Iceman

Buckhead Station

Eichord's round-the-clock on Schumway had been smothered in the crush of the numbers—man-hours, pounds of computer printout, phone logs, faxes, real time, cop time, time since the last Iceman murder. Also, the joker had a way of getting out of Schumway Buick without being seen. Closed maintenance bays, a constant flow of traffic onto the big lot, two large entrance/exit ramps on either side of the vast Parts Department, which ran the full length of the dealership, which was housed on four and a half acres of Buckhead business district.

He had access to too many cars, trucks, and rvs, not to mention the possibility of disguises, and ruses no more complex than lying down in the back of somebody else's car when they left. He would do that for spite first time he spotted police watchers. They were his employees, too, and the likelihood of complete cooperation, considering the weight of a paycheck in the balance, was less than slim. Schumway was now in the habit of routinely disappearing two or three times a week, sometime between the early afternoon and closing. So, by the end of the fourth week when nobody else had turned up dead or missing, spoda-schumway was just a grimy box full of paper in the still-open investigation on which Jack Eichord spent his working days.

When he got the telephone call that morning, he'd been across the street. He still felt numbness in his left arm and shoulder from what he believed was something that had been sent down the phone cord to get him. A guy on the duty desk in Mt. Olive on the other end, pouring poisons into the phone, the stuff burning down the line somehow, pouring through AT&T and working its way into his fingertips, the hand touching the phone, a foul, smoking thing that shot up his hand and arm and into his shoulder like a hundred icepicks.

“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.