Stone Shadow (7 page)

“I don't get what you mean."

“Even when he was telling you about all the people he had buried around the state. Did you once ever hear him say anything about I shot this one with a pistol? Or I stabbed this one with a knife? Or I hit this one over the head with a club?” She shook her head no. “See what I'm saying here? He threatened you with a gun in the mall when he took you. But how come he never waved a gun around or talked about any specific act of violence all the time he had you?"

“He talked about acts of violence all the time,” she said, making a face at the stupidity of what he'd said. “He was always going to kick my ass for this or whip the shit out of me for that. And what do you call the fact that he claimed to have killed HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. Is that enough violence for you?"

“No. You're not getting my point. If he threatened to beat you or hurt you physically, sure, I agree that is definitely violence. But did he ever pull a knife or gun on you? A blackjack? Anything?"

“Well—"

“When he was talking about the crimes he'd committed, was he ever specific with respect to using a weapon? How did he get those people dead? Run over them in a car? Drop a bomb on them? Poison them? Strangle them? What?"

“I don't know.” She shrugged. “He just talked about killing different ones and I don't recall anything about whether he said he shot ‘em or stabbed ‘em and I don't see what the hell difference it could possibly make. Also, you say did he threaten me with a gun? I was CHAINED by a leather thing this big"—she gestured impatiently—"all he had to do was grab me or slap me or kick me or whatever he wanted I didn't threaten him in any way. Why would he need a knife or gun? I was chained to the wall."

“Good point. Tell me about the trip to the place he took you. What kinds of noises did you hear? How many times did he stop? How long did it take?” And on and on over the same stuff, listening to the different way she'd describe the same experiences, looking for the telltale elephant footprints in the cottage cheese. It occurred to him as he listened, watching her, it wasn't just the eyes. The sexual statements were transmitted by the clothing.

There was something about the clothing she wore. It wasn't all tight sweaters and low-cut dresses or the obvious things like that. It was that her clothing was just ... He couldn't quite describe it or categorize it even to himself. Somehow Donna's clothing never quite seemed to be
appropriate.
Ridiculous, but there it is. Take today. She'd been drug over the coals by a therapist or whatever, the intel and homicide boys had been at her, Eichord again, and what does she show up in that morning? Some kind of strange, great, voluminous and flowery dress and big, gold hoop earrings, playing the Gypsy Queen today. What was it with this woman?

“Do you have a boyfriend or steady, uh, relationship?” he heard himself asking her.

“I had somebody I was seeing a lot before this but...” She trailed off and shook her head. “It was hard for him to deal with and it looks like it has ended. Why?"

Why, indeed. “I was wondering if this had harmed you in your personal life. Very often a terrible thing like this reaches out and hurts those close to the victim. Family, friends, a husband or boyfriend. They have their own feelings of confusion, and anger, and the utter helplessness of thinking about someone they care for put in the kind of a situation you were subjected to ... and it's tough to handle."

“Yeah,” she said wryly, “that's life, eh?” He nodded as she said, “Has this hurt me in my personal life? What personal life? Between the press and you cops and a shrink—that's it."

“When you were first chained up, you told earlier that you'd had a blindfold on, and when you felt the thing being fastened to you and then when he removed the blindfold and you first saw the room, what did you think? Try to remember your reactions to what you saw and what he said to you at that time."

“Horror. Incredible horror. I knew from the pictures he hadn't brought me there for a Sunday picnic. All I could think of was I wished I had screamed back when I had the chance or just fallen down on the floor of the car and hoped he couldn't shoot through the windshield, a dozen different things I thought of after it was too late. And there was just the awful horror of it. I figured I was in deep trouble. And he didn't say much. I started pleading with him to please let me go, that I wouldn't say anything about it and stuff and he just said, ‘Shut up’ and called me a name. And he said I had one chance. Put out when he wanted some, do what he said and be a good sex slave, and he wouldn't kill me."

He could feel he was not getting through to Donna Scannapieco the way he often was able to. Eichord was usually good with people. His innate kindness and caring would communicate itself. Everything was screwed up lately. Even his ability to convey a sense of understanding to a crime victim. He knew just how much this barrier between himself and the woman could hinder the progress of the investigation, yet he felt himself powerless to remove it. He could sense, or thought he could sense in her the intuitive ability to pick up on his bad vibes and it was absurd that he couldn't do anything about it.

Inside the swamp of Donna Scannapieco's head there was only icy resolve. She thought nothing of Jack Eichord the cop. Just another face in the crowd. Her inner being was too full of cold, unyielding hatred for the dirty, no good son of a bitch who had taken her and ruined her life, and for the unfairness of a world in which an awful thing like this could happen. She hadn't done anything to deserve such a fate. And now she wanted only vengeance, and the bitter taste of it was filling her with alienation and lonely isolation and it was draining her of the warmth and softness and femininity and decency that had given her life meaning and value. And, like Eichord, she felt herself powerless in the awesome ebb and flow of forces much stronger than her own sense of self.

Eichord tried to phone the lawyer again. Wally Michaels had told him there were some negotiations going on between a prestigious Texas law firm and Mr. Hackabee. There was something off-key about it. Hackabee was apparently being offered representation by the famous Noel Collier, arguably the most famous woman defense counsel in the country and second only to Racehorse in the ranks of famed Texas criminal lawyers. Jack had been trying to get hold of her for two days and she hadn't returned his calls. He finally got her on the line and made an appointment to come see her. One of Eichord's techniques involved catering to egos, and clearly Ms. Collier would be a formidable challenge in that department. He hoped to do a little homework on her today with Hackabee. What would anybody that big hope to gain from defending a dead-bang murder one headed for death row? It would be different if she'd been some court-appointed pee-dee, but this was THE Noel Collier of Jones-Seleska. Why would they touch a loser like Ukie?

There was a lot of ink flowing over this, on the other hand. Every paper had Grave-digger headlines. Was a movie deal in the works? Had Swifty called with a book offer? There had to be something sweet and Jack would check it out. Meanwhile he'd go around with Ukie again. He took a couple of aspirin and wished for something to wash them down but he decided he'd better settle for that clear stuff that you get out of a water fountain. He took another deep breath, tried to shake the cobwebs loose, and opened the door that led to interrogation.

M
artin Scorsese it ain't, but each tape begins with a pro slate like a TV commercial or something. And this one says:

A/N SURVEILLANCE

VCR V-3102-H WH/14

PROPERTY: HOMICIDE

And in a different handwriting:

Hackabee #14

The shot is from over Eichord's right shoulder. The resolution—grainy.

“Hi, Jack. No pun intended. Suppose I start by saying hello in a perfectly normal fashion. No tricks. No logorhumbano horizontal bopping of the cerebellum,” it sounded like he said, and Eichord interjected, “'Scuse me. I don't know the word logorhumbano. Define please?"

“Whoops.” He smiled. “Clarity is in order. I said, no LOGO-RHUMBA no word dancing, a coined word, no lofo-rhumbas, no horizontal bop, dig?"

“Okay."

“I begin with ordinary speech. Relating, say, to the weather. I say, ‘Nice day, Officer.’ You go, ‘Nice day,’ in reply. I tell you how it looks like it's too cold to snow but snow is predicted. Or I tell you how I love the smell of rain. Or whatever mundane weather fact. Or I say, ‘Didja’ see those Giants? How's about that playoff game, eh? Kicked the stuff outta the Redskins. Who do you like in the Super Bowl?’ And you think, Hey, gee, this is a regular person, after all. And we begin fresh. See where I'm coming from?"

“Uh huh,” Eichord said.

“Idea here is that we reestablish my credibility as a human being. Because I want to talk to you, Jack. I want to tell you how I did it. I want to lay it all out for you and try my damnedest not to go off on one of my goofy word-flights, because it's important somebody understands what they've got in Ukie Hackabee. So first I've got to build up a little credibility and you might say belief insurance—so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you some dead people. A whole bunch of them. Isn't that exciting? So you're taking notes, the tapes are rolling, I assume, and let's just pitch right in to the nasty business at hand. I'd like to begin with a cute little number who I picked up in fact not too many miles from this very spot. She's in a nice deep grave waiting for you right now, even as we speak. Do you know where the reservoir is?” And he began a nonstop tirade of talk that ran for twenty-two minutes. In twenty-two minutes he gave up another grave every two and a half minutes roughly. In twenty-two minutes of wild and crazed conversation and rambling reminiscing he told Eichord and the men and women at the monitors where they could disinter nine more victims. Exact almost pinpoint locations. He'd obviously rehearsed this in his mind overnight.

“Can you think of any more?” Eichord prodded gently when Ukie had apparently run out of steam.

“I can think hundreds more, my friend. Thing is, I have to have something for something. I want my uke and I want an adequate channel of communication for legal representation assured me. I want confidentiality for my new attorney. I want—I want to be treated with respect. I don't want that weinie-wagger shit in my file. I want...” He trailed off with a pleasant expression on his face. “So. Are you ready to hear how I did it, or would you prefer to wait until the bodies are dug up so you know I'm for real?"

“No, Ukie. Go ahead. I believe you."

“Right,” he said, expelling a huge stream of air, breathing in deeply and beginning, “I asked you when last we chatted about your familiarity with palingenetic phylogeny, and sacerdotalism, syncretism, things of a decidedly mystical and paradoxical nature but nonetheless important to your comprehension of the god-and-icons thing but you detuned and I went off the wall and that's why today I thought it was so important to prove to you I was real on this thing. Look, Jack. I just gave you more bodies. You know those bodies didn't just go into those graves and jump in and cover themselves with earth, right?"

“Right."

“So now that I'm on that kind of footing with you and you find out for yourself that Ukie is the king of killers of ALL TIME, just like the Champ,” he said in a Muhammad Ali voice that made Eichord smile unexpectedly, “well, then, please keep an open mind and let me try and explain it all to you."

“Fair enough,” Jack said, shaking his head a little.

“But you GOTTA know the territory, like the song says. Don't rule anything out just ‘cause it sounds weird, folks. Okay. This is so ... Oh, jeez, I just can't get into it all it's so spooky and vast and wonderful and awesome. Like where to start. Okay. Okay. I know if I start taking you back through all this you're going to tune out on me again but you have to understand the background or everything is meaningless. It is power, Jack. Such as you can't and never will be able to fathom and it doesn't just spring from nowhere."

“Power."

“The power of ... Before I tell you. I know you said you believe in God. No doubt you also believe in the devil. But for just a second put the thoughts of good and evil out of your head and look at this objectively. Forget the fallacies of Pythagorean and Plutarchean quasimoralities, the metaphysics of the Orphic and anthropo-morphic deities, the dubious disciplines of the gnostic and Nichomachean, the orgiastic and cathartic, the Shinto and Shugendo, the Taoistic, Maoistic, Confuscian, and confusing dialects and analects and sects and sex of the spastics and the flagellants and the secular and the ecclesiastical and the Mikkyo and the Ogolala shaman and the Hellenistic beliefs and spiritual suckering that forms the thick crust of so-called religious thought from asceticism to Zoroaster."

“You're losing me."

“Yeah. Okay. Start over. How do you know you believe in God? HE didn't just part the clouds one day and in a booming, thunderous voice proclaim to Moses Eichord the way it was gonna be. You learned from Mom and Pop. The Church. Sunday school. Relatives. Friends. Friends and relations on weekend vacations. Half-remembered tribal prayers, incantations passed from generation to generation, inscriptions in the stone memories of proud and noble ruins, monoliths carved by illiterates yet meant to be seen from the sky, dusty dogma and rotting ritual, surviving mysteries on crumbling papyrus, fragments of ancient urns from long-disintegrated cities, holy places gone to dust, stagnant sacraments and vestigial words of worship found in sunken cities of the dead, and it was ever thus from the blue waters of the Aegean Sea to the muddy Miss, we learned from the Word. God does not assert himself/herself, nor does Satan. Sitting at the knee of Isis, Serapis, Attis, Sabazios, Hecate, Medea, Persephone, Earth Mother Mary, basking in the katachthonian subworld's revenge and the cultist muck of Steve Holland deification, some cunt—excuse my French—passed along the marvelous, mystical, magical, mixed-up mystery of good and evil. But what if indeed there is no moral wrong or right but only superimposed force that we will refer to as phantasmagoria. It, asexual and omnisexual, neither he nor she, It upper-case, is to the existence of thought what a constantly shifting, complex sucession of optical effects and fluctuating scenes, seen or imagined, is to the vision? Eh? Then by the yellowed yarmulke of Yahweh, by the turquoise turnips of the Tetragrammaton, by the crimson chronology of the Anti-Christ, by the dirty dipstick of the Dionysiacs, then we must reexamine and reevaluate our sources of power.