Iceman

Buckhead Springs

Donna was talking about some pamphlets she wanted Jack to read about how to discipline a two-year-old, and he was not trying to tune her out, it was just that he couldn't shake the images from the day. Going back to the house with the evidence guys and the M.E. and the shooting team from Buckhead North had been as bad or worse than the awful scene this morning. Every step, every word of dialogue, was a land mine.

Somehow he'd gotten through it, but he couldn't shrug it all off. He kept worrying it like a cat with an addled mouse, shaking it, letting go for a moment, then jumping on it again. All things being equal, it fell together well. The surveillance team last night hadn't been yanked into thin air, they'd planted ‘em over at the Starlight Motor Inn, watching Mrs. Lauder. Then, with a dozen people still at the crime scene, working the house, Alan Schumway picked up for questioning, a totally bizarre thing happened.

The medical examiner had phoned the cop shop, who radioed the people on the scene. Eichord was told by one of the guys from North that the decedent was a man. He couldn't fucking believe it. Nobody could. It was going to cut their possible murder one suspect a hell of a lot of slack. Suddenly Nicki/Nicholas had begun to look like a sure-enough suicide. He/ she popped a cap into her head, with a note that said, “I'm sorry. I just can't take it anymore.” Signed, sealed, and delivered. A fucking transvestite blew his/ her brains out all over the living-room shag.

“She said they had a residual, no? I can't read my own notes, residential treatment center. And the funny thing was that a lot of these girls that come in there, you know, as battered wives, and it's incredible, a lot of them end up battering their own kids because—"

“Hey, Eichord,” fat Dana with the all-time grossest joke of the day.

“What?"

“You know why Alan and Nicki lived together?"

“Why?"

“Well, he couldn't walk, man. So he had to get a TV for his bedroom.” Screaming laughter. Fucking peabrain.

“—in the emergency foster home. So I told her about Jonathan and she said that it was perfectly natural for—"

What happens when he gets a card in the mail from Diane Taluvera. “Gee—sorry I didn't get back to you, but Bonnie said you were trying to get in touch...” Christ. A million things could collapse on him. He fought to lock in on what his wife was saying to him. She was looking at him intently so he nodded sagely.

“On the other hand,” he said, trying to look like a normal human being and not a fucking murdering FREAK, “you know the old saying."

“What's that?"

“Spare the rod and spoil the child."