Iceman

Blytheville, Arkansas

“Special Agent Eichord?"

“Yes, sir."

“Bob Mott. I'm the chief of police."

The men shook hands.

“Good to meet you. Chief Mott. Appreciate this, and very sorry I had to drag you back to work."

“No problem, Jack—if you don't mind first names? Call me Bob, please."

“Thanks.” Eichord knew Chief Robert Mott's background from the task-force file. A top drawer career man with an ultra-clean professional history, running a big-city-style police department in a relatively small town. out the ears. Enviable arrest record. He'd cleared some bad homicides.

“Just for the record, I was very relieved when I got the Fax from the Major Crimes Task Force replying to my rocket. And when I heard you were coming, I started counting the hours.” He was nodding as he spoke in a soft and serious voice. Eichord could tell the man was sincere.

“That's very kind of you. But—"

“No stroke job. Jack. I've followed your work since you cleared the ‘Doctor Demented’ thing, and your track record is incredible. I need somebody with your kind of experience on this one."

“Well.” Eichord never knew what to say when they were serious about it and not just shining him on. “Hope I don't disappoint. I notice in the files—I was reading about your fine work here on the way—you had fifteen years in CID before you took this job?"

“Yeah. I made chief in ‘eighty-six. I have a little over nineteen and a half years on the job. Less than a year to go and I pull the pin.” Eichord was confused. Mott wasn't old enough to have put in fifteen years as a CID guy and nearly twenty here. The jet lag cleared a bit and he patted his pockets like somebody looking for cigarettes.

“Was that CID in the military here?"

“No. We've got our own CID as part of the force here, and Oseola's set up the same way. You know, within the departments?” Eichord had that feeling you sometimes get when you can't remember what state you're in.

“Oh. Gotcha.” He pulled out a folded sheaf of notes, doodles, afterthoughts, sketches, and assorted airplane graffiti.

“Both Blytheville and Oseola have CIDs running their homicide investigations when they take place within corporate limits, but we work closely with county when we..."

Eichord was nodding, fighting to concentrate, but he felt awful. His head was stuffy, like he was coming down with a cold or about to get a severe sinus headache. His mouth was killing him. His gums were swollen and he needed to get to a dentist. A tooth with a bad cavity was starting to pound away. His sinus cavities hurt. He could feel himself draining as they stood there. A couple of years back and he would have been reaching for the sauce. But that was then. There were no more quick fixes. He pulled his mind back to the jurisdictional intricacies.

“...pretty much had the ball in our court the whole time. And it didn't do a bit of good."

“Yeah. Okay. How's about just running down the whole thing again for me—from when you got the word on the kids being missing? That was the mother, right?"

“Yeah. Juanita Alvarez. Forty-three. Divorced. Model citizen. Hard worker. Bringing up two little girls. Lived here all her life. Father lives up north. Been divorced six years. No boyfriends. Good kids. One day they go out on their bikes. Come back. She's doing housework. Comes out, finds the bikes back in the yard. Kids have left again. She figures they went to the store. Hours go by. She panics. Runs all over the neighborhood. Zip. She calls us.

“Twenty-four hours later it's a missing-persons case going. Angela and Maria Alvarez. Best guess: they were on the bike and the perp sees ‘em—maybe somebody they know. Perpetrator gets ‘em to leave the bikes and get in the car or van or whatever, and"—the chief shook his head—"nobody sees a thing.

“Two days later we got officers cruising the projects in a scout car: Larry Phillips and B.J. Bahn. Four-to-midnight tour. We get the anonymous phone tip. On the tape if you wanna hear it. Dead body in a field off Clearlake.

“Officers respond. Not one d.b. but two. The most awful sight anybody ever saw. Two mutilated torsos. Females. A pair of little headless girls.” Bob Mott took a deep breath.

Eichord's bad tooth throbbed.

“Again. Nobody saw shit. We never nailed down the caller. Probably just a kid going through the field. Next day we found the kill site. An abandoned two-story house near the projects on Clearlake Avenue. Blood like a slaughterhouse, but none of the missing parts of the cadavers."

“No heads?"

“Not so far. So, Juanita Alvarez has to ID the bodies. What a thing that was! We go over the killing room and the dump ground and get all the stuff for the lab, dust and all that, and really do a scavenger hunt for the burial spots.” He shook his head again, squinting like his eyes were tired from looking. “Whatever he did with the missing parts of the kids, we haven't turned anything.

“Way we dope it out is this—he, she, they—pick up the kids on South Utica or nearby. They get in a vehicle. Perp moves them somehow to the old house on Clearlake. They're probably already bound and gagged by the time they're moved inside the abandoned house. We got line. Tape. Blood and gore.

“Inside the old house he has a go at the girls. Sex and torture. Everything you can think of this guy or these guys do to the kids. Then kills ‘em. Cuts off their heads. Drains the torsos, washes them, and takes them out in the field. Why? Nobody can figure that one."

“And not a single witness sees or hears any of this?"

“Not a peep."

“Take me through the gathering of the evidence. Securing the crime scene. The whole schmear."

The chief ran it all down for Eichord. Half an hour later he had five pages of notes. He knew where they kept the barrier tape, who dusts for prints, how the photographs got developed, where the interrogation “routes” were for the nonwitnesses that failed to materialize, what they did with the orifice swabs, hair and fiber samples, nail scrapings, dirt tests, autopsy prep sheets—everything.

The State Crime Lab in Little Rock performed the autopsies on the torsos. The swabs, H & F, scrapings, and all the rest of it went to the lab in D.C.

Eichord had maps, more doodles, and the keys to an unmarked BPD leaner.

Mott drove over to the abandoned house near the projects, Eichord following him, and broke the seal on the crime scene. Electricity had been temporarily restored to the house's interior, and police floodlight illuminating the killing site, they spent an hour or so going over the place again. It was pretty much what Eichord expected, and he told the chief as much.

“I'll poke around here a little more,” he said, “but it's just the way you painted it.” He meant both figuratively, alluding to the written and narrative précis, and literally, since much of the blood-stained crime scene wore a coat of the red dye the techs had used in their search for latent prints.

“Jack, I hope you will find something we've missed. It feels like a bloody hopeless mess so far."

“I know the feeling. And I promise you I've seen too many just like it."

“Like I said,” Bob Mott replied, “I just want to hang in a few more months and—ping! I'm letting the spoon fly."

“You got something lined up or are you just gonna kick back?"

“I got a buddy saving something for me at Fed-Ex. Nice money. Great benefits. And the customers never shoot at you."

“I'll admit, that doesn't sound too bad."

“We'll have the girl for you in the morning. Nine o'clock?” He referred to the fourteen-year-old girl who was the closest thing they had to a live lead.

“That's fine."

“Like I told ya, she's got an ax to grind against their neighbor there in the mobile-home park. We checked it all out and he's clean as a whistle—but at least you'll have a starting point."

“Right. And I'll call Mrs. Alvarez and see if I can catch her on the way to work. In fact, if you don't mind, you might give her a call and let her know I'll be around in the morning?"

“No problem. I'll go set it up. Tell her you'll give her a ring or you just want to drop by?"

“Tell her I'll drop by early. I'll phone first and see what time's good. Seven, seven-thirty."

“I'll do ‘er."

“And then I'll go see the girl and our friend, the neighbor who doesn't like dogs. Probably drop in and see you around midmorning if that's all right?"

“That'll be great. We'll sit down and see if we can brainstorm something new. Right now it's a dead end."

“Oh. You mentioned the fourteen-year-old—were you going to bring her in or what?"

“Either way. Whichever. You wanna just have her brought to the station early?"

“Yeah, I think so. I mean since the man"—he glanced at his scrawls—"Mr. Hillman or whatever his name is, lives next door to her. Let's see if we can get her in without any fuss, either have her folks drive her or pick her up in an unmarked car. I'll be there by nine or so."

“Sounds good, and thanks again, Jack.” They shook hands. “See you in the morning."

“See you then."

“Okay. Bob, appreciate all your help. Catch you in the morning.” The door closed and Eichord was left alone with emptiness, distant traffic noise, night sounds, and silent screams.

He tried to put himself in the killer's mind and walked through “scenario number one,” with the children bound and gagged and in a vehicle parked as close to the back door as it could get.

Carrying them in. Dragging the bodies. Rolling them. Trying to transport the kids’ weight every way he could think of. Looking for sign and finding none.

Thinking about the torture that had come before the killing and the mutilation. Letting himself sink down into it. Watching the agony in their eyes. Hearing their muffled screams as the blood flew. This part would be very close to the way it went down up until the end: the autopsies and the kill site yielded up most of that gruesome story.

Now the killer or killers have had their fun. The kids are corpses. Eichord stood, mentally covered in the children's blood. These sickos wanted more. Something takes place. A ritual, let's assume. The heads come off. Why? To impede identification of the victims? If that was the case, why not bury the torsos? And then, why wash off the parts? And the biggest why of all, why move the bodies?

That was the craziest part. The fun and games were over. But these maniacs took another big chance—loading the headless cadavers, the severed parts, unloading the bodies in a field where the vehicle or the perps might be spotted by an unseen watcher—and then go do whatever with the heads? Madness!