Iceman

Metro

Jack spent all of the next morning getting the official glad hand from the guys at Metro headquarters. MLVPD was one of the top cop shops in the country for a Homicide detective. The action of a high-crime-incidence beat without the hazards of some shithole like East L.A. or Bed-Sty. It tended to draw slick sleuths with a taste for gold and rich, Corinthian leather.

Eichord was accorded full VIP status whether he wanted it or not, which automatically made any good copper just a tad suspicious of this big-media mocker, this ink-happy fed from some mystical task force dropping by to snoop around.

He eventually got shoved off onto a liaison type named A.W. “Augie” Stiverson.

“Sorry you got saddled with me, Augie,” Eichord said with a smile.

“It's a dirty job"—Stiverson smiled back—"but...” He left it go unsaid.

Eichord had to spend twice as much time getting duked back in while he went around listening, being a good dude, being Eichord, acting like he was just one more flat-footed copper who didn't think his shit smelled like Chanel.

“Let me know what we can do for you and we'll give it our best shot."

“This one's a bitch kitty, so far,” Eichord said, handing a stack of the police drawings to Stiverson. “Got this dude who looks real good for about five serial homicides back in the 1960s. Spoda, Arthur. It's all on the other sheet. We're talking about a male Cauc maybe forty-one, forty-two years old now. Likely he could have been a resident here for years, possibly. I believe he may have killed again recently, the first kill after twenty years, back on my home turf. Just a hunch from the M.O. Nothing solid. But the more I looked at these old files, he was doing the victims in and around Amarillo, Texas, I think they had him."

“What happened?"

“I never got a real handle on that. I think it may have just been a combination of things. Their so-called eyeball witness fell apart on them. Violated some Texas statute when they put him into a lineup, best I can judge. He was nineteen, this Spoda, and all of that and some sloppy paperwork and he just ended up walking. Like a dude there said to me, You know how it is, it happens."

“Yeah.” Siverson nodded. “I know. Sometimes the scumbags walk. I know how it happens. Can you put something together on this individual if you can find him again?"

“I dunno.” Eichord scratched his head. “Beats me,” he said quietly. “I know the Iceman killings stopped as soon as the suspect became hurt. He apparently was crippled to the point where he was in a wheelchair.” Eichord told him about the mother and the man in Vega, Texas, who had supposedly seen Spoda in Vegas.

“Shit. I think you could send these around to all the big hospitals, clinics, therapy centers, and what not. Real needle in a haystack without a mug shot or prints.” He read the short information sheet Eichord had handed him with the stack of drawings.

“Well, for starters, I'd like all the guys to get one of these. I'll also get them run through all the casinos just on the odd chance it might shake something loose."

“Sure. What else?"

Eichord gave him a couple more requests, including the standard desk-directories-telephone requirements, and Stiverson eventually left him to his own devices while he sat there in busy MLVPD Homicide dialing and smiling, finding out in the course of one afternoon that Las Vegas, Nevada, had about all the health care anybody could handle.

By late afternoon he was getting punchy. The day had not been a total loss, however. He had learned about how the coloration of a victim's fingernails and the consistency of the vomit will help determine if they have ingested a slow-acting, nonvolatile poison. That a shotgun leaves pellets, wadding, markings, ejected shell casings, and that people who do police work send these things to laboratories for analysis. He learned they found a homosexual with over a hundred stabbing wounds in the body, of which a detective observed “Boy! Somebody was sure pissed."

He learned more about the Vegas sports books than he had ever wanted to know, including the line on three important games. He learned that in Vegas they use the transitive verb “shake” the way they use the word “smoke” in Buckhead. That most homicides are solved by witnesses or informants. That most Vegas crimes are solved in the first twenty-four hours or they tend to go unsolved. That a three-day-old killing was “getting there ‘cause this guy in the joint told me this hump he knows said he was gonna shake him.” He learned that a stringer for Channel 11 was a turd. And the guy on the early-morning assignments desk was cool. And that a guy in the News Cruiser eats shit. And that somebady “got their ten-thirty-one stepped on” and all of this was profoundly more interesting than the sheet of doodles in front of Eichord. A list that said: 5 x 39 .6 = 198

Gloria (39) Strangulation

Darleen (37) Strangulation

Ann (38) Bludgeoning/Stabbing

Elnora (41) Stabbing

May (43) Stabbing.

The doodles were average. Nothing great. He was proud of the numbers, though. They were nicely rendered. Why would a nineteen-year-old boy want to “shake” 39.6 year old women? Because he could? Because they were vulnerable? Because they were surrogate mommy targets? Forcing Mom to give him head and then going to work with his hands or his sharpened icepick? I am twisted. So here's some steel, Lucile. NOW you can't see my perversions and abnormalities. My half-inch Vienna sausage of a cock. My twisted soul. Here's not looking at you, kid. Kiss THIS, Sis!

It bored him so badly, this doodle, that he concentrated on the more accessible Homicide work at hand. And by the time he packed it in for his last overnight in Vegas, he knew exactly how the three-county-level special unit worked Homicide calls, suspicious deaths, and officer-related shootings. He knew that the officer, or pair, depending on the beat, calls in the “criminalistic” officers, the HDs and the ID techs. He learned how to write up an incident report, how to get hold of a path, the pathologist, the way photographs are made, the manner in which diagrams are drawn. The place the autopsy is performed. All sorts of useful stuff in case he ever decided to do any Homicide work.

You had to walk right through the casino to get to the elevators. What made him think it was planned that way? He put a ten-dollar bet on ODD and lost. Put a two-dollar bet on 39 and lost. Put two five-dollar chips on ODD and won. Put ten dollars on EVEN and won. He was eight dollars ahead, and he quit. There was a slot machine near the bank of elevators and he fed five dollars in while waiting for his elevator. Still, he was quitting three bucks ahead. Another Vegas winner.

The noise and the smoke and the lights and the sleaze factor were almost overpowering. He couldn't wait to have Las Vegas become a memory. One more piece of business in the morning and he was gone.