Iceman

by Rex Miller

  Lishness the man was almost a caricature or parody of a psychiatrist. He had a fastidiously sculpted Vandyke, granny glasses balanced on the end of his nose, an imperial air, arch mannerisms, prissy speech pattern, and he lacked only a Viennese accent from completing the comedic portrait. For now, however, he was a dangerous threat, and he would be so treated.

  It was easy to imagine him seated behind the grand desk, his glasses on the tip of his aristocratic nose, nodding as he listened to the boasting of a killer. He had treated Spoda's utterances with the inviolable confidence of a priest's confessional, all right. But the stonewalling was over.

  After determining when the doctor would be closing shop for the day Jack and Monroe sat in the front seat of an unmarked car, fat Dana in the back, raffishly running his mouth in a clinical running commentary on the physical attributes of every woman who walked past their vehicle. In truth, Jack thought, there seemed to be an endless stream of delectable-looking morsels parading by them.

  “Ooh, shit. Look at THAT,” Dana said. “Damn! These doctors have it made. Man, I could go for some of that. Be that little honey's gynecologist. Put your feet up in them stirrups, darlin', I got to check out your plumbing."

  “Thass what you oughta be—checkin’ out folks plumbing."

  “Well, another five minutes,” Eichord said as he glanced at the dashboard clock, “and we'll go catch Sigmund Freud's act."

  “Hey, Eichord. When you was in Vegas, did you see them?"

  “Who?"

  “The goddamn lion-tamers. Sigmund and Freud?"

  “Jeezus,” Monroe said in disgust.

  “Come on. I can't stand it. Let's go."

  They went in the front door just as a young receptionist was locking the door.

  “Doctor Lishness still in there?"

  “Yes,” she replied as they flashed shields, “but he's with a patient and he has to leave right afterward so—"

  “That's okay. We're not going to keep him for longer than thirty seconds, but we do have to ask him one question. Listen, hon, just let us in and lock it back up. We'll ask him what we need on his way out the door."

  “Well—” She raised her eyebrows, glancing at her watch. Eichord smiled and she shrugged and let them in, locking the door from the outside. After all, they WERE the police. Surely it would be all right.

  They tossed the outer office expertly and silently in a matter of two minutes. Found nothing. There was a large file cabinet that held some promise and Eichord popped the lock on it, but the files inside were ledgers, payment records, statements, old appointment books, nothing on the names “Schumway” or “Spoda.” The old ledger cards and correspondence placed a date on the material. From the looks of the office, what Eichord wanted was either going to be under lock and key inside Lishness's private office, or on computer.

  There was a large, unlocked bin of patient X rays, and Eichord found a large envelope labeled schumway, alan, with the name of another doctor and a date. He transferred the data to a pocket notebook and they sat back down.

  Eichord picked up an interesting-looking publication on legal medicine and read that a latent schizz must surround himself with bizarre protective devices. That they suffer from eccentricities, have weird notions about the significance of societal values, can be dangerously aggressive. And he was just getting hooked on the reading matter when they heard the door open and a woman patient, followed by an obviously perplexed Dr. Lishness, who was surprised to find about 750 pounds of police detectives waiting in the outer office.

  When the lady had gone out the door and Lishness asked them what they were doing there, Eichord locked the outer door and the three men herded the doctor back inside his private office.

  “I don't much like this,” Lishness said officiously. “I don't approve of your manner. I have a—"

  “Listen to me. Listen good. Innocent women have been killed. The odds are it's one of your patients. I want to know everything you can tell me about Alan Schumway, and I want it now."

  “Well, you can just drop that threatening tone with me. Matter of fact,” the doctor said, reaching for his telephone, “let's just see what your—” But Eichord pulled the plug out of the phone and threw the phone across the room, where it landed on a leather couch.

  “I'll have your badge,” Dr. Lishness was saying as Monroe Tucker took him by the lapels, lifting him up off the floor, and slammed him up against a silk-covered wall. His glasses fell off and he began crying and cursing the detectives. Eichord nodded slightly to Monroe, who picked the man up as Jack retrieved his glasses.

  “You won't have shit, Niles. Now hear what I'm saying. When I leave this office, I'll have everything on Schumway. I'll have it either way. But if we have to shake it out of you, it's going to be very unpleasant."

  He could read the words right there on the doctor's lips, the threat to sue, the threat to expose, the threat to—to what?

  “Monroe,” Eichord said to the huge, menacing black figure, “if he so much as says one more word about what he'll do to us—okay?—if he says he'll call his lawyer, call the cops, call his mommy, the AMA, whatever, I want you to hurt him. Just a little. Then we'll toss the office. Later, after he does whatever—files his lawsuit and all—I want you guys to take this wimpy little douchebag out and DROWN HIM IN THE FUCKING LAKE."

  “My fucking pleasure.” He grabbed the doctor by the flab of his chest.

  “TALK, GODDAMMIT,” Eichord shouted at him.

  “What do you want to know? Don't hurt me anymore, please."

  Eichord nodded at Tucker again, and he released the pressure. Nothing hurts like a nipple come-a-long.

  “Where's Schumway's file?"

  The doctor pointed at a file.

  “Get it,” Eichord said, and he immediately produced a thick folder bearing a number and Schumway's name.

  “Are there tapes?” He acted like he'd gone numb and Eichord repeated it as he skimmed through the file. “Recordings?"

  “No."

  “Don't you automatically tape your sessions with your patients?"

  “I've been Alan's doctor for a long time,” he said, as if that explained it.

  Eichord read silently. Then he hit the last two pages, which were on a form marked SUMMARY. It began with a brief description of the patient, his vital statistics, Intelligence Quotient, other salient facts known about the individual called Schumway, Alan. Then came the good doctor's assessments.

  OFFENSE RECORD: No offense recorded.

  AGGRESSIVENESS: Uniformly belligerent and arrogant.

  FREE ANXIETY AWARENESS: Uneasy. Fearful apprehensive. Paranoid.

  FLIGHT IMPULSES: Escapist. Lives in make-believe world of contrived values. Artificially bolstered by indulgences. Alleges inability to use legs. Refuses to accept fact there is no medical reason for him to be confined to wheelchair.

  CONVERSION TENDENCIES: Incapacitating conversion hysteria.

  EMOTIONAL VOLATILITY: Manic.

  OBSESSIVE/COMPULSIVE TENDENCIES: Obsession with visual stimuli (art-deco-style graphics), aural stimuli (dance band music of the 1930s—see Mother Fixation).

  SCHIZOID CHARACTERISTICS: No friends. Calculated arrogance to counter sense of inability to achieve a heterosexual relationship under what he perceives to be “normal” conditions. (Hallucinated?)

  PARANOID CHARACTERISTICS: Suspicious.

  SEX VARIANCE: Reliance on oral sex, and insistence on sexual intercourse only with females exhibiting emphasized degree of what he perceives to be “vulnerability.” (Possible history of child molestation? Preoccupation with sex with the dead. Mother Fixation.) Strong latent homosexuality. Predisposition to sexual objects he perceives as “inferior” (transvestites, fetishists). Reliance on masturbatory fantasies and voyeurism.

  ANTISOCIAL TENDENCIES: Violently critical. Openly supercilious.

  EPILEPTOID CHARACTERISTICS: Rigidity. Explosive temperament.

  MANIC TENDENCIES: Loathing. Destructive desires. Punishment fantasies.
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  SCHIZOPHRENIC TENDENCIES: Paranoia.

  PHYSICAL DIAGNOSIS: Old spinal injury long-since healed and paralysis of legs psychosomatic (see Conversion Hysteria.) Subject could be ambulatory after sufficient (1 year-2 years?) rehabilitative therapy for atrophied musculature.

  PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSIS: Undifferentiated psychosis.

  ACTION POTENTIAL: Extremely dangerous.

  Aggressive, antisocial, with alarmingly high violence capability. Should seek institutionalization.

  Eichord's hands were shaking.

  “You fucking idiot. Why didn't you come forward with this?” The man just looked at him. “Don't you realize you're playing with a killer? You could be an accessory to multiple homicides? What the hell is the matter with you?"

  “But I—I cured him,” the doctor said meekly.

  “You WHAT?"

  “Yes. Look at the damn dates.” He drew himself back up, regaining some of his bluster. “I cured him. I was finally able to bring him around. Make him realize that he could WALK. With time, he'll be out of that wheelchair and he'll have regained full use of his legs. Then, with continued therapy, I can restore his mental and emotional balance. Make him a full person again. He's a wonderful success story, don't you see?” The doctor rubbed his chest. “This man hurt me,” he said accusingly, but in a softer tone.

  “Jeezus.” Eichord was fumbling with the calculator on the doctor's desk. Suddenly he realized the significance of the man's words, of what he was reading what he was HEARING.

  “My God! 292 days. You fucking IDIOT. Don't you see what you did? All you did was help a killer get back up and walk again. He hadn't killed for over twenty years. You cured him all right. Maybe you can figure a way to bring Hitler back to life. I can't believe it. You've put a homicidal maniac back on the streets. Given him legs and the will to kill again. Nice going, asshole.” He detuned on the doctor's response saying, “Where's a DSM-II?” He turned pages. Asked questions. Began reading. Forgot to sit down. Forgot to breathe. Forgot Dana and Monroe were standing there. Forgot Dr. Lishness.

  The words came in alien phrases. So many questions. So much information to digest so quickly. Trying to sift through the conversion symptoms of Schumway's disorder. The words like “pseudoneurological” and “hypochondriasis” accessible to a word buff like Eichord, but the clinical jargon insulating the facts under a thick coating of astasia-abasia and akinesia-dyskinesia, pathophysiological and psychogenic conceptualization. Even the academic usage of such words as “temporal” or “etiological” pushed him further away from a clear understanding.

  With a final round of warnings to the psychotherapist, the men returned to the car and headed back to the station house.

  “Shit. Wasn't nothing to that, was there?” Monroe said. “That white boy sure didn't take much leanin', did he?” He laughed softly.

  “I think what did it was that hair,” Dana said, “all those little patches of baaaaad, black Rastafarian hair clumps stickin outta Monroe's cheeks. Very scary to your basic white person. We don't HAVE that shit."

  “Yo gonna have a bad, black Rastafarian FOOT stickin’ outta the cheeks of yo fat ASS in a goddamn minute, blubber tub."

  “Mon-roe,” fat Dana said. “Can I AX you som'-pin?” But the big detective ignored him.

  “Smart ass car dealer lookin’ pretty good, eh?” he said to Eichord.

  “Yep."

  “Need to knock his fuckin’ dick inna dirt."

  Eichord said nothing. His mind was ice-cold, like a meat locker, and he drove silently, framing the proper response inside his head.

  North Buckhead

  Around 1400 he confirmed that he was going to be late and made certain Donna had arranged to take the boy to a girlfriend's house, where she planned to have their evening meal. By 1430 he was in the Buckhead Public Library making a nuisance of himself on the third floor, then vanishing into the bowels of the reference room on the second floor, where he reached over behind a spine-worn Psycopathia Sexualis feeling in between the solid rows of old books on the top shelf. The library books he'd dropped were still there. He pulled them out.

  These were the books that had been used as cross references in the report he'd had Doc Tulare lash together for him, but it was the sort of report a layman could research if he wanted to spend three or four hours in the dusty bookshelves. All the titles were appropriately dog-eared and he had a nice checkable bibliography. Unlike prints, which generally paid off only in the movies, the first step was still Alibi Ike. It helped if in backtracking your trail the other guy found you were otherwise occupied at the time of a crime, especially if you could arrange it so he thought it was HIS idea.

  The beautiful thing about the multilayered library was all the nooks, crannies, spiraling stairs, alcoves, hidden recesses where you could sit quietly at an out-of-the-way desk. Eichord still loved the library just as he had as a kid. But he needed it another way this one time, and he had the books in his jacket and was out through the basement without being seen and on his way to Schumway's house.

  By 1500 a rather ordinary-looking middle-aged man in dark, thrift-shop coveralls and workman's cap, carrying something, was climbing the hill in back of Alan Schumway's. He looked like a repairman of some kind with his toolbox, an ordinary-people guy walking down the street. Unexceptional.

  It was the end of the line, at last. Had to be. And Eichord hoped it would be resolved now. Too many things could collapse for him to try to wrap this up with good, solid police work. Too many lives hung in the balance to play with it. The system could no longer be trusted, in this instance. A killer had proved himself, or rather they had proven THEMselves, to be too clever. Then there was the matter of the typewriter with the Hand of Christ. Pure Jell-O. The circuit attorney wouldn't even go through the motions. Lishness, for crissakes, he'd have a fucking FIELD DAY if this went in front of a jury.

  These were the thoughts in his meat locker as he penetrated the residence yet a final time. (surreptitious entry—possible occupancy by armed suspect #11—quantico training program for major crimes task force agents.)

  B & E dialogue: “What are you in?"

  A: “Tool and die."

  Q: “Oh, well, we all gotta go sometime."

  (surreptitious entry—countersurveillance checklist) pins, hair, matchsticks, tape, doorwedges, sensors, sound wave generators, autographed picture of Sean Connery. Inside now and listening to the strange and quiet home again. There's no place like home. GOT to get my own key—eh?—he thinks, light in heart and pure in spirit.

  1600. 1630. 1655. 1700. Will it be a big production? Scumwad will come in and Eichord will see him get up out of the wheelchair and cross the foyer to the elevator. Freeze, he imagines he'll say. Up with your hands, mother sticker, this is a fuck-up. 1705. 1710. Wet palms now. Upstairs and in the first bedroom to the left of the office with the hallway a clear shot in the reflection of a picture frame. He can move back an inch or two and he's out of the picture both ways. Waiting. 1711. 171130 171135 171136, when you start clockwatching you take some deep breaths and clear your mind. Change positions. Sit if you're standing. Stand if you're sitting. Don't get spooked. There's nothing quite like the sounds of a darkening house as you wait hidden in the gathering shadows. The house comes alive in a way you would never dream and you can begin to believe in all kinds of things like ghosts and poltergeists and spirits as the house begins to breathe around you. She takes on sex, like an old ship will, and she sighs, moans, stretches, cries out, creaking and coughing and snarling with all manner of noises real and imagined. Motors hum and joists contract with the pitch and yaw of her decks. She is coming alive in the darkness, and your skin chills as she whispers her warning.

  1738 vehicle noise, exterior, wait, then sounds on eggshell gravel rolling crunching daddy coming home wheelchair on the ramp, key noises at door and a last deep, shaky breath and the palms are dry now like the throat and someone is in down there and then the elevator purrs as he comes for you now. The doors are very
quiet, like the stroking of a blade against oiled whetstone only a light vip-vip you have to listen for, feather edge steel in warm oil noise, and then nothing. Long pause. No—nothing—dead S I L E N C E—Eichord is frozen in position. Wanting to tilt forward another two inches to see in the frame reflection and finally paper sounds the son of a gun was reading his mail and he loudly rolls by in the chair. He is not walking. He is N O T repeat NOT AMBULATORY he is a cripple in a wheelchair the man is in a fucking chair and then he speaks and his voice in the dead quiet house where Nicki and Alan lived is louder than a shotgun.

  “Companeeeeeeeee. Oh, lucky me. It's Dickless Tracy again."

  Eichord says nothing. Motionless.

  “Come on, man. You are fucking PATHETIC! I mean, is this how you shot Nicki, you came in and waited for her to come back from getting groceries. You cocksucker."

  “Talking to me?” Eichord said as he watched the man seated in the chair. He was not holding a weapon.

  “Well, eat my grits and get the shits if it ain't my fav-o-rite flatfoot. Sher-luck Homo, of the Major Task Force."

  “That's me. Just out of professional curiosity—how-djew make me?"

  “Jeezus, fucking pathetic.” He was already rolling down the hall. “Come on, you might as well come in and have a buzz or whatever. Take the load off your brain. You do drink, don't you? I hear you almost qualify for silent-partner status down there at Jack Daniel's distillery—izzat true? Like the old demon rum, do you, Jackson?"

  “I've tossed back some."

  “Uh huh."

  “So how did you know? I thought the door looked clean."

  “It's that pathetic stuff you splash all over yourself, Dickless. What is that crap—Three Nights in a Garbage Can? WHEW! I just about died of cologne poisoning when I walked in the door.” He laughed loudly.

  “I'm not wearing any cologne, Alan. Or should I say Arthur?"

  “Hey, booby, you can say Myron Lipshitz if it'll get you off."

  “You think you smell cologne on me? I'm serious."