Stone Shadow

Love Field

The pretty stewardess was telling him something, smiling like the idea of serving booze to a low-rent cop on the shadowy side of middle age was precisely what she wanted to be doing with her life on a pretty day like this. How many of the little bottles of airplane booze had he consumed? He also had a silver flask he'd worked on pretty good back in the john. He was flying, all right.

The thing didn't seem like it would be much more than a two-way round-trip tourist ticket. After all, they thought they had the perp. Probably be another Bundy deal. Come in and make nice with this Hackabee character and pry the whole picture loose grave by grave.

According to what Wally Michaels had told him, some wino was going through some empty cardboard boxes, and he opens one and there's a naked woman in there. He thinks she's dead and runs screaming to the coppers. Only thing is, she's still alive. This being the woman Donna Something—he fumbled for his notebook—Canofpeas? He squinted and read the name Scannapieco. Irish broad, he thought, feeling very tight.

So Donna Can-of-peas, age thirty-something, naked as a jaybird, crammed inside an appliance box and about two steps short of coming unwrapped altogether, she tells ‘em in the ER that she was pulling into a parking lot at this shopping mall when a dude puts a gun in the window, tells her to move over. He starts the car up and takes her into a nearby alley where he stuffs Donna in the trunk. A half-hour later he's got her chained to the bed in the basement of this old house. Says she's his “sex slave” from now on, and if she wants food and drink she can put out for it; if not, she dies. She tells of rape and torture, and finally, a month or so of this, she sees her chance and manages to escape. Ends up downtown, still naked, and covered in filth, hiding in a refrigerator box where she passes out and the wino finds her.

Thing is, all during the weeks of captivity, he's bragging to her about how he likes to take folks off. He's the number-one killer of the century, he tells her, and brags about the “hundreds of human bodies” he's buried all over the Southwest. He's so specific that she manages to remember some of it. The cops figure it's bullshit.

She's a little on the hard side, Donna is. They see that once she gets cleaned up, she likes to load up with the old makeup, lots of eye shadow, flashy wardrobe, a low-cut this, a tight that, show a little leg. They kind of figure she may have asked for it. Maybe she didn't even mind it all that much—the sex-slave part. Maybe she even got off on it. And Donna is on the theatrical side. Very dramatic. Poses a lot and talks like she thinks maybe somebody should be shooting all this with a camera. It just doesn't sit right.

And there's always the remote possibility you got an irate lover who wants to punish somebody and embarrass them real bad. Maybe a jilted mistress who wants to put her married sugar daddy through some changes at the expense of the Dallas cop shop. It wouldn't be the first time. So there is natural suspicion.

But one of the coppers happens to see the Identikit drawing they do of Donna's abductor, and son of a bitchin’ don't that beat all, that's that crazy fucker Ukie Hackabee. Whoa, shit. Ukie, as in Ukelele, is what they call a police character in Dallas. You've got to realize, pardner, this is Big Dee, where Jack Ruby was only rated a “buff” status. So if you're a genuine “character,” that means you've done messed in a few mess kits and got caught at it. Eichord had checked the MCTF computer-think on the man and he had a thick package as a KSP (known sexual pervert), with the impression of being a very small-time nickel-dime con man.

Within forty-eight hours the state rods picked him up. And as it happened, they nailed him while he was digging out behind a private estate where the wealthy owner had friendly troopers make the occasional drive-by. On closer inspection, what Ukie was poking around in happened to be the fresh grave of a young Jane Doe. Ukie looked awfully good for about thirty-nine homicides all of a sudden.

And all of a sudden there were city, state, and fed-level shields digging everywhere Donna Scannapieco said to dig. And many of the areas where Ukie had bragged to her about burying people revealed human remains. They were onto what might become one of the most notorious mass murders ever. Ukie had told Donna about “hundreds of bodies.” What if his brags were factual? What had Ukie Hackabee gone and done?

In his maximum-security cell Ukie (William) Hackabee not only confessed that he was the guilty party, but guys, hey, you don't know the half of it. I've killed whole rooms of people—buildings full of assholes. You ain't just messing with some small potatoes punk. I've taken down HUNDREDS of mother-fuckers all over this part of the country.

And all of this was sloshing around with the airplane booze when Eichord got his final smiles from the stews, deplaning at the huge piece of tarmac that had disappointed so many visitors to Dallas—finding out that Love Field was only the name of an airport. And he shook his head to clear out the cobwebs, sucked in a lungful of that warm, dry Dallas air, and moved with the mob, spotting a familiar face who said, “Hey, over here."

“Whatdya say, Wally."

“Great to see you, Jack."

“Good to see you again. You've gotten fat, eh?” Wally Michaels might have weighed all of 160 soaking wet.

“Yeah. I'm eatin’ good. You look great."

“I look a little drunk, I'll bet. All that booze on the plane—man, I'm swacked.” They laughed.

“I hear you, sir. I get that way everytime I get in a plane."

“Anything new?"

“Huh?"

“On your perp?"

“Oh, not much. The woman's starting to get a little hazy on the specifics. But she's batting a thousand with us. She's tryin’ hard. Very forthcoming. Offered to let us have her hypnotized and that kind of thing but we've got to be awfully careful with this. Don't want to blow it."

“Playing it by the book with the perp?"

“Absolutely. All the way, Jack. They Mirandized him six ways from Sunday. He got so many Mirandas read to him he had it memorized.” Jack smiled. “We're really taking it slow ‘n’ easy with Ukie."

“What the hell kind of name is that anyway?"

“Ukie was sort of a half-assed entertainer at one time here. He worked a couple of the strip joints as an MC or something. Got up and strummed his ukelele and sang dirty songs or whatever. We've known him for years. Had him in over and over for a couple aggravated sexual assaults, wienie-wagging, bunch of times on suspicion-jerkin’ him around a little. Vag. He's a fuckin’ moke."

“I saw the package. But you know what doesn't feel right?"

“This is the car—'scuse me. Go ahead,” Michaels interrupted as he started to open the door of an unmarked Plymouth.

“I got some luggage."

“The airport guy's getting it. Get in. You've got the VIP treatment this time, Jack.” They got in the car and Wally popped the trunk release.

“So, you were saying something wasn't right?"

“It just doesn't fall together for me yet. I can't see a dude like this offing all those people. I mean you're talking some kinda body count already. What is it?"

“Thirty-nine or forty-three depending on whose vibes you go with—whether you wanna believe Ukie or forensics. You know how some of these perps are. He wants credit for every murder one on the books now. Like I say, we've gotta walk on eggs."

“I dunno.” Eichord shook his head. “It doesn't come together so far for me. Like this thing about you all tryin’ to get him to explain why and he said, what, that it was a jigsaw puzzle for the cops to solve. He wouldn't explain it. Or he couldn't. If he did all those people—and I'll admit so far it looks dead-bang—why did he leave seventeen to be found and supposedly bury hundreds, or let's say even bury dozens of victims? Why go to that much trouble and then leave seventeen? And why does a known dong-dangler who picks up a woman and forces her to have sex with him—why does a sex offender leave his sexiest victims unmolested? Huh-uh. Two, three different MOs going here. You got no semen residue, no sexual penetration, no freak stuff. Just whacks ‘em and either leaves ‘em or buries the corpse. Doesn't make a shred of sense at all. I mean, there's a million unexplained pieces to this, right?"

“That's why—” But Jack was still going on with it.

“Why does a guy who wants the coppers to play guessing games with him, a guy who is calculating enough to construct a mystery of this complexity, with the balls to carry out the killings—why would somebody like that be stupid enough to brag openly about the location of buried corpses to Donna Scanty-panties-whateverhernameis? See?"

“Yeah. But—"

“Bragging about buried bodies, Wally. I mean, if he buried some and leaves some, the ones he buried were buried for a reason. He didn't want us to find ‘em. So why brag—"

“But if he thought he was going to silence her, doesn't it fit the profile of a hey-look-at-me kind of psychotic?"

“Maybe and maybe not. But even so, I dunno—"

“All right. Wait, Jack, suppose that some of these victims he's put in the ground turn out to have been molested."

“Yeah?"

“You grant the possibility?"

“Right."

“Right. Now, if he only has sex with some of his victims and then buries those AFTER he offs ‘em ... Get it?"

“Huh?"

“If he was going to bury Donna Scannapieco when he was through with her, what did he care whether or not she knew?"

“Oh, yeah, I get that, but my point is we've got conflicting MOs at work here. Different patterns of behavior, it seems to me. That kind of a dude. He's not going to take those kind of unnecessary risks, is he? What sense does it make? He's already got the woman. Why tell her anything she doesn't need to know?"

“To convince her."

“Well..."

“Big-time killer. He wants her to know it so she'll be scared. You know how some of those freaks are. Scary sex is the only sex. Boo, shit. Let's fuck. Those guys."

“Yeah."

“That's what."

“But take a look at this guy's package. There's nothing here to indicate the sort of physical thing you got goin’ with the seventeen he's left aboveground. No muscle here in the package. No heavyweight stuff at all. When did he move from bein’ a dude in a trench coat in the back row of the Sperm Theater and start getting a taste for the heavy stuff?"

“Point is, you're here to help us find out. What is the obvious possibility? If Ukie Hackabee is for real. If all this time when he was dangling his dipstick at the gals in the supermarket, he was also getting into bigger and bloodier games, and if there's a trail of dead bodies like we're afraid we may find on this one, well...” Michaels trailed off and it was suddenly unnaturally silent in the closed vehicle. And in that moment of absolute quiet the airport man slammed the trunk shut and it sounded like a cannon going off.

Eichord damn near jumped out of his skin. “Jeezus,” he muttered, shuddering involuntarily, feeling his heart thumping, as Wally Michaels turned the key in the ignition and they drove out into the wake of the Texas traffic, Eichord still shocked by the sudden noise, discomposed from the flight, turbid from the airplane liquor, and neutered by the obvious inconsistencies of the Dallas grave-digger.