But who says Arthur WAS in a chair for all that time. He's injured in Vega. Moves to Las Vegas, Nevada. Eventually his beautiful pony of a girlfriend nurses him back to health. He moves to Cleveland. He moves to Muncie. Fargo. Buckhead. Drives to the nearest metropolitan area where he wants to kill. What if the killer had been killing all along but not with an icepick? Bludgeonings. Strangulations.
Missing persons? What if he'd been killing with an icepick all along, sure enough, but he'd found a way to dispose of the bodies. He's in the construction business now. He pours concrete footings for parking garages. Acme Parking in Fargo is a mausoleum for 132 dead women. Maybe he just doesn't sign his name to the artwork.
“What are you doin’ here?” Brown's voice cuts through Jack's thoughts as the detective hangs up his coat, obviously a rhetorical question.
“Precisely my sentiments."
“That's a good question,” somebody said behind him. The guys on the eight-to-four tour were coming into the squad bay.
“Read it and weep, baby,” he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the crime report on the morning's homicide.
“Jane Graham,” Eichord says aloud, the first time he'd spoken Poke Salad Annie's real name, “Iceman Murder Number Two.” He read his list to them. “Other possibilities?"
“What about that note?” Brown asked. Meaning the thing the paper had received. “What if it wasn't just a crank note? Suppose that's the killer. How do we know Jane Graham wasn't a feminist deal, a what-yacallem women's libber, or a dyke or whatever? Might be worth looking at?"
“Bullshit,” somebody said.
“We'll look. Sure. But, no, I don't think so. The women's movement in Buckhead, and in fact nationally, is anything but militant. All that remains of the cutting edge of it is a relatively small core of political activists who've paid their dues in the trenches. Only the fringe people still come on with the radical rhetoric—and where is there any evidence of serious hostility? No pattern of threats. No zoned-out cranks wanting to off the political piggies. None of that, man. What's the note say?” He glanced over at a dossier and opened it and thumbed through to find a photocopy.
“Women's lib whores must die,” Brown said.
“Here you go: dyke whores must die. women's lib cunts have destroyed the family and they will pay! i strike with the hand of christ.” He laid the dossier down and picked up a stack of Xeroxes. “I think it's garbage. Sorry. No way. Some dude wanted to get us a little crazy, some cop-hater, and fortunately he or she isn't hip enough to couch the thing in post-feminist phraseology. He probably saw ‘women's movement’ in a news story and decided to pull our bell rope a little. Maybe Tina Hoyt was a women's libber five or six years ago but she was too political to let herself aim that narrowly now. I've looked over a couple of her speeches and they're broad-based. Not the sort of thing to enrage anybody in the audience. No ‘chauvinist pig'-type vocabulary. Also, the note came a day late and a dollar short. On the other hand, we'll take it seriously. We're still working on the typewriter, and one thing and another. Read the operational memo. And speaking of which...” He started passing out pages. “June Graham we gotta keep buttoned down tight. Man, we let the press in on this baby, we'll never hear the end of it. We've got to stay chilly with it. No icepick stuff. No ‘Iceman Murder Victim,’ and I don't want anybody talking or writing about any ‘puncture wounds.’ Let's play this one real close. June Graham is a STABBING until you hear differently. Keep it all in-house with regard to Graham. Do we have a suspect? Yes. Is it related to the Hoyt homicide? No. What do WE know, right? We don't know nuttin'."
“You got that right."
“Um hmm. So much for media. The perpetrator: we'll call him Arthur Spoda Junior. The Iceman from Texas. Amarillo screws the pooch and Artie baby-walks. Or rolls, I should say, Mommy having caught him with Sis and done a J.O.B. on his spine. He rolls to Vegas."
“He's a high-roller,” somebody says.
“Yeah. Blends in with all the other nutbaskets out there. Gets a couple dollahs. Goes to Dallas. Des Moines. Dubuque, Paducah, whatever. Then he comes here. He's born again. Something something something. Lightning strikes his wheelchair and he gets up and walks after twenty years. Mad as hell, and he's right back where he left off. Whacking out middle-aged women."
“Tina Hoyt wasn't that old."
“So maybe he got lucky. What can I tell ya? Hoyt pisses him off and-bang! Down she goes. How do we find him?” Eichord push-pins one of the drawings to the wood frame around the cork bulletin board.
“We go all the places somebody might have had therapy in recent years, chair-bound PROBABLY—maybe not. Forty—forty-two-year-old white male who looks anything remotely like the composite. This guy got better in the LAST YEAR OR SO. No longer handicapped. That's one.
“Two is our copy-cat. Three, remember the surrogate. Our man is still in the chair but he's got a friend or lover who will do the deed for him. He's the doc. He plans ‘em, his buddy does ‘em. Or it's all a scam. Somebody tied to Hoyt or Graham looking for camouflage. Don't dismiss anything. Even if he just...” Eichord trailed off into space. “You know. Looks weird."
He could hear Brown giggle and say a rude word.
“Whatever."
North Buckhead
“You know what, love?” he told the beautiful woman who was facedown on the king-size bed beside him, her head down at the foot of the bed, thinking that lots of “real” women in their twenties would love to look like Nicki did.
“What?"
“Hmm,” he told her in reply, rubbing the back of her slick right thigh. Taking hold of the leg high up, his huge hand spanning the slim leg and squeezing, not trying to hurt her but not being particularly gentle either as he squeezed and slid his hand up a little higher, cupping her upper thigh right under the cheek of her buttocks.
“Hmm?” She was working a puzzle and a little preoccupied, and he let the hand pinch her a little as it moved up.
“Mmm.” She had on a string bikini and gold-colored sandals with extremely high heels. A tiny gold leg chain on her right ankle said Daddy, and the gold waist chain said Nicki.
“What?” she said again.
“Pay attention to me, bitch,” he joked with her, but cruelly taking hold of her long hair and pulling it back like a handle.
“Don't, Daddy,” she whispered sexily, “don't hurt your baby. What are the names of three actresses with five-letter first names who've been nominated for Academy ?"
“Susan Saranwrap, Molly Ringworm, and Merry Steamengine,” he offered, without a beat.
“Mary is four letters."
“Yeah,” he grunted as he ripped the top of her bikini off, pulling her up to him. He was naked, propped up in the big bed on a mound of pillows, his hairy, muscular upper torso encircling her as he fed on her hungrily for a few moments.
“Hey,” he said, pushing her away and looking at her in a serious manner, “I just thought of something."
“What?"
“Bonnie."
“Who?"
“You know. Your friend Princess Di of the wrinkled toes. Her buddy Bonnie she was always blabbering about."
“So?"
“So she's a kind of loose end, ya know?"
“Huh uh. She's covered. Remember—I got that postcard. It already went out to the nigger girl I told you about in California,"—she shook her head—"so, like no problemo. In a couple of weeks she gets the first card from sunny Cal. Remember?"
“I know. That was soooooooo clever. I do like it. In fact, I love it.” He kissed her. “But she's a loose end. I think we should handle her."
“What do you mean ‘handle'?"
“Okay. If I was legitimately Funny Toes’ heartthrob, I'd be sick about Princess Di being gone. And ole Bonnie is going to think that her idiot bitch friend ran off with me to California. Who the fuck knows if she might get crazy and put the cops on me? True, she probably doesn't know much. But it seems to me the smartest thing we could do is eliminate the possibility of a problem. Go ahead and send the card blah-blah, and so on and so forth, and then I get in touch with Bonnie. I wonder whatever happened to Diane. We get together and I dispose of this little loose end."