Iceman (11 page)

The thunderclap made her jump again and he chuckled.

“Don't be scared. You're so beautiful,” he told her, kissing her on the hair.

“No. I'm not."

“You know what you really are?"

“Huh?"

“I tell you no lie, Princess Di. You're fucking drop-dead beautiful!” And that broke him up and he laughed with joy. “That's it, darling. Drop-dead beautiful!” He kissed her through the giggle and she snuggled close. And then she started to ask him about all the mystery.

“What's all this with the suitcase and the cards, honey? Please. Tell me what's going on?"

But just then Nicki came in the room, saying, “Excuse me, hope I'm not interrupting,” talking to him about something she couldn't follow, sitting on the bed beside her quite naturally as she spoke, her long, slim legs stretched out in front of her, the three of them together on the bed.

“Hey, Princess, I've got a neat idea,” he said to her softly. “Why don't the three of us kind of cuddle together? Would you like that, baby? You and me and Nicki?"

She thought he was joking. “Oh,
sure.
"

“Hear that, Nicki, she likes the idea."

“So do I,” Nicki said.

“Hey! What the hell? I was just kidding.” She moved Nicki's thin fingers from her arm. “What the hell is this?"

“Just a little lovin'? Don't you like Nicki?"

“I like guys, if you haven't noticed. I don't happen to go for other girls.” She was irritated now. Diane was rather homophobic, for one thing.

“Well, that's no big deal,” her strange boyfriend told her. “Nicki ain't a girl, she's a guy."

She knew as he spoke that it was true. “Oh, sure,” she said again. The damn thunder was making her jumpy. And now THIS dumb scene. “Listen, I think I wanna go home. Would you mind?” She thought of the woman's face. The jawline. Mannish in profile.

“I don't think she believes us, Nick. Are you gaffed?” The slim woman beside her shook her head. “Pull up your skirt, doll. Show Princess Di what you have between those lovely legs."

“Come on,” she told him. “This isn't funny ... JESUS!” She jumped out of bed. Nauseated. Shocked. Nicki's long, dark penis lay across her thigh. Diane was horrified. “GOD!"

“See?"

“Get away from me."

“Okay. Okay.” He got her gentled down after Nicki left the room.

“He's a MORPHIDITE!” She was in a chair across the room looking at the bed where the man still lay, his paralyzed legs stretched out in front of him.

“Noooo. I believe the correct phrase is preoperative transvestite, but, you know, if she makes you nervous—"

“SHE. She has a big COCK. She's a MAN."

“Um,” his Reagan voice kicked in, “well—technically—yes.” Eventually he got her calmed down.

“Come over beside me. Nicki won't be back. I promise.” And she sat beside him and he told her all about Nicki and he tried to kiss her and she resisted at first, but he kept it up. Eventually he calmed her down and she slid back over beside him.

“How could you...” But he'd had enough questions and he overpowered her with his handsome face and his open smile, selling her again with all his charm, pulling her over so she'd be safe from the storm, promising her, inviting her, baiting her in his soft, romantic tones, and she let him start kissing her again.

“Drop-dead gorgeous, that's what you are, all right,” he said, and then he had HIS penis out and she let him guide her face down and he gently moved her closer and then he was in her mouth, hard and hot, and moving her head back and forth on him, almost choking her, telling her she was “drop-dead gorgeous,” over and over, filling her throat with him, and it seemed like a minute or less he was making a loud, fast-breathing gasping noise and she knew that he was climaxing, and he was exploding inside her mouth and she tried to pull back then, but he had hold of her hair and then he was pulling her mouth off him and the right hand did something and there was a flash of metal and she screamed as the sudden unbearable stab of pain penetrated her screaming unendurable agony as something struck deep into her mind with deadly force and Diane Taluvera was dying even as he penetrated her again.

D
onna had packed most of his wardrobe, it appeared, and he joked with her about it as he unpacked slacks, hanging them back in the master closet in their bedroom, “You tryin’ to get rid of me or what? I'm only goin’ for a couple of days. I got enough clothes in here to stay a month. You guys tryin’ to get rid of me?"

“That's it. We're trying to get rid of you,” she said, coming up behind him, encircling his waist with her arms, and resting her head and upper torso on his back. He managed to get the hook of the hanger back over the rod and turned into her hug, lifting her face up to his.

“Mmwa,” she said, kissing him wetly.

“Those are my sentiments exactly,” he told her, kissing her again. Slowly and gently. It had been a perfect evening. Jonathan had been so docile Jack had decided not to chance telling her about some information he'd picked up about possible allergy therapy. Grains. Fiber. Dairy products. He'd forgotten the other things. Warning signs. He'd seen a video of kids whose behavior was similar to the little boy's. But it had been a quiet night and he wanted to keep it this way. They put their son to bed and finished packing for his trip to Texas in the morning.

“Do you really HAVE to go?” she finally said.

“I dunno,” he sighed. “I suppose not. But it'll cut us a little temporary slack. Media's not going to let Tina Hoyt go down as long as it'll get numbers. We're probably in a ratings sweep or whatever,” he said, his cynicism borne of long experience with the dauntless crusaders of electronic journalism and print.

“How'd you like to cut ME some slack,” she whispered into his ear.

Their mouths mashed hotly together. He could never get enough of her.

Big, beautiful breasts that curved slightly upward like the surreal cartoon boobs in the men's mags, the bazooms of a busty, firm young girl, still nice and high, each crowned with a full, inviting cherry. Long, silky hair, and—most of all, best of all—that attitude of delicious sensuality that was so natural and sweet. He'd come to love Donna so much.

Eichord was still awed and pleased by his wife. By the elegance of her movements. He'd seldom known anyone so totally natural, and he liked to watch the sexy way her femininity asserted itself, the feral way she held herself, her openness as they made love. She was a joy to watch at any time, but especially in their intimate times together. Yet he even liked to watch Donna run, or walk, or just curl up on the sofa. He enjoyed her awake, asleep, animated, or in repose. He thought of his lady as a mysteriously female person who was absolutely open in her ways. An eternal mystery that could still take his breath away.

“What?” she asked him.

“I said there's no bloom off these roses, honey,” Jack muttered.

“I love you,” she told him.

“Hmmmm.” He smiled, moving back a little so he could look at her. He could not say what was in his heart at that moment. Speechless, he wanted to tell her as he looked at one of the most beautiful shapes in nature. Right up there with the rainbows and sunsets and oceans and snowy meadows. Exquisite perfection, beautiful as innocents. Pure and purely feminine.

What was it that old Spanish painter had said about the most beautiful shape—was it an egg? Or the eliptical figure 8 recumbent—the infinity sign? The Greek letter? Or was it the breath-catching sight of the female S-curve, the most perfect line in nature? The glorious S of the breast and buttocks.

Jack Eichord traced a gentle, surprisingly warm line under his wife's loose clothing. “You got a great S, you know that?” he said.

“Your S ain't bad either,” Donna said, each of them beginning to satisfy the other's hungry needs.

T
he Amarillo cop shop was superclean. Efficient and professional to a fault. Hardly what the records of twenty years ago would have suggested. The cop work on the Iceman kills had been spectacularly shoddy, Eichord thought, and the more he looked into the crime reports, the worse it appeared. Sloppy investigation techniques. Sloppy paper work. And one of the sloppiest mishandlings of a prime suspect he'd ever seen. At least that was his strong impression two decades after the facts.

With predictability the detectives involved in the investigation were all either deceased or seemingly scattered to the four winds. Nobody in the Amarillo shop had first-person or hands-on memories of the investigation. The most glaring omission in the records—the fact that neither the NCIC computers nor MCTF stored photo or prints of the suspect, a teenager named Arthur Spoda—proved to date back to a fire in which the suspect's records were destroyed. Then even THAT proved false.

“Bullshit,” the man in the sheriffs office told him. “I remember an ole boy in Homicide tellin’ me how they lost a whole buncha stuff in the flood they had over there. Water pipe busted, is what happened. Ruined a file cabinet fulla stuff. Ah think they just had it all hauled off to the dump."

“So you're saying nobody in law enforcement down here has got a picture or fingerprints on the primary suspect in a multiple-homicide headline case?"

“Just one of them things,” the man said. Eichord thanked him and talked again to the guy in Sex Crimes who put him on the Spoda trail as best he could.

Eichord was still driving, thirty minutes later, when he saw the VEGA sign on the outskirts of town. It reminded him of the deep South, where you can drive through residential neighborhoods and tall, centuries-old magnolias spread out over the traffic like the elm-shaded side streets of the 40s, before the national Dutch elm blight hit southern and mid-America. It was like that here. Big, unkempt trees drooping out over the highway.

A sign assured motorists Jesus Loves YOU and then another that Jesus Died for YOUR sins. Somebody had painted on the side of an underpass: Trust Jesus. Eichord passed an elderly gentleman in a slow-moving station wagon sporting a bumper sticker telling you to Honk if You Love Jesus. The phrase “Bible Belt” came to mind.

But this wasn't the Bible Belt. Perhaps it was below the belt, he thought as he drove by large stone abutments that looked like a mini-acropolis, once the supports for a massive loading dock. The compress for the cotton bales was long gone, and so in fact was the railroad that once hauled the cotton away. The gin was vanished. He passed shacks for migrant workers and signs advertising Rummy Cola, Brad's Truck Brokerage, and Velma's Salon. All rust-covered. Green frog-colored lily pads floated in stagnant roadside water. Joe's garage and muffler shop. Closed. Ivy's Café. Empty. no tresspassing.

A creek runs along beside a wooded area. The creek is banked by low-hanging willows, water lilies, thousands of cattails, goldenrod, water weeds of every description. An underground cable sign has all but rusted away, so that the only thing you see is the bold word W A R N I N G.

The vestiges of a ghost town without optimism or hope. A forgotten chunk of America not even the most hypo realtor could get excited about. A storm had flung mighty oak limbs into the two lane and nobody cared. He could tell they'd been in the way of traffic for a while as he slowed and navigated his way around the partial roadblock.

Prosperity had fled. Storefronts were clogged with broken roll-top desks, legless or seatless chairs, boarded-up buildings like Lou's Tack and Saddle Repair, Bud's, Vega Boot & Shoe Shop. On the side of what had been a diner somebody had painted bypass city. Buy Bond's Bread for extra nutrition. Memories of the 7th War Loan. The city Meat Market was empty. Keerist, what a ghost town.

The entire downtown area resembled one huge and sprawling thrift shop. The Main Street Bank Building was straight out of the Northfield, Minnesota, Raid, and appropriately it was now a historical museum. Eichord stopped and asked for the directions to the Spoda house. The man had never heard of it. He asked if the guy remembered the Iceman murders back in the 60s. Nope. Where was the local police station or sheriffs office? Weren't none. Was there anybody who had lived here a long time? Sure. Plenty of folks. Name one? Freda over at the gas station. Freda and her husband been here since the war. Eichord didn't ask which war. How do I get there? elicited the following direction:

“Go yonder to the Picken's sign and turn around an’ go back a block.” Jack digested this while he drove. He kept thinking of the James gang as he drove past crumbling brick edifices that triggered movie memories of the Daltons and Youngers. Pioneer Seeds. Wilson Grain still hawked their wares from ply-boarded hulks of weed-covered, vanished commerce. The town belonged, at the very least, to a world of cars with running boards, obsolete fireplugs, and five-cents phone booths.

A sign said Motel—Right, and his word-puzzle brain automatically substituted Motel-Blight, passing the once-pink motel with its totally redundant vacancy sign. One more tiny business clinging by its fingernails to the slippery precipice of the mercantile exchange. How many eternities since the NO vacancy neon had blinked on?

Eichord pulled up next to a gas station that sold eats, worms, and de xe coolers & vented heaters—not an appetizing combination. He thought the missing lu in De Luxe to be the final indignity. A person of indeterminate sex and age appeared, materialized really, from the shadows.

“Howdy,” Eichord said, and the person nodded. “I was looking for somebody who knew this town back in the old days, and the feller down at the bank said you might be the right person to come to.” Nothing by way of response, so Jack plunged ahead, wondering whether to flash his shield or not. “I was trying to find out a little something about a family who used to live here back in the 60s. The Spodas. Can you help me?"

“Depends."

Jack realized then that it was a woman. “You Freda?” He smiled pleasantly.

“Yep,” she said.

“Boy,” he said, looking around as if he'd just seen the town for the first time. “What happened here anyway?"

She shrugged and waited.

“Looks like a kind of a ghost town. What happened to all the businesses?"