“Whatdya say, Wally."
“Great to see you, Jack."
“Good to see you again. You've gotten fat, eh?” Wally Michaels might have weighed all of 160 soaking wet.
“Yeah. I'm eatin’ good. You look great."
“I look a little drunk, I'll bet. All that booze on the plane—man, I'm swacked.” They laughed.
“I hear you, sir. I get that way everytime I get in a plane."
“Anything new?"
“Huh?"
“On your perp?"
“Oh, not much. The woman's starting to get a little hazy on the specifics. But she's batting a thousand with us. She's tryin’ hard. Very forthcoming. Offered to let us have her hypnotized and that kind of thing but we've got to be awfully careful with this. Don't want to blow it."
“Playing it by the book with the perp?"
“Absolutely. All the way, Jack. They Mirandized him six ways from Sunday. He got so many Mirandas read to him he had it memorized.” Jack smiled. “We're really taking it slow ‘n’ easy with Ukie."
“What the hell kind of name is that anyway?"
“Ukie was sort of a half-assed entertainer at one time here. He worked a couple of the strip joints as an MC or something. Got up and strummed his ukelele and sang dirty songs or whatever. We've known him for years. Had him in over and over for a couple aggravated sexual assaults, wienie-wagging, bunch of times on suspicion-jerkin’ him around a little. Vag. He's a fuckin’ moke."
“I saw the package. But you know what doesn't feel right?"
“This is the car—'scuse me. Go ahead,” Michaels interrupted as he started to open the door of an unmarked Plymouth.
“I got some luggage."
“The airport guy's getting it. Get in. You've got the VIP treatment this time, Jack.” They got in the car and Wally popped the trunk release.
“So, you were saying something wasn't right?"
“It just doesn't fall together for me yet. I can't see a dude like this offing all those people. I mean you're talking some kinda body count already. What is it?"
“Thirty-nine or forty-three depending on whose vibes you go with—whether you wanna believe Ukie or forensics. You know how some of these perps are. He wants credit for every murder one on the books now. Like I say, we've gotta walk on eggs."
“I dunno.” Eichord shook his head. “It doesn't come together so far for me. Like this thing about you all tryin’ to get him to explain why and he said, what, that it was a jigsaw puzzle for the cops to solve. He wouldn't explain it. Or he couldn't. If he did all those people—and I'll admit so far it looks dead-bang—why did he leave seventeen to be found and supposedly bury hundreds, or let's say even bury dozens of victims? Why go to that much trouble and then leave seventeen? And why does a known dong-dangler who picks up a woman and forces her to have sex with him—why does a sex offender leave his sexiest victims unmolested? Huh-uh. Two, three different MOs going here. You got no semen residue, no sexual penetration, no freak stuff. Just whacks ‘em and either leaves ‘em or buries the corpse. Doesn't make a shred of sense at all. I mean, there's a million unexplained pieces to this, right?"
“That's why—” But Jack was still going on with it.
“Why does a guy who wants the coppers to play guessing games with him, a guy who is calculating enough to construct a mystery of this complexity, with the balls to carry out the killings—why would somebody like that be stupid enough to brag openly about the location of buried corpses to Donna Scanty-panties-whateverhernameis? See?"
“Yeah. But—"
“Bragging about buried bodies, Wally. I mean, if he buried some and leaves some, the ones he buried were buried for a reason. He didn't want us to find ‘em. So why brag—"
“But if he thought he was going to silence her, doesn't it fit the profile of a hey-look-at-me kind of psychotic?"
“Maybe and maybe not. But even so, I dunno—"
“All right. Wait, Jack, suppose that some of these victims he's put in the ground turn out to have been molested."
“Yeah?"
“You grant the possibility?"
“Right."
“Right. Now, if he only has sex with some of his victims and then buries those AFTER he offs ‘em ... Get it?"
“Huh?"
“If he was going to bury Donna Scannapieco when he was through with her, what did he care whether or not she knew?"
“Oh, yeah, I get that, but my point is we've got conflicting MOs at work here. Different patterns of behavior, it seems to me. That kind of a dude. He's not going to take those kind of unnecessary risks, is he? What sense does it make? He's already got the woman. Why tell her anything she doesn't need to know?"
“To convince her."
“Well..."
“Big-time killer. He wants her to know it so she'll be scared. You know how some of those freaks are. Scary sex is the only sex. Boo, shit. Let's fuck. Those guys."
“Yeah."
“That's what."
“But take a look at this guy's package. There's nothing here to indicate the sort of physical thing you got goin’ with the seventeen he's left aboveground. No muscle here in the package. No heavyweight stuff at all. When did he move from bein’ a dude in a trench coat in the back row of the Sperm Theater and start getting a taste for the heavy stuff?"
“Point is, you're here to help us find out. What is the obvious possibility? If Ukie Hackabee is for real. If all this time when he was dangling his dipstick at the gals in the supermarket, he was also getting into bigger and bloodier games, and if there's a trail of dead bodies like we're afraid we may find on this one, well...” Michaels trailed off and it was suddenly unnaturally silent in the closed vehicle. And in that moment of absolute quiet the airport man slammed the trunk shut and it sounded like a cannon going off.
Eichord damn near jumped out of his skin. “Jeezus,” he muttered, shuddering involuntarily, feeling his heart thumping, as Wally Michaels turned the key in the ignition and they drove out into the wake of the Texas traffic, Eichord still shocked by the sudden noise, discomposed from the flight, turbid from the airplane liquor, and neutered by the obvious inconsistencies of the Dallas grave-digger.
Dallas
Miss Scannapieco was a letdown. If Eichord had been expecting a brassy blond bombshell oozing raw sexuality and flirting with every male in sight, he got a big surprise. Physically, at least, there was nothing out of the ordinary about her appearance or her actions. She appeared to be a rather average-looking, moderately attractive, somewhat hard-looking woman in her early thirties. She had come in the next morning around ten o'clock and Eichord's first look at Ukie Hackabee's only living victim was through the one-way observation glass of Room 601. She was talking with a detective from the intelligence squad named Duncan, and he popped the speaker sound off, watched her a bit longer, and seeing nothing instructive, went in and introductions were made.
“I guess you're getting pretty tired of talking about this by now,” he said to her with a smile.
“I'll talk about it all night if it will help nail the dirty bastard. Whatever it takes.” There was something about her, sitting across from her at a table, that didn't communicate itself through the looking glass on the wall. You couldn't even see it coming in the room. Only when she turned those eyes on you did the frankness of her open sexuality hit you. Immediately, no further dialogue between them being necessary, they each read the other like an open book, and both of them looked away, neither of them liking what they saw.
“Well,” Eichord stalled, “how about starting at the beginning for me and tell me about it one more time. You were in the parking lot..."