Slice (30 page)

So if the bitch's HOLE is the problem you just make a slightly larger cut but God it's just too tempting isn't it, taking that scalpel and the stupid cunt is spread out here right in front of you on PLASTIC and the TV is LOUD and your KID is in there wanting air and she's an IDIOT you'd be doing her a favor and enough is enough and this is Dr. Bunkowski making his small incision only whoops it just keeps cutting doesn't it that nice easy pressure very delicate there at the vaginal opening the baby's head is there but then the blade is so sharp and it's her fault the bitch strains and arches up as you cut so how can you help it as the blade just keeps going, making that beautiful red, perfectly straight oh God dont you love the way it looks long and straight and opening her right up with that firm and perfectly held scalpel cutting straight up cutting deeply now through the fatty tissue of the abdomen judging it just so mustn't cut baby and cutting her right in half Jesus cutting straight on up the chest slicing right up there and then one left to right for luck and peel that shit open and take the baby just reach on in there and lift it out of that steaming stinking scarlet shit pile of guts and bile and bloody things and beating heart and screaming awful sudden death and agony and terror beyond any mortal experience, that long, straight, deep, perfect slice up the center of what was Sissy fucking Selkirk. Carving her open from poop chute to Morgan Fairchild chest, and those steel-muscled hands reach out in the sudden, violent ebullition of this bright-red moment and peel her back! god how wonderful it is and Chaingang tenderly clears the newborn's mouth and throat as he ties the umbilical close to the belly lifting it out of the dark, beefy placenta and the amniotic membrane, and oh so gently taps the little dead monkey on the bottom of its tiny feet and it goes “wwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,” and Chaingang's son is alive. Ten fingers, ten toes, a pair of testicles, and a penis, all orifices clear and with a functioning brain. Dr. Bunkowski, he of the first hundred known heart transplants that didn't take—well, not exactly transplants, open heart surgery we can call it, the good doctor has delivered his own child. The wife, ahhhh, that's another story. She doesn't look like she's going to make it.

That's all she wrote for Sissy, it looks like. It was a weird relationship while it lasted. Poor Sissy-girl walking a kind of razor's edge, never knowing when she'd go too far and her violent madman would have to lash out at her and she'd fall across the blade. When you slide down the banister of life you gotta make sure nobody's hidden anything real sharp in there.

“
M
r. Schott?” Both Eichord and the agent flashed shields and IDs. “Special agents. Can we talk to you about the—"

“Oh, shit, betcha wanna talk about them bodies. I knew it. Christ's sake I told Larry, the boy I work with, it's that spooky big sumbitch out there at Hora's. You know that Hora was a weird duck hisself ‘course I don't hold with talking about the dead. I mean rest in peace and whatnot. But he never did associate with nobody ‘round here. Had this woman he lived with out there on that there farm who was playin’ without all fifty-two cards in her deck if you get my drift."

“Wonder if we could talk inside?” Jack said, and the man stepped back as he kept up his running commentary. “He come here I dunno—it's been several years back, I think he was in Veetnam and maybe got shot in the head or whaddyacallit shell shock? Anyway, he took up with this ole gal—she didn't have a front porch onner house if you get me—and man he just never—"

“You said spooky, big man. Who did you mean—the one who worked at Michael Hora's?"

“Yeah. BIG mother. Like to go four hundred pound. Stood about seven feet tall. Fill up a damn doorway. Ask Buddy Retter about him, he seen ‘m load about three or four ton o’ them damn railroad crossties onto a flatbed truck in a couple hours. You couldn't do it with a goddamn FORKLIFT. Strong as a damn OX. Went out there and cleaned out every weed in Hora's pasture with a little old sickle like yea"—he gestured with his hands—"I know where he bought the damn thing ‘n you go over to Western Auto if you wanna hear some stories about that big ole boy. He only come up here about a year ago, I remember saying to Larry, this boy works with me? When he come to town I seen ‘m one day I said to Larry I said—"

“Uh, Mr. Schott, we have a couple of composite drawings of this Mr. Selkirk, the assistant to Mr. Hora that's missing? I wonder if you'd take a look at these and tell us if they resemble the man."

D'Amico was pulling out the drawings.

“Lemme see ‘em,” the voluble man said, pulling a set of spectacles from a case in his pocket. “I don't really need these I only wear ‘em when I wanna SEE somethin."

“Right,” Jack said softly. Schott shook his head.

“Naw. That don't look nothing like ... Ahhhhh, yeah, that's more like it only this here is wrong. It's more of a triangle, and the face was holes not scars. This looks like scars. He didn't look like that. Djew ever see Killer Karl Kemp rassle?"

“Pardon?"

“He looked just like Killer Karl Kemp's back. In the face, I mean. Killer Karl use to work over by Hubbard, an’ we went up there to see him rassle in the amp'theater a coupla times. He had two bullet holes in his back real close together an’ it sorta looked thataway, all puckered up. Coulda been anything made ‘em. I ain't saying they was bullet holes but they LOOKED like the ones in Killer Karl Kemp's back and I know they WAS bullet holes ‘cause I recall when Eddie Rogers shot him. It was over the woman Eddie was livin’ with and they got into a altercation over it and had ‘em a gunfight up in—"

Eichord was finally able to shut the man up, and they got him to agree to meet with the artist in the sheriff's office later and work up a new Identikit drawing.

They talked to two more persons and learned very little of substance and finally they were in the car and heading back to the temporary command post, Tom D'Amico, Walter Belcher, with one of Bob Andersen's uniformed guys, Gary Ammons, driving them. The radio crackled, and the driver rogered it.

“Task force call for special unit on frequency two."

“Roger, switching to two” He flipped a switch. “Kay zero niner on two, over."

“Is special unit in the vehicle?"

“Affirmative."

“Jack, this is Bob Anderson. Patching a call through from Buckhead, stand by one."

Gary Ammons handed the mike to Eichord, who leaned forward and keyed the press-to-talk switch.

“Eichord standing by, over.” He waited.

“Jack, can you hear me?” It was James Lee.

“That's a rog. Loud and clear, Jimmie."

“Need to talk to you on a land line
immediately
.” His voice was very cold and businesslike. Jack's first thought was that Chink had just caught the shit from IAD.

“Let me call you in ... oh, five or ten minutes. Where are you?"

“Squad room."

Eichord almost said, What are you doing there? He figured he'd be at a pay phone.

“You want me to call you back at the squad room?” Eichord repeated, knowing Chink would get the point of the question.

“Yeah. Immediately. Soon as you can."

“Ten-four. Out.” The ride took a long six or seven minutes and Jack was outside in a pay telephone calling Buckhead Station and asking for James Lee in homicide.

“Jack, listen. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe something. Listen. Just heard about a mutilation homicide matches your MO there. Did anybody say anything to you about—"

CLIK. BBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

“Hello? Jesus, oh man, HELLO. SHIT.” Click, Tick ... tick ... tick ... tick ... Is he going to call me or is he waiting to get MY call but if I call HIM and my line is busy when he calls ME then he can't get in and...

RIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNG.

“YEAH!"

“—Were cut off. Listen, did you get that about a mutilation homicide?"

“No, what?"

“Can you hear me?"

“YES I CAN FUCKING HEAR. What about a mutilation homicide, Jimmie?"

“This side of Chattanooga, man. I-Seventy-five. A motel. Scene straight out of hell. The maid goes in to clean and runs out into the street screaming. Young girl in there ripped in half. Bed is covered in blood. Sliced open and gutted. Heart removed. Sealed up.” There was a noise like he was coughing. “Heart sealed up inside a little plastic bag and put back in the chest cavity. You still there?"

“Yeah. I'm here."

“Medical examiner thinks a baby was removed from the womb of the girl."

“ID?"

“Not yet."

“Let's have the rest of it."

“Yeah. You sittin’ down?"

“Yeah."

“Okay. The plastic bag in the chest cavity with the heart cut loose and—you know—sealed up in it. The killer printed your name on it. There was a long pause. Same MO as Bunkowski in Chicago."

“That doesn't mean shit. He could be a copycat, you know that. Let's not get crazy here."

“I thought you oughta know. I mean, the description of the dude matches the guy there. Big, massive Cauc. ‘Course that don't mean anything. All you white guys look alike anyway,” he said, trying feebly.

“Right."

“Hang tough. I'll have the results datafaxed right to you soon as we get. And call. Perp left prints ALL over the scene. We'll have something from docs on the plastic bag printing. Get it right to you."

“Yeah.” Eichord took a deep breath and let it out slowly as if he had a lungful of smoke. “Other than THAT, how's everything."

“Samey same, papa-san."

“Wonderful."

“I just thought,” Lee paused. He was acting like he didn't want to hang up yet. “Uh, you know, if it IS anything, the fucker was in Chattanooga this morning. Sort of on the way here, you know?"

“Yeah. I know. Lemme hear what you get.” The connection was broken.

And as he broke the connection he could only think of one thing: a phone call to a Virginia pay phone compliments of his old colleague Sonny Shoenburgen, a career colonel in the intelligence racket who had managed to survive the purges and climb into the senior strata of clandestine spookery. The call had been to an anonymous spook chief who had told him next to nothing about the man he'd been hunting in a notorious serial-murder case. A conversation pried loose through the sticky need-to-know tape that seals the doings of the folks who come out of various compounds and complexes and camps and forts with that special and unique attitude that is part mean and part tradecraft.

“This bridge is burnt. No matter what,” he'd said. It was after he'd told him about their “experiment with mercenaries in Southeast Asia,” and about this self-taught genius of assassination who had developed a taste for raw, fresh, human heart.

“What makes him kill?” Jack had asked. He'd never forget the sound of those three words down the long, hollow umbilical to spookland.

“He likes it,” the man had said.

Even though Eichord was not prepared to believe it was happening, he was galvanized into an orgy of action. Each phone call, each successive interview, every new fact that emerged, each word down the task-force line brought the distant image into sharper focus. Try as he might to build air castles of theory about copycat killers and this and that and the other, he was beginning to see the shape of the shadow that was blocking the other end of the tunnel. And it made him shudder with the icy reality of this terrible thing that could not now be denied.

“
W
hite-Merrimen,” the operator said crisply.

“Good morning,” the deep voice rumbled resonantly into the phone, eighteen-wheelers whizzing by not far away. “I need some information related to newborn infants for a piece we're doing for the
Buckhead Advertising Guide
, a new newspaper. Could I ask you just a couple of brief questions?"

“One moment please.” A busy receptionist passing the buck to somebody. A pause and then, “Yes? May I help you?"

“Yes, ma'am, we're doing a piece for a new newspaper here, and I just wanted to get a couple of answers about newborn infant care. Okay? I'll be real fast—know you're busy."

“Sure. Okay. Who's this now?"

“It's called the
Buckhead Ad Guide
. It won't be out for a couple of weeks but it will have a lot of information for newly marrieds, people moving to the community, that sort of thing. We won't quote you unless you want us to, okay?"

“What did you want to know?"

“What do you recommend for the feeding of a newborn child? Let's assume the mother doesn't breast-feed for whatever reason, and...” Chaingang in his three-piece suit, looking extremely large but quite proper, talking into a pay telephone within .22 range of the southeast lane of I-75, talking his line of con into a phone, looking into the window of a used maroon Sedan DeVille, amazingly legal, at the tiny, wrinkled monkey packed into a soft nest of covers.

“Yes,” he said, “uh-huh,” as he milked the woman for all the information necessary for the proper care and feeding of the newborn monkey.

“Thanks,” he told her. He hung up the phone and got back into the car. “Now, little monkey,” he said in soft tones, “we'll get you some goodies.” The child was fast asleep, and he slept through the closing of the car door and the starting of the engine.

Bunkowski drove to a nearby shopping area and was soon back in the car with formula, appropriate containers, bottles, boxes of diapers, and piles of things that he stacked methodically across the back seat. He pulled the car over into a shady area behind a building and told his son, “You're such a fine monkey. Monkey doesn't hardly cry at all,” and beaming with pleasure and amazement he gently lowered a nippled bottle of formula toward the wrinkled monkey, who gratefully began to feed. Daniel remembered something about how you were supposed to test the formula first by shaking some out onto your wrist to see if it was too hot. It made his smile even wider—the thought of putting formula on that huge, steel-hard wrist. Life was actually rather amazing.

“Good monkey, atta boy,” he said paternally. The monkey fed. Slept again. Daniel knew he must find a safe place for the baby. A nice, quiet motel where he could care for the baby while he marshaled his forces. There was a way he might even pay someone to rent him a small, secluded home or apartment for temporary quarters. He drove around the corner and paid for a newspaper. He would see what his options were.