Freezing Page 26

  She wasn’t ready when he lunged at her and slapped her face, his hand open, the rubber of the surgical glove burning her skin. Tears stung her eyes but she knew she’d hit a nerve. She didn’t let the topic go. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Shut up!’ He was clenching and unclenching the hand he’d slapped her with.

  ‘So you applied.’ Jayne pressed on. ‘And you didn’t make it – for whatever reason. Though I’m surprised they didn’t take you, what with your postgraduate degree, obvious intelligence, previous Bureau history, plus you’re active and athletic.’ She was almost gagging on her words but her voice was getting stronger. ‘I would have thought you were perfect agent material. You know you’re good, right? No matter what they say.’

  She watched the compliment take its effect. Gene’s back straightened perceptibly, his mouth relaxed.

  She went further. ‘You were already a Bureau employee in the lab. Why was it so important to become an agent?’

  He didn’t respond initially but when he did, his eyes were fixed on the grenade. ‘I wanted to stay in Rwanda another year but the Bureau said extensions were only open to agents.’

  Jayne hadn’t expected this and couldn’t immediately think of a follow-up question. ‘So?’

  His eyes bore into her. ‘If you hadn’t noticed, not a single one of those “special” agents can investigate their way out of a paper bag. Not only does the Bureau prevent me from carrying on my work in Rwanda, but, two years later, they decide to send a team to Kosovo for the UN and what happens? They send that stupid piece of shit rookie in my place. My place.’

  Jayne frowned. ‘What rookie?’

  Gene rolled his eyes at her like she wasn’t keeping up. ‘Houston,’ he sneered. ‘There I was, with all my forensic experience as well as a previous UN mission – I even advised them on who to get for the team – and who gets passed over? Me. And who goes? Scott Houston. I don’t think so. No, uh-unh, the Bureau was only going to fuck me over like that one time. I resigned immediately, deprived them of my talents, and I’ve been making sure they know what a mistake they made on Houston ever since. I’ve taken my time but I’ll see that dirtbag stripped of every accolade he’s received. I’ve shown he can’t even solve a couple of homicides, that he’s a fantasist who sees serial killers around every corner. He can’t even close a couple of local missing person cases, for Chrissakes!’

  Jayne heard that familiar, superior tone, now applied to Scott like he was a target. To her knowledge, Scott didn’t even know Gene. She stared at him, struggling to understand how she had missed the signs that he was a sociopathic killer in the time she’d been side by side with him in the graves. She was suddenly assaulted with the images from the photographs they’d seen in the briefing room. The technicolor of Rwanda bleached out by midday sun, the rich soil wetted anew with fresh blood, and then she remembered further back. Gene at The Cadillac, dancing out of rhythm with a young woman who followed him back to the bar, her suggestive smile fading when he didn’t buy her a cold drink despite the crush of heat and noise and twirling disco-ball light. That young woman had been dancing with death and hadn’t even known it. Not only that, the rest of them hadn’t seen it and so hadn’t protected her.

  Jayne was mortified to feel tears springing to her eyes unbidden as she said, ‘So you murdered that girl in Kigali? And in a place that had just survived a genocide?’ Her voice trembled audibly.

  He fed off her display of emotion. ‘But even you understand why it was the ideal place to do it: what was one more dead body in Rwanda? People were too busy with eight hundred thousand other corpses to pay attention.’

  ‘But . . . but you were a forensic scientist. You were supposed to be helping people, not victimizing them. Why, for God’s sake, did you kill that woman?’

  He shook his head. ‘Still such an idealist, aren’t you, Jayne? Let me tell you the truth about these victims you put on such a high pedestal. The cases we got at the Bureau were all about stupidity. The vics were stupid to get themselves into a situation where they were killed and the killers were stupid enough to leave behind trace. After a few months of scraping dried shit out of people’s underwear after they’d voided their bowels, I knew the world was a better place without people like them but I had no intention of being caught getting rid of ’em.’

  Jayne gazed up at him in wonder, forcing herself to skip over his obviously willful misunderstanding of the way bowels can sometimes relax upon death, leaving feces free to flow into anyone’s underwear, regardless of their IQ. ‘You’re saying that you think some people deserve to die? You think that young woman in Kigali deserved to die?’

  ‘I’m saying I don’t want stupid people in the gene pool.’

  Jayne almost spluttered. ‘Who the hell are you to say who’s stupid?’

  Gene pulled a ball of twine from his bag as he spoke, leaving the grenade inside the bag. ‘Hey, I give people the opportunity to make a choice: go with an instinct for survival or go with the social fiction of Trust in Others. If they can’t make the choice to survive, they shouldn’t be allowed to live, let alone reproduce. It’s the same choice our ancestors had when they came face-to-face with a lion in the savannah. I give them that choice, they usually make the wrong one and I get to clean up while I simultaneously drag Houston down.’ He flashed a grin at her. ‘Who said men can’t multitask?’

  Jayne pictured Eleanor Patterson meeting a man like this when she was at her most vulnerable. Gene was justifying his murders with some kind of perversion of evolutionary biology when, really, he had victimized women, first out of career frustration and then out of misplaced revenge. But his reasons didn’t change anything. She couldn’t fake a plaintive tone any longer; Gene was deeply wrong and he needed to know it.

  ‘You haven’t been giving people choices, you’ve been giving them bait-and-switch. All you’ve done, Gene, is betray people’s trust.’

  He put a loop of twine through the pin on the grenade and then stood up, towering over her as he placed a foot on either side of her waist. ‘You and Steelie have always had a way of sounding holier-than-thou.’

  He dropped down on to her, trapping her with a knee on each side of her waist. ‘We’ve talked enough. You’re going to lay here in this bathroom, Jayne, the lure on a hook for Houston, and when he comes through that door looking for you – and I know he will because he likes the chase and you’ve been giving him one hell of a chase for quite a while now. Unh-unh, don’t try to deny it. Now he’s going to walk in and trip the line to this grenade I got specially for you.’

  He leaned down toward her face. ‘I lied when I said I hadn’t kept up with where you went after Kigali. I heard about Kosovo and the mine your team blew, so you should enjoy this. You’ll get to watch Houston and Steelie bite it. You’ll probably survive it with a few limbs intact. Now, you start the show by calling Lover Boy to reel him in. If you tip him off to the grenade, I pull the pin the second the words come out of your mouth. You don’t mind if I frisk you now, do you?’ He began going through her pockets.

  Jayne panicked. She didn’t want to die and she knew Scott wouldn’t be the one to come through that door. It would be the FBI driver. Another innocent, just like Benni in Kosovo; there because she was there. She had to stop this. Gene had located her phone and rocked back as he held it aloft, compressing her tailbone against the tile floor. And suddenly all the fear and pain mixed with his weight on her hips to trigger an old, old memory – she’d been young, on a mat, in a class, being taught – defend yourself.

  She screamed with all her might and Gene reacted just as she’d hoped, lunging to push the gag back into her mouth, his weight now forward and, crucially, off her hips. Using strength she didn’t know she had left, she thrust her hips up as hard and high as she could, sending him head-first toward the cold, hard toilet bowl, shutting her eyes a millisecond before his knees smashed into her face.

  Scott attempted to be patient as he watched Angie from the doorway of her office. />
  When she finally slammed down her phone, she shouted, ‘We got it! Guys, we got it.’ She looked up at Scott in triumph.

  He felt warmth spread across his chest and went to her, his hand up for a high five. She hit it and merged it into a down low, followed by one of their old handgrips.

  Eric popped his head in from the hallway. ‘You got the location?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she replied, breaking free from Scott and grabbing an FBI windbreaker from the back of her chair. ‘It’s in Northeast. We can go mobile and I’ll keep in cell phone contact for them to give us the one hundred-foot radius.’

  ‘OK, I got the warrant underway, so I’m coming with you.’

  Mark was out of his seat. ‘I’m driving.’

  The four agents ran down the stairs and out the back of the building to the motor pool. Mark shouted, ‘Four-eight-six’ and the others diverted course to the black Suburban with the corresponding license plate. ‘It’s got the flak jackets and shotguns.’

  Within seconds, Mark had reversed out of the parking space and activated the red and blue flashers in the front and rear windows. They entered the roadway at speed.

  Angie’s cell phone rang and she listened, then said, ‘OK, head southeast. We’re keeping the line open.’

  Mark swerved around a double-parked delivery truck and then braked hard as a taxi veered into their lane. ‘Come on!’

  Angie’s voice came loud. ‘We got him! Last ping is from near Eden and Forty-Fifth. We’re almost there.’

  Mark slowed as they approached that intersection and turned off the lights. He halted at the corner so they could scan the cross street and take in the buildings.

  Scott looked out the front window, saw the motel across the street, dismissed it, and then did a double-take. ‘Holy shit!’

  Mark followed his gaze, and then threw the vehicle into reverse, parking it out of sight from the motel. Scott dialed a number on his phone as the other agents jumped out and opened the rear doors.

  Scott joined them a moment later, his phone still in his hand. ‘This is the motel where Travel put Jayne and Steelie last night. Carter’s here, in the parking lot. He arrived early to pick them up, was able to hear water running, assumed someone was bathing, so was waiting until the appointed time to go back and knock.’

  Eric cut in, ‘King’s got to be in there with them; no way one of ’em’s having a bath when they’re due to leave.’

  Scott nodded. ‘Get your gear on. We’re going in on the presumption that he is armed. We are not waiting for further backup. Got it?’

  The others assented and they ran to the building, splitting into two pairs to take the separate exterior staircases up to the second floor. They positioned themselves on either side of Jayne and Steelie’s door, guns drawn as Mark held a small battering ram. Scott nodded at him and he rammed the door. It slammed open with a crack and they all shouted, ‘Federal Agents! Drop your weapon!!’

  They were met with silence so they charged the room.

  Scott saw Eric rush to the bed, where Steelie was on the floor against the wall, but his eyes were taking in the emptiness of the rest of the room. He felt rising panic as he imagined King taking Jayne away with him. Then he heard a shout from his left.

  ‘Call a medic!’

  He spun around and Angie’s concerned expression gave him a stab of worry. He pushed past Mark to get to Angie in the bathroom doorway, then heard a squelching noise and looked down. The threshold was soaking; his eyes followed a film of bloody water across the floor. He saw two bodies by the toilet: a man collapsed around the toilet, his knees obscuring the head of someone contorted underneath. Jayne. Scott figured the water was coming from the overflowing bath. That left the blood. He desperately hoped none of it was coming from her. He stepped into the room and got down on his knees. He was going to get her out.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Scott stood next to Jayne’s hospital bed, looking at the clipboard he’d removed from the door of her room. She murmured and he looked at her, but her eyes remained closed. She was semi-reclined under a blanket and her forehead looked discolored. He could see abrasions on her arms where the short sleeves of the hospital gown ended. When he heard footsteps in the hallway, he darted out in time to stop a nurse, who gave him a polite, interrogative smile.

  He held up his Bureau badge and the clipboard. ‘What does all of this stuff mean? Why is she out cold?’

  ‘She’s not out cold. She’s sleeping.’ She took possession of the clipboard and slotted it back into the holder on the door. ‘There’s nothing to be concerned about, sir. She took a knock on the head that had a mild concussive effect and the doctor wanted to keep her in for observation. He cleared her half an hour ago and she is now sleeping. Please don’t disturb her.’

  Scott sighed and ran his hands through his hair. ‘What about Lander? Steelie Lander? They would have come in together.’

  ‘Around the corner in eight-oh-eight. I believe one of your colleagues is already there.’ The nurse continued down the hall.

  Scott turned to look at Jayne again. Her mouth was hanging open slightly and the fluorescent bar above the bed was shining bright on her forehead. He walked back in to lean over her and switch off the light, half hoping the noise would wake her. He wanted to ascertain that she was really all right, to apologize for putting her in danger.

  He reached down to her cheek but remembered what had happened when he’d picked her up off that bathroom floor and pulled the gag from her mouth. She’d opened her eyes but hadn’t been able to focus on him. Even when he’d repeated her name, she hadn’t recognized him and then the paramedics called in by Agent Carter had arrived, pushing Scott aside while castigating him for moving someone without first establishing the nature of their injuries.

  He had been forced to stand on the sidelines, watching them tend to both Jayne and an unconscious Eugene King, and he hadn’t even thought about the effect the same sight would be having on Steelie, who was standing just behind him, supported by Mark and Eric. He should talk to Steelie.

  Scott stepped away from Jayne’s bed and saw that Angie was watching him from the doorway.

  She looked him up and down as he approached. ‘You got a chance to change clothes?’ She kept her voice low.

  ‘When I logged the evidence at HQ.’

  ‘Any sign of Franks?’

  Scott shook his head.

  Angie’s eyes went to Jayne. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘Nurse says she’s fine. Just sleeping. What’s the word on King?’

  ‘The Doc won’t let us have him yet. Seems he’s experienced two separate traumatic “events” involving his head in the last twenty-four hours. He won’t be out of the woods for a day or two.’ She paused. ‘She’s tough. Wouldn’t think it to look at her.’

  Angie made to leave, then turned back. ‘Don’t let that one get away.’

  Scott tried to acknowledge this suddenly personal directive with a casual response but only succeeded in producing a strangled noise.

  Angie regarded him with a smile for a moment, then set off down the hallway.

  Scott took a final look at Jayne before going in search of Steelie’s room.

  When he looked in her door, he saw Eric sitting on the side of Steelie’s bed, his hand closed over her fist. He was saying, ‘Keep the thumb on top. That’s key.’

  Scott took in the bruise coming up on Steelie’s chin. Her hair was unruly, making her head look huge over a thin body lost in a voluminous hospital gown.

  She noticed Scott and said, ‘Welcome to Fight Club.’

  She raised her fist. ‘The first rule of fight club is . . . know how to fight.’ She pointed at Eric, ‘That’s key.’ She leaned back against the pillows.

  Scott sat down in the chair just inside the door. ‘Eric giving you lessons?’

  ‘Yeah, which beats him giving me medical tests. A minute ago, he asked me how many fingers he was holding up. It was just the one – the middle one.’

 
Eric smiled as he stood up. ‘I don’t get to run that joke too often.’ He crossed to the door. ‘I’ll be back in five.’

  Steelie regarded Scott for a moment, then asked, ‘Is Gene here as well?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You’ve got him under guard, right?’

  ‘He’s not going anywhere.’ He cast around for something to say. ‘I just came from Jayne’s room. She was sleeping. She’s going to be fine.’

  ‘The doctor told me.’

  They fell silent. Scott leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor. He was uncomfortable but spoke anyway. ‘Steelie, I owe you both an apology. I should have known—’ He broke off to see why she was groaning.

  Steelie had sat up. ‘Should have known what?’ she challenged. ‘That Gene was lying in wait for us? That he’s got a mean right hook? What are you, a mind reader?’ She sank back on to the pillows.

  He had never seen her look so angry. ‘Point taken.’ Waiting for her to compose herself, he averted his eyes and took in the IV stand next to her bed. The nametag appeared to read, Lander, Sandra. He frowned and tried to focus on the name and then quickly looked over at her, hoping she hadn’t clocked him reading it, which he was almost sure had her name as Sandra. She wasn’t looking at him. He got up and came to the side of her bed.

  ‘Look, Steelie, when I was driving back from Phoenix with Jayne, I had a . . . situation.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard.’

  ‘Right. Well, then you’ll know she bailed me out. Which made me wonder who bails her out, when she needs it. Is it you or is there someone else?’

  She didn’t respond.

  He continued. ‘Because I think she needs it. At least to deal with the seriously bad dreams I think she’s having.’ He waited. ‘I’m only asking because I care. No one should be alone on this . . . or groping in the dark. In the Bureau, we don’t even get a choice about getting debriefed. So who do you guys talk to?’