Iceman

Buckhead Station

Eichord was reading one thing, hearing another, thinking about yet another. No. That's not quite right. He was hearing one thing, reading another thing, and thinking about two different things—two things, that is to say, that were different than the things he was hearing and more or less reading.

“In circuit court,” he heard Marv Peletier say. “Yeah. He's a complete and total anus.” As he heard the word “anus,” he READ the word “Venus.” Weird.

“VENUS WITH THE NAKED EYE,” he read. “According to the United States Naval Observatory, Buckhead residents will see the planet Venus appear to kiss the earth's moon today, in a spectacular astronomical show that should take place shortly before sunset.” It was the third or fourth time he had read the sentence.

“Yeah. He gave him an affidavit for a wiretap—"

“With a good pair of binoculars, the planet that appears as a mere white speck to the naked eye will take on a crescent shape.” He thought about the boy. Then about a homicide. And he read “expansion of the nascent cosmos” and realized he had no idea what the hell he was reading and closed the paper.

Dana lumbered by. “Drunk again,” the fat detective mumbled.

“You know it."

“Sit there like that staring off into space or jacking off into space nobody will know it's Fill-’ em-up Marlowe, Supercop."

“Speaking of jacking off into space, did you know that the surface temperature on Venus is 830 degrees Fahrenheit?"

“Shit. That ain't nothin',” Tuny said, sorting through a pile of papers strewn across the slum area he called a desk, but his mind wandered before he could finish whatever Danaism he'd been about to impart.

It had been several days since Eichord had seen the old crime file on the Iceman Murders and reached out for everything MacTuff had. The task force was a high-tech miracle worker, but as the saying went, it couldn't take shit and give you apple sauce.

MCTF was a storehouse, a main-frame computer center, a decoder, a think tank, a search-and-transfer giant linked on-line to your data base. And it could make a machine, a snitch package, and that made it a copper's dream. But Eichord, tapped into all the stored data on the planet, didn't have J. Walter Diddley Zip.

The Iceman had been partial to women of a type: average in appearance. Mid-to-low-income demographics common to five dead women killed over a period of seven months, back in the 1960s. Mean age: 39.6, the five of them ranging from 36 to 43. One with money, but all of them living what might be described as a downscale middle-income life-style. Average middle-aged, middle-income, mid-Americans shaded to the low-rent side. Zero commonalities besides that and the age/wage demographics. The unsolved killings had occurred within a fifty-mile radius of Amarillo, Texas.

A teenage suspect had been identified in the ancient lineup and then the eyewitness had caved in on them. Turned out to be an airhead and the kid, a nineteen-year-old white boy, had walked. Eichord had poured over the old files and the related printout. Reading and sifting through the old homicides. Read a rocket from a dude in Amarillo Sex Crimes. Done a good bit of thinking about a thrill killer who liked to have middle-aged women give him head and then he'd take them down permanently.

Two strangulations, and then he'd found an icepick somewhere and used that on the other three. Quite a thumbprint, what they called a “try-and-catch-me” M.O. An icepick shoved into the victim's ear at the moment of discharge. His steel ejaculate. So the M.O. didn't fit Tina Hoyt.

Tina Hoyt was younger. Prettier. Upscale. But Eichord never threw any babies out with the bath-water. Could it be that some nutbasket found an old newspaper account of the killings, or an old detective magazine, or saw a TV documentary, and decided to do a copy-cat kill twenty years after the fact? Or was a serial killer alive and well and living in Buckhead? And if so, why stop for twenty years?

He reached out for all the recent parolees, all the cons released in recent months, anybody who'd been doing a long bit in the system, then went through the mental-health facilities and similar institutions. Who was suddenly back out after two decades? Cross-referencing with Amarillo arrest records and with other MCTF subscribers, he compiled a list of institutionalized individuals who'd been put away in the same time frame.

Something nudged him and he realized the night guys had been on duty for half an hour. He dialed his house and Donna answered.

“It's me."

“Hi."

“Just wanted to let you know I'm runnin’ a tad late."

“Hey. Guess what?"

“What?"

“Guess what our son just did today?"

“No telling."

“He said your name."

“What?"

“He said DADDY."

“Aw. Come on."

“I promise.” She was excited. “Clear as a BELL. He was sitting on the floor of the living room with Blackie, and he said DADDY just as clear. I almost fell over."

“You're sure about that.” He had a smile on his face. “Maybe he said Blackie, and it sounded like Daddy.” Blackie was what they were calling the stray mongrel.

“Jonathan,” her voice was suddenly hollow and off-mike, away from the phone mouthpiece, “come here to Mommy, honey. Come here. Listen sweetcheeks. Guess who's on the telephone. Come over here. That's a fine boy. Listen. Put this—here. Say DADDY. Can you say it for me. Say DAH-DEE."

“Garbage,” it sounded like.

“What?” he said, his ear pressing hard against the phone.

“Gargah."

“See! SEE!” Donna was ecstatic. “Daddy—his first two-syllable word."

“God! Amazing. The kid's talking at two! Say it again, son. Say daddy. Daaaaaaah-deeeee."

“Gaah."

“Wow! The kid talks!"

“It sounded just like Daddy a while ago.” Donna was laughing.

“It talks."

“Yeah, it talks. It likes Daddy. He said it about four hundred times. Say, Good-bye, Daddy.” She made a noise with the phone. But no more gargah noises.

“Oh, well. He has a few years to practice."

“Still. It's great. I can't wait to get home."

She could read the joy and humor and excitement in his voice, and they both whispered a couple of quick love-yous and hung up.

He couldn't wait to get home to his family. Eichord drove all the way with a fatuous smile plastered to his face, already thinking about teaching the kid how to pitch a slider. What a guy. Things were going to work out.

Donna still did it to him the same as she always had. He thought about how lucky he was to come home to her, and the thought warmed him. He remembered the way she'd looked that morning and he wondered if she'd still have on that thin, summery dress she'd had on when he'd left for work. He could never look at her in it without thinking of the two people under the marquee of Creature from the Black Lagoon. The scene where the blonde in the white dress stands over the air blowing up from below the grate and she says with that hot, red, kissably voluptuous Marilyn mouth of hers, “Isn't it delicious?"