and give you apple sauce.
MCTF was a storehouse, a main-frame computer center, a decoder, a think tank, a search-and-transfer giant linked on-line to your data base. And it could make a machine, a snitch package, and that made it a copper's dream. But Eichord, tapped into all the stored data on the planet, didn't have J. Walter Diddley Zip.
The Iceman had been partial to women of a type: average in appearance. Mid-to-low-income demographics common to five dead women killed over a period of seven months, back in the 1960s. Mean age: 39.6, the five of them ranging from 36 to 43. One with money, but all of them living what might be described as a downscale middle-income life-style. Average middle-aged, middle-income, mid-Americans shaded to the low-rent side. Zero commonalities besides that and the age/wage demographics. The unsolved killings had occurred within a fifty-mile radius of Amarillo, Texas.
A teenage suspect had been identified in the ancient lineup and then the eyewitness had caved in on them. Turned out to be an airhead and the kid, a nineteen-year-old white boy, had walked. Eichord had poured over the old files and the related printout. Reading and sifting through the old homicides. Read a rocket from a dude in Amarillo Sex Crimes. Done a good bit of thinking about a thrill killer who liked to have middle-aged women give him head and then he'd take them down permanently.
Two strangulations, and then he'd found an icepick somewhere and used that on the other three. Quite a thumbprint, what they called a “try-and-catch-me” M.O. An icepick shoved into the victim's ear at the moment of discharge. His steel ejaculate. So the M.O. didn't fit Tina Hoyt.
Tina Hoyt was younger. Prettier. Upscale. But Eichord never threw any babies out with the bath-water. Could it be that some nutbasket found an old newspaper account of the killings, or an old detective magazine, or saw a TV documentary, and decided to do a copy-cat kill twenty years after the fact? Or was a serial killer alive and well and living in Buckhead? And if so, why stop for twenty years?
He reached out for all the recent parolees, all the cons released in recent months, anybody who'd been doing a long bit in the system, then went through the mental-health facilities and similar institutions. Who was suddenly back out after two decades? Cross-referencing with Amarillo arrest records and with other MCTF subscribers, he compiled a list of institutionalized individuals who'd been put away in the same time frame.
Something nudged him and he realized the night guys had been on duty for half an hour. He dialed his house and Donna answered.
“It's me.'
“Hi.'
“Just wanted to let you know I'm runnin’ a tad late.'
“Hey. Guess what?'
“What?'
“Guess what our son just did today?'
“No telling.'
“He said your name.'
“What?'
“He said DADDY.'
“Aw. Come on.'
“I promise.” She was excited. “Clear as a BELL. He was sitting on the floor of the living room with Blackie, and he said DADDY just as clear. I almost fell over.'
“You're sure about that.” He had a smile on his face. “Maybe he said Blackie, and it sounded like Daddy.” Blackie was what they were calling the stray mongrel.
“Jonathan,” her voice was suddenly hollow and off-mike, away from the phone mouthpiece, “come here to Mommy, honey. Come here. Listen sweetcheeks. Guess who's on the telephone. Come over here. That's a fine boy. Listen. Put this—here. Say DADDY. Can you say it for me. Say DAH-DEE.'
“Garbage,” it sounded like.
“What?” he said, his ear pressing hard against the phone.
“Gargah.'
“See! SEE!” Donna was ecstatic. “Daddy—his first two-syllable word.'
“God! Amazing. The kid's talking at two! Say it again, son. Say daddy. Daaaaaaah-deeeee.'
“Gaah.'
“Wow! The kid talks!'
“It sounded just like Daddy a while ago.” Donna was laughing.
“It talks.'
“Yeah, it talks. It likes Daddy. He said it about four hundred times. Say, Good-bye, Daddy.” She made a noise with the phone. But no more gargah noises.
“Oh, well. He has a few years to practice.'
“Still. It's great. I can't wait to get home.'
She could read the joy and humor and excitement in his voice, and they both whispered a couple of quick love-yous and hung up.
He couldn't wait to get home to his family. Eichord drove all the way with a fatuous smile plastered to his face, already thinking about teaching the kid how to pitch a slider. What a guy. Things were going to work out.
Donna still did it to him the same as she always had. He thought about how lucky he was to come home to her, and the thought warmed him. He remembered the way she'd looked that morning and he wondered if she'd still have on that thin, summery dress she'd had on when he'd left for work. He could never look at her in it without thinking of the two people under the marquee of
Pouring tea over ice cubes, the attractive woman glanced in at her friend seated in the small dining alcove. The white shades had been rolled down to keep out the blistering sun, a curse that came blasting out of the sky in the midafternoon, baking the flatland, cooking brains, making everybody tired and a little silly.
First the drought, then the rains, then the heat.
“Every year is supposed to get worse from now on,” her friend was telling her, and she detuned. Somebody had told her at the bank, “It's hot enough to fry an egg on the—” and she had finished the sentence snappishly, “hood of a car, I know. Yes!” Smiling, but saying it in a wise, tough voice that wasn't her at all.
It wasn't Diane talking, it was the heat talking. But you didn't deal with people that way in a small community like Moss Grove, and she softened it even as she smarted off to the nice lady, giving her a warm, sort of loopy smile and asking her, “So, why don't you make it rain?” A full shot of her best cutes on this last part of the exchange, hoping to take the sting out of her wise-ass lip. Remembering this, she bit her tongue this time, not telling Bonnie what she wanted to say, which was ... Talking about heat is boring.
“I wonder if it's something we're doing to the atmosphere? You know, hurting the environment?” And Bonnie began one of her long and laborious explanations, a rehash of a half-recalled newspaper story. But it gave her time to breathe. Make the other glass of iced tea. Calm herself down a little. Cool off.
It was just the heat ... No, it wasn't. She knew that would be the next thing. It isn't the heat, it's the HUMIDITY. The fucking humidity. She was so bored.
The day had been a cliche day of nonconversations, little nondialogue with semistrangers, snatches of mouthings and empty phrases spoken a hundred times a day as one went around doing crappy little errands. Moving without thought or concentration, sliding in and out of hot car seats, walking across hard, baking parking lots, moving down the long walkways of malls. Nothing tough or physically demanding, but on a hot day like today you could do five things like run to the grocer's or to the post office, and you'd be wringing wet. Cranky. Starting to feel the edges of a headache starting back there in your neck, working its way north.
The phone jangled, snapping her out of it and she said, “'Scuse me, Bon.” Hand-picked up the receiver. “Hello?'
“Is this my princess?'
“Hi,” she said, softening instantly.
