Iceman

by Rex Miller

  “—documentation of the Heracletian canonical labors. Studying the fascinating iconography in the—” Click.

  “—would go into the office and take my clothes off. But he wouldn't ask me to take my clothes off because he's not that kind of doctor and I'm not that kind of a girl. He's a veterinarian—” He switched from the channel as a 1950s laugh track roared in response to the 1980s writing. Another sit-com from hell.

  “—gold and zircon with the flaming mist center. The regular price is 199.95. But you won't believe our special, low, low sale price for our telephone shoppers. Only—” Click.

  “They can't find enough World War Two tanks. Also, it may seem a bit odd to hear a World War Two American soldier with a thick German accent, but Arnold—” Click.

  “—say to the Lord that you're willing to make a financial sacrifice—” Click.

  Click. Click. Click. Clickclickclickclickclick.

  Buckhead Station

  The next morning Eichord did paperwork and made phone calls. He stared at the bulletin board notes, out of boredom. Looked at a photograph of a notorious fruit hustler and a missing teenager. An interdepartmental memorandum on subject matter his eyes refused to focus on. His list:

  ADAMS, Hayden

  BOLEN, Willard (check)

  BRITTEN, Morris

  CARTER, Jerry (struck out)

  CUNNINGHAM, Harold

  DENNENMUELLER, Mike (check)

  FREIDRICHS, Keith (check)

  GIBBAR, Robert

  GILLESPIE, Jeff

  HOWARD, Edwin

  JAMES, Felix

  JONES, Mark

  MULLINS, Craig

  NAGEL, Sam (struck out)

  ROSE, Louis (struck out)

  SCHUMWAY, Alan (check)

  SCHWAB, David

  SMITH, Rick

  TREPASSO,Phil

  WHITE. Blake (struck out)

  WISEMAN, Eben

  ZOFUTTO, Mario

  Schumway's name, minus diacritics, with a recently added check mark, gave Eichord four semisuspects. Four impossible-possibles whom he'd drawn lines through. And while he was looking at the semiprobables he decided. No way, Bolen was out. Good on motive, opportunity, and personality assessment, but too far afield from the physical parameters. He whited out his check mark by BOLEN, Willard.

  Chuckling with disdain at any inference of such a thing as incipient farsightedness, but pushing his legal pad away from him a few inches so he could see better, he began working on a tantalizingly insoluble premise—solution by doodle.

  By the time he quit for the day, he'd filed away, in his special round file, crumpled balls of pale-yellow lined paper that carried such slam-dunked declarations as i roamed under it as a tired, nude maori.

  name no one man. i maim nine moro men in miami. name no one man.

  draw putrid dirt upward.

  mirror, mirror on the wall. who's the weirdest cop of all?

  But on the drive through afternoon traffic to Buckhead Springs a few loose thoughts rattled around in his noggin like pebbles in a pan. And as Eichord looked back on his face-to-face conversations with Messrs. Dennenmueller, Freidrichs, and Schumway, there was a curiosity that bugged him anew, each time he recalled their respective reactions.

  None of the three seemed surprised or even mildly alarmed, hell, even QUESTIONING that he was suddenly talking to a cop about a homicide. Like this was the most normal thing in the world to happen in the course of their daily routine. Wouldn't any normal person, that word again, register a degree of consternation, confusion, something, at being involved in a murder case, however peripherally? The usual reaction was, Why me?

  But these jokers had hardened facades, almost like the wise guys, shells that let the questions bounce off. Yet another bothersome detail in the daily grind, a homicide copper sniffing around. No sense of outrage, or irritation, or of being taken aback a bit. Just a shrug and Ask me whatever you wanna and then get outta my face. Strange, it was. But when Eichord tried to mine the pebbles for gold, all he got was a panful of dust.

  Buckhead

  Betty Baylos, Keith Freidrich's girlfriend of the moment, had agreed to meet Eichord, and she had been ten times more curious about the investigation than had any of the men he'd questioned. Freidrich's, along with his other primary suspects—such as they were—had been surreptitiously voice and-fingerprinted, and a special sheet with their recent photographs had been circulated among Nevada and Texas law enforcement.

  The Baylos woman was a sexy, animated woman in her early thirties who dressed and acted like a teenybopper. “How come you're wanting to know all this stuff?” she asked Eichord about fifteen times as he did variations on the routine-investigation standard response. The area that he thought he'd have lots of trouble with, that of Freidrich's sexual orientation, had been dismissed with a curt “God! That's none of your BUSINESS!"

  But when Jack gently prodded, saying that it might help Keith, blah blah, apologizing for asking such personal questions about any area of intimacy between them, she simply shrugged and preceded to regale him with an ultra-explicit, blow-by-blow (literally), unashamed recounting of their amorous couplings. After ten minutes of this Eichord had truly learned everything he had ever wanted to know but was reluctant to ask, and then some.

  In the voyeuristic eavesdropping he did acquire a bit of insight into the area of a disabled person's sexual magnetism. From what Betty Baylos said, if she was typical in her reactions, a good-looking guy in a wheelchair was or could be extremely attractive to a woman, piquing her curiosity as to what intimacy would be like, how that person might seek satisfaction, the things we always wonder about a person to whom we're drawn, but amplified by that element of curiosity, especially when underscored by the instincts of a woman in that situation. The urge to mother was strong.

  His brief Q and A session with Jeanette Hohner was also interesting. She was a registered nurse who had been involved with Alan Schumway.

  “I appreciate your willingness to be candid with me, Jeanette,” he said, “if I may be on a first-name basis with you?” Smiling, speaking softly. Not carrying a big stick. “Can you tell me a little about your relationship with Mr. Schumway?"

  “Which one?” she asked. “Personal or professional?"

  “Both."

  “I was his physical therapist for a couple of months. And I went out a couple of times, too.” She was an interesting-looking woman. Not pretty in the face, and with a complexion that could be described as a kind of sandblasted look, but she had nice eyes and a naturalness that Eichord found very appealing. “Is Alan in some sort of trouble?” she asked quietly.

  “No. Not at all,” Eichord said, and did his short routine-query tap dance. She had a look about her that made a healthy guy aware of his own maleness. The sort of figure that told you what was under the clothing was mostly Jeanette and not the by-products of clever designers of undergarments. Her curves had the look that said. These are my own. Take me or leave me. “What was your regimen in terms of the physical therapy? What kind of things would be involved in the work?"

  “Mostly just his legs. He has no use of his legs, as you probably know. So we did whirlpool baths, massages, various excercizing, and that sort of thing.” Keith Freidrich's girlfriend had said her boyfriend's legs were “real thin,” in answer to a question, and Eichord used those words in his conversation with Jeanette Hohner.

  “Would you describe his legs as real thin, emaciated, withered? How would you describe them?"

  “Sure. They're pretty thin. But considering how long he's been in a chair, they've got pretty good tone."

  “Is it possible he could ever walk again?"

  “I doubt it, from what I've seen of his medical records. I couldn't say for sure, but complete paralysis like that—I doubt it."

  “You know that he can't walk now, though? No way he could be faking?"

  “Of course,” she said, looking at Eichord like, Are you nuts?

  “Why do some patients of th
erapists in this sort of a profile have good tone, as you put it, and some are extremely withered in the lower limbs?"

  “I don't know.” She tilted a shoulder. “Nobody really knows how much a person's muscles will atrophy. Almost all people in chairs atrophy a lot, whether they have therapy or not."

  “Then why do they go through the motions if they're going to atrophy anyway?"

  “Because. Some people are fighters and some aren't. And some of them have had different kinds of diagnoses. Maybe the prognosis for recovery is there. Or maybe they don't believe they'll be paralyzed forever. Or maybe they think they can regain some usage. Or perhaps they feel like they MIGHT not atrophy as much with some therapy. All kinds of reasons."

  “And you can say for certain that Alan Schumway, the last time you worked with him, was atrophied consistent with an individual who couldn't move his legs and hadn't for years?"

  “Sure. He had good muscle tone to begin with, so he still has some tone, like I told you, but his legs are atrophied. They're pretty thin."

  “I have to ask you this, Jeanette. I'm not just being nosy, but I apologize for the intrusion on your privacy in advance. I need to know what sort of sexual relations you might have had with Mr. Schumway. If you would categorize him as normal in that way,” he kept his voice soft, speaking as softly and respectfully as he could.

  “Normal. Yes. I, uh, we had normal relations."

  “Intercourse?"

  “No,” she said, plainly irritated, giving the word a couple of extra syllables.

  “This is a murder case of some complexity.” He breathed deeply. “I need you to be specific, please.” Ever so gently.

  “I gave him head. Okay?” Just like that.

  Okay. It's okay with me, Jeanette. He nodded, eyes cast down by way of looking official. There was a time in his life he would have pursued that line, but he got off it now. “And when—"

  “I mean, that's normal enough. Lots of couples, you know. But there were other things he wanted to do and I don't go for anything freaky. Like with another girl or anything. Forget it."

  “That's what he wanted you to do?” She nodded. “When was the last time you saw him?"

  “Couple months ago, I guess."

  “Does he have a therapist now? Somebody else?"

  “I think he goes to a doctor regularly, but I'm not sure who it is. I don't think he got another physical therapist."

  “Was the personal thing between you why he stopped using you as a therapist?"

  “I guess.” She shrugged with all of her upper body. “We just got into it. You know. He's got personality problems. He...” She ran down.

  “What's your opinion of him, Jeanette?"

  “Have you ever seen him on TV?"

  “Sure."

  “Well. That's Alan. You know what he's like if you've seen the TV commercials. He's a real horse's butt."

  He smiled at her answer and thanked her.

  Mission

  He loved the feeling. Not just the power of his physical body again, but the power of his mind. The raw, rippling, totally controlled, awesome power of his restored being. He had come out of his special room smiling with joy at the promise of the night and the unexpected sensuality of being in command again. This time he would take a bitch down in the way he liked the best.

  He'd been saving Heather for this. The fucking tramp. Oh, sweet Jeezus, it felt good, thinking about what he'd do to the cunt. How he'd pay them all back again. They'd fucking NEVER catch him. He WAS invulnerable. And he came out of his special place gloating, laughing with pure pleasure, slick and powerful as he slid into his car and inserted a cassette labeled Deco Echo into the unit, turning the volume up as the garage door lifted and the big car purred out into the night.

  He'd met Heather in the basement of an apartment complex, oddly enough, and seduced her from the first second, using his wheels to create the atmosphere most conducive to his style of the moment, and Heather had fallen like a tree. He had convinced her into moving to Mission, to a recently vacated, small home he'd found out about. Isolated and perfect for what he wanted. In fact, he'd loaned her the first month's rent. Brought her along carefully. Slowly. Saving her for the right moment.

  It was over twenty miles to Mission, but to him it felt like a five-minute drive, and he turned the ancient tape up even higher, basking in the glow of the old-time musical memories and the images of his childhood, driving through the early night, a bright moon lighting up patchwork squares and earthtone rectangles that stretched to the horizon. Past “Sand drags,” which he knew all too well, Fred's Package Store & Live Bait, grungy abandoned trailers, just like home.

  The car was a work of art. Dude who ran a local chop shop owed him one from way back and he'd got him something untraceable and squeaky clean which, by the time he'd further customized it, was a perfect war wagon. Also, it was sanitized to a fault, in case he was ever spotted or had to dump it. Similarly, his special place was untraceable, and he entered and left it unseen, through the garage. Perfect. He'd thought of everything.

  Thirties music thumped from the speakers as he drove past a battery of large silos that a sign advertised to be the property of the Newhope Grain Company. That was it, all right. New hope. But the welded bar gate stood open and the darkened Quonset buildings, two obviously unused tin sheds with open doors, and a bulldozer beside a mound of excavated dirt in an adjacent field, all these were the signposts that brought it all together for him, helped to nurture his core, and took him back home. Because Spoda only saw these things with a killer's eyes.

  Later, as his circle of death widened, he would come back this way again. Two extremely interesting expanses of cotton fields caught his eye. A well-tended private road cut back through the field leading to a spacious, expensive residence. It was always surprising to see a beautiful home tucked back in some low-rent corner of rural America. An eight-hundred-thousand-dollar spread replete with the trimmings from parabolic dish to rv to fenced-in Olympic pool, out back of beyond. So invitingly isolated.

  Right by the road, alongside the highway, dilapidated frame homes squatted like aging spinsters, old schoolhouses gone to seed, white paint chipped and faded, cracked, peeling, vestiges of long-absent sharecroppers, and they were what you expected to see out here. Then you looked past them into the field and Tara sat waiting to be plucked. Sitting out there like a queen, rich and bitchy, where not even the loudest screams could carry to the road.

  Near the turn to Heather's he passed an apparently deserted warehouse that looked precisely like the proverbial warehouse-on-the-edge-of-town from all the old B movies and serials. Three boarded-up doors out front. Back windows barred with rusting iron bars. Insides covered in plywood sheets. Brick columns standing out front, supporting nothing. Loading bay filled in with blocks cemented into place. Discs, trailers, a combine, and an International 510 sat nearby, each turning slowly to scrap metal. He cast a longing glance back at the padlocked building and the fancy home in the distance as he rolled past.

  Heather Lennon was so perfect for this night. He'd wheeled out of the elevator at Town Plaza, a business deal had brought him to one of the penthouse apartments, and literally run into Heather as she carried a basketful of laundry from the basement laundry room. She lived there with a pair of stewardesses who were usually out of town, and he'd been able to either sequester her or otherwise remain anonymous by arranging her to come to his home. A pretended legal problem with a soon-to-be ex-wife was his excuse.

  He sensed that if he wanted to isolate her for a future target, he must cut her out of the pack. In no time at all she was in the rented home in Mission. Its automatic garage a requisite feature. Isolation was the key. That, and silence on her part.

  In that respect she filled the bill admirably. Unattractive by some standards, she had always been the fifth wheel who sat home alone on those occasions when the popular and gregarious stews partied. It was not difficult to persuade her to leave Town Plaza.

  As soon a
s he found out the things she liked, he played to her every desire, making himself over in her favorite images wherever possible. This great-looking guy who shared all her interests, it was an irresistible package for her, and if he was a bit idiosyncratic in the area of compulsive secrecy, she could meet his needs. Heather was a somewhat secretive person herself, used to keeping her own counsel and not garrulous by nature, and his reasons for wanting to keep their relationship quiet seemed perfectly understandable.

  She was not unintelligent. But neither was she particularly intuitive by nature. To him, however, she was that perfect blend of smart-stupid that he gravitated toward: not smart enough to question, but not some vapid, gum-popping idiot who would pose a threat.

  He pulled up in front of the house and pressed the garage-door opener, noting that she had parked her car in the driveway as he had asked, and as the overhead door slid up, he turned off the cassette player and drove into the garage, lowering the door before he shut off the motor, removing his wig and dropping it out of sight beneath the collapsible chair. In thirty seconds, right on cue, the garage lights came on and Heather appeared, smiling, in the doorway.

  “Come here,” he said, motioning with his finger.

  “Hi,” she shouted, scampering around the car as he pushed the door open. The ugly bitch reminded him vaguely of his sister. It amused him to consider he could still fantasize about the cunt, even though he hadn't had her in over twenty years.

  “Hello, baby. Miss me?” He pulled her head in and they kissed for a long time. He could already feel himself stiffening, growing hot. Wanting her. He could barely swallow he was so excited, and his words came out raspy “I want you so much. Heather.” And she misread his urgency for pure lust and it inflamed her, too, but there was nothing pure about his wanting. “Honey, I've got great news. The therapy worked."

  “You're kidding."

  “No. It's working."

  “Oh! Wow! My God! That's wonderful."