by Rex Miller
“Hello?” Nothing. Nothing but a clicking noise in Eichord's ear. He was calling a TV station to try to keep the lid on the exploding resurrection of the Lonely Hearts case. No please hold, no please stand by, no please please please, just click. Not even a simple “We're too busy to talk right now but if you'll shove the phone receiver up your ass a proctologist will be with you in a couple of weeks.” Finally a few more clicks and a lilting voice told him he'd made contact with the mother ship.
“Ginny Snow please,” he told the voice, and he sat there waiting while it went one ringy-dingy and two ringy-dingies, and finally another voice and another click and Whom shall I say would like an audience with her highness? Eichord was singing tunelessly to himself as he sorted through the voluminous crime-scene reports that now threatened to shove his desk down through the floor, the voice in his ear stabbing him back to life and he began a soft-shoe tap dance with a local television anchorwoman, conning her for all he was worth, doing his best to keep the lid on this thing.
Finally, his task accomplished, he thanked her, made the obligatory promises about dispensing information, all the usual media bullshit, and hung up. Sighed. Checked his directory and then remembered he had a call card on her and dialed Letty Budge over at the Buckhead News-Gazette, slipped his feet back into his patent-leather dancing shoes, and started tapping again.
Letty was a total pro who bought nary a word of it, so he gave up his scam and leveled with her. They were friends. She was a responsible journalist. Blah blah. He needed some slack, and he needed it now. Finally, one more odious task was completed, with promises of exclusivity, a bit of a ribbing about “trying to pull her chain,” and he'd managed to buy a few more precious hours.
Eichord knew what it was like when a city was swept up in the awful tide of a pattern of serial crimes. One of his primary functions beyond apprehending serial killers was to placate the media, pure and simple. He was by now such a high-profile cop that anything from him was newsworthy and he didn't blink an eye at using the press the way they so often used him. He didn't like it. He wasn't crazy about it. But it was a vitally important part of his job to keep the flow of ink as managed as he possibly could under the circumstances.
More phone calls. The mock-ups of Bunkowski were almost ready. He told somebody he'd be over in an hour and a half and wanted three copies of everything, plus the master for the new expanded circulars he figured they'd be saturating the town with soon enough. More details. More paper logjam to cut through.
And then, for just a few moments, Jack sat there at the desk in a kind of stupor, listening to Brown murmur in the background, and he thought about his nemesis, Chaingang.
Where are you? What are you doing with that little baby you ripped from the girl in Chattanooga? Why did you take it? Here was a beast who had come back from the dead. Something that ate human hearts. Mutilated. Tortured. Fed. Cannibalized. Gorged to capacity until its vast, demonic hunger was satiated. WHAT IN THE NAME OF CHRIST WOULD IT DO WITH A TINY BABY? He could hardly stand to think of the possibilities.
While his mind was temporarily in the floating state of hold he seized the opportunity to begin what he called his mnemonic doodle. Years ago he'd taken some courses in speed-reading, improved retention, various self-improvement studies designed to aid him in his work. He'd found mnemonic devices well suited to his work style. Mnemonics gave him a way of retaining large amounts of seemingly unrelated data in a manner that was particularly useful when his ever-present pocket recorder wasn't filing it all away on cassette for him.
In an interrogation or during an impromptu interview or at a busy crime scene he could file away reactions, responses, facts, figures, anything imaginable with his mnemonic system. He'd committed over sixty graphic, numerical images to memory, and these are what he drew now as he began doodling:
1. A picture of a gun beside the number.
2. Glue. A bottle of glue tipped over. Spilled. A lake of sticky glue.
3. A crudely drawn tree.
4. Open door.
5. A hive swarming with bees.
6. A pile of sticks.
7. A billowy cloud with the word “HEAVEN."
8.
Eichord stopped his mnemonic doodle in midstream and thought about the realities of what faced him. He knew what his chances were against this seemingly unstoppable monster.
8. ATE. The things it ate. He doodled an enormous heart with his felt-tip pen and began shading in perspective. Drawing to kill time like some little kid in study hall waiting for the bell and the summertime playground ball game, he doodled the phrase “TO KILL TIME,” and he drew a clock with a dagger in it.
The thing had been honing its skills. Dieting. Starving, no doubt. Healing from Jack's pathetic attempts to destroy it, planning its revenge with the acute foresight of a presentient being, killing for pleasure as always. Killing for the basic love of taking human life, guided by the unerring premonitions and previsions that were the gifts to be enjoyed by this rare subspecies of humanity.
He looked at the drawing of the gun beside the number one and his mind slipped back into gear. He got up from the desk and started up the stairs. His chances were marginal. He smiled to think of it. At the moment he didn't care. Later he could think about it to his heart's content and pee his pants in mortal terror.
He went out of the building and drove to a pawn shop nearby run by the cop's unofficial gunsmith, Shorty Wallhausen.
“Hey."
“Yo."
“Can't change y'r mind?"
“Nope."
“Okay. I still say if it was me I'd take and get me something like this.” He was holding a .45 Colt in his big fist. It was pointing at the ceiling and it had jumped into his hand from out of nowhere.
“If I could handle one the way you can, I would. But I'm dirt worthless with one of those."
“You don't have to be Wild Bill fucking Hickock, baby. Just blow about seven dollars’ worth of Teflon-coated KTW power load in his general direction. WAX that mother-flogger."
“I trust this,” Jack said, lifting his heavy fourteen-inch cardboard box of steel and grip. Shorty held out his hand and Eichord relinquished it. He always enjoyed watching somebody like Wallhausen when he examined a weapon. Any kind of weapon. It was watching a master craftsman with a fine, precision tool. He showed so much respect for the ability of the thing, such a great affinity for it. It was just a kind of awe for the purity of the professionalism. Now he felt nothing.
“Well,” Shorty said, taking one of the thick red shells by its brass base and holding it up in the light, “you got your basic death hurricane here.” He wiped off the brass as he checked the sides of the waxy container, shoving the two shells into place, wiping the exterior of the amputated shotgun as he returned it to its innocuous resting place in the box. “The master blaster."
“Let's hope,” Eichord said quietly.
“Remember our deal. You have to use this on our boy, you doctored the loads yourself."
“That's right, I did."
“Now let's see how you did it,” he said, as he handed Jack a hunting knife. “Open the crimp."
“Like this."
“No.” Shorty showed him, making it look easy.
“Okay."
“Shake everything out."
He did so, and the little lethal pellets rattled into the metal pan.
“Now watch how I load the crystals.” Shorty stuffed the crystalline poison in, repacking the pellets at the same time. “I'm not doing it right, but just so you know how to, if you have to prove you done it. Okay? Now you take an’ give this a shot, and a little epoxy"—add a teaspoon of nitro, a pinch of oregano—"and crimp ‘er back ‘n wipe all the excess. That's an easy way to do it,” he told him, making it look easy again.
“Gotcha. I ‘preciate it a lot. Shorty."
“Nothin’ to it. Jus’ do it."
“Long as it gets the job done."
“Put ‘er this way, pohdna'. You hit a rhinoce
ros in the big TOE with this load an’ that sucker's dead ‘fore he can FALL."
“That MIGHT do it,” Eichord said, meaning it. “Thanks.” He had little faith in guns, and for damn good reason as he looked at his own sorry track record. He had little faith in his own judgment, seeing as how it had caused his pal Jimmie Lee to die a horrendous and sudden death. He had, when you get right down to it, very little faith in anything right at this moment. He went out and started his car and to his relief it didn't explode.
Jack missed the hell out of his wife. He thought of her more than he'd planned since the bit of hopeful misdirection at the airport. He wished he could talk to her right now. Just hear that sweet voice over the phone. To be able to whisper love talk. To tell her the honeymoon WASN'T over, that there'd be better days. To tell her that nobody said “commence” anymore.
He thought of a bad joke one of the guys had told him about hazard pay, danger pay, something like that. He suddenly felt very cold at the thought of flying solo on this one, but he knew the MO of Daniel Bunkowski. To insulate himself and hide behind a shield of cops would achieve nothing. It would only delay the inevitable confrontation. It would mean more uncertainty for everyone, more innocent victims would surely die. It was better to let this thing come to a head. Easy to say, but when the bull's-eye is painted on your back it's another matter.
He ached so bad with the loss of Jimmie he could put himself at risk again in the hopes of drawing the killer out in the open. This time Eichord wasn't going to miss. No matter what. The man they called Chaingang would die.
For all the pissing and moaning about his status as a media darling there was an up side to it. He could manipulate the ink. His tendency to be nonconfrontational with the brass, somewhere between iconoclast and ass-kisser, had a curious side effect. The powers had now begun to believe the press THEY had created as a buffer between the police and the public. To them Jack had in fact become a supersleuth. It was the way they looked at things. You said something enough times with a perfectly straight face and it came to pass. A nutty sort of egoistic self-confidence bred of supreme power of authority.
But their attitude resulted in Eichord having autonomy now when it came to this sort of situation. And since he was the one who would pay in spades for having allowed Bunkowski to come back, as it were, from the grave—he was going to go for broke. Make himself as vulnerable and unprotected as he could and let the monster come for him. He wanted it one-to-one now. But most of all he just wanted it to be done with.
For a second he could visualize Lee watching him and he said softly, “We'll get him. Chink.” And for a second he was the Eichord of old and he looked in the rearview mirror and intoned, “Or my name isn't Michael Lanyard."
BUCKHEAD HIGHWAY MALL
On Tuesday evening, Daniel Bunkowski, in his neatly pressed suit, with infant safely nested beside him, was driving out of the crowded Buckhead Highway Mall and turning at the third light, a now-familiar interchange to him as he drives a route leading to money. He will check a rental property tomorrow morning, and if it seems adequate inside, having already cased the lay of the land and assessed its isolation factor, he will rent the base for his next operation.
The immense killer is not the same anthropophagous wild man who devoured the heart of a fresh kill only a few weeks ago. In fact, he can still feel himself changing. That thing that would come over him is growing weak inside him and he can feel its hold on him lessening. The thing that would force him to kill to appease the boiling pressure cooker, to make the awful heat subside, to do violence—the only kind of act that would slake the burning red thirst—no longer had its sharp fangs suck into his innards. He was changing.
All because of the little baby son. It was, indeed, a miracle. Bunkowski for the first time was acting out of regard for someone or something beyond his own survival. Above all else it was now crucial to him that the newborn be protected. His long-range plan, the creation of a self-sustaining safe environment for his pet monkey—involved the acquisition of money. To even make the move involving the computer hacker he needed lots of working cash. One more score on top of the recent windfall. Just a thousand, twelve hundred, would do it. Walking-around money.
“That be all tonight, hon?” the bored lady at the cash register said as he slid a quart of Wild Turkey along the counter together with a crisp new double sawbuck.
“That's got it,” he rumbled with a wide smile.
“How you been gettin’ by?” she asked with her usual familiarity. Having seen him five or six times he was filed away as a regular.
“Just so-so. I guess I can't complain."
“Well, you can complain but it won't do you a goddamn bit of good."
They both roared with laughter at this brilliant conversational diamond.
“That's for goddamn sure,” the big man agreed in his most jovial and pear-shaped approximation of ingenuousness.
“Ohhhhh, my God,” she said, stretching like a cat, pushing her chest forward to emphasize what Bunkowski suspected were outrageously padded breasts, “I got a back that's just KILLING ME, ya know?"
“Really?” he said. The state of her health and well-being was clearly the most important thing in the huge man's life. Everything about the sincerity of his facial expression, tone of voice, and the steadiness of his gaze said that her back pain was FASCINATING to him.
“I got the goddamnedest crick in my back I ever had in my life. I tell you it is MURDER.” She stretched again in the white sweater, moving her head from side to side as she did so. “I didn't sleep in my own bed las’ night and shit I tell ya I can't hardly move today. I stay over at my boyfriend's once in a while, ya know?” Daniel nodded. “An’ last night. God, I promise ya it wasn't cause we ... you know. BELIEVE me, we DIDN'T.” She shook her head knowingly, letting him know it wasn't because they'd done the deed hanging from a chandelier or anything. “But hell, you know how it is when you're not in your own bed."
“I sure do. I just don't sleep worth a damn when I'm not in my own bed,” he said.
“I can't even sleep good when I'm, you know, on VACATION or anything. I like my own bed.” Her head shook at the very thought of her own bed.
“Boy I hear that loud and clear. You know, I guess this job gets kinda scary once inna while, you know—guys coming in and sticking up liquor stores and that.” He said it innocently, shaking his head just the way she did as he slowly folded up the bills, letting her see the humongous wad of money he carried so she'd know he wasn't interested personally, just making conversation. A friendly non sequitur.
“The scaredest I've ever been was about four, five months ago this Mexican comes in here—well, I say Mexican, he LOOKED Mexican. Anyway he comes in somethin ‘bout a flat and hasta call somebody, he's lost his wallet, hell, I don't remember what all, so he's got a pint of whiskey and he comes over and he says. Put this on my tab."
“Uh huh."
“And I go. You haven't got a tab here, mister. I can't do that."
“Wow."
“And he says. You BETTER do it. And, you know, he just stares. And I stare back at him. And I mean he is STARING at me, you know. I figure he's gonna shoot me or stab me with a knife or somethin’ bad is gonna happen. And I move on across like this"—she moved down the length of the counter to show him—"and I said, ‘Listen, mister, if you don't get outta here I'm gonna step on this buzzer back here, and as soon as my foot hits THAT, the shit hits the fan down at PO-LEECE headquarters. NOW GIT THE HELL OUTTA HERE!’”
They both laughed at her amazing audacity in the face of peril.
“God! That's really something,” Chaingang said, amazed by this woman's bravery and quick thinking, moving around to look where the buzzer was as he told her how great she was. “That was really something!"
“There AIN'T NO BUZZER,” she screamed, and they both roared again with laughter.
“Wow! Goddamn, you sure were great. That's pretty fast thinking.” He obviously admired her for her cleverness.
“Well, you know, I had to do somethin'. It was all I could think of."
“I don't think MY mind would have worked that fast."
“Wally don't have nothing in here. We don't even keep a gun."
“Hell. Looks like they'd have an alarm to that—whaddyacallit—that security company deal."
“Naw. We ain't got shit in here."
“Well, don't that beat all. Hell, I bet if some stickup guy hit you now he'd get a thousand dollars cash!"
“Shit. He'd be lucky to get a hunnert and a half.” She leaned on the counter. “Weekends when the money stacks up good."
“Bet you could hit a liquor store like this on a Friday, eight, nine o'clock, come away with plenty."
“No.” She shook her head. She knew what she was talking about. “I'd make it Saturday night about ten or ten-thirty,” nodding firmly, “yep, that's when the most cash would be on hand."
“Hell, a guy'd probably get two, three thousand on a Saturday night,” he agreed.
“Ummm.” She shrugged, obviously disagreeing. “He might get fifteen hundred, MAYBE two thousand on a real good Saturday."
They bid their friendly good-nights after a bit and Chaingang got into his car and drove off. It never failed to astonish him ... the remarkable degree of openness with which people revealed their innermost secrets to casual strangers. He in particular had this ability with people. He could just look at someone and they'd be telling him their life story inside of five minutes. Something about the look of him. A trust thing. Something across the bridge of the nose, in those doughy wrinkles and crinkles, ail be lacked was a white beard and a ho-ho-ho. And now—a pillow for padding.
He had a reason for every move he made, if only subconsciously. He'd picked this liquor store to patronize for a specific reason. He was going to hit it, and this imbecile had just told him when the best time was and how safe it would be for him. She'd even given him a guided tour of her behind-the-counter surprises and a peek at her hole card.