Freezing Read online

  Jayne nodded.

  ‘Good. Well, I’ve got to get on the road. Eric’s already in LA.’ He gave a lopsided smile. ‘It’s nice to see you guys.’

  As he turned away, Steelie nudged Jayne while calling after Scott. ‘Um, Scott? Do you mind taking Jayne with you?’

  He turned back and looked at Jayne. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because I . . .’ Jayne looked questioningly at Steelie.

  ‘Because of the turbulence,’ Steelie said. ‘It was a bad flight out and you said you’d prefer to drive back if you could.’ She turned to Scott. ‘She was ready to get a rental car, so this would be perfect.’

  Scott appeared to accept the explanation and went to move something from the passenger seat of his vehicle.

  Steelie murmured to Jayne, ‘He needs back-up, Jayne, if only to keep awake. I’ll stay with Ben and Linda.’

  Jayne nodded and Steelie gave her a quick hug in parting.

  It took seven and a half hours of driving for the essence of the meeting with the Alstons to percolate through Scott’s consciousness and then it hit him hard.

  It happened in stages. The first stage made him feel like he couldn’t breathe. As he gulped air, he hyperventilated. That was the second stage. The third stage made him think he was having a heart attack. His hands tingled where they gripped the steering wheel and his chest was tight. He felt there was a direct electrical current between his heart and his hands.

  He veered wildly from the right lane on to the shoulder, spraying loose gravel before steering into the upcoming exit lane, and that’s when he became aware of Jayne calling out his name. He automatically read the exit sign as he passed under it: Calimesa. Scott had never heard of it and he didn’t care. His eyes were watering and he needed to stop the car.

  On the exit ramp, he pulled sharply on to the shoulder and put the transmission into park. He didn’t turn off the engine because he felt like his breathing was getting easier, even though it was made up of deep breaths he couldn’t control. Jayne was gripping the dash and he sensed she was staring at him but he was calming slightly, sure now that he wasn’t having a heart attack. He closed his eyes in relief and that’s when he saw her: Kate Alston. Preserved in the cold stillness of the freezer. Smiling at him from the autopsy table. Living in her parents’ photograph. Her parents. Their devastation.

  The sob was dry but shocked him into opening his eyes. He slammed the palms of his hands against the steering wheel and then gripped it tightly. He squeezed his eyes shut and, immediately, the same physical sensations tore through him, followed by an image of Kate Alston’s teeth, disembodied, ruthlessly exposed. He didn’t realize Jayne had opened a door until hot desert air filled the cabin with the musky scent of creosote. He opened his eyes again and saw the back of Jayne’s head, her familiar wavy hair just in front of him as she reached under his arms to turn off the engine. He couldn’t speak.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You need to get out of there.’

  He felt like her voice was coming from a great distance away. She reached around him and undid his seatbelt, then pulled his hands from their hold on the steering wheel.

  ‘It’s all right, Scott. Come on.’

  Tripper cruised the streets in one of his favorite Atlanta neighborhoods, savoring the familiarity of both the dark stretches and the residential blocks where elderly owners lived in the back at night, the volume on their televisions cranked up because Medicare still didn’t cover hearing aids. He’d taken risks in Los Angeles – especially with the surveillance gear – even though it had provided the answers he needed and thereby allowed him to move freely again. But it had still involved risks. He’d mitigated them by retrieving the repeater from outside the brunette’s apartment, which ensured that, if anyone ever found the wiretaps, they’d assume a Peeping Tom, not someone at a distance, put them there.

  Tripper considered the white hatchback he’d been following, looked at the street they were on, and decided it was time to get started; he did need new dump material. He turned on the red light on his dashboard and the hatchback dutifully pulled over ahead of him.

  The only building on the street was an office complex under construction. Its windowless bulk was dark, the workers long since home for the night. As Tripper walked up to the car, he missed his van and the old method. But the van had to go and this new method had potential. He leaned into the driver’s open window.

  ‘License and registration, ma’am.’

  The driver handed the two items to him without speaking.

  Tripper stood up and perused them. Her name was Pamela Winton. He leaned back down.

  ‘You sure were in a hurry back there, Mrs Winton.’

  ‘It’s Ms Winton.’

  ‘Step out of the vehicle, ma’am. I require you to complete a sobriety test.’

  She sighed and got out of the car. Tripper smiled to himself. The new method had passed its test. Ms Winton, on the other hand, has just failed hers. He watched her move to the sidewalk, which was disappearing under sand and gravel seeping out from the construction site, unhindered by the tall chain-link boundary fence.

  He directed her in a friendly tone: ‘Put your hands out to either side of your body at shoulder height and walk towards me, one foot in front of the other, with your eyes shut.’

  As soon as the woman closed her eyes, Tripper moved behind her, clamping an arm around her body and a hand over her mouth. She raised both hands and tried to pull his hand off her face. He wrenched her to the side so forcefully that her feet left the ground for a moment. But when she came down again, she stamped hard on his right instep. He inhaled sharply, inadvertently relaxing his grip enough for her to get the purchase she needed to pull one of his hands down and she bit the soft skin between his thumb and first finger.

  Now he only had one hand firmly on her and she repeatedly jabbed her left elbow behind her in gawky, unplanned movements. He was aware that while the method he’d used had got the mark out of her car, it didn’t get her into his car. It was always easier, and safer, when they got in themselves instead of him fighting them first. He moved in to control her but this allowed a jab that ordinarily would’ve only bruised him to hit his solar plexus and he keeled forward, struggling to breathe. The woman seized him by the hair and pulled downwards. As Tripper’s face thudded against her right knee he was reminded of how little fat covers a patella once the knee is bent.

  Pamela Winton whimpered as she stared down at the police officer. He was lying on the sandy pavement, face down and silent. Then he groaned and she leapt away, crying out. As she stood in the beam of his patrol car’s headlights, she could see him slowly pull himself to lie on his side, and then he collapsed on to his back. Blood flowed freely from his nose and across his face, only pausing at his earlobes to pool before the overflow dripped on to the gritty pavement.

  Pamela Winton clutched her shirt about herself and trembled. She knew no one would believe that a policeman had attacked her unless she had some proof of her own. She looked up and down the street. It was deserted; not a single car or person visible in the glow of the streetlights. She peered at the policeman. He was breathing but his eyes were closed. His badge reflected the swirling light from the dashboard of his vehicle. Pamela Winton took a deep breath and then lunged at him, screaming in fear as she ripped his badge off along with most of the shirt pocket. She continued to scream even as she sped away in her hatchback. Her distress trailed out her open window only to be trapped by the car’s slipstream and stay with her.

  TWENTY

  If Atlanta security guard Troy Purcell had rounded the corner a minute earlier, he might have heard Pamela Winton’s tires leaving a rubber deposit as she cornered at the end of the street. But his scheduled perimeter check of the construction site was all out of whack that night, on account of someone throwing eggs at his car while he was inside the security trailer. He knew from experience that egg had to be washed off immediately, preferably with a clear soda. So he’d had to find his boss’s
stash of Diet Slice, clean the car, and then make a careful note to replace the soda as soon as his shift ended at 6 a.m.

  When he saw the prone body by Gate 5, he knew someone was having a worse night than he was. But he was filled with dread when he saw the swirling light making patterns on the dirty rear window of what had to be a police cruiser parked ahead with its headlights on. Troy Purcell pulled into the curb and looked to see if anyone else was around. No one. He got out and locked his own car, noticing the transfer on its door: Premium Security Corp. His pride at seeing that renewed his determination and he walked over to the body.

  The man was bloodied but breathing. He was wearing a dark uniform with a hole in his left chest pocket; a wounded police officer.

  The security guard made two calls on his phone. The first was to the ambulance service and the other was to the local police station, Chesterton.

  Before either unit arrived, the officer lying on the ground regained enough consciousness to murmur something and attempt to sit up. But Troy Purcell was not going to have that on his head. He held the officer down, his palms on the wounded man’s chest, while he reassured him that the ambulance and his brother officers were on their way. When the sirens were audible, the officer stopped trying to get up and Troy Purcell believed he’d lost consciousness.

  Eric was frustrated. The evening was closing in and he hadn’t had a single call about Wayne Spicer’s vehicle. He had been hoping some fresh patrol officer somewhere would be enthusiastically monitoring APB’s and then miraculously catch Tripper on a routine traffic stop. Eric was just getting up from his desk to get a cup of coffee when his supervisor, Craig Turner, walked into the room, holding a single sheet of paper.

  Eric had only been working under Turner for a few weeks but they had met a number of times at Quantico where the Bureau veteran regularly ran seminars or flew in to do special trainings. So Eric knew that it was normal for the wrinkles on Turner’s forehead to be reaching up into his receding hairline. What wasn’t normal was the resigned way Turner indicated that Eric sit back down.

  ‘Where’s your partner, Eric?’

  ‘En route from Phoenix, sir.’

  Turner perched his lean body on the edge of the desk and fixed him with the unblinking stare that had earned him the nickname of ‘Ice’ among Quantico newbies – a devolution from ‘IC’, which was the acronym for Turner’s original nickname, ‘Iron Curtain’.

  ‘OK. Bring me up to speed on the freeway body parts case. In fact, take it from the top.’

  Eric leaned back, marshaled his thoughts, and then recounted the essentials of the investigation up to the eventual discovery of the frozen body of a woman inside the suspect van.

  Turner consulted his paper. ‘This is Katherine Alston, missing from California.’

  ‘Yes, sir. On interview, the suspect confessed to the manslaughter of Alston in nineteen ninety-nine, stated that he has kept her body in a freezer on his premises, first in California and then Arizona. He was in preparation to go mobile with her body in the van, which he had recently acquired from another individual. That individual is who we suspect dropped the body parts on the freeway.’

  ‘Do you have a name for that suspect?’

  ‘We only have an alias: Tripper.’

  ‘What else do you have?’

  ‘We’ve got a physical description of the suspect: White, blond and blue, approximately six-four, clean-shaven—’

  ‘Has that description supported or refuted your theory that this Tripper was driving the van when it was hit on the freeway here?’

  Eric paused. Turner’s use of the word ‘theory’ was setting off alarm bells. ‘It backs up the description given by two witnesses who had contact with the driver of the van after it was hit.’

  ‘No variation?’

  ‘Yes, but only in the areas that can be easily disguised.’

  ‘Hair color, eye color?’

  ‘We’ve got a match on hair color. It’s the facial hair that varies.’

  ‘So you’re good on race, height, and eye color.’

  ‘We don’t have corroboration on eye color because he’s sometimes been seen only in sunglasses.’

  Turned nodded and consulted his sheet again. ‘In your last memo you indicated that there was a hold-up on ID’ing the previous owner of the van you located in Arizona because the VIN was mutilated?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  ‘And what’d the Crime Lab out there tell you on estimated time to get to the frame VIN?’

  Eric spread his hands out. ‘I’m just waiting for the phone to ring.’

  Turner fixed him with the stare again. ‘So, in sum, you have no leads on this suspect’s name.’

  ‘Not yet, but I’ve got the IT guys working on getting the name of whoever registered the alias Tripper on the Internet.’

  ‘OK, so tell me this: if you have no sense of who this guy is, why have you activated a BOLO to all the local PD’s in the state of Georgia, stating the make, model, and VIN of the vehicle you believe he just might be driving?’

  Eric opened his mouth and then shut it quickly. He felt like he was on Day One at Quantico, sitting in the front of the class, and Turner had asked him a question that not only was he unable to answer but he’d also clearly missed the summer reading.

  Eric tried to make sense of this. He hadn’t issued a BOLO to Georgia law enforcement and, as far as he knew, Scott hadn’t either. And if Scott had issued a BOLO but not told Eric, that would raise Turner’s eyebrows. More to the point, if there was a special BOLO for Georgia police, how had Turner heard about it over here in LA?

  Eric decided to hedge his bets. ‘No matter who’s driving that vehicle, we need to locate it ASAP. It’s part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the death of Katherine Alston.’

  He could tell that Turner knew he’d sidestepped the question and was deeply relieved when his supervisor just responded with a slow nod. But then Turner loosened his tie, his bony fingers working themselves into the knot, and Eric knew he wasn’t off the hook yet.

  ‘I had a feeling you were going to say something like that because I just got off the horn with SSA Franks. He wasn’t happy.’

  Eric wanted to say, ‘I was posted under Franks for three years and the man was never happy,’ but he held his tongue.

  ‘And now I’m not happy because this is the second call I’ve had to field from him since you and Houston got posted out here.’

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘Are you familiar with these allegations, Eric?’ Turner snapped his sheet of paper straight and cleared his throat. ‘An anonymous complaint was lodged direct with Franks regarding the conduct of SA Houston during the investigation into missing prostitutes in Atlanta. The complainant alleged that Houston was ‘friendly’ with prostitutes who were part of the investigation, during Bureau hours and in a Bureau vehicle.’

  ‘This is just Franks—’

  Turner cut him off with a look. ‘No. Franks protected Houston by not referring this to the OPR.’

  Eric inwardly winced at the reference to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. The image of those internal affairs agents competed with his thoughts on who the complainant could have been.

  Turner continued. ‘Franks took an interest in Houston’s activities and gained evidence of him giving prostitutes rides in his Bureau vehicle, which, as you know, is in itself against regulations. He purchased food and drink for them. He fraternized with them alone and after hours. Franks pointed out that, for all the attention SA Houston was giving these streetwalkers, it was ironic that two of them later went missing.’

  Eric shook his head in disbelief but had learned not to interrupt his supervisor.

  ‘Now, in Franks’ estimation, the reason you two never cleared that case was because you developed the erroneous theory that there was a lone abductor who was the lone serial killer. At the time you were transferred out here, he described you both as ‘obsessed’. I told him it was my practice to gi
ve experienced agents their reins. But as soon as your BOLO on this vehicle came across his radar, he called me to find out what you’re working on. I only gave him an outline but it was enough for him to inform me in no uncertain terms that you and Houston are pursuing a dead-end theory that will now leave my office with a case that can’t be cleared, taking valuable resources and man-hours. He advised me to take control of this case ASAP.’

  Turner rubbed his fingers hard over the faint stubble on his chin, jutting his lower jaw out as if to stretch it. ‘Now, I’m capable of drawing my own conclusions about you and Houston but I do have one more item that needs clearing up.’

  Eric braced himself.

  ‘What in Sam Hell did you think you were doing when you allowed two civilians into the crime scene at the freeway?’

  Jayne recognized the symptoms. While she had fallen asleep like a baby in the passenger seat, Scott had not done the same at the wheel; nor was he ill. He was experiencing a flashback of some kind. She didn’t know if it was about the Alston case or if the case had simply triggered something else, but she knew she had to get Scott out of the car. Long drives conducted alone, or, in this case, in silence, had a way of breeding meltdowns. Steelie had once referred to this as Jayne’s Law. Steelie had probably seen this coming when they were still in the parking lot in Phoenix, where Jayne had thought Scott was suffering more from fatigue than anything else. She had to get him out.

  She said his name again and he turned his face toward her but his eyes were still staring forward, out the front windshield. She was shocked by the vulnerability of his expression, the red rims of his eyes contrasting with a paleness around his lips. She took his hands and pulled on them, urging him out of the car and now he slipped down from the driver’s seat. When his feet hit the ground, he pulled away from her, muttering ‘Christ’ as he strode quickly away, walking along the edge of the tarmac, disturbing a ribbon of blown desert sand. Jayne let him go. He eventually stopped and she watched his back, seeing him apparently loosen his tie, then clasp his hands behind his head as he looked up at the dusky sky. After a minute, she walked over to him, purposely stopping slightly behind him but close enough so he’d know she was there.