Stone Shadow

by Rex Miller

  So Donna Can-of-peas, age thirty-something, naked as a jaybird, crammed inside an appliance box and about two steps short of coming unwrapped altogether, she tells ‘em in the ER that she was pulling into a parking lot at this shopping mall when a dude puts a gun in the window, tells her to move over. He starts the car up and takes her into a nearby alley where he stuffs Donna in the trunk. A half-hour later he's got her chained to the bed in the basement of this old house. Says she's his “sex slave” from now on, and if she wants food and drink she can put out for it; if not, she dies. She tells of rape and torture, and finally, a month or so of this, she sees her chance and manages to escape. Ends up downtown, still naked, and covered in filth, hiding in a refrigerator box where she passes out and the wino finds her.

  Thing is, all during the weeks of captivity, he's bragging to her about how he likes to take folks off. He's the number-one killer of the century, he tells her, and brags about the “hundreds of human bodies” he's buried all over the Southwest. He's so specific that she manages to remember some of it. The cops figure it's bullshit.

  She's a little on the hard side, Donna is. They see that once she gets cleaned up, she likes to load up with the old makeup, lots of eye shadow, flashy wardrobe, a low-cut this, a tight that, show a little leg. They kind of figure she may have asked for it. Maybe she didn't even mind it all that much—the sex-slave part. Maybe she even got off on it. And Donna is on the theatrical side. Very dramatic. Poses a lot and talks like she thinks maybe somebody should be shooting all this with a camera. It just doesn't sit right.

  And there's always the remote possibility you got an irate lover who wants to punish somebody and embarrass them real bad. Maybe a jilted mistress who wants to put her married sugar daddy through some changes at the expense of the Dallas cop shop. It wouldn't be the first time. So there is natural suspicion.

  But one of the coppers happens to see the Identikit drawing they do of Donna's abductor, and son of a bitchin’ don't that beat all, that's that crazy fucker Ukie Hackabee. Whoa, shit. Ukie, as in Ukelele, is what they call a police character in Dallas. You've got to realize, pardner, this is Big Dee, where Jack Ruby was only rated a “buff” status. So if you're a genuine “character,” that means you've done messed in a few mess kits and got caught at it. Eichord had checked the MCTF computer-think on the man and he had a thick package as a KSP (known sexual pervert), with the impression of being a very small-time nickel-dime con man.

  Within forty-eight hours the state rods picked him up. And as it happened, they nailed him while he was digging out behind a private estate where the wealthy owner had friendly troopers make the occasional drive-by. On closer inspection, what Ukie was poking around in happened to be the fresh grave of a young Jane Doe. Ukie looked awfully good for about thirty-nine homicides all of a sudden.

  And all of a sudden there were city, state, and fed-level shields digging everywhere Donna Scannapieco said to dig. And many of the areas where Ukie had bragged to her about burying people revealed human remains. They were onto what might become one of the most notorious mass murders ever. Ukie had told Donna about “hundreds of bodies.” What if his brags were factual? What had Ukie Hackabee gone and done?

  In his maximum-security cell Ukie (William) Hackabee not only confessed that he was the guilty party, but guys, hey, you don't know the half of it. I've killed whole rooms of people—buildings full of assholes. You ain't just messing with some small potatoes punk. I've taken down HUNDREDS of mother-fuckers all over this part of the country.

  And all of this was sloshing around with the airplane booze when Eichord got his final smiles from the stews, deplaning at the huge piece of tarmac that had disappointed so many visitors to Dallas—finding out that Love Field was only the name of an airport. And he shook his head to clear out the cobwebs, sucked in a lungful of that warm, dry Dallas air, and moved with the mob, spotting a familiar face who said, “Hey, over here."

  “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?"
<
br />   “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..."

  “I'd just pulled in to go to the mall,” she said without hesitation, “and this man comes up to the car and I had just tapped the car in back of me very, very gently on the bumper when I parked and I didn't know who he was I just assumed maybe he was going to be saying something about me hitting the car, like he was going to, you know, claim I knocked a dent in his bumper, which I know I didn't because I barely touched the car, and he goes, ‘If you'll look in my hand you'll see I'm holding a pistol and ... ‘"

  As she talked, Eichord's mind wandered and he listened to the word patterns as much as he did the words. Listening for the subtle changes in the rhythms as he always did. Listening for the gray areas that lay hidden in between the blacks and whites of fact, opinion, conjecture. Trying to piece together an after-the-fact reality from as many sources as would offer input.

  Eichord was a by-the-book detective when he had to be. And nobody could touch him when it was time to cogitate, seriate, extrapolate, and excavate the buried chunks of seemingly irrelevant and disconnected datums. They came from nowhere. Apparently meaningless nuances. Trivia. Minutiae. Nonfacts. Suggestions. Rhythms. Patterns. Nudges. But Jack Eichord was no Sherlock. (Those were the ashes of a Trichinopoli cigar in his cuff, Watson.) Eduction/deduction came in many packages. He was a visceral, gut-instinct, vibes man at heart.

  He knew the overlong frankness of eyeball stares calculated to instill trust, the hesitation in midphrase that sometimes red-flagged deceit, the too-perfect arrangement of “clues,” the patterns of occurrence that signaled a suspicious structuring of events supervenient to a homicide. He listened for dissonance, sniffed for secret blood trails, watched for the dodgy maneuvering of the evasive broken-field runner. What he called the footprints in the cottage cheese.

  “...clothing, and they wanted to know whether I was wearing provocative clothing at the time of,” he heard her say with heavy sarcasm, but what he watched was the way she widened her eyes on the word “provocative.” It was this signal that he would find so typical of Donna Scannapieco's demeanor, the widening of the eyes, the frankness of the sensual animal in her reflected in those dark irises, an unabashedly sexy communication that was so off-putting to him, the continuous statement she made about herself to anyone with whom she had close contact. The truth is that she was one of those victims it is rather difficult to pity.

  “Tell me about the place he kept you in, Donna."

  “I'll never forget that place. It was just a room. About twelve feet wide"—she motioned with her hands—"and about fourteen feet long. The walls looked like maybe cedar, I'm not good at that, but they were covered in pictures and stuff. He had mostly pictures from dirty magazines. Women doing things, you know. And some newspaper clippings."

  “Tell me about the clippings."

  “There was the one about the slain college girl. That was the first one I told you guys about that led to them believing me, I guess. And then I remember the clipping about the boy who had suddenly disappeared, and that was the one where he first started bragging about how he was able to do anything he wanted and get away with it. And that he made hundreds of people disappear all over the Southwest. He'd just drive from city to city and whenever he felt like it he said he'd just kill somebody and put them in the ground or dump them in the river or whatever.” She had begun speaking very rapidly, and as her speech cadence changed, her breathing accelerated, but the focus of the eyes that mirrored the inner direction had never wavered. His initial reaction was, whatever else Donna Scannapieco might be, he thought she was probably telling the truth.

  “Donna, did you ever wonder or even think to ask him why he was telling you about these killings?"

  “He probably figured he'd kill me too when he got tired of me. I mean, what did he have to fear from me? When he still had me chained up I guess he knew there was no way I could get loose."

  “How did you finally get loose exactly?"

  Unlike so many similarly besieged victims she did not seem to grow physically tired from the long interrogation that ran through the lunch hour. Eichord's initial Q-and-A session with Miss Scannapieco had produced the curious effect of making him very weary, but she wasn't tired in the least when they broke for lunch. Two hours and forty-five minutes of relentless probing, taking her over that painful time, making her search the corners of her memory, had left her fresh as a daisy. Her resolve had kept her alert and keen. It was almost as
if she'd enjoyed it. Every surfacing fact putting Ukie Hackabee closer to death row. He hoped she'd stay this way. She was one helluva witness.

  But while the questioning hadn't drained her energies, what it had done was start the two of them off on some uneven footing. He could tell by the way she'd begin her answers to some of his questions that she thought Jack Eichord was a real horse's butt, and she was letting him know. Telling him what he could do with his judgmental, chauvinist, redneck ass as far as she was concerned, or so Eichord imagined by the way she'd frame up her answers. And when he packed it in around one that afternoon he was getting prickly and paranoid about her tone of implicit condemnation and reproach that he was reading in her responses. He was also aware that this could hinder the shit out of an investigation.

  He decided he'd put his feelings back in cold storage where they belonged and start fresh with her again tomorrow. Let go of it for now. Regroup and come in with a new attitude next time. Try to like Donna a little more, be less of a judge and more of an impartial listener. Go in there and really make some decent use of this potential gold mine of information about what could be one of the worst mass murderers ever apprehended.

  “He was making me do things to him, and I was able to convince him that if he took the chain off I could, you know, be better."

  “Be better?"

  “He was having me do it, uh, turned with my back to him"—her eyes cast downward—"dog-style, he called it"—her voice caught a little—"and it hurt a lot to do it anyway. And he had this leather thing like a wide belt on me that I had worn ever since he took me"—her eyes opened wide again and she grinned savagely—"and that's how I first started getting him to unchain me. This big old heavy chain was fixed to a steel ring on the belt, which was held together with padlock. And I had gotten real chafed and raw from under the belt deal, and I started acting like the chain was so heavy I couldn't stay in position to do what he wanted, and I got him to unlock it and so, you know, I could be better at it,” she was sneering. “And I'd been watching how he'd stopped locking the door upstairs. If I hadn't talked him into letting me out of the belt I'd be dead now.” She seethed with hatred and Eichord could see her fighting to keep under control and taking deep breaths. It was the closest she'd come to showing the least sign of what he considered vulnerability.