheet with the primary-suspect mug shots—guy owns the arcade, the VA dude, the Schumway Buick guy. He says Schumway came in and priced typewriters. Was considering replacing all the office machines and what not. He typed on a machine that he liked. This guy remembers him in the wheelchair and all. He said it's fairly normal that people type samples and take them home for consideration of what to buy. Okay. So I ask him, Did Schumway take his sample home? Yeah, he says. He typed on a piece of paper and he thinks he put it back in his pocket. What he remembered about the deal was he thinks Schumway made some remark about the typeface on the machine. Could it do this or that? Could you put in a certain element that would give you another option or whatever? Guy goes, Yeah. He puts another paper back in and types some more. The man remembers thinking it was odd that he didn't type on the same piece of paper. He thinks it was an envelope. He isn't sure. He THINKS the second time it was an envelope and it stayed in his head. Anyway, I ask him. Have you changed the ribbon or the cartridge since the machine has been on display? No, he says. I got it as is. Didn't take it off the machine. Nothing. So I go to the lab with it?"

“Bet your ass, Dana. You done great, man. Stay with it."

“You got it.” It was 11:10 a.m. At thirteen hundred hours Jack Eichord knew where the Hand of Christ letter had been typed. It appeared on the used section of the X-L Office Equipment's machine's one-time cartridge. Cheek by jowl in between quickbrownfox and nowisthetimeforallgoodmen. Right there in Executive Bold: Dyke Whores Must Die...

He fumed as he imagined what the circuit attorney would tell him.

“Lock that case down tight. Jack. Don't bring me this iffy typewriter shit.” The fucker left him a head.

He took it personally. Enough with the typewriters and the fags dressed up like women and the rest of the fucking BULLSHIT. That's it. You play, you pay, asshole.

T
hreatening was not Eichord's style. He was a firm believer in the soft sell, but this case had turned Eichord into something else—something he wasn't meant to be. He had killed to stop the killings. And he'd failed. So a little push and shove scarcely caused him a second's hesitation. Another woman was dead. Beheaded by a madman who had put himself beyond anyone's touch.

As they rolled toward Medical Park, Jack Eichord thought that at that moment he loathed Dr. Niles Lishness almost as much as the hated killer Schumway/Spoda. As he tried to visualize them together, doctor and patient, he had no trouble visualizing Schumway holding court, the wimpy, pedantic shrink in rapt, scholarly attention.

Lishness the man was almost a caricature or parody of a psychiatrist. He had a fastidiously sculpted Vandyke, granny glasses balanced on the end of his nose, an imperial air, arch mannerisms, prissy speech pattern, and he lacked only a Viennese accent from completing the comedic portrait. For now, however, he was a dangerous threat, and he would be so treated.

It was easy to imagine him seated behind the grand desk, his glasses on the tip of his aristocratic nose, nodding as he listened to the boasting of a killer. He had treated Spoda's utterances with the inviolable confidence of a priest's confessional, all right. But the stonewalling was over.

After determining when the doctor would be closing shop for the day Jack and Monroe sat in the front seat of an unmarked car, fat Dana in the back, raffishly running his mouth in a clinical running commentary on the physical attributes of every woman who walked past their vehicle. In truth, Jack thought, there seemed to be an endless stream of delectable-looking morsels parading by them.

“Ooh, shit. Look at THAT,” Dana said. “Damn! These doctors have it made. Man, I could go for some of that. Be that little honey's gynecologist. Put your feet up in them stirrups, darlin', I got to check out your plumbing."

“Thass what you oughta be—checkin’ out folks plumbing."

“Well, another five minutes,” Eichord said as he glanced at the dashboard clock, “and we'll go catch Sigmund Freud's act."

“Hey, Eichord. When you was in Vegas, did you see them?"

“Who?"

“The goddamn lion-tamers. Sigmund and Freud?"

“Jeezus,” Monroe said in disgust.

“Come on. I can't stand it. Let's go."

They went in the front door just as a young receptionist was locking the door.

“Doctor Lishness still in there?"

“Yes,” she replied as they flashed shields, “but he's with a patient and he has to leave right afterward so—"

“That's okay. We're not going to keep him for longer than thirty seconds, but we do have to ask him one question. Listen, hon, just let us in and lock it back up. We'll ask him what we need on his way out the door."

“Well—” She raised her eyebrows, glancing at her watch. Eichord smiled and she shrugged and let them in, locking the door from the outside. After all, they WERE the police. Surely it would be all right.

They tossed the outer office expertly and silently in a matter of two minutes. Found nothing. There was a large file cabinet that held some promise and Eichord popped the lock on it, but the files inside were ledgers, payment records, statements, old appointment books, nothing on the names “Schumway” or “Spoda.” The old ledger cards and correspondence placed a date on the material. From the looks of the office, what Eichord wanted was either going to be under lock and key inside Lishness's private office, or on computer.

There was a large, unlocked bin of patient X rays, and Eichord found a large envelope labeled schumway, alan, with the name of another doctor and a date. He transferred the data to a pocket notebook and they sat back down.

Eichord picked up an interesting-looking publication on legal medicine and read that a latent schizz must surround himself with bizarre protective devices. That they suffer from eccentricities, have weird notions about the significance of societal values, can be dangerously aggressive. And he was just getting hooked on the reading matter when they heard the door open and a woman patient, followed by an obviously perplexed Dr. Lishness, who was surprised to find about 750 pounds of police detectives waiting in the outer office.

When the lady had gone out the door and Lishness asked them what they were doing there, Eichord locked the outer door and the three men herded the doctor back inside his private office.

“I don't much like this,” Lishness said officiously. “I don't approve of your manner. I have a—"

“Listen to me. Listen good. Innocent women have been killed. The odds are it's one of your patients. I want to know everything you can tell me about Alan Schumway, and I want it now."

“Well, you can just drop that threatening tone with me. Matter of fact,” the doctor said, reaching for his telephone, “let's just see what your—” But Eichord pulled the plug out of the phone and threw the phone across the room, where it landed on a leather couch.

“I'll have your badge,” Dr. Lishness was saying as Monroe Tucker took him by the lapels, lifting him up off the floor, and slammed him up against a silk-covered wall. His glasses fell off and he began crying and cursing the detectives. Eichord nodded slightly to Monroe, who picked the man up as Jack retrieved his glasses.

“You won't have shit, Niles. Now hear what I'm saying. When I leave this office, I'll have everything on Schumway. I'll have it either way. But if we have to shake it out of you, it's going to be very unpleasant."

He could read the words right there on the doctor's lips, the threat to sue, the threat to expose, the threat to—to what?

“Monroe,” Eichord said to the huge, menacing black figure, “if he so much as says one more word about what he'll do to us—okay?—if he says he'll call his lawyer, call the cops, call his mommy, the AMA, whatever, I want you to hurt him. Just a little. Then we'll toss the office. Later, after he does whatever—files his lawsuit and all—I want you guys to take this wimpy little douchebag out and DROWN HIM IN THE FUCKING LAKE."

“My fucking pleasure.” He grabbed the doctor by the flab of his chest.

“TALK, GODDAMMIT,” Eichord shouted at him.

“What do you want to know? Don't hurt me anymore, please."

Eichord nodded at Tucker again, and he released the pressure. Nothing hurts like a nipple come-a-long.