Iceman

Buckhead Station

The Major Crimes Task Force normally reached out for Eichord only when there were four or more related murders, their yardstick for serial killings, or when the attendant publicity on a homicide reached a certain noisy level. In another city the Hoyt murder might not have reached Jack's desk, but here on his home turf, Buckhead Station, it was a major homicide case, and he was asked to focus all his energies to solving it.

“Operator,” he said, “I'm on long-distance calling for Doug Geary, please.” A woman's voice, presumably the local operator's, had suddenly asked if anyone was waiting on this line. Someone was.

“One moment.” The long lines to Arizona buzzed, hard plastic nestled against Eichord's left ear.

“Dr. Geary's office."

“Yes. This is Jack Eichord calling long-distance for Doctor Geary, please."

There was another wait.

“Jack?” the doctor's voice crackled down the line.

“Doc?"

“Can this be the legendary Jack Eichord?” The man's high, squeaky voice made Jack smile. He considered Doug Geary a good friend.

“'Fraid so, old pal. Me again.” He laughed into the phone. “I didn't know if you'd remember me after all this time."

“Sure. How are ya? What's up?"

“Fine. Doug, I'm on a case, of course. In Buckhead. But it goes back a number of years to a series of killings that took place in Texas.” Jack told the doctor about the homicides from the crime reports he'd obtained after his reporter friend had sent him the old news clippings. Between MCTF and Amarillo he'd amassed quite a file. “They were called the Iceman Murders by media. Do you recall ever hearing about them?"

“Ummm.” The doctor thought for a moment. “Nope. I don't remember hearing about them."

“These are homicides from roughly twenty years ago. But I think the recent killing here in Buckhead is the same M.O. I just need a few minutes to get some basics from you. Do you have the time?"

“I'll make time, Jack. Sure. Go ahead."

“Just the basic stuff. I have so much trouble retaining the psych stuff. Okay. I'm trying to get some background that will help me understand what I'm dealing with.” And he began telling him what little he knew about the Tina Hoyt killing. The oral penetration. Semen trace in the decedent's mouth. The icepicklike weapon—how it had been used. The medical examiner's hypotheses.

“Go over those penetrations again, Jack,” the doctor said. “The old homicides. You said strangulations and then the icepick killings?"

“Right."

“Precisely where were the entrance wounds made? You said something about the one being stabbed in the eye?"

“Yeah. Right. One in the temple. One in the ear. One in the eye."

“Have you considered that maybe this perpetrator has bad aim. What if he had been aiming to get the eyes each time, and the victims move or his aim is bad? You see, when you talk about an icepick into the eyeball, you're painting the classic M.O. of somebody who has low self-esteem—such as a badly disfigured person. Somebody who sees himself as ugly to women for whatever reason."

Dr. Geary began speaking very rapidly without seeming to choose his words. “The personality distortions that all of us have inside are potential explosions and the stress of daily life is the catalyst. Three types of unacceptable social behavior can take place as a result of these explosions: happenstance misbehavior, fleeting or chronic. Let's say you act from the stress of severe economic pressures—what we might categorize as a normal reaction. Or from accidental happenings that place you under unusual momentary stress. These types of reactions differ from the reaction of the chronic misbehaver. This category includes the so-called hair-trigger temper, the individual who has no feeling of belonging to the society with which he must compete, a society that frightens him."

“Why does such a chronic misbehaver kill? Because he's afraid of those around him and wants to get rid of them?"

“No. It's more complex than that. There are all types of chronic offenders whose distorted personalities lead them to kill, as you're well aware. Hysteroids and epileptoids and schizoids who may kill out of hostility, or fear, or frustration, or disorientation. But the kind of chronic killer you have to deal with as a serial murderer is making statements. He's saying to that frightening society, You don't scare me; I scare YOU. I am more frightening than you are. This is the extreme of disturbed behavior, and obviously that sort of killer can think he has a million different reasons for that action."

“Can you draw any kind of a general profile of him with respect to the rest of his personality?"

“It's too general a category of disturbance. For instance, that same guy who kills in that reaction mode may only be galvanized to murder when a given stress factor is present and motivates him to reach such a state of emotional duress and psyche distortion. He might, in a very general sense, be the sort of character who normally—at least for him—gets through life by ‘getting over’ on his fellow man. Stealing from him, perhaps by some clever and sophisticated scheming that is acting as his substitutive ego-satisfier. Again, another statement: I am more clever than you, so I do not have to compete within the ordinary social structure."

“Is this guy, this general-profile fellow, is he going to tend to be very smart or very stupid?"

“No way to say. He could be a genius, although that would be rare indeed. He could certainly be cunning. He could have extremely developed superficial social skills—be an actor, in other words. Or be in between, somebody whose situational awareness is sufficiently acute that they appear normal. They get by and do not appear to become unduly imbalanced by the stress triggers. Or at the other end of the continuum, you could have a mentally deficient, low-IQ offender who is so aggressively hostile, or afraid, or ego-sick that he could fit the same profile. Your classic sadist, for example."

“He could be anything,” Eichord whispered.

“Absolutely. Schizzy, paranoid, sex psycho, cyclothymic, phobic, an—"

“Whoa. Speak English, Doc."

“Yeah, okay. Schizoid—remember—the guys who know they're inadequate. They can't cut the mustard physically or mentally or emotionally so they tune out. Become reclusive, turn inward, and build whatever peculiar set of defenses they need to protect themselves from the pain of being self-consciously inadequate. The aggressive ones become paranoid—get the superego working for them. Create a psychotic make-believe world to explain their frustrations or failures or fears. The cyclothymic, he is in perpetual unbalance. Gigantic mood swings. Loves his mother one minute and kills her the next. Ecstatic today, suicidal tomorrow."

“You said sex psycho. What about the violent sex crime? Where does he fit into the scheme of things?"

“He's usually a guy who's afraid of women for whatever reason and expresses this in sadism, or hostility, or in the most violent psychos—murder. Typically he's schizzy or immature or homosexual, or in the exceptional cases such as you have to deal with, a total psychotic personality. The most dangerous breed: the paranoid-schizophrenic."

“But if your schizzy dude is a passive-type offender, what pushes him to the point of violence? Any sort of stress?"

“You can't generalize. Too many possibilities. But it might be his inadequacy is manifested in some kind of unacceptable sexual misbehavior—he's a deviate. Or maybe he's simply malicious. He wants to strike out, and when the opportunity and the feeling of inadequacy occur at the same moment, that in itself could precipitate a violent act."

“All right. Now try this one. A guy is killing women in some psychotic fashion. He forces them to go down on him, and when he ejaculates, WHAM, he stabs them. He leaves his calling card. The old iceman strikes again—"

“And that factor is in fact his signature. He's telling you something about himself. That's why I first asked about the icepick to the eyeball M.O.—it's the classic retaliation of a disfigured man. He's striking out at women who attract him, but whom he knows he repulses—so he'll fix that, he'll put their eyes out. That's a simplification but—"

“You mean I might look for a disfigured killer?"

“Well,” Dr. Geary said in his high screech, “FIGURATIVELY disfigured has a lot of definitions. The disfigurement can be both literal or figurative. Emotional disfigurement, say. He could think he repulsed women, for example, by his infantile penis, or by a SENSE of ugliness, or by an awareness of a sexual equilibrium so out of balance that IT was revolting to the fair sex. You see? Anything that might make him want to symbolically keep them from seeing his true self. In fact, the punishing aspects of this M.O. are so strong. I don't think you can make any definite...” Geary trailed off into space.

Jack thought he sounded older, tireder than he remembered him. We're all older and tireder, he thought.

“So this guy could be ugly, like scarred or deformed, or just emotionally unbalanced and be physically Robert Redford?"

“Of course. You know what mass murderers look like, they're as likely to be movie-actor handsome as hideously ugly. It could be anything. He could be a cripple, or he has an underdeveloped penis, or he's out of whack in some manner, his sexual dysfunction is so severe he must strike out at these women he wants, punish them or blind them. He could be very good-looking in the conventional sense, but he sees himself as inadequate or repulsive by his own standards."

“And let's say he's the most dangerous type ... I always get this confused, is he the sociopathic type or the schizzy type?"

“Jack, that's the paranoid-schizophrenic. You need to look at your DSM-III. It's got all that broken down for you."

“Your what?"

“Oh, your Diagnostical Statistical Manual, roman numeral three. And if you can get a three-slash-R. Revised update. Give you the definitions for all the terms."

“All right. Okay. Now. We're back in Texas or wherever, and we're ugly or we have an infant-sized penis or whatever. When the moon is full we go out and get a woman, force them to go down on us, then we strangle them or stab them with an icepick. Let's say we symbolically blind them or punish them. Right so far?"

“Right—defacing, Jack. Think DEFACING. That one shot with the icepick to the eye—that's the textbook classic. Keeps them from seeing him, you understand, and he's defacing THEM, too, as well. Get it?"

“Yeah. All right. Now suddenly we stop. For twenty years we don't kill again. Then, suddenly, another killing. Why do we stop? Why didn't we keep killing? Why did we start up again? Give me some scenarios, can you?"

“First off, he's not your same killer. He didn't stop. The first factor you can take to the bank is this: NOBODY stops. Serial killers don't stop. Not ever. You're the expert. You tell me. When did you ever hear of a serial killer who stopped?"

“Zodiac."

“Hmm?"

“Zodiac. Dude out in California? We never caught Zodiac. He stopped."

“No, Jack. He was caught. Or he was killed or he died or was imprisoned. By caught I mean for something completely unrelated. For a theft, let's say, and he goes to jail. He's imprisoned. Well, there would be one scenario. Your man is imprisoned for twenty years. He got out and resumed? Huh?"

“I wish thieves DID go to jail for twenty years, but that's another story. Yeah, I've been over that ground a little. The mental institutions and all."

“Sure, could be institutionalized for twenty years. That's one scenario. But you take my meaning. Unless something like that happens, nobody stops. They like to kill too well. Unless they mess up, get too cocksure of their own invincibility, and the coppers take them out of the game, they keep on going. But twenty years, Jack? No, a more likely scenario is that he died, or what might be is he got murdered himself. Violence begets violence. Make your own scenario but keep one factor in mind. Nobody ever stops. You can't count on that happening. These persons are deeply deranged and they kill till they get caught.

“He's also telling something about himself in the demographic profile of the victims. Look at the age group of the women you just read off to me. Now a younger woman. But that could be so consistent, you see, because HE'S older, so he relates to the victim in a different way. There might be a clue in the victims’ profiles. That's where to begin."

“Yeah. Listen, Doc, while I've got you. On another subject. I just wanted to get your thinking. I realize this isn't your line, but let's say you got a murderous psycho and he has a child. Genetically, is there any way of determining whether, you know, the kid is going to have any inherited traits, er, ah—"

Geary took over and lost Jack after the “DNA stepping stones,” and when he paused, Jack said “Okay,” and thanked him.

But there weren't no okay to it this time.