Stone Shadow

by Rex Miller

  He took her back over the old ground again. Getting her to remember everything she could about the details of the room. Precisely which pictures were on the walls? What sort of magazines had they come from? Were there any captions? Did the newspaper clippings indicate which paper or papers? Dates? What were the exact headlines that she could remember? Were they comments he had made about other victims when he was doing his bragging? Had he had sex with them before he killed them? Was he explicit about those activities? What had he said to her about his motives? Why did he kill? And on they tromped over the fading and bitter memories.

  Something nagged at him about Donna Scannapieco and her face, that irritating smile kept gnawing at him, not wanting to let go. She was one of those persons who seem at first to have about ten too many teeth in their mouth. In her case, imagine the older Mary Tyler Moore with her mouth full of Chiclets. Mary takes off her necklace of beads, puts them in her mouth, and smiles and—voila!—Donna. One of those mouths that always look like they should be chewing gum.

  Then he knew what it was in the toothy smile, so ready to flash at you under the long mane of dark hair, he knew what it was that bothered him: Miss Scannapieco was an older, more shopworn, less attractive model of Joanie, the wealthy preppie he'd married about 140 years ago back when both of them were too young to know better. Joanie had seen his job, perhaps rightfully, as the other woman in his life, and their days had been an endless cycle of marital battles, a war of attrition that called a truce each night as the two sides made rough-and-tumble peace overtures between the sheets. Some people build a life together on a hell of a lot less but eventually it just came apart at the seams. Too many years ago to seem real, but sexy Joanie's mouth had come back to chew on him a little more.

  When he finally put a handle on what had been nudging him it took some of the pressure off and he felt like it would be easier for him to make a fresh start with Donna. His intuition told him that even second hand from her lips, the bragging he'd done in front of his captive audience might prove to be a lot more important to the case than what Ukie would say himself. Little did he know how right he would be.

  Because if he had not expected Donna Scannapieco to be what she turned out to be, rather than the image evoked by her cop-shop reputation, he would find himself totally unprepared for the reality of William “Ukie” Hackabee, whom the Dallas papers were now referring to as the Grave-digger.

  Dallas Lockup

  Inside his head there is the feeling and it soaks him in terror. Before he can resist he is there. He hates himself for his weakness but the second he feels the chill of the cold place a whimpered “PLEASE” escapes involuntarily.

  So still and cold and his voice is loud inside his head. The place always frightens him so terribly. Corridors of stone. Gray stone. Featureless.

  The tall shadow beckons him forward and he knows better than to resist.

  He knows as he moves into the depths of the dark and merciless place that he will be forced to look and he tries to steel himself but there is never time and he always forgets that he has no secrets now and this time it is one of the worst yet and he screams, seeing it, and the tall shadowy figure laughs.

  Dallas

  Guy builds up a few priors for flashing folks, shooting his dingus out ladies in the drugstore, you get an image of a fellow—you just can't help it. Weird-looking, wimpy dude with zits and glasses. Sort of gray-complected and vaguely moist, the kind of guy you'd never want to touch in a million years. Then you take a dude gets his rocks off burying corpses, you expect to see those buggy Manson eyes staring out at you going boogah-boogah. Even Eichord, who had seen enough of these folks to know you can't judge a book by its cover, had his preconceptions when he walked into the room where Ukie Hackabee was being interrogated. Those preconceptions were immediately shattered.

  First off, when you imagine someone named Ukie Hackabee who kills people, you picture a toothpick in the mouth, a rough-and-ready “good ole boy,” or at least Eichord had. Ukie Hackabee was six-foot-one or -two, with styled hair, a Cary Grant chin, and only about twenty pounds on the heavy side of being able to pose for Jockey shorts ads. Ukie was a good-looking dude. And he looked up with a big preconception-shattering, sardonic smile and said, “Oh, goodie. You must be the GOOD cop. Because that gentleman"—he nodded toward the policeman shoveling papers back into a valise, who looked up to catch Ukie mouthing “asshole” to Eichord—"is most assuredly the BAD cop.” He broke himself up and laughed in a pleasantly loopy tenor giggle. This was a mass murderer and a pecker-shaker?

  “He's all yours,” the other cop murmured, shaking his head in exasperation as he left.

  “Come back and see us—hear?” Ukie called to his back, flipping him a bird. “What an asshole. Get that on the tape okay?” He spoke to the ceiling lights. “Do you need a level? Are you getting this okay?"

  Eichord laughed easily and said, “Boy, we're not going to put anything over on you, are we? You got the good-cop/bad-cop ploy down cold. You even know where the mikes are. You and I must have seen the same movies."

  “Yeah.” Ukie laughed, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “You're the good cop. I can see that. Well, hell's bells, why not stay with whatever works? I mean take TV. Did you ever just sit and listen to those laugh tracks they put behind the shows? Even the funny shows that don't need it. They say they do it because it works, meaning the shows won't get as high ratings if they don't play the electronic laughs. Those same laughs were taped back when the first studio audiences were listening and watching Amos ‘n’ Andy, f'r heaven's sake. That was, what—forty years ago? And the laughs are so phony. You can hear the way they just roll in the ha-ha-has on every would-be joke line. The laughs have an electronic sound that isn't quite the same as a real crowd laughing. You listen some time.” He was very animated and enthusiastic.

  Eichord had the feeling that if he hadn't been cuffed to the steel table he'd be up and pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly as he talked.

  “But they're pigs. They being the network assholes. They're greedy. They want ALL the lines to be funny. The worst show I think I ever saw was that old show with Ozzie and Harriet. Ricky would come in and say, ‘Hi, Mom,’ and the laugh track would explode, and the screen door would slam and the laugh track would get hysterical. I saw where that kid Ricky died not long ago. He seemed like a nice young man. I remember pictures of Ozzie and Harriet back when I was a kid. My mom and pop—foster parents but I called ‘em Mom and Pop—they thought Harriet was so beautiful. She was cool-looking back in the thirties. I saw a—"

  “Mr. Hackabee?"

  “—picture of her. Gee, must have been when she was in her twenties. Absolute knockout. Huh?"

  “I wonder if we could just—"

  “If only I had my uke in here. Man, I could play some good old jam, you know?"

  “Mister Hackabee?"

  “Mister Hackabee,” Ukie parroted, saying the words as Eichord said them.

  “You mind if we talk a little about the—"

  “little about the—"

  “case?"

  “—case,” he said brightly.

  And Eichord just looked at him with a big smile. Letting the man see he was enjoying it too. “Very good."

  “Very good,” Ukie repeated, exactly with Jack's words.

  Eichord laughed and Hackabee just watched him to see if he had zinged him a little. He decided he hadn't and took a breath and relaxed. “Ukie, my name's Jack Eichord, and I'd like to—"

  “EICHORD Wow!” Hackabee appeared genuinely animated by the information. “The cat in MODERN CRIMINOLOGY. We've got a celebrity cop. That was a marvelous spread on you. Simply mah-velous. I was impressed. Really. I've read about you in the papers too. You solved that Demented Dentist thing and the one with the huge killer—what was his name—Cosnowski? Something like that? The Lonely Hearts murders? That was bigger than the Boston Strangler. You know one that always fascinated me was the Zodiac thing. They never got me, you know. O
h, woopsy-daisy. That was just a Freudian slip. I meant they never got HIM. But that was out in San Francisco or somewhere. I love the town. Everyone there is so happy and gay. Laugh it up, these are the jokes, folks. Eichord. Are you Jewish by any chance? No, of course not. German, I'll bet. Achtung. I used to like to eat in this restaurant that was half-German-half-Chinese. They had great food but an hour later you were hungry for power. BaROOOM-boom. Little rim job. Er-rim shot. Anyway, I saw the big story on you and really scoped up on that investigative genius. How come they brought you in to this? There's nothing left to solve. I've told them everything. I was the second gun at Dealey Plaza. I was the guy shot McKinley. I go way back. I'm so old I was a waiter at the Last Supper.” He took a breath and Jack spoke in the pause.

  “Is this for the mikes, Ukie, or do you just like an audience or what?” Ukie's eyebrows raised in question. “All the commentary. I mean, it's very interesting but what's the point?"

  “Point? Oh, I get it. This is going to be a thing where you challenge me on everything I say so that I have to say everything two different ways and in the dual narrative so to speak you hope to compromise me, catch me in falsehoods, trip me up in the fallacies and dialectic pitfalls of the Socratic dialogue, the snares laid by Platonic logic, the mental mine fields of Hegelian conceptualization, the technique of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, speaking of which—"

  “Whoa. Please. Ukie. Give it a rest a minute.” Jack's brain was beginning to feel like it had been lying in the sun too long. His mouth had that dry, cottony feeling. “Are you laying groundwork for an insanity plea, because it's wasted on me, Ukie. Can we just talk in the normal way? Please?” Eichord staring at the enigmatic grin, speaking very softly. Calmly.

  “I don't think so, Special Investigator Eichord of Modern Criminology Magazine and late of Chicago Sunrise, The American, and the New York Daily News. I think I prefer good-cop/bad-cop. One to threaten and berate. One to coax, cajole, flatter. One to pontificate and command. One to offer blandishments and hope of official friendship. Have I just about got that one down right? An investigative laugh track. Speaking of laugh tracks, did you know that in—"

  “Hold it. HEY! Ukie"—the dark eyes leveled on him—"tell me this. Why would a nice-looking fellow like yourself have to get his rocks off by wagging his wienie at little girls from his car? I mean, that's something a slime-ball degenerate might have to do. But why would a good-lookin’ chap like you have to lower himself to that level of behavior? I'd really like to know."

  “Bullshit. That is pure BULLSHIT. I know that's in my file and it is absolute garbage. I don't have to whip my dingus out to get a broad to look at me. Ask little innocent Miss Donna, doubtless waiting in the wings. Ask that cunt. I only wish I'd reached the pulverizing stage with that nubile ex-flight-attendant, ex-semi-pro, ex-cocktail-hostess, and I mean with the emphasis on COCK, dig, the emPHASis on the foist si-LAB-bull but ... Look, hey! Let me tell you about that dumb twat.

  “I walked by her in a shopping center and the chick is undressing me with her eyes and I smile over at her and she wolf-whistles like some hard-hat hard-on and so I rub my stuff and I go, ‘Li'l girl, wanna go for a ride?’ And five minutes later she's in my car and I've got my hand in between those hot legs. Little innocent Miss Donna.

  “I called her ‘hothead’ because of her ability to go down on Sly here, as I told Dr. Roberts when he interviewed me about it, she was really ORAL, Roberts, and I liked to read awful gothic romances peddled by fag agents to her aloud while she sucked me off, and then I'd twist Miss Donna's hothead hair into a handle like so, and force her hot wet mouth back and forth on me. And I indoctrinated her into the pleasure-pain of boiling water.

  “Get Miss Innocence to tell you how she liked to suck me with her mouth on fire from boiling water and how she'd cry with pleasure when I shot my hot load of spermaroony between those cum-soaked whore lips of hers. That fucking round-heeled tramp. I don't give a fat rat's cootie what it says in that lying pile of palomino poop, if I want a broad I TAKE ‘EM. Period."

  “What about all the killings?” Eichord asked. “Why would a sharp guy like Ukie Hackabee bother with it? What's the point?"

  “Ah, ah,” shaking his finger at Eichord.

  “Huh?"

  Ukie laughed as he tilted his head a little and said, “Now, now. Naughty boy. Mustn't ask about such things until you've read me my rights. Under the United States Supreme Court ruling in U.S. vs. Miranda, a U.S. citizen has the right to remain silent during any Carmen Miranda movie in which there is a bananarama scene. If you cannot afford a hat with fruit on it one will be purchased for you. Anything you say can and will be used in Joe E. Brown's comedy act."

  “The guy talking to me now, this smart gentleman named Hackabee. This guy's no killer. Come on, man. Tell all."

  “Very effective. That's a good number the way you lower your voice in that conspiratorial hush. Almost a whisper. I like that. Very nice. Oh, yes. Jack, I'm afraid you're destined to play the good cop forever."

  “You said it, old boy. You're afraid."

  “Do which?"

  “What are you so scared of? It's not like you could pay the death penalty more than once, is it?"

  “Exactly my sentiments. So what do I have to gain by helping you with your little puzzle. Look, Jack—if I may be informal? Intimate with you, so to speak. Try to think of this as a theoretical whodunit. These are the clues, Mr. Serial Murder Expert. Read my lips. CLUUUUUUUU ZZZZ. You should be able to really sink your teeth into this thing. Try and think of everything I say as a clue. Where do you keep your clues? I keep mine in the clues’ closet at home. But say we had two sets of clues. Parallel hieroglyphs: one demotic, one noncolloquial not unlike the Rosetta Stone or the menu at Uncle Nick Zorba's Grecian Spoon. Now picture the thing nonisoscelean: the hypotenuse of each triangular shape tangential in such a manner that the sum of each is equidistant within the peripheral closed curve of an ellipse that encloses them, bend the outer curve like so"—he tried to gesture earnestly—"and you have a figure-eight infinity symbol which, when studied with the other clues, will divulge a secret more diabolical than the rumored Satanic preachment in the Stones’ album covers—"

  “Ukie—"

  “—the alleged subliminal symbolism within Procter and Gamble's corporate logo, the double entendre of the Beatles’ music from the Helter Skelter period, and at the perigee of our bent orbs, when the theme song from that television milestone, touchstone, and kidney stone Mister Ed is played backward ‘someone sung the song for Satan’ and ‘the source is Satan’ can clearly be heard, much the same way ‘Paul is dead’ supposedly follows in the end grooves of Strawberry Fields, or ‘fuck your girl all kinds of ways’ was rumored to allegedly grace the lyrical beauty of Louie, Lou-eye, or—"

  “Ukie, we sure are wasting valuable time here,” Jack said with a smile. “How come you didn't mess with those pretty girls you took down? Weren't they your type?"

  “I'd have thought you'd been more interested in how I zapped that whole family of citrus-pickers. Three of them. That was a real challenge. Don't you want to know how I put ole Hay-zoos away?"

  Eichord widened his eyes but said nothing. Not wanting to interrupt the first piece of information that had any reality attached to it.

  “Don't you want to know about that one?"

  “Sure I do."

  “No. You say you want to know but soon as I'd start explaining it, running it down for you, pulling your coat to it, you'd tune out on me. And that's a shame because I can see that raw intellect oozing out of every pore. No lie, you're the only cop I've met since this like, you know, came to a head who has even a prayer of understanding what they've got hold of."

  “I'd like to try to understand."

  “You sure?"

  “As long as it doesn't have anything to do with TV laugh tracks I'll listen.” Ukie giggled. “Give it my best shot, anyway."

  “You know we're part of history now, right?"

  Eichord raised
his eyebrows and tried to smile.

  “I mean, if you knew where all the bodies were buried, Jack, you wouldn't believe it. But before we talk about all the skeletons in my closet, you have to understand my—what do you guys say—modus operandi?"

  “Right."

  “Let's talk about God and icons, okay? You believe in God, right?"

  Eichord nodded.

  “Okay. Are you familiar with the doctrine of pantheism? Sacerdotalism? The paradox of syncretism? Palingenetic phylogeny? A simple yes or no will do."

  “Yes or no."

  Which broke Ukie up. There was a lot more. Just as Hackabee said, he tuned it out, somewhere between “cranial suture” and “chthonic and telluric ritual” he glanced at his watch and tried to swallow. It hadn't been an entire waste. Also, back when Ukie had wished his relationship with Donna Scannapieco had been at “the pulverizing stage” something had lit up for a second. A thing that was icy and nameless and invisible had touched him just for that quick passing moment. Blown across him like a cold wind.

  But even in the face of Ukie's babbled confession, nothing about this mess was right. Nothing.

  Dallas Lockup

  It comes in a nightmare, death masked as an artist, coming paint his mind's portrait in shadows and blood, and it will call him Still Life with Frame and hang it face to the wall and before he can beg it has taken him there and the stone corridors of the dark pathway are empty.

  “CLETUS!” A blood-chilling scream from the deep blackness.

  He feels the penetration like his mind was a veil splattered in scarlet PLEASE NO DON'T but its fury takes him and the fall is like diving down into burning liquid crystal and the silken whisper from inside this darkened mirror is the scream of madness, “C L E T U S!” An exploding, blazing mirror in black, angel on fire, the scream boiling out of his deepest fears.