by Rex Miller
There was even a bizarre, and far from scientific opinion advanced by one Dr. Norman there in the shop. He was of the opinion that this behemoth of a man had managed to escape detection and capture for so long a period, murdering wantonly and randomly as he had, because he was presentient. A physical precognate. None seriously believed this other than Dr. Norman, but it made the Bunkowski dossier even more interesting to certain folk in the clandestine service, for whom every poisonous cloud has a silver lining.
After more tests, interviews, drug-and-hypnosis sessions, interrogations both rigorous and benign, examinations, and debriefings, the aggregate data was poured into the computers and the mavens gathered to pay homage to the deus ex machina of tradecraft, and the printout filled them with certitude. Theoretically, at least, this Bunkowski person was ideal for the purposes they had in mind. And they began creating a spike team around this unlikely discovery.
Here is how you create a Daniel "Chaingang" Bunkowski. Take a little boy. Take his daddy away when he is a baby and substitute a succession of drunks, hypes, perverts, and assorted human filth. Make Mommy a drunk too, and now give the baby a particularly vicious "stepfather" who doesn't like to hear baby cry. He likes to put Danny in high places where he will scream in terror, and leave him locked in closets for days yes days at a time, and because he is a bad little boy and survives chain him into a special little metal place you've made for him. It is his discipline box. And at night when "Uncle" comes to visit Mommy later on, and Mommy is gone, Uncle will chain him under the bed and bring him out to use him and then jam him back under the bed on his chain, feeding and watering him in doggy's bowl. And when you beat him use your fists first, and then a nice electrical cord, and later on a short piece of rubber hose so Mommy won't see too many bruises. Force the little boy to do every despicable, unspeakable, depraved, degenerate thing in the pervert lexicon, and then invent a few just to keep interested. And don't forget to torture him every so often with clothespins, pieces of wire, matches, burning cigarettes, a soldering iron—anything that will inflict sudden and devastating pain. And then when he is a big boy put him in a home where lots of bigger kids can use him too, and that is how you make a Daniel Bunkowski.
Now tease and torment and assault and abuse and abandon and finally try to kill little Danny. And if Danny surprises all of you and SURVIVES . . . oh, my God in heaven . . . if he's four-hundred-and-some pounds of deeply, brutally disturbed manhood, six-feet-seven of spring-hard legs bigger than tree trunks and fingers that can rip a jawbone loose, tearing stabbing ripping like steel tools, and if he's spent about half of his horror of a life institutionalized in one way or another and if he's free to roam and kill, well by God on high you'd better get up and pray because he is a DEATH MACHINE and vengeance is his and you'd better believe he has a hundred ways to hunt you down and turn you into an unrecognizable bathtub full of red pulp and dripping, steaming dog shit.
And this is what is dreaming the dreams. He is dreaming it is night and he is camouflaged, traps set, waiting beside the neat green pipeline, a perfect roofing of leafy, verdant cover that hides the trickle of water. He is CHAINGANG again in his dream. A silent, still, unseeing, unmoving, lone killing unit. Waiting. Impervious to the tiny things crawling on him and buzzing around him. Waiting in the absolute blackness of the deep Vietnamese jungle, listening to the mosquitoes and the symphony of night noises, the dark overture that will tell him of the coming of the little ones. And the steel cigar fingers of his giant right paw veer so gently touch the special canvas and leather pocket that houses his three-foot, taped tractor chain, and he takes the last inch of slack out of the wire that triggers his grenade trap. And he waits with infinite patience, a beaming smile plastered across his big, dimpled countenance. And this is what he dreams. Of humans coming there in the darkness.
He dreams that he waits without moving. Scarcely breathing. His vital signs slowed to a crawl. A deadly, totally dedicated, ruthless killer. Efficient. An atavistic throwback to the precivilization when man killed to live. He lives to kill. And he is waiting in the blackness with a loaded M-60 LMG, a violent hell of hand grenades wired into his frag trap, a razor-sharp bowie, and a yard of heavy chain. And in this dream he smiles his grotesque, dimpled smile, remembering the red mist and the taste of fresh, bloody human heart.
Jack Eichord meets the Lynch Family
For three days and the better part of a fourth Jack Eichord sat on his butt at a borrowed desk in the squad room alternately reading the file on Sylvia Kasikoff and making fruitless phone calls of one kind or another. He was tromping over old ground. As police work it was probably worthless, as a time killer it was only slightly better. Boring stuff. People had moved, phone numbers had been disconnected, people had days off at work, work numbers had changed, out for illness, busy but he'll call you back, and so on. There's nothing worse than having to spend hours and hours on a telephone, especially when the results were zipadee-doodah.
A lot of calls were long distance, and everything involving a direct dial call seemed to backfire, and every time Eichord got a phone operator it was as if he'd played Operator Roulette and lost. That's like you have all these operators waiting, in theory, and you dial 0 and the most vile-tempered, arrogant, stupid, offensive, abrasive, sententious, officious and slow-witted bitch at AT&T gets you. After a couple of days of this he was getting phone paranoia, and subconsciously concocting little scenarios in which the phone company, pissed at divestiture, decides to seek revenge on the populace at large and instructs all its operators to be as obtuse, recalcitrant, irritatingly brusque, and shitty-tempered as possible.
On the third day something happened to the lines and all 1-plus calls were answered by operators who kept insisting that he "report your trouble to Repair." After a few of those he gave up on phone calls, both local and LD, and concentrated on pouring through old police reports, crime-scene photos, interviews, newspaper write-ups on the Lonely Hearts Killer, lab reports, transcripts, all manner of fun reading from official CYA tap dances to autopsy summaries. There was a ton of paperwork to digest, and he'd barely scratched the surface.
At approximately 1400 he packed it in and took his map into Vernon Arlen's office and got directions on how to get to the Lynch home, filled his battered attache case with unread homework, and headed north for suburbia, despite having been unable to get an answer at the Lynch house for the fourth day in a row. It beat sitting in the squad room sucking up used smoke.
About this time he always thought about stopping in some nice little neighborhood tavern for a cold one, just to relax in familiar surroundings, mellow out for a few minutes, and enjoy watching the working folks come in for their boilermakers, a little shot n' beer or two on the way home, and a little double for a tightener on the way out the door what the hell. He loved the booze smell of bars and he'd nurse his Light and let the effluvia seep into his bloodstream by osmosis.
Or he'd stop into some little bistro for a little happy-hour pick-me-up. A nice dark saloon, atmospheric and dense with smoke and that rich, brain-battering booze aroma that he loved. Even as he drives through the gray Chicago streets the ambience swirls around his imagination engulfing him in the memories of that mixture that is uniquely happy-hour bistro. Lentheric, VO, Johnny Walker Red, Chanel, Gibsons, margaritas in icy glasses, a Harvey Wallbanger; assorted scents and flavors of urban decadence waft through his imagination.
His mind's eye pictures a nice, dark saloon with that heavy old wainscoting, an ornate backbar full of crystal, a shiny, gleaming brass rail. Leather stools. No chrome. No plastic. No disco bass thumping. The music drips out of the darkness and booze smell, the notes cool and fluid, golden colored and intoxicating like the stuff in the glasses—and it drips into a drinker's wet daydream. The music cuts through the swirl like a silver stiletto plunged into wet, black velvet, piercing the boozer's back with blue-note jazz. Unsmiling, tough, a little twisted maybe, convincingly alcoholic, sustaining the buzz and nurturing the feel of a serious drinker's
saloon.
But now he is out of the mainstream, driving with frequent checks to find the next street marked on his map, on a route that looks like any midwestern small town, cleaners and package stores and video shops and Radio Shacks and fast-food places in an endless blur of neon, gray streets and the beginnings of a pretty sunset in the background, as he negotiates the unfamiliar territory, fixing it all in his mind so he can find his way back after dark. And now through the commercial section and out past the junkyards and salvage places and nurseries and on his way to the suburbs.
1619. Eichord has been parked across from the Lynch residence for an hour. He's read reports with half an eye on the street traffic, after having rung the bell and waited a couple of minutes. No barking dogs. The street is quiet save for a pack of kids on the way home after school. He watches a couple of jets go over and leave contrails in the stratocumulus, and he moves his head from side to side to get the cricks out, hearing the second vertebra pop like a finger snap.
Twenty minutes later and he's got his long legs stretched out diagonally across the front seat, and wishing he'd brought a thermos of coffee. So far this day is shaping up to be a king-size cipher. So much of police work is in the waiting. Surveillance, to some, can be one of the most hated jobs. A plant is one of the necessary evils in the job. He looks at his watch again. He decides to stick it out another twenty minutes, then go catch a cheeseburger and get some coffee and come back. She's got to come home sometime. There's only one newspaper on the lawn so that's an encouraging sign. No neighbors home yet either. This place would be a natural for some B&E guy who wanted to take down six or seven places in one afternoon, just for the silver and the shotguns, and minimum risk.
Nobody home. No cars in the driveway. Kids' toys all over the yards. Where is everybody? Other than a handful of cars and that pack of kids he hadn't seen a human face. One of the houses had a FOR SALE sign in the yard. Lawn a little shaggy, but every other yard looked like it had been trimmed with a scissors right before the last of the fall grass. Leaves all raked. Neat City. He waited with his mind on hold and watched one of the most beautiful, dazzling sunsets he could remember. The sky high up still lightly blue with a little peach color and then down where he could see the horizon a ribbon of the most beautiful red lighting up the dark bluish gray with a bright, breathtaking slash of color. And he was enjoying looking at it when Edie Lynch drove up into her driveway.
"Are you Mrs. Edward Lynch, ma'am?" he asked her, smiling pleasantly as she turned to face him by her front door.
"Yes."
"Sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Lynch," he said, showing his shield and ID as he spoke, "but we're investigating some related matters and I wonder if I might ask you just a few questions. It wouldn't take but a minute." She seemed to deflate visibly as he said the words.
"Oh. Yes."
"Can I help you with those?" he offered.
"Oh, no, that's all right, just let me get this one bag in with the milk and things and—Lee Anne, get that little sack on the backseat for Mommy please—and I can get this." He took the larger of the sacks from her as she spoke, and she shrugged a thank-you and smiled as he followed the woman into the house, the child running up the sidewalk after them with a sack of what looked like paper towels.
"That's fine," she said, "just sit it down there, thanks."
"Go ahead and put your groceries away, ma'am, no problem."
"That's okay. Just—uh, Lee, honey, go in and start cleaning up your room now, please, and I'll get the other things." She turned back to Eichord. "I don't want to talk about it in front of— "
"I understand. I won't take up much of your time here, but I'm just coming on board this investigation and if you can I'd just like to go over some old ground with you from the time of the tragedy that happened. Just to make sure I have all the information."
"They asked so many questions back then and I'm sure you'll have more than I'll be able to remember now down there in your reports, but I'll try to answer whatever I can of course." She was obviously very tired. He didn't ask but he wondered where they'd been for the last few days.
Glancing down at the report cover he was holding, he began without any hesitancy, getting right after it. "I have to take you back to some sad, painful old ground, and I want to ask you to help me reconstruct that evening," he began softly, soothingly, speaking in measured tones, building a layer of trust as he always did. Within a few minutes he'd be calling her by her first name, asking her calm, easy questions in preparation for the heavy stuff that was his sole reason for going back to this ancient, cold trail.
She repeated all the information that she'd given countless times before, embellishing one or two things, forgetting here and there, very straightforward in her willingness to retrace the ordinary events that had led up to that fateful night as well as she could remember them. And then he pitched her his change-up, and the long, slow curve that preceded his high hard one.
"What were his exact words if you can recall when he left that night?"
"He said he was going out for cigarettes and he'd be right back."
"No. Edie try to tell me the exact way he said it to you that night."
"Well . . . he said." She paused, trying to get it right. "I'm going to run down to the 7-Eleven and get some cigarettes. Do you need anything?"
"And you said what?"
"I said no thanks," she said, shaking her head.
"How much did Ed smoke—how many packs a day, do you remember?"
"Not too much, I guess. He never smoked over two packs a day."
"Do you remember the brand?"
"Parliaments," she said, somewhat exasperated at the question.
"Edie when Ed was found he had a half a pack of Parliaments in his pocket. We found cigarettes here in the house according to the reports. Now, that could just mean that he hadn't had a chance to get to the store yet when he was attacked. But it could have another meaning." She raised her eyebrows and made a little frown of irritation. He let the pitch go. "It could also mean that Ed wasn't going out for smokes that night."
"What do you mean?"
"What it could mean is that he'd gone to meet somebody."
"No. He said he was going to the store, I just told you that."
"But husbands don't always tell their wives the truth." He was watching her very carefully, boring into her with those hard eyes and keen reason.
"Well, Ed and I weren't like that. He was always truthful with me."
"What if—just to make a hypothetical situation, Edie—what if he'd wanted to meet someone that night. Another woman, for example, and he didn't want you to know. How certain are you that he wasn't going out to meet someone that night?"
"That's the most ridiculous question anyone ever asked me. We had a good marriage and Ed was a fine, upstanding man. I can't imagine why you would come around asking something like that."
"I apologize," he said to her softly, "but I have to ask that question for this reason. The man who attacked your husband may have begun committing crimes again. If there is a chance that there might have been some other witness that night, someone who might have seen—oh, let's say someone suspicious looking and they could help us in that regard, I know you'd want us to have that information."
"I can assure you that isn't a possibility. Ed was going to the store that night and that's all there was to it."
He ever so gently began turning the questions back around to the safer area, times, places, things she'd be more comfortable answering. Slowly some of the strain and irritation went out of her face and he was getting ready to wrap it up, hoping to leave a less bitter taste as he faded back out of her life, when an irrepressible bundle of cuteness came bounding down the stairs and came up saying, "Hi! Mom can we eat now?"
"Hi," he said, smiling, as her mom shook her head.
"No, dear, we'll be eating soon. This is my daughter Lee Anne, Mr.—"
"Eichord. Jack Eichord."
"Mr. Eichord is a detect
ive working on Dad's case."
"Mr. Acorn?" she repeated quizzically.
"Eye-cord," her mother corrected.
"I'll bet you never heard that name before, did you?" he said. She shook her head in response shyly, smiling, standing very close, one of those people who will go through life never meeting a stranger.
"Lee Anne is a pretty name."
"Thank you."
"How old are you?"
"I'll be nine."
"That's a great age to be. Do you like school?"
"Uh-huh. I like Mrs. Spencer the best of all. Are you a real detective that's like on television?"
"I'm a real detective."
"Can you come talk to my bear. He's been very bad and needs to have a police detective investigate him."
"I happen to specialize in bears. What kind of bear is it?"
"He's a talking bear."
"Sweety," her mom interrupted, "Mr. Eichord doesn't have time to—"
"No. It's fine. Really," he said quickly. "In fact that's the main reason I came out here, to see what some of these bears have been up to." And Lee Anne was sort of helping him out of the chair and showing him toward the room where the bear was even as he soundlessly gave Edie the signal that it was okay with him, if she didn't mind, and she did a little shrug and head move kind of thing that said okay, but really said, well, whatever turns you on, because she was still angry inside. And before anyone could change their mind and let better judgment and wiser heads prevail, Jack Eichord, who a couple of minutes before had implicitly suggested Mrs. Lynch's late husband might have been having an extramarital affair was now in the bedroom with her daughter. Fate works in strange, mysterious ways.