Iceman

North Buckhead

Around 1400 he confirmed that he was going to be late and made certain Donna had arranged to take the boy to a girlfriend's house, where she planned to have their evening meal. By 1430 he was in the Buckhead Public Library making a nuisance of himself on the third floor, then vanishing into the bowels of the reference room on the second floor, where he reached over behind a spine-worn Psycopathia Sexualis feeling in between the solid rows of old books on the top shelf. The library books he'd dropped were still there. He pulled them out.

These were the books that had been used as cross references in the report he'd had Doc Tulare lash together for him, but it was the sort of report a layman could research if he wanted to spend three or four hours in the dusty bookshelves. All the titles were appropriately dog-eared and he had a nice checkable bibliography. Unlike prints, which generally paid off only in the movies, the first step was still Alibi Ike. It helped if in backtracking your trail the other guy found you were otherwise occupied at the time of a crime, especially if you could arrange it so he thought it was HIS idea.

The beautiful thing about the multilayered library was all the nooks, crannies, spiraling stairs, alcoves, hidden recesses where you could sit quietly at an out-of-the-way desk. Eichord still loved the library just as he had as a kid. But he needed it another way this one time, and he had the books in his jacket and was out through the basement without being seen and on his way to Schumway's house.

By 1500 a rather ordinary-looking middle-aged man in dark, thrift-shop coveralls and workman's cap, carrying something, was climbing the hill in back of Alan Schumway's. He looked like a repairman of some kind with his toolbox, an ordinary-people guy walking down the street. Unexceptional.

It was the end of the line, at last. Had to be. And Eichord hoped it would be resolved now. Too many things could collapse for him to try to wrap this up with good, solid police work. Too many lives hung in the balance to play with it. The system could no longer be trusted, in this instance. A killer had proved himself, or rather they had proven THEMselves, to be too clever. Then there was the matter of the typewriter with the Hand of Christ. Pure Jell-O. The circuit attorney wouldn't even go through the motions. Lishness, for crissakes, he'd have a fucking FIELD DAY if this went in front of a jury.

These were the thoughts in his meat locker as he penetrated the residence yet a final time. (surreptitious entry—possible occupancy by armed suspect #11—quantico training program for major crimes task force agents.)

B & E dialogue: “What are you in?"

A: “Tool and die."

Q: “Oh, well, we all gotta go sometime."

(surreptitious entry—countersurveillance checklist) pins, hair, matchsticks, tape, doorwedges, sensors, sound wave generators, autographed picture of Sean Connery. Inside now and listening to the strange and quiet home again. There's no place like home. GOT to get my own key—eh?—he thinks, light in heart and pure in spirit.

1600. 1630. 1655. 1700. Will it be a big production? Scumwad will come in and Eichord will see him get up out of the wheelchair and cross the foyer to the elevator. Freeze, he imagines he'll say. Up with your hands, mother sticker, this is a fuck-up. 1705. 1710. Wet palms now. Upstairs and in the first bedroom to the left of the office with the hallway a clear shot in the reflection of a picture frame. He can move back an inch or two and he's out of the picture both ways. Waiting. 1711. 171130 171135 171136, when you start clockwatching you take some deep breaths and clear your mind. Change positions. Sit if you're standing. Stand if you're sitting. Don't get spooked. There's nothing quite like the sounds of a darkening house as you wait hidden in the gathering shadows. The house comes alive in a way you would never dream and you can begin to believe in all kinds of things like ghosts and poltergeists and spirits as the house begins to breathe around you. She takes on sex, like an old ship will, and she sighs, moans, stretches, cries out, creaking and coughing and snarling with all manner of noises real and imagined. Motors hum and joists contract with the pitch and yaw of her decks. She is coming alive in the darkness, and your skin chills as she whispers her warning.

1738 vehicle noise, exterior, wait, then sounds on eggshell gravel rolling crunching daddy coming home wheelchair on the ramp, key noises at door and a last deep, shaky breath and the palms are dry now like the throat and someone is in down there and then the elevator purrs as he comes for you now. The doors are very quiet, like the stroking of a blade against oiled whetstone only a light vip-vip you have to listen for, feather edge steel in warm oil noise, and then nothing. Long pause. No—nothing—dead S I L E N C E—Eichord is frozen in position. Wanting to tilt forward another two inches to see in the frame reflection and finally paper sounds the son of a gun was reading his mail and he loudly rolls by in the chair. He is not walking. He is N O T repeat NOT AMBULATORY he is a cripple in a wheelchair the man is in a fucking chair and then he speaks and his voice in the dead quiet house where Nicki and Alan lived is louder than a shotgun.

“Companeeeeeeeee. Oh, lucky me. It's Dickless Tracy again."

Eichord says nothing. Motionless.

“Come on, man. You are fucking PATHETIC! I mean, is this how you shot Nicki, you came in and waited for her to come back from getting groceries. You cocksucker."

“Talking to me?” Eichord said as he watched the man seated in the chair. He was not holding a weapon.

“Well, eat my grits and get the shits if it ain't my fav-o-rite flatfoot. Sher-luck Homo, of the Major Task Force."

“That's me. Just out of professional curiosity—how-djew make me?"

“Jeezus, fucking pathetic.” He was already rolling down the hall. “Come on, you might as well come in and have a buzz or whatever. Take the load off your brain. You do drink, don't you? I hear you almost qualify for silent-partner status down there at Jack Daniel's distillery—izzat true? Like the old demon rum, do you, Jackson?"

“I've tossed back some."

“Uh huh."

“So how did you know? I thought the door looked clean."

“It's that pathetic stuff you splash all over yourself, Dickless. What is that crap—Three Nights in a Garbage Can? WHEW! I just about died of cologne poisoning when I walked in the door.” He laughed loudly.

“I'm not wearing any cologne, Alan. Or should I say Arthur?"

“Hey, booby, you can say Myron Lipshitz if it'll get you off."

“You think you smell cologne on me? I'm serious."

“I'm Roebuck, how do you do?” He reached for a bottle and Eichord tensed a little. “I went to perfume U when I was in Paris. The Sorbonne it ain't, but you learn to identify about five hundred different fragrances by memorized olfactory response. Everything from essence of cat shit to the most expensive scents on earth. Eau d'Eichord is down there at the low end of the odor spectrum, Dickless."

“Is that Paris, TEXAS, you're talking about? Did you kill some woman there, too?"

“Killing women is what you're hung up on, Dickie bird. You murdered my lady, you slimy nothing no-dick shit-for-brains cop."

“Your LADY?” Eichord allowed himself a slight smile, keeping his voice as soft as he could. “You mean Nicki? I don't know anything about her suicide, except—wouldn't you agree he's better-off? Oh, sorry. I mean, I don't know anything about HIS suicide. Wouldn't you agree IT'S better off."

“Good try, asshole. You'd like to get me provoked. You want to blow me away too—right? No witnesses. Do you have MY suicide note all typed?"

“Let's see if I have all this right before I take you in, Arthur. You repeatedly rape your stepsister in the foster home. The rapes and abuse leave her insane.

“You're killing surrogate mommies. I guess you and your mommy have something going. But she catches you with Sis and beats you so badly you end up a cripple—in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. We cut to Nevada. You make enough money gambling to start your own business. You and your, uh, boyfriend move to Buckhead. You're in therapy. Your doctor convinces you that you suffered from conversion hysteria all these years—the only thing that kept you in this chair for twenty years is your own sick mind. You and your LADY start killing again. Eh?"

“What bullshit.” He wheels around as if Eichord has ceased to exist in the room.

“You would probably have been able to get away with it for a long time if it hadn't been for the degree of mental illness you suffer from. One of the side effects of your therapy is that you sometimes get a sense of total invincibility. Is that medication or do you generate it in your system? Oh, well, no matter. So you got reckless. Started taking down women you knew, victims who knew YOU. Heather Lennon? Was she the first—so many I forget offhand. Then your big mistake. You got REAL sloppy with Diane Taluvera. You and your lady did."

Schumway snorted, turning a page of the newspaper be was glancing at.

“We got your mail drop, you know?” Eichord started ad-libbing. “Then we put you all together at the bank. You three, I should say. Later we got real lucky with an eyewitness. Then we got a witness to the typing scam on the Hand of Christ letter. The guy at X-L remembers you."

“Wow! REALLY?” Schumway laughed wildly. “You're too fucking much, man. That's just frightening."

“How about the DNA? You didn't count on that one, huh? We got a positive trace on your sperm. Nailed you for two of the killings on that alone."

“SPERM!” Schumway laughed. “I love it! Oh, stop."

“I'm taking you in, Arthur. It's all over."

“Jezus. Do you know what my lawyer will do to this crap in a court of law? He'll eat your fucking LUNCH, Dickless. You and I both know you is tryin’ to pull ole Alan's pud and guess what?” Over his shoulder. “It SUCKS."

“Speaking of your lawyer. You know something I always wanted to ask you. Out on the golf course that time. How did you get out of there? In a wheelchair. Through all that mud. Hmm?"

“Better still, I didn't leave when you did, asshole, I finished up three.” He bragged. “They're STILL trying to fix that green."

“Yeah?"

“You have to WANT it real bad. Coach. What can I tell you?"

“I still don't see how—"

“There's a fucking lot you people don't see.” Schumway wheeled halfway around. “Thirty-eight million goddamn people in chairs and we can't get in the goddamn door of the fucking Buckhead post office. You wonder how I can play golf from a wheelchair, in the mud yet? Because I'm nothing but a poor CRIPPLE. You sell us short."

“I wasn't being patronizing. I just wondered how you could keep from getting stuck."

“Shucks, Matthew.” Suddenly the exact voice of Dennis Weaver. “You kin jess plain charm the maggots offen a daid BUFFALO when youuns wants to, caincha?” Schumway wheeled over and opened the door that overlooked his garden. “Do you know why there are no thirteenth floors in hotels?"

“Superstition, I suppose."

“Wrong, Dickie-doo-doo. There ARE thirteenth floors in hotels, ya fucking dummy. They're just CALLED the fourteenth floors.” Chester of Gunsmoke again: “If they wuzn't no thirteenth floors, them fuckin’ buildin's would jess cave rat in, now, wouldn't they, Mister Dillon?” The front of the house and the back both jutted like the exaggerated profile of a concrete ocean liner. There were no balcony railings or protective barriers to spoil the lines. But Schumway rolled out on the concrete expanse like it was a foot off the ground. Eichord didn't even want to walk out there, much less roll out in a wheelchair.

“You know how I built this house?” Eichord followed him out, thinking this wasn't the scene I was going to play, but if it's ever going to work it'll work here.

“Nope."

“The same way I beat my lawyer out of three hundred dollars on the third hole that day. The same way I wheeled out of the mud. The same way I sold more cars than any other Buckhead County Buick dealer last year. The same way I do whatever I want to do.” He spun around in the chair again, facing Eichord.

“You stab women with an icepick because you're very sick, Arthur. You're twisted inside. You're afraid they can see inside you. See that evil soul of yours. The evil that others put there when you were a little boy. You know it doesn't matter about the nice-looking outside. You're rotten inside. You're a nice red apple with a worm in the center."

“Oh, Christ in heaven.” He put a hand over his stomach like he was in terrible pain. “Don't. Don't make me laugh anymore, man, I really can't stand it.” He giggled. “With a WORM in the center.” He laughed again and Eichord had to smile. “You're fucking unreal. Where do you GET your material?"

“I know you must hurt inside, Arthur,” still smiling. “But I can't let you hurt any more innocent women.” Eichord turned with his back to him for an instant and took something from his jacket, turning back quickly as Schumway said, “You're a pissant joke, cop. The world is made up of two kinds of people. You've seen the signs. Either lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way."

Eichord saw how muscular the man was and he was controlled. Unafraid. Jack felt the weight of the Smith & Wesson in the oiled leather rig and automatically free-associated Smith & Wesson Oil in his mind. He felt perspiration on him under his clothing. Somebody had turned the heat up in the meat locker.

Schumway was about to make a move, he sensed. Tensing his hand, wondering if the man would spring out at him when he saw the thing behind Eichord's legs. Would he come out at him fast and hard? And he was notoriously bad with a piece. The slowest draw in the West. Wet-palmed. But he made himself move near, closer to Schumway. He dried his palm against his trouser leg, watching the man's muscles tense up. Eichord inching to the right, now, moving off the straight line he had drawn inside his head.

“Remember the movie Knock on any Door,” Schumway said, “it was ‘live fast, and die young?’ Well, my motto is. Party till you puke, take whatever you want, and never die. NEVER FUCKIN’ DIE.” He gritted his white teeth and Jack knew it would be now and he said look and Schumway looked—

“YOU DUMB CRAZY STUPID BASTARD!” The phallic black object sat perched very close to the edge.

“That's the original, by the way. A good, stiff wind will take it right on down. I'm going to destroy them all if I don't have your signed confession. Even if your lawyer beats the charges, you won't have your pretty babies anymore, eh?"

Schumway had to fight not to spring out of the chair and Eichord saw him put weight on his legs for that first instant before he could catch himself and just as he started rolling to save that precious black beauty Eichord felt a cold, hard pain in his chest as he forced himself to step forward shoving against the top of a wheel with his foot, all of his weight behind the leg, and Arthur Spoda was fast, springing out of the chair but too late because everything was in the air, Spoda and the wheelchair and the unbreakable casting of the deco treasure, falling through space and in a quarter-second the chair was going over and half a beat later it was all over and the hard concrete below was rushing up to meet Spoda and trapping the scream in his throat as unyielding concrete broke his fall and his neck.

Jack turned and went back in, heading downstairs to remove the copy of the black Futura from the scene of the accident. Again, there was neither guilt nor sense of relief. No tragic loss, certainly. Just nothing.

Nothing even to the extent that as he tied loose ends, tidying up doing the things that had to be done at the scene of this crime, he could feel a little hollow laugh building in there. Dark humor is, after all, the refuge of people in Homicide. You betchum.