Stone Shadow

Dallas

It was another in the world series of bad mornings. Eichord got up with a blazing screaming pulsating killer hangover pounding behind the eyeballs. Forced himself to get through his morning ablutions, put fresh water in the dog's container, which he now kept surreptitiously (by bribing the maids) beside the motel door, and made it to the cop shop downtown in more or less one piece. The traffic seemed particularly vicious this morning, and the mouthwash and toothpaste had done nothing to rid his tongue of the thick, stale, woolen sleeve it was wearing. At 7:50 A.M. he was already thinking about how good the first triple would taste over the rocks.

The headache was reaching nightmare proportions and he popped a couple of Darvon when he finally realized the pills weren't going to get the job done today. The sound of a blaring newscast was more than he could handle. He couldn't find the big bands this morning. All the stations appeared to have been programmed by complete maniacs or the tone-deaf. He finally dial-twisted around and found an oldies station. They seemed to program only songs that were played before the last dance at old-time proms and sock hops, and it was somewhat bizarre driving to work while the station played “Teach Me Tonight,” “I Only Have Eyes for You,” and “Red Sails in the Sunset"—All before eight in the morning. But he left it on and drove, mind disengaged, through musical memory lane. He pulled up at headquarters in the middle of “Blue Velvet,” depressed all the way down to the soles of his flat copper feet.

He went in and had to fight with himself not to try phoning Noel Collier, who still hadn't returned his LAST call, then he finally reached the number in Scottsdale he'd been phoning for two days, not in, secretary, left word, got a cup of hideous coffee-colored semiliquid stuff, and decided to read the paper in atonement for missing the morning news.

A seventy-seven-year-old woman had been crushed to death under the wheels of a bus. A commuter plane in its landing pattern and a private plane in the midst of takeoff smacked into each other over the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. Early estimates said twenty-two dead. A cerebral-palsy victim who was described as “one of the most courageous men imaginable,” who'd established a successful aluminum can-recycling business in spite of severely impaired motor skills, was in his apartment when somebody broke in and attacked him, leaving him badly beaten and traumatized. A nine-year-old girl disappeared off the streets. It was believed that a four-year-old boy had died in a fire because the building's landlord had refused to install smoke alarms. The man who played the Lone Ranger on TV years ago was checking his baggage through a ticket counter at the Houston airport and someone stole his six-guns and silver bullets. It looked like everyone was going to survive the fifty-eighth anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King. A day like all days. The Grave-digger was still out there somewhere, or right under their noses in maximum security lockup ... or C: None of these.

Jack could imagine how good that first one would taste. He knew just one would completely cut through all the fog and wipe that woolen sleeve right off his tongue and totally lose that dull headache, all in the first swallow. How could anything that therapeutic possibly be bad for you? He could just have ONE, he assured what was left of his conscience and common sense. Just one, come back to work, it would all be more better, brudda.

He tried another call. Another nobody home. He'd reached the point that was so familiar and dreaded to Jack, a hollow and unfunny phone paranoia, the end result of too many recorded messages, too long spent on hold, too many rate increases, too many “I'm sorry she's not in"s AFTER the secretary gets your name.

So when his line rang and he depressed the lit trunk line and said, “Eichord,” and the thing went “MMMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRFFFFFFFFFFFF” real loud in his ear ... Jeezus. It was all he could do not to throw the piece of shit through the nearest wall. What a fucked-up week. He hung up the receiver and sat there for nearly a minute looking at the phone. Tasting something awful and sour in his mouth. Staring at his desk. Eventually the extension on his borrowed desk made its looney trilling sound and he snatched it off the cradle and snarled, “Eichord?"

“Long distance calling Jack Eichord"—from Mars it sound like.

“This is he, operator."

“One moment please, for Dr. Geary's office."

Ohhhh, shit. Can't believe it. Finally.

“Thanks,” he said, listening to long-line harmonics, the hammering in his temple having reached disco proportions. He noticed his right eye was trying to close. Just a little tic. Nothing serious.

“Jack?” the familiar voice.

“Hello."

“Jack—Doug Geary."

“Doctor, thanks for getting back to me. I need to pick your brain again.” Geary had helped him on the Demented case years ago. “I was wondering if the Arizona papers have been carrying anything on the Grave-digger stories."

“Yes. I take it you're on the case."

“I'm in Dallas now. Yes."

“The guy, what's his name—your primary suspect—Ukelele Ike?"

Jack laughed. “You're close—Ukie Hackabee."

“Yeah. So what can I tell you? Don't know much, but shoot."

“The subject in question is quite intelligent. But with a record of minor sexual offenses. He abducted a woman here in Dallas and held her captive for several weeks, This was the first time we know of that he raped. Prior to that it was public-nuisance stuff. All during the time he had her he was bragging about all these bodies he'd buried. Convinced her be was a killer. When she got loose she gave us enough information where some of the graves were located and they picked him up. He's open about it. Admits the killings, even give us more graves. Real antisocial type.

“But then he takes it all back. Says he didn't do the killings, he saw them happen in his head. Has this farfetched story about a place where he can go inside his head that's like a concrete tunnel, and a thing he calls a neural pathway where this man hurts him, then he shows him where various corpses are, but he never gets a look at the guy doing the killings, he always stays in the shadows. The suspect has the impression the man is tall, but he claims he knows nothing else about the buried bodies, only their locations."

“My God, that's wild."

“Yeah, I know. He sounds nuttier ‘n a fruitcake. Thing is, he's very smart. Real bright guy. A ne'er-do-well kind of schlub in one sense—had a background of failure in the workplace—an abortive career as a local MC in some of the sleazy strip clubs—a package as a small-time nothing con man.

“First, there's a strong possibility he's trying to build up an image so he can cop to an insanity plea. Second, the obvious possibility that he's crazy. Third-and here's what I want to know, here's where I'm really needing your help—how much of an outside chance is there that he's telling the truth? He goes on about this neural plateau in his head where the killer tortures him a little, shows him the bodies. Sounds on the surface like some whackaroony on a guilt trip the way I'm telling it, but this guy doesn't have a killer's profile at all.

“I think the Grave-digger thing has brought him to the point where he finally got the guts to abduct a woman and rape her. But the rest of it doesn't feel right at all. I don't doubt for a second he was an accomplice, or a hanger-on, had some part in the killings-perhaps in helping to select the victims or whatever. But I can t see this guy getting up for the muscle. Wet work would scare him silly, I'd guess. Part of a team is the way I see him. He's covering for somebody maybe. Someone who's bad enough to have Ukie very scared."

“Hmmm. Interesting possibilities. First—and I know you already know this but just to run over the old basics, don't ever disregard anything when it comes to the cry for-help department."

“Right,” Jack said.

“We've talked a lot about that, I know. But in the past we've both seen an awful lot of seemingly bizarre behavior that boiled down to being nothing more than an individual going down for the third time and crying out to the authorities as a father figure, ‘Help me.’ The classic cry, ‘Stop me before I kill again'. But some of the ways they do that don't look anything like a cry for help, they look like anything but."

“I know. And Ukie is very frightened. But having recanted—"

“Also, Jack, someone disturbed enough to be part of mass murder, however passive the role, out of sheer hatred or mental imbalance or whatever, let's say, but bright enough and imaginative enough to have created a make-believe world where someone shows them pictures of graves inside a concrete tunnel—that is going to be one complex individual. He will probably sense he is deeply disturbed if his dementia allows rational introspection. Thus you have the cry."

“But what if it's for real?"

“Is your sense of Ukie that he's being influenced or manipulated by an accomplice? How do you clock him? And what does the testing show? Pollies and all."

“Polygraphs haven't shown diddly. Just too conflicting and inconclusive. I think my sense of it is that not only is Ukie capable of BEING influenced, I think somebody has been terrorizing him. It's hard for me to buy any part of the thought-manipulation in a brain pathway, but I don't think he's faking the scared part. He may even believe all this stuff—who knows? Another thing I wonder. Could he have killed all these people, through anger or whatever, then blocked it all out, and is using this as the way of taking it all back inside his head?"

“Mmm. I suppose it would be remotely possible, but if he is an extremely tormented individual who finally went all the way ‘round the bend and began murdering random victims, it's rather unlikely when he abducted a woman and raped her that he'd let her live for days, much less weeks. That kind of a criminal psychotic would be much more likely to rape and kill her at the moment of ejaculation or soon after. Or, like a friend of ours from the past, kill the girl and THEN rape her. You're dealing with massive amounts of rage and hostility."

“What's your feeling about the theoretical possibility of a neural pathway, and the likelihood that a stronger, dominant person could somehow cause you to think or visualize things on that level whenever they wanted?"

“You mean by hypnosis or sheer will or whatever?"

“Right.” Eichord could hear the doctor let out a deep breath as he framed his reply.

“Wish I could recall those findings on telepathic manipulation. Years ago some institution—Duke University perhaps, I just don't remember-Aid a major study. Check the psych abstracts."

“Somebody else told me to do that. What are they exactly?"

“Okay. You're in Dallas, right?"

“Right."

“Great—” And he began telling him where he could go and how to use the psychiatric abstracts, and how to look up the subject matter and the date, and as he was explaining how to use the catalogued data Eichord said, “You mean just look up the general heading first, like ‘TWINS,’ and then—” “Whoa. Shit, Jack. Did I read somewhere the suspect had a twin sibling?"

“Yeah. Twin brother."

“Whooooooaaaaaabhhhhh. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Whoa, horse."

“Huh?"

“You didn't say anything about a twin. Ukie is a twin!"

“Right. Yeah. Sorry. I just hadn't got around to it yet."

“Oh, well, WELL now. That could change everything. Let me think now, just a second.” He paused and Eichord said before he forgot to ask, “Let me say one thing while you're thinking. Would you be so kind as to let me ship these surveillance tapes to you? I know it's one hell of an imposition, but would you have time to take a look at them? I'd just send one or two to give you a feel of the man. I'd be so grateful if you would have time to—"

“Send ‘em soon as you can. Glad to do it. Now listen. You're talking about identical twins?"

“Yep. I met the brother. Ukie in appearance. Deeper voice or more mellow in his speaking voice. Dresses better. Seems mannerly. Speaks in a very soft-spoken, not exactly deferential way but just a very pleasant way. Nice dude, Seems awfully, genuinely personable. Totally unlike Ukie or at least that's what you get right under the facade. Same exterior, totally different interior is the impression. Clean background. Ultra-successful businessman in Houston. Doesn't seem bitter in any way toward his brother. Acts convinced that Ukie is innocent."

“The twin thing..."

“Yeah?"

“That changes everything, though, Jack. It adds another dimension. If our Ukie is a same-twin you've immediately got a whole new set of possibilities, see? And they're diametrically divergent. You know the fantasy of having a twin is that it's another you but it doesn't work that way. You think you're going to have a best friend who looks like and thinks just the way you do. It's like a kid having a pet but better because it talks. But the twinning reality is often quite different. Largely negative relationships can develop. One can be super-critical or jealous of the other, If Ukie was hostile toward his twin, and bright, this could be an extremely intricate piece of invention to put a frame around his brother's successful neck, right? Conversely his brother-okay, this gets very iffy—but suppose Ukie's twin could manipulate him in some way, the way the frame might work in reverse. Both theoreticals are too far out for me, I'm just shooting from the hip. But the twin thing. Ahhhh, now that's a rich area."

Eichord made a pained noise like a “hmmmmmmm” and the man said, “Jack, I think you might want to look closely at the twin brother's relationship to our suspect."

“Oh, Doctor, I don't really feel like there could be much there. I'm checking it out but aside from a bit of resentment on Ukie's part for what he imagines as disloyalty—you'll see that in the interrogations I'll send you—I don't think there's too much happening there. Joseph Hackabee, the twin brother, he came in on his own when he saw the story in the newspapers in Houston. I doubt if we'd ever found out about him or reached for him had he not shown up wanting to help his brother. They had falling-out several years ago and hadn't kept in touch over this last four or five years ... Eichord trailed off.

“Twins is something, though, Jack. There's a wealth of potential for a uniquely complex relationship and this series of crimes—wow. I mean, do you still use the rule of thumb that anything beyond four killings qualifies?"

“Yes. That's pretty much the official line. Once the tally goes past four it's a serial-murder case and I get notified. Of course you can have ten or twenty deaths in an isolated shooting and not have a serial killer. I get tapped when there are more than four different homicides within a geographic area or a proximate occurrence pattern timewise. Unofficially the definition is simpler. If it makes headlines."

“If it's serial murder when it's four, what is it when it's—"

“A hundred and four?"

“Yeah.” He laughed without humor.

“It's bloody mass murder is what it is. And we're looking for light at the end of the tunnel."

“I hear that. What you need to do is contact Randy Vincent. He's at CMH Sacramento. Let me give you his number. Find my Rolodex here in all these papers—"

“Where is he? What were those letters?"

“CMH, California Mental Hospital. Here it is. Nine-one-six ... three-six-six—Wait. No. This is the one on Stockton. No. Here's the number you want. The administrative offices. Call this number and ask for Doctor Vincent.” He gave him the number. “He worked in the federal system. He was the one they called in when they were testing Gacey at the mental-health facility in Illinois. He goes around to all the lockups where they have the max-security psychos. He's got a deep background in sexually disturbed psychopathia and he's going to know everything there is to know on the phenomenon of twinning That's his primary area of expertise. Tell him we talked. He's a good guy. He'll be perfect to give you some good info on the twins thing, not to mention the criminal psych angle. Okay?"

“I really appreciate it, again."

“Shoot me those tapes too, and I'll get right back to you."

Jack thanked him and hung up, called and requested dubs of four of the surveillance videos, and called the hospital administration out in California.

“Is Doctor Vincent there?"

“Doctor Vincent? Randy Vincent?"

“Randy? We have a Vincent Johnson in Personnel."

“Don't you have a physician there named Dr. Randy Vincent?” A pause and then.

“Hold on, please.” Probably somebody who just started working there. A long ... deadly ... pause.

Minutes slowly ebb and flow. A syrupy tide measured by seconds that echo the heartbeat hammer of a headache briefly dormant, now thrumming below the surface as the seconds drag by on hold, receiver changed to the other ear.

The.... (tick).... long ... (throb).... deadly.... (tick).... pregnant.... (throb).... pause. Christ! He looks up at the clock and after four minutes he clicks the line. Gets a dial tone. Dials the number again. Same woman's voice.

“Yes"—an edge of steel hardens his voice—"this is the same long-distance party that was waiting on hold for Randy Vincent. This call is police business and I was disconnected while I was on hold.” He lies.

“One moment, ple-uhz, sorry we disconnected you.” Click. (Tick) ... (throb).... (tick).... (throb).

“Personnel?"

“Yes."

Good Christ above. “My name is Eichord, I'm with the Major Crimes Task Force and we're involved in an investigation of a Murder case.” Really laying it on. “It is vitally important that I reach Doctor Randy Vincent."

“One moment please.” (throb).... And, mercifully, a click and a woman's voice says, “Hi. Are you trying to reach Doctor Vincent?"

“Yes, I am. Is he there?"

“No. He hasn't been here for over a year. I'm not sure where he can be reached. Would you want me to check to see if we have forwarding information on him?"

“Yes, please. But wouldn't someone there know where he is? I mean, he's a nationally known physician.” Eichord was beyond any compunction. Just get it done somehow.

“It's the fact we're so big. This is a very large facility and so many people are new here. I remembered the name from an old personnel roster. If you'll hang on for half a minute I can check."

“Please. It's quite important.” Half a minute, he thought as the phone banged in his ear. At least she gave him an ETA. That was golden as far as he was concerned.

“Hello."

“Yes,” he said, holding his breath.

“I can't find any forwarding address.” (Siiiiiiiiiggghhhhh.) “But I've got a phone number. Would that help?"

He took the number and hung up, dialing with fingers mentally crossed.

“Hello,” a woman's voice on the seventh ring, a slightly foreign-sounding accent he couldn't place.

“I trying to reach Doctor Vincent. This is long distance.

“I'm berry chorry, he not here."

“May I ask with whom I am speaking?"

“Eh?"

“Who are you, please?"

“Dis is de maid. You call later, okay?"

“No, wait, DON'T HANG UP YET,” he yelled before he could catch himself. “Listen. This is very urgent. WHERE ... IS ... THE ... DOCTOR? WHAT HOSPITAL IS HE AT?"’ Throb.

“I teek he at the BA."

The VA hospital. Ah-ha. “What city is this I'm calling?"

“Eh?"

“This is long distance. I called area code six—” Click. “Oh, don't hang up, goddammit,” he swore at a dead phone. There was a long period of dialing, the woman again, United Nations-style translation ... tick ... throb ... Finally he had the city. Bonita, California. He dialed directory assistance. Got the offices of the VA hospital.

“Hello—Veteran's Administration.” They'd given him the wrong number. Back through the operators, obbing, ticking, the romance and excitement of policework, throb, tick, another switchboard, a VA hospital in California and a woman telling him, “No, I'm sorry, there's no Doctor Randy Vincent here to the best of my knowledge. Wait a second. Just, uh, hold on a second,” she promised him one second and she kept it quick, clicking back on crisply, saying, “Here's someone who can help you. I'm connecting you."

“Thanks.” THROB....

“Yes?"

“I'm trying to find a doctor named Randy Vincent. An idea where I can lo—?"

“Oh!” The woman laughed into the phone. “He has his own consultancy now, I believe. I think you can reach him this week at—you want to write this number down?"

“Yes, go ahead please."

“Country Code Forty-one. City Code Twenty-one.” She gave him a long and strange-sounding number which included an extension.

“Do you happen to know what this is?"

“I believe it's a clinic."

“No. I mean what country this is, what city?"

“That's Lausanne, Switzerland."

Fucking wonderful. He dialed direct. At least he wouldn't have it on his motel bill and have to use one of those cards he was always misplacing. The line rang fifteen times. He had the operator place it again.

“What time is it there, miss?” It finally occurred to him that it was after office hours.

“It is seven-forty-six there, now."

“Thanks. Cancel please. I'll replace the call tomorrow."

T H R O B.... T I C K. Lunchtime: 12:46. He'd have a little lunch and be all n’ lit in no time. This afternoon, one more call—Donna Scannapieco. Line her up for the house. He wasn't particularly looking forward to having to drag her through the experience but you never knew what it might shake loose from the trees.

Come back. Make one more call. Shuffle a few papers around. Go back to the motel and play with his mangy mutt. Or something.