by Rex Miller
“Is it a metal sculpture piece?"
“No.” The man laughed. He wheeled over to the round chrome object and did something to it and music squawked out of it. “It's a RADIO!” He laughed again.
“Wild."
“It's fucking outrageous. Art dreck-o. I love it all."
Eichord was hammered by the man's intensity and the feel of implicit latent power. The thought that kept nagging was, Could Alan Schumway get up from that wheelchair and walk? Do I yell fire? Or do I back off and stir the ashes a little and hope that when I move in to get him he hasn't packed up his wheelchair in his old kit bag and run away to Norway.
“Listen, one more thing, if I may. Somebody mentioned you have a, uh, personal secretary?” He looked down, not wanting to watch Schumway raise his eyebrows and do shtick while he tried to embarrass Eichord. “Does she live in? I was wondering if I might ask her a couple of brief questions while I'm here."
“Does she LIVE IN,” Schumway mocked. “Holy JEEZUS, Feste, you silver-tongued bastard.” Eichord smiled pleasantly while Schumway roared with laughter, then screamed at the top of his lungs, “NICKI!” And saying to Jack as he turned away, “I don't think she's here."
“Does she live here?"
“We hang out,” Schumway said. “Anything else you need right now?” Schumway stared into the glossy depths of the black deco vase.
Eichord doodled with the surface of his mind and had to fight from asking big Al from Norway, “Hey, Alan—is there a fjord in your Futura?"
North Buckhead
In the living room, Daddy was drunk and disorderly, and very much on. He was unpredictable when he drank too much. Sometimes he would get horny and want her, and the sex might be rough or it might be sweet and tender and remarkably gentle. Or he would fall asleep and snore like a dockhand and he would not want her. Or he would become jolly and gregarious and want to take her out and show her off. Drink with the guys. Party. He could be very funny. Or he might become brooding. Moody. Mean. He could turn ice-cold and very dangerous.
She was nude and stood looking at herself, shoeless and wet, toweling off after a delightful bubble bath. She loved her body. She was a very beautiful woman, even now. One of the uniquely lucky ones. She had the small bones that had made her so womanly. The Beverly Hills were perfect, neither too large nor too small, her ass high and firm. Very female in every sense. The hormones, both the IVs and the regimen of oral drugs, had helped her voice, which was already a sexy huskiness, and her skin, which was her worst feature.
Nicki wasn't perfect. Her hair was too coarse, but she could afford the best wigs money could buy. Her jawline was a bit wider than she liked, but Daddy said it made her more interesting-looking and he looked at her with a critical eye. He loved the look of her long, slim legs in high heels. She had starved herself for so long—through her teens, in fact—that she no longer thought of food as she once had. She would subsist on bits of fruit, vitamins, the bare minimum. She went up on her toes and posed, then stood hipshot, but she could catch a glimpse of those ugly things a mocking God had placed between her legs, and she quickly changed position. She would tuck tonight, tuck them back out of sight.
Nicki Dodd, nee Nicholas Dodstardt, was a freak. She was neither female impersonator, nor transvestite, nor transsexual, nor any of the other categories that run the gamut from cross-dressing straights to drag-queen homosexuals. She was a woman with a penis and testicles. Not a play woman. Not a make-believe, Halloween, limp-wristed, flaming, swishing, lisping, pretend-time closet-faggot woman, but a REAL woman, through and through. Biologically, psychologically, every other way a woman. Just not physiologically. She was a beautiful, soft, slim, sexy, dynamite show-stopper of a freak of nature. A woman with a dick.
It still bothered her. She wondered how enraged her daddy would have become if he'd heard the conversation she'd had a few weeks ago. He thought she was totally comfortable with her plumbing. Depressed after one of his rough numbers, paranoid from his growing carelessness, and maddened by the frustrations of his goddamned fucking therapy, she had called Baltimore. Just for information. Nothing more. Dialing a toll-free hotline so it wouldn't show up on their bill.
“Nurse Recruitment?” a pleasant voice said into her ear.
“Hi. I'm calling long-distance to inquire about your program. What are the prerequisites for working in the—I'm not sure what you call it—your gender surgery clinic?"
“The general surgery clinic? Just a second please.” No, you idiot, she said as the woman clicked off to take another call. An eternity later the woman returned. “I just have the regular university number. I don't have anything called General Surgery Clinic."
“GENDER surgery."
“Oh. Gender surgery.” A long pause. “Is that like, you know, sexual?"
“Yes.” Another long pause.
“I'm trying to figure out how to look that up."
The line made noises while the woman did things to a computer far away in Maryland. The obtuse woman came back. Made her wait again because someone had just come into view whom she thought might know these answers. Her voice was rather patronizing, or so Nicki imagined, when she returned to say, “The university no longer does them.” THEM. She couldn't bring herself to enunciate such a word. “So that's why I couldn't find it under Gender or Sex, you know, in the listings."
“Do you know why they no longer ... Oh, never mind.” She hung up. So Johns Hopkins was no longer part of the scene. It took her another half-hour on the phone to learn that Barnes in St. Louis did them. Two other hospitals. Just making random calls to whatever toll-free numbers she could think of to try. She wondered if there had been malpractice suits. If the surgery had proven unsafe. Or was it public relations—that kind of thing? Probably none of the above.
Would getting her outside plumbing whacked off make her feel more womanly? Would trading a cock and balls for a vagina—complete with ersatz clit, no doubt—make her able to satisfy her man better. Hell, no. It would be an unnecessary and stupid risk. Just something she toyed with—her little ace in the hole, so to speak. An option. She was still in love with him. He was everything. Her life. Without his desire she would be dead. He wanted her this way.
“From-a Lick Pier, Sanna Monnica Bitch Californium, Itsa Larry Welg anna Champagna Muzik Makers,” she could hear him screaming over some taped dance band. “An now hereza Norma-um Enema to singa an play the accordiona-enema, Lady of Spain-enema!” Crazy fool, she smiled.
She would keep him with her hot mouth and kinky mind and beautiful eyes and long legs and great ass and Beverly Hills and cosmetic trickery. He liked it when she'd savaged the one with the low-cut blouses, Princess Di with her smug-ass mouth, telling her, “I'll do it,” when Nicki started packing her things. Saying to her later, “No, I need all of these,” when they packed her cosmetics. “I have to keep my peaches-and-cream complexion, you know.” Yeah. Nicki knew. She had sliced off the bitch's fat tits the moment Daddy had finished with her. The knife blade was sharp and she felt surprisingly good about it, not squeamish in the least, and Daddy really got off watching her work out. She could remember how he laughed like a little kid when Nicki had sliced the toes off, “This little piggie went to market,” slicing her fucking toes off like little white stubs. Blood all over everything. Daddy turning on and them playing in the blood.
She went into him naked but for a pair of heels, standing and posing for him naturally, a beautiful woman in profile, as he played his ricky-tick music, “Thang hugh Norma-enema. Anna loog whoze here now, itsa Myron Florn-enema, to play his latest tits for us. Let it all hang out, Myron-enema."
“Every chance I get, baby."
“Did you call Bonnie like I wanted you to do, enema?"
“I will. Promise,” she said sweetly, still coming to him, but he turned away from her and said in a cold icebox voice, “Go do it."
Buckhead Medical Park
“Doctor Lishness, I don't understand why you're being so unresponsive to me,” Ei
chord said, working to keep control of his temper. They had finally located Schumway's psychotherapist.
“I'm not being unresponsive."
“What would you call it, then?"
“What?” Unruffled. One of those icicle types. A face that reminded you of the younger Teddy in his senatorial bifocals. Was it a poseur's face?
“What would you call failing to respond to an official inquiry in a Homicide investigation?"
“I would call your manner irresponsible, for starters."
“Irresponsible. Do you realize this crazy son of a bitch has killed eight or ten victims—just that we KNOW about? Driven his own sister insane? Do you—"
“I've just told you that I cannot violate my code of ethics. The relationship one has with one's patients—and you should certainly be aware of this—is a highly confidential and privileged one. Unless people can rely on that total confidentiality, the system of health care collapses. Trust is an inviolable aspect of our ethical standards,” the psychotherapist said imperiously.
Eichord wanted to throttle him.
It had been a long day for Eichord. Yesterday's rocket from the deputy director of MCTF's crime lab on the DNA-matchup with the sperm traces from Heather Lennon had, in effect, cleared both Dennen-mueller and Freidrichs.
Jack was crushed by the circuit attorney's reluctance to immediately indict Alan Schumway, but the man had told him, “You don't understand the law, here. Look: the complexities of our statutes are unique to the state and, in fact, are in the process of being revised as we speak. But this is a new technology, and until it has survived some court battles, somebody's refusal to comply with a test doesn't begin to provide us with sufficient grounds to indict."
“So we'll trick our suspect. There are a dozen ways we could get blood, saliva, tissue—"
“Jesus! Jack, that's the last thing you want to do. Hey. Put a solid, concrete case against the scumwad together and lock down all the edges. That's what you need to do. Don't be counting on some lab magic to nail him. Not under these circumstances, with the current statutes and a relatively revolutionary—for us—technological breakthrough."
“The data I've seen on it is rock-solid. It's widely accepted by people in law enforcement, MIT, the—"
“You're in Buckhead County, Jack. Forget about what some egghead at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology says. Make a solid case against your man. You get some iffy DNA shit to go to trial with and the case stands a real fat chance of getting thrown out of court. Then you really will have messed in your mess kit, eh?"
Keeeerist, Eichord thought, forcing himself to breathe deeply. “Iffy DNA shit?” He thanked the C.A., por nada, and put his nose back to the grindstone.
The following day started out even worse. The composite of the suspects’ mug shots had drawn a total blank in Nevada. And Eichord had his morning ruined by a call from the Amarillo PD. They'd run the sheet by the old gentleman in Vega, and “he just couldn't be sure.” Did he even seem halfway about it? “Waffled” was the word they used in response. He waffled.
It was one of those times when as a law-enforcement peon you felt so much frustration. Schumway looked so good for it. Any why was he having so much trouble getting this Nicki Dodd interviewed? He had full-time surveillance on the house in North Buckhead and she hadn't come in or out for three days, for sure. Unless that prick Schumway had him some kind of secret tunnel. He wouldn't discount anything. One of the guys thought they might have seen a shadow at the window. Not sure.
If the woman was hiding in there, he had to find out. First—why? He could eliminate a lot of possibles with a face-to-face. He had to interview her and get it done NOW. Probable cause was the first thing. He didn't really have much, but he could throw something together, put her in a lineup, jack her around a little. See what fell into place. Main thing—he needed the house empty. He wanted in there when the place was empty. He'd get a search warrant first. No. He'd, uh, wing it.
Schumway as Spoda. It sure looked good. Especially the tie-in to Diane Taluvera in the Moss Grove bank. To reach out for somebody on probable cause was one thing; to apply for an arrest warrant from the circuit attorney's office, and to be able to give them an indictable package for trial—that was another smoke. This legal genius, Eichord, he knew all about such shit. He fumed, driving back to the station.
He'd go home and read his old depositions. Listen to the kid scream—the cartoons had stopped working, for no apparent reason. Just so he didn't dream about the trailer in Blytheville, Arkansas, and the silver platter of mean cuisine.
The night went just about the same way the day had. He went home and tried to work, trying to decide what to do, wondering which was the angle he'd missed, which was the one that was going to come back to haunt him, and all of this in one of Jonathan's loudest, ongoing tantrums. Then he and Donna got pissed with each other and he went to bed with that terrible sinking feeling in his chest, that sinking feeling that something was going to fuck him up once again, and then he'd see another page of The Journal of Retribution.
It was the one thing he never let himself think about. He wouldn't even admit it existed. It was too painful to remember the call from the nice chief down in Blytheville, telling him about the “scrapbook” they'd found when the particle-board flooring rotted out.
Hidden down under the flooring of the unmobile home was Mr. Owen Hillfloen's diary of blood. Explaining the crimes in twisted, meticulously printed phrases taken from the Scriptures.
Try as he might, he could not jerk his thoughts from the page where the old man detailed his punishment of the children, and Eichord visualized their last hours of torture. It was the page that explained why he'd taken their heads. What he'd done to them with the snakes before he killed and dismembered them.
Then he fell asleep. And in his dream he touches the filthy doorknob, turns, pushes, flashes the light around, finds the switch, hits it, sees the eyeball first as the stench overpowers him.
Some things never go away.
Buckhead Station
Jack Eichord woke up hurting all over. He felt as if he might have had 3 1/2 hours’ sleep, and his neck hurt the way he imagined it would if someone had taken a ball bat to him. He'd awoken scrunched up against the headboard, head at an impossibly weird angle, and he tried unsuccessfully to pop his second vertebra. Two aspirin hadn't helped. His throat, and nose, and sinus cavities felt the way they use to feel after fourteen hours behind the wheel of a car, back in the days when he still boozed and set fire to three packs of Winstons a day. His tongue was thick and coated with something that proved impervious to toothpaste, mouthwash, and coffee. He went in and found Donna's Darvon and popped one, and stood still and rotated his head back and forth.
They'd violated one of their own iron-clad rules. They'd gone to bed mad. Always before, when there was a problem between them, they'd talk it out, but they'd got into it over the boy again last night and each had said things they shouldn't have said, the way you sometimes will in a fight. Jack was downright mean to Jonathan. Donna was unwilling to sit on the kid. Each agreed the other was a shitty parent. Nobody won, and this morning it was still a draw. Nobody felt like hugging and kissing and Eichord ended up leaving the house in a silent, sullen cloud of frustration and fear and anger. Another first.
It had started when he came home and she hit him with the housework bit again; she had busted her back all day, she was through with the kid, “it's your turn."
He'd gone in to a screaming, defiant Jonathan and worked to calm him down. Let's play blocks, he said. They played blocks. Jack took a block just slightly below his left eye, thrown hard. For a two-year-old, he had to give him credit. The kid had an arm on him. Now if he could work on a slider and his change-up...
Did she fully realize the implications, he wondered, of a child like this, who felt such bitter hatred at two? The corny phrase “SPAWN OF EVIL” always managed to type itself on his mind screen when he had such thoughts. Jesus Christ! The child's murdered
father had BLINDED A MAN when he was—what?—eight or nine years old! Again he allowed himself the guilty quasi-pleasure of regretting having fought for the kid's survival. Maybe it would be better for all concerned if he would ... And he let the thought die out. That kind of thinking was just jacking yourself off. It might feel good for the moment, but it's better when you grow out of it.
By the time he got to work he could feel his paranoia quotient building like Dana's high blood pressure, and the morning had barely started.
“Eichord,” he grumbled into the telephone mouthpiece.
“Jack?” It was the C.A.
“Listen,” the man said, and Jack duly listened, the phone cradled between his sore shoulder and neck and his throbbing head, words crackling meaninglessly as he jotted notes on legal pad paper. The call ended and another phone rang beside him, and he listened to Peletier get invited to a customs seminar in New Orleans, or so it sounded from his eavesdropped side of the call. What the fuck would a Homicide copper be doing at a ... Ah, fuck it. Little did he realize the telephone was about to strike him like a lightning bolt.
He shuffled papers and tried to attack his mountain of paperwork with little success. He read a memo rerouted to him via MacTuff, from a weapons consultant who suggested a new slant on the Tina Hoyt case. His thesis was that the killings were acts of political terrorism, and he had some fifty-six pages of documentation available on the use of a sharpened bicycle spoke as an assassination weapon. The killer, he proposed, was a hit man for the Ton Ton Macoute. Eichord, who never ruled anything out at first glance, filed the memo in the Graham file and flashed on the tire track cast. Shit, why not? But it didn't help his neck or headache any.
Now he'd misplaced the notes from the C.A.'s call, and as he shuffled papers, he found a crude drawing of three stick figures beside a doctor's name.