Iceman (6 page)

“I just hope he doesn't have mange,” Donna whispered.

“Yeah,” Jack stage-whispered back to her, “'cause if he does, he'll give it to the dog."

Inside the darkened room the child opened his eyes as the door closed and petted the dog reassuringly. It thumped the bedspread gratefully in response, not believing its luck, the little boy willing the dog to be still, reaching out for him with his mind.

H
e'd already begun to tire of his retard of a stepsister by the time Darryl Haynes moved into the neighborhood. She was too slack, now, too pliant, too easily obtainable, and he lusted for a fresh conquest. Darryl was sissified, and very slim, with long hair like a girl. A play-hippie.

“How'd you like to play some cards?” he asked the newcomer to the block.

“Sure. You know how to play rummy?"

“Uh—yeah. But I've got something even better. Ever play high card?"

“Huh uh."

“Look. It's easy.” He fanned the deck. “Pick a card.” The boy picked one. “Now turn it over.” It was a nine of diamonds. He flipped a card over beside it. The two of hearts.

“See! You won. If we'd been playing for pennies, you would have won 1 cent just then."

“Yeah?"

“Sure. High card always wins. Let's try it."

“I don't have any money."

“Oh, that's okay. If you lose, you can owe me and pay me some other time. Okay?” Darryl shrugged. “Okay. Let's try it. Go ahead.” He let the boy beat him several times. “Boy! You're good at this. Hey, I'll tell you what, here's the money I owe you.” He forked over a shiny dime. “Let's play slave. We'll cut to see who is high card. Whoever loses has to be the other guy's slave the rest of the day. You know, do anything he wants him to do and that...” He trailed off vaguely.

“Yeah. Okay,” Darryl said, anxious to please his new friend. They cut the cards.

“Wow! An ace! Too bad, Darryl. I beatcha this time. I'll tell you what. Let's go two out of three, okay?” The other boy looked relieved as they cut the cards again. Darryl lost all three times. “A run of bad luck. Tough luck.” He had Darryl perform a few menial tasks and then he loaned him some of his comic books and they said good-bye. He was already learning how to build that initial foundation of trust.

Eventually he would get Darryl's mom and dad to let the boy go with him on a fishing trip. They would be gone overnight. He would play cards with the boy again. Another game of slave. He already had sent away for some high-heeled shoes he had seen in a magazine, even before he'd met Darryl. He had swiped some lipstick and a pair of old nylons. He fantasized how Darryl would look from behind in the women's hosiery and high-heeled shoes. How he would look naked from the rear. Long hair and a small butt like a girl's. He would make this sissy be his sister for the night. It filled him with a hot surge of desire that he couldn't explain, and he began to masturbate uncontrollably at the thought of such an experience. This sick, twisted child on his way to manhood.

T
he woman was hardly recognizable. As a woman, that is. She was bruised playdough. A lumpy, bloody, badly formed and grossly misshapen caricature of a human being. The face distorted, cruelly out of sync, as if an uncoordinated child had taken clay and tried to approximate the shape of a human head. Her name appeared below her face and it said, simply, VICTIM.

“Another victim of violent crime,” a woman's professional voice spoke from the speakers, “and the men who did this never served a night in jail."

The unrecognizable face dissolved with the audience reaction and a poorly lit sound bite of what appeared to be a group of paramedics and police carrying something into a waiting ambulance. Freeze frame on a cluster of hands shoving the body bag in.

“Another gangbanger rape-murder in the ghetto. The victim was a thirteen-year-old girl."

The next footage was familiar to everyone within a hundred-mile radius of Buckhead who owned a television set: the steep hillside at Buckhead Park in the early dawn. The place where some boys passing by on their bicycles had spotted the body of Tina Hoyt. The shot was too far away to show anything, even though the crew had tried for bloodstains. The Hoyt woman had already been moved by the time the Channel 4 people came on the scene, unfortunately. But in some ways it was even spookier NOT to have the shot of the body being carried off.

“The grisly scene of the park in early morning. The place where children discovered a woman's body and it proved to be that of Buckhead political activist Tina Hoyt. Abducted, Murdered. Stabbed with an icepick ... and then raped."

A switcher, two women, one of whom was the director, and an engineer all looked up at the on-air monitor as the graphic came up. It said sexual Attacks Continue, and the words moved on a crawl as Ginger narrated the voiceover, “Sexual attacks continue. Following an ongoing investigation by Detectives Marv Peletier and T.J. Fay of the Sex-Crimes Section of the Buckhead Police Department."

“That's wrong,” somebody said as they watched the blow-up of the news clipping from the
Gazette
.

“Three additional felony charges including one count of rape, one count of felonious restraint, and one count of sodomy have been issued against Wade Weiss of South Buckhead. The new charges involve sexual assault against a twenty-two-year-old Madison-burg woman in the four hundred block of Tower Lane.

“Weiss had been arrested last month following the sexual assault of a woman and her infant daughter, who were forced behind a building in South Buckhead. Weiss had been charged with rape, molestation, sodomy, and kidnapping in connection with the original case, but due to improper arrest procedures was able to obtain release by posting a reduced bail, police said."

The small studio audience made noises of disapproval.

“Wait. Wait. Listen."

The people in the booth watched the screen wipe the graphic bringing Ginger Stone's face to the screen in a medium close-up.

“Move in, two,” the woman's voice said into the floor headsets. “And three,” the switcher beside her.

“We've got lots more.” Ginger Stone said, continuing to read as the next graphic filled the screen.

“Vaughan Andrews, thirty-one, told investigating police that he tried to kill his wife, LaDonna, by putting infected specimens of diseased cadavers into her food and drink. Andrews admitted he had been attempting to murder his wife for the last six months, during which time he obtained serum with hepatitis virus, AIDS virus, and other toxic substances, which he used to infect his wife. Mrs. Andrews was subsequently hospitalized with a severe case of serum hepatitis, authorities said. Vaughan Andrews told investigators he had heard about copy-cat killers and it had given him the idea of using specimens he stole from the Buckhead Morgue, where he had been employed since last February. Andrews admitted that he was attempting to copy serial killer Donald Harvey, who was convicted of killing twenty-five persons in Ohio."

Murmurs from the studio audience.

“Well, we have one of the leading experts on serial murder in the United States right here in Buckhead, the famous Jack Eichord of Buckhead Station, who single-handedly solved the Dr. Demented, Lonely Hearts, and Gravedigger cases, among other infamous crimes. And perhaps he'll be able to help us understand this rash of violent crime,” Ginger said, shaking her head.

“Look at this,” she continued as the screen flashed a graphic. “Here's a nice little item for every Buckhead motorist. If somebody tailgates you or cuts in front of you, or you just don't like the color of their car, and you're driving down the boulevard, you just push this and strafe their car with simulated machine-gun fire.” Laughter. “Nice healthy way to get rid of those mounting hostilities."

The audience hooted as the noise of the toy machine gun punctuated her comments.

For more times than he cared to admit to himself Jack Eichord was being manipulated. By his fearless leader at Buckhead Station, that bastion of law enforcement the captain, by MacTuff and all who sailed aboard, and by the fickle middle finger of unruly fate.

Channel 4 and the taping of one of “those” talk shows. Ginger Stone all coiffed and propped and prompted, ready for the winking red-eyed monster that bestows fame, fortune, or any number of negatives from calumniation to sudden death. Fucking TV. McLuhan's cool medium of the eyeball massage. The tribal communicator.

Somebody high up in the task force had fixed it in their head that Jack was a perfect buffer between The Press and the blues. On too many occasions he'd found himself gliding across the screen in his television tapdance. A circumlocution of bullshit designed to keep the lid on potentially volatile situations.

But the lid was off. Violence was a bloodthreat that had finally pounded on the door of even the swankiest suburban homes. People were scared. Gangs from the eastern and western inner cities, fueled by dope and hyped by the promise of virgin sales markets, had pushed inward toward the soft American heartland and its vulnerable underbelly.

Somebody, to top it all off, had abducted the famous feminist Tina Hoyt right out in front of Buckhead Christian. Taken her out to the park, maybe played with her awhile, then shoved an icepick through her ear and into her brain. He'd then submitted her lifeless body to one final degradation, according to the sperm traces in the victim's mouth.

“We had to promise Mr. Eichord we wouldn't ask about any ongoing investigations,” the attractive redhead said with a flashing smile, “so we can't ask you about progress in the so-called Icepick Murder can we?"

“'Fraid not,” he said, his mouth tightening.

“That's a shame, you know. Because the subject is the one thing that's on everybody's mind right now, and all of us feel so helpless in the grip of the violence we see around us more and more. I mean, we can't understand how a respected civic leader like Tina Hoyt could be abducted right there in front of a crowded CHURCH and the police not have a single clue.” He didn't respond. “I mean that's what we're all thinking. We don't feel safe anymore."

The small studio audience clapped loudly.

“I can sympathize with that feeling."

“You can sympathize with it, you can empathize with it, you just can't
do
much about it. Can't you even comment to say whether or not you've made any progress in the Hoyt slaying, or if you even have a suspect.” After a moment's pause an abrasive voice spoke off to Eichord's left.

“Let ME answer that one for you.” It was Councilman Bissell, the bitter enemy of the Police Department. “I think we know how much progress the cops are making in the Hoyt killing. And for that matter, how much progress they're making in stopping the flood of violent crime. ZERO is the answer. They've failed miserably in their sworn duty to serve and protect the honest, law-abiding public paying their salaries. The man on the street is no longer safe from the animals."

More applause.

“Jack ... is what Mr. Bissell says true? Are we no longer safe?"

“How do I answer that? Are we safe? The police do everything humanly possible to protect law-abiding citizens. But we aren't a fascist state. We cannot arrest a person whom we suspect MIGHT commit a crime. We can only be a presence until a crime is committed, and because that's the nature of our function in society, when crime increases the ball gets dropped in our court. Councilman Bissell's comment that we have failed in our responsibility to the public is inaccurate."

“Isn't it true that we have more violent crime now than at any point in our history, even with respect to the population explosion?"

“In some geographical communities there is a higher crime incidence, in some it's lower. Nobody denies there is violent crime."

“But are the measures the police take sufficient to match the higher crime rate? It would seem not."

“We sometimes succeed. We sometimes fail. Overall the police do a good job, in my opinion. Everything's relative. We're in a society where a few underpaid, overworked law-enforcement officers stand between the good guys and the bad guys. As the population increases and the criminal population increases with it, the job becomes more difficult to do. Sometimes the law itself is on the side of the criminal."

“How do you mean?"

“Violent, repetitive offenders need to be imprisoned. Often that doesn't happen. Judges are too lenient. Turnstile justice and plea-bargaining and overcrowded prisons all contribute to this atmosphere. It's an atmosphere that lets dangerous offenders back on the street too soon, it contributes to premature paroles, it contributes to suspended sentences that should never—"

“The prison system is worthless as it is right now.” Bissell again. “Do you know my wife and I can go stay at the fanciest hotel in Buckhead and order three meals a day from room service and we STILL can't run up a bill of eighty-four dollars a day, which is what it costs to house one of these felons. See, that's the cops’ answer to crime. Build more prisons. Like the taxpayer has a bottomless pocketbook. Prisons are no answer."

Eichord just looked at him. He realized the camera was back on him, so he spoke.

“It's true enough that prisons aren't an answer in themselves, but what are the alternatives? Work programs? Mental institutions? Psychiatric counseling? Violent, dangerous offenders must be put in prisons. We need more prison space to house these criminals. Right now we have severe problems in allocating the finite source of prison space. Only so many beds, so many cells. When we—the penal system—are forced to make decisions about confinement based on available space we're in a very dangerous area. Antisocial individuals are going to be back out on the street in that sort of environment. So the reality is, we need more places to lock offenders up. But nobody wants to build more prisons and nobody wants to spend more tax dollars on them, yet everybody wants a better criminal justice system, better police protection, and a better correctional system. But we want it without a price tag. It's sort of like all of us here in this studio, Ginger.” He looked at the interviewer.

“How so?” she said.