by Rex Miller
Stone Shadow
( Detective Jack Eichord - 3 )
Rex Miller
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Stone Shadow draws you inevitably against your will into the mind of serial killer Daniel Bunkowski, also known as "Chaingang," a brutal rapist and torturer of women. A captive victim fortunate enough to escape his deadly clutches brings his twisted games to the attention of detective Jack Eichord. Now Eichord must solve a case that forces him to confront the hellish nightmare psyche of a serial killer while struggling with his own, all-too-fallible nature.
Stone Shadow
Rex Miller
Copyright ©1989 by Rex Miller
Other Works by Rex Miller
Stone Shadow*
Butcher*
Chaingang*
Slob*
Frenzy
Slice
Iceman
Profane Men
*also available in e-reads editions
Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye ...
—I CORINTHIANS 15
South Dallas
“You like that?” the man asked her.
“Mmmm.” Incongruously, in the back of her mind she recognized “The Lady from Brazil” playing over his radio that he'd brought down into the basement with him. Their romantic accompaniment, she thought.
“Answer,” he commanded.
“Yes.” Tania Maria is the artist's name, she thought, fighting to keep herself in check.
“Don't talk so forcefully. You know I don't go for that.” He hurt her a little to emphasize his words.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered.
“Now. Try it again. There. You like that—huh?"
“Yeah."
“Okay. You've already forgotten what I just told you two seconds ago. You ain't the smartest cookie ever drew a breath, are you? Eh?"
“No."
“No WHAT?"
“No, I'm not the smartest cookie that ever drew a breath."
“What a fuckin’ GENIUS.” He laughed. “I LOVE it. Damn. Okay. Now. When I ask-you-if-you-like-it"—he squeezed her breasts roughly, his arms coming around her from behind, reaching under her arms and cupping her large breasts, kneading them in tempo as he spoke, turning himself on at her helplessness—"I want you to tell me. I want you to say, ‘YES, I like it. I like for you to squeeze my big, juicy melons.’ You think you can remember that?"
“Yes."
“Say it"—he squeezed hard, hurting her this time—"goddamn you."
“I like it. I like for you to squeeze my big, juicy melons."
“Like this?"
“Ahh,” she cried out in pain as he squeezed her breast, crying out more than the degree of pain called for, knowing how he got off on it, and then making a little whimpering, keening noise that he liked.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely, “you go for that, don't you? Oh, yes.” He was touching her now.
She fought to keep herself on course. She tried to whimper convincingly and not recoil from the unwanted intimacy of his hand.
“You're so wet. Damn. You want to beg for some of ole Sly?"
“Yes. Please. I beg you give me some of old Sly."
“Uh huh. A nice soft whispery voice. That's the way I like for you to beg for it.” He was touching her roughly below. The first two fingers of his right hand going in and out, plumbing her over and over, in and out, and then his hand was out of her and she could feel him doing something.
“Now,” he said, “let's beg for him nice."
“Come on, Sly, please. I beg for you. Please. I want you so bad.” She fought to keep the hatred and ice out of her voice.
“Ole Sly gonna make you sit up and beg."
“Oh,” she said as he thrust his erection in.
“That's what I like about fuckin’ you doggie-style, bitch, I don't have to even guide ole Sly in. He just sorta fits in there himself, don't he?"
“Yes. He feels so good,” she lied as he banged up against her.
“Yeah. I know, baby.” He cupped her left breast, his right hand on her right hip as he drilled her. Her breast was getting sore from his squeezing. It had been a nightmare. She'd been his captive for over three weeks now. He'd abducted her in a Dallas shopping center. In broad daylight, he'd said later, and you were the broad. He was some joker.
“Oh,” she let out an audible moan of simulated ecstasy. In the weeks of captivity she'd learned survival skills. She'd even had a menstrual period while she was chained up, and he'd whipped her for it and made her take him in her mouth until she gagged. Forcing her to give him head for hours.
Her name was Donna. Reasonably attractive, longhaired, neatly groomed, outgoing, poised under normal circumstances. She imagined what she must look like now, cowering in dazed fear and semishock, chained to a basement wall by a mad rapist and murderer, waiting for his pleasure in the cellar room of a dark house. Hair like a rat's nest hanging down in her face.
“Ohhhh,” she moaned, and he said, “That's right, cunt. Sly's a big boy, isn't he?"
“Oh, yes. Sly, you're so big and hard. You feel so good inside me."
For the first couple of weeks she'd slept only three or four hours a night. Losing all sense of the passage of days and nights. Sometimes he left the light on all night. Sometimes he turned it off and kept it dark during the daylight hours, she knew, purposely disorienting and confusing her.
“Beg for him."
“Yes. Please. I beg you, don't stop. It feels so good.” She tried to move a little off the rhythm, trying to subtly spoil his deep strokes, but she had to do it with the greatest care. If he suspected anything, her plan wouldn't work, and he was very cunning. It was now or never.
“Oh,” she moaned again. “I ... Ohhhh.... I want it so bad. I could do this so good if I didn't have a chain like this. Please. Ohhhh. Please. I want you to fuck me so deep. Please unchain me.” She made her voice as sexy and ingratiating as she could.
“Ole Sly done got you hot to trot."
“Yes, baby. So hot. So hot and wet. I want to be such a good slave to you."
“Yeah. I can dig it.” He was really banging into her now. “Yeah. We can take that heavy chain off our little bitch. Let her do her thing. After all, you can't go nowhere."
That's what you think you bastard, she thought to herself as she moaned in mock, orgasmic delight.
He had kidnapped her at gunpoint, this joker. Plucked her from the safety of her car. Raping her repeatedly. Keeping her in a thick leather belt to which a heavy chain had been padlocked. This was what he was unlocking now, the hated thing that kept her tethered to the wall.
She felt weak. Light-headed. Sore. She was nude. He'd kept her that way all the time. With only a blanket pulled around her—"so you won't catch cold and die, bitch,” he'd said. He fed her by whim. Watered her enough to keep her going. Sex was rough. Perverted. Animalistic.
But it wasn't the sex or his brutality that had terrorized her to the breaking point. It was his wild bragging about the bodies he'd buried. “Hundreds of bodies.” And she knew that it wasn't all hot air. He told her too many specific details of burials. And he'd shown her proud clippings of his kills. Dozens of newspaper stories detailing a recent rash of mysterious disappearances in the Southwest. He had lots of the stories thumbtacked to the walls of the basement room, interspersed with his favorite pages from raunchy skin mags.
The fact that he would tell her such explicit details frightened her deeply. He continually promised that he'd let her live if she'd do what he demanded of her, but instinct told her otherwise. She knew that all of his bragging would eventually have a price. If she was going to survive this ordeal, she would have to get away somehow
, and it would have to be soon.
She was very tired and weak. A lethargy had set in after the first couple of weeks and she'd gone from sleeping a few hours a night to sleeping constantly. She would retreat from the horrors of her imprisonment and abuse the moment he would finish with her, pulling back into a curl and instantly letting herself slip into the dark womb of sleep. When she'd be awakened, she'd still be in that same fetal ball, the blanket tucked around her, barely able to move.
Even now she could feel herself giving into it. A curious bonding effect often develops between captor and captive. She had begun to look forward to his brief visits, on some level that she couldn't possibly comprehend, hoping that she would please him and that he'd allow her to shut her eyes tightly again and curl up into that wonderful state of abject nothingness. She recognized how dangerous this was. She realized she was beginning to give up.
She fought to keep herself servile. To keep her voice soft and pseudo-sexy as he unlocked her shackles. She must call on every ounce of her courage and resourcefulness. He was large and powerful and she was weak and no match for him. But she had a strength of her own. She knew men. She could see this madman had an obvious weakness. An area of insecurity that, if played correctly, could set her free.
She knew that if she could convince him that she wanted his sexual prowess, wanted to enjoy it to its fullest, he might take the belt or at least the heavy chain off her for a few moments. Then she could watch for her chance. After the first week or so, he had stopped locking the upstairs door when he came down to visit her. She prayed he would not lock it this time when she heard the door open and the old boards creaking under his weight.
Now he had entered her again from the rear and he was savagely reaching a climax. She was doing her best to bring him to a wild finale, working hard to make him ejaculate in a hot frenzy of intercourse, and their moans and hard breathing brought him to the shooting point and she could feel the liquid heat and then his spent member withdrawing as he murmured things to her.
“Oh, that was some good slave pussy,” he told her.
She moaned back at him, her back still turned. Squirming a little for him as she did so and making a little toss of the head that she did, a shake of the hair to make the long mane fall back away from her face. But he could not see that her eyes were as hard as Carborundum, nor could he know that her concentration was as sharp as a butcher knife.
And in just that three or four seconds when he turned to adjust his radio volume those bare feet took her soundlessly up the stairs, and she was fast and very scared and lucky and flew through the small frame dwelling with unerring accuracy and out the back door of the kitchen and down a few wooden stairs, through a postage-stamp-size backyard and down an ordinary alley to the barking of a dozen neighborhood dogs, running barefoot through cinders, gravel, broken glass, garbage, sticks and stones, rusty nails and alley cat tails, running like a frightened gazelle, propelled by the potent fuel of terror, running nude through the Dallas night, running across lawns, clumsily falling, sobbing and gasping for air, darting around strange shapes and silhouettes, jumping stumbling vaulting throwing herself over all manner of obstacles, dashing unexpectedly out in front of cars on a busy street in a blinding glare of headlights and a blasting, cacophonous honking of horns and screeching of brakes as bewildered motorists stood on brake pedals to avoid the insane streaker who shot across their field of vision in a blur of skin and wild, trailing hair, and then out of sight and running through suburbia, through the streets of the darkest shadows, knowing the mad one was right behind her and that any moment she'd feel the awful stab of the blade or the searing heat of the gunshot, and running beyond exhaustion and running through the dead envelope of shock and then losing herself in this endless new world of alternating pools of blackness and bright light, awareness melting away, her consciousness dissolving in the deliquescent flow of perpetual night that took her at last and held her in its arms.
Buckhead Station
Jack Eichord looked like shit. He was drinking too much. He wasn't getting enough sleep. He was irritable and apprehensive about nothing and just generally felt awful. He was getting his own diagnosis confirmed by one Detective Sergeant James Lee, who was breathing toxic fumes on him and berating his condition and attitude as they sat side by side in the cramped and filthy detective squad room in the basement of Buckhead Station.
“You don't seem to give a shit anymore, like I said."
“It isn't that—"
“Don't tell me it isn't that. I know when you're giving a shit and when you ain't, Kemo Sabe, and you don't act like you care. You been just walking through it. I been knowin’ you too long, man. I know when you're here and when you are out to lunch, dig?"
Eichord just shook his head at the Oriental cop whom he'd worked with for so many years.
“You got an attitude all of a sudden, that's another thing. When Jack fuckin’ EICHORD, straight-arrow crime-crusher and Mr. Never-give-up gets an attitude on the job it's something a friend notices, believe me."
“Make sense, for Chrissakes,” Jack said, smilingly, but feeling sour.
“You walked through this Cassarelli thing like you weren't here. Like you didn't give a rat fuck. Just because it wasn't some big mass homicide with three hundred dead people in a locked room, and Jack haffin’ to fly in and figure out who put the cyanide in the fucking Kool-Aid—I mean, you're still on the job, my man. And since when don't you give a hundred fucking percent. Eh?"
“Gimme a break."
“Huh?"
“Cassarelli was a piece of shit. Another tap dance. What's to have an attitude about? I'm just tired of going through the motions for looks. You knew the perp was gonna end up walking. I knew he was gonna walk. HE knew he was gonna walk. His fucking lawyer knew. His honor the nitwit judge knew the fucking captain knew my dead Aunt Sarah knew. Everybody knew. So what's to get an attitude about?"
“That's what I mean, right there. Since when do I hear that kind of shit outta your mouth?"
“I'm just tired, I guess,” Eichord admitted. “I need to back off it for a while. Take another vacation or something."
“Bullshit. You just came back from fucking vacation two, what was it—three months ago. You said it bored the stones offa ya."
“Well—"
“You look like shit. You're drinking too much. You don't get enough sleep. You're hanging around here night and day and you got the social life of a monk with herpes."
“A monk with herpes? What the hell does that mean?"
“You're drinking again, my man. And it worries me."
“I'm not drinking one fucking bit more than I always drink."
“You are half-blitzed on the job, kiddo. Don't bullshit a bullshitter. You stink like a fuckin’ brewery half the time."
“Christ.” Eichord fought back a smile.
“I'm not jokin’ with ya, man. And everybody's saying stuff about it. I mean the captain—on the Cassarelli thing—he was talkin’ to me one day and you'd been in his face and he goes"—Jimmy Lee fanned a hand over his face—"tell the bartender to cut back on the vermouth, this gin tastes funny.” They both chuckled. “And you know that bar rag, shit Jackson, he's never seen the noon hour without at least two coffee cups of Gordon's under his king-size 56. So when that son of a bitch says you stink of booze you gotta smell like a broken bottle of Fuzzy Navel."
“I hope I didn't stink as bad as you do right now, you smell like you're wet and on fire.” Eichord turned to fan a hand over his face.
“I hope this pungent cigarette is not the object of your scorn. This doesn't bother you, does it?” Lee said, blowing a huge cloud of poisonous smoke directly at Jack.
“Come on, man,” Eichord said, fanning furiously. “I mean, if you wanna get cancer, that's fine, but don't—"
“This is the smoking section of the room, my man.” James Lee pointed at the crudely lettered sign that hung next to one with the printed legend A-1 DETECTIVE AGENCY, NO JOB TOO SMALL. Someone
had penciled out “job” and written “dick.” And someone else had written “eat me.” And another shaky hand had Eichord's cop mind instinctively matching the “eat me” with the printed urinal art in the upstairs men's room, “Want to see a joke, look in your hand,” under which somebody else had scrawled, “Look in BOTH HANDS, you mean.” What flakes.
“You're telling me it is,” Eichord said, feeling sicker by the second. “And if you do that again, I'm gonna puke all over that shitty-looking suit."
“That is a $350 mohair, Special Agent Eichord, courtesy of Bon Tons. I just flogged it. You like?” He shot his cuffs.
“Wonderful. Too bad they didn't have your size."
“I got a special deal.” Lee smiled inscrutably.
“Yeah, you boosted the fucker. I don't wanna hear about it."
“You gotta take something. Buddy Lintz gets pissed. He thinks you don't like him you don't take some threads."
“Oh, I'm sure Buddy just loves to have coppers flog $350 suits off him. Must make his day."
“Make my day, mother-fuckers,” a huge man boomed from the stairway. It was fat Dana Tuny, called “Chunk” Tuny throughout Buckhead Station, and the longtime partner of James Lee—known as the legendary homicide team of Chink and Chunk.
“Hay-ZOOS! It stinks like a mother-grabber down here. I gotta get a straight goin’ to cut the smell.” The big detective grabbed a cancer stick out of his partner's pack and lit it with a gold Dunhill, letting out a huge plume of foul carcinogens.
“Morning, asshole,” Lee said to him. “I was just telling Eichord he looked like shit."
Eichord nodded hello.
“That's no lie, Jack. You look like fuckin’ walking death, man, whatsa matter witcha—you on the sauce again?"
Eichord laughed. “Real subtle, Dana."
“I just got done tellin’ him, man. He better cut back a couple of quarts a day."
“Well, girls,” Tuny said, shifting his poundage from his partner's back, “I'm goin’ across the street. You guys want some doughnut holes?"