“Right. And I'll call Mrs. Alvarez and see if I can catch her on the way to work. In fact, if you don't mind, you might give her a call and let her know I'll be around in the morning?"
“No problem. I'll go set it up. Tell her you'll give her a ring or you just want to drop by?"
“Tell her I'll drop by early. I'll phone first and see what time's good. Seven, seven-thirty."
“I'll do ‘er."
“And then I'll go see the girl and our friend, the neighbor who doesn't like dogs. Probably drop in and see you around midmorning if that's all right?"
“That'll be great. We'll sit down and see if we can brainstorm something new. Right now it's a dead end."
“Oh. You mentioned the fourteen-year-old—were you going to bring her in or what?"
“Either way. Whichever. You wanna just have her brought to the station early?"
“Yeah, I think so. I mean since the man"—he glanced at his scrawls—"Mr. Hillman or whatever his name is, lives next door to her. Let's see if we can get her in without any fuss, either have her folks drive her or pick her up in an unmarked car. I'll be there by nine or so."
“Sounds good, and thanks again, Jack.” They shook hands. “See you in the morning."
“See you then."
“Okay. Bob, appreciate all your help. Catch you in the morning.” The door closed and Eichord was left alone with emptiness, distant traffic noise, night sounds, and silent screams.
He tried to put himself in the killer's mind and walked through “scenario number one,” with the children bound and gagged and in a vehicle parked as close to the back door as it could get.
Carrying them in. Dragging the bodies. Rolling them. Trying to transport the kids’ weight every way he could think of. Looking for sign and finding none.
Thinking about the torture that had come before the killing and the mutilation. Letting himself sink down into it. Watching the agony in their eyes. Hearing their muffled screams as the blood flew. This part would be very close to the way it went down up until the end: the autopsies and the kill site yielded up most of that gruesome story.
Now the killer or killers have had their fun. The kids are corpses. Eichord stood, mentally covered in the children's blood. These sickos wanted more. Something takes place. A ritual, let's assume. The heads come off. Why? To impede identification of the victims? If that was the case, why not bury the torsos? And then, why wash off the parts? And the biggest why of all, why move the bodies?
That was the craziest part. The fun and games were over. But these maniacs took another big chance—loading the headless cadavers, the severed parts, unloading the bodies in a field where the vehicle or the perps might be spotted by an unseen watcher—and then go do whatever with the heads? Madness!
Buckhead Station
When the drought finally broke, it did so with a vengeance. It was one of those drippy-looking Mondays that all but the incurably cheerful abominate, and the two huge salt-and-pepper cops were decidedly not of such temperament. Fat Dana Tuny and his new partner, tough, ace-black Monroe Tucker, stood at the top of the steps leading to the squad bay arguing about whose turn it was to drive the Dodge, bickering like two little boys choosing up to see who gets the bat.
“I'll drive,” Dana insisted. The massive black detective just stared at him like he'd enjoy throwing him down the stairs.
“Whatever, just do it.” Dumb fuck, they each thought simultaneously. And just as they started out the side door to the parking lot, the clouds unzipped a dark fly and relieved themselves in a sudden, wet, splashing pisser of a rainstorm.
“Fuckin’ great,” Tucker mumbled with disgust.
“You won't melt,” Tuny said, flinging open the door and breaking for the unmarked Dodge in a fast, waddling run. The two huge men flung themselves into the rump-sprung bench seat, the springs moaning in protest at the hundreds of pounds of abuse, and Dana Tuny ground the ignition and they wheeled out into traffic.
“What's invisible ... and stinks like CARROTS?” the fat, white cop asked in a sneering voice, switching on the wipers.
“How the fuck would I know?"
“Bunny farts,” he said, loosing a loud and vile explosion of flatulence into the car's already malodorous interior.
“OH, JEEZUS! YOU FUCKIN’ MORON!” Tucker fought to get the window down, fat Dana giggling like a schoolgirl.
“Sorry about that,” he said, “I hadda make poo-poo in my pants."
Monroe thought how he'd like to smash a big fist into this giggling blubbergut and watch him fold up like a goddamned accordion. Water streamed onto the arm of his new sportscoat.
“Hey, you know,” he said, his voice taking on a cold and dangerous edge, “I wanna ax you something.” He was trying not to inhale any of the poisonous air in the car, and rain was hitting him in the face. “How the hell you ever get hold of a detective's shield?"
“Just lucky,” the incredible, corpulent hulk riding beside him said. “I was the fourth caller on Name It and Claim It."
“Uh huh. But for real, man. How the fuck did you get a detective's shield, as fuckin’ STUPID as you are?"
“I'm glad you axed me that, Monroe. I stole it off a dead nigger."
Vega, 1955
The boy-child was slipping off the mountain. Even though he was still a child in years, with a child's absence of morality, he was already possessed of a burning intelligence that told him how different he was.
And inside his mind he could see himself going off the deep end, over the high side, down the cliff. See himself caught in the throes of something dark and tenacious and deliciously forbidden and all-consuming. But the human mind is such that it will attempt to block out the imputations of anything remotely resembling encroaching insanity.
So he went with it. Gave himself over to its pull. And in that mind he created fantasy hideouts and magical escape routes. Great, safe havens in which he could hide from the laughter and cruelty downstairs. Safe hideouts from the overpowering urges that came and held lit matches to his groin and then made him do the bad things to his sister, to the child down the block, to himself.
And the boy-man constructed wonderful secret rooms inside his strange and frightening mind where he could go, always late at night, tuning in the faint signals of security as you tune in the sound of a distant station over late-evening radio. And in fact he would huddle into a fetal ball with total concentration, straining to hear the voices of escapism from the old Fada's tinny speaker.
Late in the night, when the last mysteries and horror tales were over, he'd switch from the network stations to the local stations in nearby Amarillo. And he'd lie there for hours with the midnight dance bands soothing him, playing lullabies in the darkness, as his imagination would concoct complex fantasies of revenge, release, and escape. And they nurtured and comforted him, these evil and dark thoughts, rendering him invisible and all-powerful, a man-child going all the way over the edge into a kind of controlled madness.
South Blytheville, Arkansas
Mrs. Alvarez, distraught and shaking, proved to be totally worthless. They had ended up meeting at the cop shop at eight a.m., and she sat in a small interview room, hugging herself and always appearing to be on the verge of shivering, as she numbly took Eichord over the ground she'd trod a dozen times in the past seventy-two hours. She was not going to go back to work until she found the kids.
Angela and María were, by all evidence, sweet, adorable kids without enemies. She never let either of them go out alone on the streets, even in the neighborhood, “so they'd never get into trouble.” Why couldn't the police find them? Juanita Alvarez kept asking. It was a question nobody could answer.