Iceman dje-4

by Rex Miller

  The telephone on his desk rang and he picked it up. “Homicide. Eichord."

  “This is Bonnie Johnson. I had a message you tried to get in touch with me."

  “Hi, Bonnie. Thanks for returning my call. I had some information here on Mizz—” He fumbled around on his desk, turning pages, trying to find the dossier.

  “Diane Taluvera. Yes, sir?"

  “You still haven't heard from her?"

  “No, sir. Just that postcard."

  “Has anybody received any sort of direct communication from Ms Taluvera? A phone call—something like that?"

  “Not a word."

  “Do you think something has happened to her, Bonnie?” He tried to use an individual's first name whenever he could, but he had caught himself saying Mister Schumway a whole lot.

  “Yes.” He could hear the catch in her voice. “I'm afraid for her. It's not like her to run away like that."

  “You think this person that she was seeing, the man she referred to as Al, might have abducted her?"

  “I did until last night, but now I don't know what to think. His secretary called me and they all want to come talk with me about Diane. He is as worried as I am. It's the car dealer Al Schumway. And he said he got a postcard from Diane too. He wanted to know what was going on. If I had got a call from her. He can't understand why she hasn't phoned him."

  “Alan Schumway called YOU?"

  “Well, no. Yeah. His secretary did. And then he got on the line for a minute. We talked. He seemed real concerned. I don't know."

  “When was this?"

  “Last night. About ten o'clock. He wanted to know if we all could meet and I told him I was too tired last night. And I really was. I was just exhausted. I hadn't slept for the last two days. So I guess I'll get together with them tonight. She's coming over to pick me up after work. I never realized, you know, Diane never said anything about him being in a wheelchair and I—"

  “Listen, Bonnie—” He had a shortness of breath. “I, uh, want you to forget we had this conversation. Temporarily, please don't say anything about this call. Be sure not to mention it to anybody. Now, what I want you to do is this...” He was having a hard time swallowing. “I want to make sure you are safe for the next day or so. I will clear all this with your employers, but I want you to take sick leave this afternoon. You feel awful and you have to go home. I don't care what you use as your health excuse. Dizziness. Whatever. Just don't come back after your lunch period. When is your lunch hour?"

  “It's at eleven-thirty. I don't understand. How come you want me to—"

  “Bonnie, I don't want to take time to explain right now, but make sure you don't go home. Not for any reason. Do you have a cat or dog that has to be fed? Anything like that?"

  “No."

  “I want you to go to a hotel or motel. Don't tell any of your friends where you are. Don't tell the bank. I'll take full responsibility. How about relatives, Bonnie—anybody who might worry if you couldn't be reached for twenty-four hours or so?"

  “They're all in Florida."

  He ended up explaining to her what he wanted. Took her parents’ phone number in Ft. Lauderdale. Had her vow she'd call and leave word in a certain way as soon as she checked in. If he should be away from his desk, she was to leave word with anyone there in Homicide that Mrs. Lauder was in such-and-such a room at this number. It wasn't particularly clever, but his brain had vapor locked and it was the best he could improvise. He hung up and was out of the squad bay all in one motion.

  He drove to Buckhead Springs first. Trying to decide which way to go on it. The search warrant, that was the biggie. Should he get the goddamn thing or not? Which way to go? Finally, he decided what he'd do. It scared him a lot to think about the plan. It made him want to pee, and he was glad the traffic wasn't too bad. He didn't want to red-ball it. In a few minutes he was parking in their garage. Donna was gone. This was her shopping morning. She had Jonathan with her. He checked the house to make sure nobody was home, then went in and took a leak, came back out to the garage, and took a deep lung full of gas fumes. Oi veh.

  His heavy toolbox was under the bench, coated in oily grime and spider webs. He removed the hammer, drill, files, pliers; it was full of hand tools. His whetstone box was wrapped in an oil-soaked rag. He unwrapped it. The box carried the legend dont let the bastards grind you down in Latin, with the cardboard gone at the end so it read non carborund. He took the silver thing out and slipped it in a Baggie. Four rounds followed. Carefully wiped. The surgical gloves went in one pocket, pick gun in the other.

  Back in the plain Jane and moving toward North Buckhead.

  Would Bonnie go along with what he wanted? There were a couple of weak holes in his plan. He'd made enough Homicide cases he had some idea of the number of ways he could fuck up right now, and it just didn't matter. He knew what it was now. Very clear. And when Bonnie Johnson had phoned, he had this nudge from the corner of his mind about the lady in the women's group who had told a detective she THOUGHT she might have seen Tina Hoyt leaving the church with a young woman.

  So this was how Spoda or Schumway did it. He had a surrogate all along. After twenty years he somehow talked his sexy, live-in secretary girlfriend into setting ‘em up for him. But the thing was, Eichord couldn't make a fucking case without a d.b. If he was willing to put Bonnie Johnson's life in peril, no sweat. Maybe they could stake her out like a fucking goat and let Nicki move in, and ... Shit, it wasn't working for him. Postulates bled like wounds. Fuck the circuit attorney's office with his aloof “iffy DNA shit."

  If Eichord was right, Spoda, Schumway, was chair-bound. Without Nicki for legs, he'd have a helluva time doing his thing. He might be able to off somebody, but dispose of the victim? That could be a bit tougher. If Nicki baby was out of the game, Arthur Spoda could still be a player, but it was going to slow him down something fierce.

  He stopped and called Dana on a pay phone, and by the time he pulled down the block from Schumway's house the surveillance car was gone. Eichord had roughly a quarter-hour before the surveillance van man rolled by. He'd be a memory by then.

  Moving toward the house at a brisk pace. Just short of a jog. The pick gun out. No problem. Easing in nice and quiet. Standing dead-still. Breathing in the sounds of the house. Strange feeling. Nicki. She could be asleep in a bedroom. Or waiting. He stood there for a long two minutes. Slipped his shoes off and moved up the stairs. The elevator was a closed door he wouldn't investigate.

  Did the whole house fast, Where the fuck WAS she? Took a couple of things out of his pockets. Put a couple of things back in. Time was ticking. He got paper out of Scumwad's desk and wiped it, even though he was using gloves, then decided that was wrong and opted for the top sheet on a notepad. Then changed his mind back again and took a full-size sheet.

  The typewriter was a fancy electric with the guts in one tiny, self-contained compartment. The cartridge would have whatever he typed on it now, but he would gamble on that. He typed the brief note, then some other extraneous information to move the cartridge along. Had an inspiration and typed another. Enough. Every key sounded like a gunshot.

  The penetration of the cabinet was a snap. He opened up the clay box and did a nice careful casting of both sides. The latex mold could work wonders, but you had to have a smooth matrix to work from.

  He thought about checking for a catalog of mail-drop companies, matching company names with canceled checks, that kind of thing. Looking for the Polaroid collections these jokers sometimes like to keep. The nasty little scrapbooks. If he'd had three more hours instead of three minutes, he might have done that very thing. What he did do was ... he left. Why spoil a good thing? He didn't even check for hidden security systems, although he wanted to know more. Was the joint miked to a sound-activated recorder, for example? Later for you, house, he thought, and he was outta there.

  By the time Bonnie was leaving for lunch, and not coming back, so was he. Back in the squad room listening to Tuny's rasp cut through the fo
g, “You wanna eat Spic?"

  “Shit, no,” Tucker told his partner. “I don't wanna eat that shit."

  “Why the fuck not?” fat Dana whined. “Get some of that hot babyfinger chile.” Dana claimed he'd once found a tiny fingernail in his favorite Mex-Tex restaurant, hence Babyfinger Chile con Carne.

  “Less eat honky. Go over to that shithole on Central and get some nice, rare greaseburgers."

  Eichord felt his stomach turning and he had to pee again. He went into the men's room and NIGHT-CRAWLER was waiting for him on the wall above the urinal. He felt alone. It was a feeling like being lost at the heart of a dark and foreboding maze. He zipped his pants, washed his hands, went back into the squad room, and sat down at his desk. He noticed Dana had put the surveillance back on the house like he'd told him to. Eichord felt a surge of affection for his old pal and glanced over at the two massive detectives.

  “Hey. Ya know what? You guys do good work, didja know that?"

  “Does the pope wear a hat?"

  “C'mon, man,” Monroe Tucker said, looming over him momentarily, “we gonna go scarf up some nice, bloody greaseburgers. Sound good?"

  “Gee, Monroe. That does sound tempting. Wish I could."

  “Oh, Jackie, PLEASE change your mind,” Dana simpered, half-swishing, half-waddling past.

  “Pass,” Eichord told him, blowing a kiss.

  North Buckhead

  You see, what happened was he woke up thinking he had done it and it set his teeth on edge worse than a spur working its way out bim-bam-boom. Bim—in the car listening to kids laughing as they wait for a school bus, Schumway leaves and Eichord thinks it's empty so he B & Es it and ... Whoaaaaa, hello dere! It's Nicki waiting for him. With a gun.

  “Who the fuck are YOU?” she says, the gun too close. He does his Quantico Armed Suspect #6 and then puts his piece in her mouth find BAAMMO—gyuk and splattergore all over everybody.

  “That's who the fuck I are,” he says. That's one. Then there's the one where he's in the car and the kids are laughing and Schumway leaves and Eichord knocks.

  “Hello,” very ladylike.

  “Hi, I'm Jack Eichord.” The badge just a little flash, like an open trenchcoat. He's a closet shield-wagger. “Could I have just a moment of your time?” Soft and gentle.

  “Certainly, Officer. Glad to cooperate with the police."

  “Miss, we know you and Mr. Schumway are responsible for the murder of Tina Hoyt and Diane Taluvera, not to mention others. Do you want to talk about it? This is the time to think of yourself."

  “But, sir, I'm completely innocent.” Demure. Soft.

  “I see,” he says, placing the silver thing between her teeth, jamming it in and firing as she brings her arms up. BBOOOOOOOMMMMM! He'd killed her over and over all night long. But it was morning and the dangerous, deadly lady was still alive and he couldn't make it go away this time. Not with the sun coming up.

  It was cool this morning and Eichord had a thermos in the car with him, and he unscrewed the cap and poured half a cup of black coffee. Steam swirled out of the cup when he sat it on the dashboard, and the front windshield fogged up across the lower part of the glass. He took a sip of the steaming coffee and wrote something beside one of his notes. The legal pad was beside him in the seat. It said: Timing? Arrest Warrant. And there were numbers beside that. Beneath that was printed a long list of things like, Gloves, Take bullet from bag, 2nd round goes, with the word “brass” printed beside that. Nineteen things to remember in all.

  The newspaper was propped up in the space between him and the wheel, a guy killing some time drinking coffee and reading the paper while he waited for someone. The window cracked a little, the cool air helping him. There was still time to get real and forget this altogether.

  He'd never done anything like this. Ever. A couple of times there'd been things happening on the job. He'd seen others go nuts, get carried away. Seen somebody shot once when it didn't have to be. Eichord had killed three men in his lifetime and had hated it each time. He wondered as he sat there if he had the balls for this, this morning, and oddly enough he decided that balls would be the least of his worries.

  He ran it through his mental fixative one more time. The aftermath of what he was about to do had an unknown black hole in the middle. An area where it could all come tumbling down around his ears. The maid who comes in to clean, the neighbor who hears something, the witness who sees the remembered face, the forensics that everybody forgets, the package of money left on the closet shelf to take you down later.

  There's always a bottom line. The bottom line here was more innocent women. He tried to recall all of their names to give him some poison to work with, starting with Diane Question-mark and working his way backward. Diane Taluvera. Poke Salad Annie. Shit, all of a sudden they were a nameless, faceless blur of cadavers.

  People! The front door. Scumwad and his bitch. A black car he hadn't seen before in the drive and big Al wheels over, gets in while she helps him, collapses the chair, packs it all away nice and neat. Doors slam. She leans in and they kiss for a long time. Lovers. Isn't that sweet?

  He planned to wait five minutes, but three is all he can stand. If the man returns ... Fuck it. Ad-lib, we will. Eichord has to piss, of course, and fuck that too. It's too late for piss. He's in the driveway. Out. Forgot the fucking box. Back in. Gets the box and stuff in the sack. Up to the door. Rings. Doesn't wait to find out if she'll answer, but starts pounding, really hammering on the fucker, and Eichord has a fist like a college shotput, hard and heavy.

  It opens and a woman snarls, “Keep your goddamn shirt on, for crissakes, you don't have to beat the goddamn door down—"

  “Nicki Dodd?” he says with the shield case open in one hand, the sack heavy and down beside him in the other.

  “Yeah?"

  “Ma'am, you are a material witness in a Homicide investigation...” A barrage of double-talk that he'd learned from a New York City Vice cop years back, starting to Mirandize her as he invited himself in, pushing by her in the doorway, the ID and shield long gone now, a given, pushing his way in with all the authority of all the Homicide dicks in the history of the world, shoving his way in in the time honored manner, shouldering past with bad vibes and ugly warnings, muscling into the darkened early-morning house with copper eyes and gunmetal words: “—anything you say can and will be used against you.” Nothing makes ‘em drop their drawers like Miranda. It's television that does it. All those bad movies. Everybody knows when they hear that bullshit about how you have the right to remain silent. Sure, bitch. Take the fifth.

  “Am I under arrest?” The tone saying. What the fuck is THIS shit? Not a worried bone in her thin body. Think gas chamber, he tells himself.

  “Ma'am, do you know what this is?” His hand is going out to her and he makes her take something, dropping it before the fingers touch so she won't feel the pliofilm.

  “What the—” She looks like she never saw such an object before.

  “Do you own a gun, ma'am?” He takes the bullet from her quickly.

  “No."

  “I have a couple of questions, ma'am. Let's sit here, shall we? This won't take a second.” He watches as she writes her scrawl across the Miranda form.

  “I don't say shit without an attorney.” She's moving back.

  “Huh uh.” He takes hold of her in his strong hands, pushing her down in the nearest chair. “It doesn't work that way. I ask questions. If you answer them, THEN you call the lawyer. If I don't get answers...” He trailed off, walking behind her. “We have lots of problems. First, we know you and Mr. Schumway killed Diane Taluvera and others. You wanna talk about it or what?” Moving around behind her.

  “This is bullshit. I'm—"

  “NO. Sit."

  “Hey! You can't do this. There are rules. I know my rights and—"

  Would he ever forget the sneer in that voice? “You don't know sweet shit, lady. Here are the rules: there are no rules. Okay? Now. You get one chance.” He did somethi
ng quietly, soundlessly, but then there was a metal noise again, he restrained her back in the chair. “Will you admit you helped kill Diane Taluvera and others? No time. Talk. Yes or no?"

  “You're crazy. You're fucking NUTS. I never killed anybody, you stupid son of—” The silver thing went off up close against her right temple. She had reached for the bullet with her right hand. There was some blood. Some noise. He looked around and picked up the brass.

  Don't bog down. Keep moving. Don't worry about anything now, you've either got it covered or fuck it, you know? Everything gets dumped out of the sack and onto the sofa. Long white sofa, and godDAMN it get control of your hands, asshole. Get control of your asshole hands.

  A Baggie inside the evidence bag. Three rounds. U.S..25 Colt Auto. Oldies but goodies. The silver thing a Frommer Lilliput. Exposed hammer. Not like the locked-breech weapons of the larger Frommers. Little Hungarian pocket guns that had some fuckup features like a hammer to catch on the way out and an exterior barrel casing that had a way of getting dented and totally screwing the weapon over. Some kind of crazy Rube Goldberg locking system. All in all, a piece of shit, but this little sweetheart was clean and cold. Freezer-cool and sheep-dipped as a piece can get. Never saw a cop's drop-gun case, never saw the inside of a Confiscated Property room. Right off a wise-guy stiff some five years back. Even the ammo was old, but it still made a bang. Bim-bam-boom.

  And he finally fumbles the rounds out on the table beside Nicki's chair. Drops them and the spent casing into one of her pockets. Picks up a little lint on the oil. Does some things to the Lilliput. Runs an oily rag through a few times afterward. Puts a couple rounds in the mag. Takes the decedent's right hand and closes it around the grip. Mother-of-pearl. The left hand over the slide. Lets that hand drop. Cocked and unlocked. Stuffs it into the ballistics box and fires a second round. Picks up the brass and drops it into the sack. The noise is not a factor.

  Rearranges the hands and feet. Nicki Dodd is looking good. Keep moving. No sweat. Looking real fine. Okay. We either got some time or we don't. He sees the legal pad in his head. Nicki had shown up with Schumway to the surveillance team working the four-to-twelve trick last night. He'd taken a chance and had Dana lift surveillance at midnight. The graveyard tour was thrilled, of course. Fucking house plants.