Iceman

Buckhead Medical Park

The glass of the doctor's window was a barrier between his spotless office and the clutter and stink of what lay beyond. It sealed out the breeze carrying a mixed scent of urban fumes and country smoke, as transportation stench and burnt fields commingled and stirred together. It had not rained for a long time and the roadside foliage had turned a dry, parched, brittle brown where the ground had gone too long without moisture. Tap roots strained down, probing the earth for life-giving water. The once-rich farmland was beginning to crack open. Things were still alive and from the distance there was the appearance of normalcy, but up close you could see they were dying.

The man looking out the window turned from the depressingly barren landscape, speaking to his patient seated on the other side of the immense, hand-carved desk.

“The mind is the most powerful medicine there is. It can heal. It can cure."

There was a pause and the man in the chair said, very seriously, “Would you like to know what I believe, Doctor? What I REALLY believe?"

“Certainly,” the doctor said with sincerity.

“I believe that one day a hole will open in the sky and that somehow, miraculously, Shirley MacLaine shall be revealed to me. I believe that I never, to paraphrase Will Rogers, met a woman named Shirley I didn't like. I believe in the mystical significance of names. Think how many funny comedians are named Richard: Pryor, Belzer, Lewis, just to name three. I believe that the names Shirley and Richard each contain seven letters as do Lincoln and Kennedy. I believe that John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald each contain—"

“Please,” the doctor said gently, “I'm only trying to—"

“i wasn't fucking through goddamn you NEVER fucking interrupt me,” and then laughing to show he was just kidding, realizing that he had alarmed the good doctor and adjusting his face to its least frightening clown mask and becoming in that next quarter-second a scowling, jowly, pouting Nixon, saying, “Just as I told Kissinger at one of our prayer breakfasts, the mind is powerful medicine. It CAN heal. It CAN cure. Say, Henry, do you think I should burn the tapes?"

The doctor laughed heartily in appreciation and the evil and dangerous man across the desk mugged, rolled his eyes, and waved victory signs with each hand. Quite the court jester, this killer.