Iceman by Rex Miller Page B

goodies from the sack.
    “Black through and through,” he told his partner as he handed him the cardboard cup.
    Tucker nodded and said, “So is this,” cupping his load.
    “Dana?"
    “Say what?"
    “Gimme the Privacy Act Unit number already."
    “What do I look like, a fuckin phone book?"
    “You look like the Macy's Dumbo float but gimme the 202 number I gave you yesterday."
    “Okay. Hang on.” He ignored Eichord and sat down at his desk with a thump, his broken chair tilting dangerously to one side as he unwrapped food.
    “Sometime this year if possible,” Eichord said patiently.
    “Shit, gimme a fuckin second,” he whined, stuffing a huge sugary donut into his face.
    Buckhead Station was a workplace in transit. It seemed to be going downhill, like The Job itself, and Eichord felt powerless to do anything about it. Chink and Chunk, James Lee and Dana Tuny, had been partners for about a century, Eichord's friends, guys who'd stayed with him through his booze years, and both Dana and Jack had been devastated by Jimmie's death.
    Fat Dana had become absurdly protective of Jack in the ensuing months. Additionally, his rotund pal seemed to feel that he had failed his buddies in some way. His detective work grew sloppy, and when he'd been assigned a new partner, he had started doing everything he could to get kicked off the force. Eichord had traveled that road, too.
    Monroe Tucker, a massive, two-fisted black man, had not been the ideal choice for a partner to Dana. The captain couldn't seem to grasp the fact that just because Tuny had partnered with an Oriental for years did not make him an expert in biracial relations. In fact, both Tucker and Tuny were bigoted, hard-nosed guys used to doing it their own way. The partnership had been a volatile one, but at least Dana was more or less back to his old self, and doing some semblance of competent police work. Yet the overall efficiency of the unit had continued to decline.
    “Unnnnng,” Dana said through a mouthful of food, handing a sticky piece of paper to Eichord.
    “Thanks,” Jack said, making a show of holding it by the tip and shaking off the residue.
    “I'm the only one in this whole fuckin place knows what he's about,” Dana said, taking a noisy sip of coffee and wiping at the front of his shirt absent-mindedly, like somebody who was used to having crumbs all over him.
    Eichord remembered the time it had all come to a head. The first homicide they'd been on after Tucker had been transferred from Metro. Woman and a dude both dead of gunshot wounds. One of the scenes that was so unreal everybody figures it has to be apocraphyl when the coppers trade stories later.
    Jack could see the building as if it was yesterday, a run-down duplex with the orange tape around the exterior. A crime scene sealed off by the upside-down legend DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. And if you kind of squinted and let it run together it said CROSS POLICE LINE DONUT. And he can see them all going in and the blood and the bodies there.
    Each man was a different-style detective. Eichord into vibes, the feel of a scene, the aura. Dana, when he wasn't being sloppy, was a plodder. Meticulous. A detail man as good as any evidence tech. Tucker was a steamroller type. His method of getting from point A to point B was to run full speed until he crashed into a wall.
    “In here,” Dana had said, and Eichord had gone in the room where the man was.
    “That the shotgun?” It was rhetorical. It looked like a murder/suicide. One of the bad domestic things you'll catch when the moon is right. For the first few minutes everybody was conducting the business at hand. So far so good. It appeared the man had killed his woman, blowing her apart with three or maybe four up-close blasts. You had to be sorely steamed at somebody to keep shooting them like that. Racking those spent shells out and letting another hot load of lead pellets perforate what had been a human being. Then, with the last shell up