Stone Shadow

Jack was almost relieved when he went in to confront Ukie again.

“Let's talk.'

“Yeah. Okay. What?'

“Your serve. Whatever you want to talk about.'

“Let's talk about me getting outta here, howzzat?'

“Ukie, come on. You're not seriously expecting anybody to turn you loose after everything that's gone down, are you?'

“Please, man. I've told you. I didn't do it. I saw the bodies being buried and I made a mistake in judgment. I thought I could fake my way into headlines, be a big star for the week or two, just enough I could maybe get some kinda half-assed shot. Clubs or whatever. Wail with all the publicity. I knew I could act real crazy and carry it off. The thing with the cu—with the woman, I just, you know, let her go, man. I LET her escape. Just like I gave you the graves. Ask yourself this, if I was really the killer why would I want to admit it? Why give myself up?'

“You didn't give yourself up. You got caught putting one of the bodies in the ground.'

“BullSHIT. I didn't ... I wasn't burying anybody. I was digging to see if there really was a body in there. The thing had been coming and putting all this shit inside my head and I had to see, man. I wanted to know if I was going nuts or if it was for real.'

“Would you want to tell me a little more about the Way of the Viper? That was my favorite so far.'

“Hey. Come on.” He was very quiet and the usual animation seemed to have been drained from him.

“Or the paradox of syncretism. I'd like to kick that one back and forth a little more.'

“You having fun?'

“I'm having a pretty good time. Yeah. Matter of fact. How about you? You having a pretty fun time, too?'

No comment.

“Or here's one you might like. Try this one on, Ukie. Just for grins. Let's say there was this real sharp fellow, loaded with talent, smart as a whip, one heckuva guy. He just never made it big. And so he goes off the deep end. Whackaroony time. He starts taking lives out of plain old mean, no-good, nutty-as-a-fruitcake craziness. Just to get even with the world let's say.” Ukie sighed in disgust. I'm just talking theory now. So this sharp guy he says to himself, ‘Self, let's really yank everybody's chain. Let's waste as many of these folks as we can and if we get caught'—and here's the real good part—'we'll ADMIT to all the killings. Give them even more than they know about. Act real goofy too. Talk in parables, metaphors, free association, all that good stuff. Ramble. Be incoherent. Memorize a bunch of looney-tunes stuff to mess their minds up with.’ Then, when you've got ‘em going real good, recant. Tell how this guy really didn't do it he saw it inside his mind on a strange pathway. Then, bring in a heavy- duty legal firm and plead your ass insane as a bedbug. How's that sound just for a random scenario?'

“It sucks.'

“Uh huh. Oh, hey, guess you're really excited your brother came in to see you, huh?'

“Yeah. That's all I need. THAT asshole.'

“What's the matter? Don't you two get along?'

“You might say that.'

“Looks like he must think a lot about you to drop everything and come here to see what he can do to help.'

“That may be the way it looks to you but that know-it-all, serf-righteous fuck has come to gloat. Not help, GLOAT. Hey, I love Joseph, and I can't do anything about that. He's my brother. You love your own brother regardless of what kind of a first-rate asshole he is. But I couldn't even get him on the phone when I needed help before. When I asked him for a few dollars a couple of times the dirty son of a bitch lied and jerked me back and forth and let me hang out there on a line to dry. He's got a mail-order business raking the bucks in and he couldn't give a couple hundred measly dollars to pull my ass out of the frying pan. His idea of help was to send me a note reprimanding me for my ways, a fucking twenty-dollar check and a lecture. So don't tell me he's suddenly all interested in helping his poor, dear brother now.” Ukie's eyes blazed with fury.

“Don't hold back, Ukie. Do you like your brother—yes or no?'

“Fuck you very much, Officer Krupke.'

And a thing he couldn't name began then and there to reach for his clothing, a sleeve or a pant leg, anything it could get its claws on, a thing that caught hold of fabric then the limb inside, and as it caught hold it began getting a firmer grip on Jack Eichord the man, not so much the cop but the human being, and the claws sunk into the flesh and started taking him somewhere he had no business going. But all he felt now was that first, light touch when the razor-sharp claws first caught on the cloth of his trouser leg. Just a little, harmless tug.

And the afternoon was like the morning but more of the same and squared and then magnified. Something so unsettling about meeting Joseph Hackabee and having that gut-wrenching feeling of seeing Ukie walk in free as a bird, sans cuffs or restraints of any kind, smiling, speaking in that warm baritone of his. And Eichord found out that:

1. Joe Hackabee was well-to-do. “Comfortable,” he said.

2. Joe was single, never married, straight.

3. Joe liked Noel Collier a lot. He also thought she was pretty sensational-looking. Jack had to listen to a good bit on that subject. He also thought, from his lunch with the counselor, that she was going to provide his brother with “a vigorous defense.'

4. Joe had a direct-mail marketing firm in Houston. He had learned his trade in professional fund-raising for charitable organizations. He sold mailing lists to companies—was what the thing sounded like to Eichord. He computerized lists of names and addresses and sold them to other mail-order houses. He told Jack he could sell him “a thousand males working in law enforcement, aged twenty-one to thirty-four, sorted by Zip/income/credit rating, and merge-purged with Jack's existing mailing list.” X dollars for a thousand preaddressed stick-on labels and onetime usage rights.

5. Joe liked his brother more than Ukie liked him. He told about all the times he'd tried to help him. Followed behind him paying his brother's debts, cleaning up after him, mending fences. But he didn't feel bitter or angry. “I just finally gave up.” Ukie had never had the breaks he'd had, he said. He thought that “Bill could have been anything he wanted. He had a fine mind. He just couldn't control himself, is what it boils down as, a lack of control. But not so out of control he'd ever kill anybody. He just isn't capable of that sort of violence.'

Jack ran a couple of verbal-response tests by Joe as was his usual style and came up with nothing. Example:

“Joe,” he'd said, “I noticed you said when you were describing looking like Ukie, uh, or Bill, you said you probably were a little tanner than he was. If you hadn't seen him in four years'—he allowed his voice to take a bit of an edge to it—'how could you know that?'

“I saw that awful picture in the paper. Jeez, he was so pale-looking.” It was a sadly smiled throwaway without the slightest hint of resentment or con in it. All the litmus tests ran that way. Eichord asked questions like that in the standard cop interrogation manner, not so much listening to WHAT you said but the rapidity with which the words came back in return, the tone of the answer, the emphasis of the words. Interrogation as an art form was a kind of mental tennis match. And the best interrogations were those in which an unspoken thread of something could be seen weaving itself through the texture of the Q-and-A give-and-take.

In that way a copper was like a trial lawyer. It wasn't like on Perry Mason. You didn't often catch the man or woman in the lie, if you were a prosecutor, show them the picture taken by the hidden surveillance camera ('Isn't this YOU we see holding the smoking gun?'), at which point the person on the stand collapses in tears. Today, first of all, nearly everyone has become so damn smooth at stonewalling, and the criminal justice system has become so overloaded in the favor of the accused criminal (thanks to some DANDY Supreme Court rulings), that they could simply look at the photo, smile, and if their lawyer didn't object to the introduction of inadmissible evidence, shake their head politely and say, “Nope. Sorry. Looks a little like me, all right. But it's not me.'

Two of the most famous trials of the last quarter-century had involved photographic evidence of “smoking guns,” and the two perpetrators, both of whom had been SEEN, caught in the act by national network television, seen in the commission of the crimes, walked. Both trials had resulted in the defendants’ respective acquittals.

As Eichord led Joseph Hackabee through the step-by-step progression of orphanage, foster-parent, high- school, puberty memories, he began to taste that next drink the way he had when he was at his lowest ebb—a decade ago. It was all he could do at one point not to conclude the meeting so he could go get a couple of real stiff