Freezing Read online

  The man tried to laugh but he looked nervous.

  ‘So it was a California plate but you didn’t get the number,’ Eric rejoined.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And you said that you couldn’t remember if it was a vanity plate or a regular one.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I wondered if you knowing that we’re looking for this van because it’s at the center of a Federal murder investigation might help jog your memory?’ Eric smiled at him.

  Corso’s voice came out at a slightly higher octave. ‘Murder?’

  Scott leaned around from the front seat. ‘And not just murder. We have evidence to suggest that the guy driving the van cut people up into pieces.’

  ‘I-I-I didn’t know about any murder! The guy didn’t look like a murderer.’

  Eric was calm. ‘The guy who brought the van in.’

  ‘Yeah. I told you, he was just a nobody, maybe forty years old, nothing weird about him.’

  ‘And he paid cash.’

  ‘Everyone pays cash!’

  ‘Let’s talk about the other cash.’

  ‘What other cash?!’

  ‘Come on, Corso. We know he paid you hush money. And don’t pretend you haven’t been in this business long enough to note the plates even before you start working on the cars. Come on. How else do you think we found you? LAPD gave us your number ’cause you’ve handled stolen cars.’

  ‘But this one wasn’t stolen.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Corso looked crestfallen; he’d walked straight into the trap Eric had laid. He sighed. ‘OK, fine, look. Look. I’ve got a contact at the DMV. He checks plates for me because of all the problems I had with the cops. I’ve been trying to go straight, OK? I only just got the place out of Chapter Eleven.’ He appealed to Eric.

  ‘I don’t want to hear your bankruptcy sob story, Corso. Tell us about the plate on the van or we’ll be telling LAPD that you’re hacking into Department of Motor Vehicles files.’

  ‘OK, OK! The plate was like I said, California. It was clean.’ He unzipped his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. He ran a finger down the page, then read out a license plate number.

  Eric nodded at Scott, who was writing it down. ‘So if it was clean, why the hush money?’

  Corso shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The guy just pulled out the cash – three hundred dollars – and I knew exactly what it was for. I didn’t want to take it but he said, “Remember, I know where you live.”’ Corso looked indignant. ‘I took the money, OK? I’ve got kids to feed, a mortgage.’

  ‘Get out, Corso.’ Eric’s words were punctuated by the sound of the door locks lifting.

  ‘Wait! What about the LAPD? What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Just get out.’

  Corso looked at Scott for a reprieve but he was focused on his cell phone. The body shop owner got out of the car, shoulders still slumped, clutching the unzipped briefcase to his chest.

  Scott spoke as he dialed. ‘I’m calling the plate in.’

  Eric moved up to the passenger seat and read the notes Scott was making on a pad.

  As soon as Scott ended his call, Eric asked, ‘The van’s registered to a woman?’

  ‘Well, the plate that Corso gave us is registered to this woman. But he didn’t check that the van actually went with the plate. Lance just ran the woman’s name through NCIC. No convictions, no arrests. Allegedly living at an address in Woodland Hills since nineteen ninety.’

  ‘You thinking the perp comes out here from Georgia and borrows her plate to cover his tracks after he gets hit on the freeway?’

  Scott looked grim as he turned the ignition key. ‘All I know is, this is the only van we’ve found that matches the drunk’s vague description and needed repair to its back doors since Monday.’

  The FBI office on Wilshire was in a multi-story building constructed in the 1970s when concrete blocks and tinted, deeply inset windows were in vogue. Only the barricades at the front curb hinted that a warren of government offices lay behind the unremarkable exterior. Inside, Elevator Number 2 was moving silently upwards, carrying Steelie, Jayne, and Special Agent Weiss.

  Weiss had cleared the anthropologists through Security after they arrived from the visitor parking lot but as the elevator reached and passed the fourth floor, where Scott and Eric’s office was located, Jayne and Steelie exchanged a look.

  Steelie cleared her throat, watching the floor numbers go higher. ‘Uh, where are we going, Weiss?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s classified, ma’am.’ He smiled at her as the elevator doors opened. It was the tenth floor.

  He ushered them into a foyer with four doors marked ‘Restricted Access’. A wall-mounted keypad flanked each one. Weiss punched a code on the one directly ahead. A buzzer sounded and he opened the door for them. ‘Welcome to Critter Central.’

  Jayne went first into the large, windowless room whose rows of fluorescent tube lights gave it the feel of a clinical space. The foreground was a workspace; metal desks, filing cabinets, and bookshelves filled with forensic science reference texts. The back of the room was set up as a wet lab with fume hoods and countertop.

  Steelie sounded impressed: ‘So this is where you guys hang out?’

  Weiss nodded. ‘Tony Lee, who did the photography out by the freeway, is just through that door, in the cool room.’

  ‘What goes on here, exactly?’ asked Jayne.

  ‘We do collection of trace evidence, some analysis.’

  Agent Lee emerged from the door at the end of the room. He was wearing blue scrubs and had two reddish stripes across his cheeks where the elastic straps on a filter mask must have pulled tight. There was another stripe across his forehead and his dark hair looked flattened. He raised a hand in greeting.

  ‘Hey, Thirty-two One. Been expecting you.’

  Weiss said, ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ and departed.

  Steelie and Jayne followed Lee into an anteroom that was divided by a bench and had lockers on one side. At one end, there was a sink with a mirror above it next to a door marked ‘Restroom’. Adjacent to that were two swinging doors, each with a porthole.

  Tony explained, ‘We’ll do the examination in the cool room itself because we’re trying to keep the material as cold as possible on account of the coroner needing it next. Here’s the protective gear. I’d suit up over your own clothes – you’ll need them for warmth. The shoe covers are here.’ He gestured to a container by the entrance to the cool room.

  ‘And the glasses are inside this box.’ He put his hand on a wall-mounted cabinet holding Plexiglas safety glasses on a series of hooks, all illuminated by a soft ultraviolet glow.

  ‘I’m here to run the fluoroscope for you, capture whatever images you want, take photos, and move the material if necessary.’

  ‘Basically cater to our every need,’ joked Steelie.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Jayne was glad Steelie had made the joke. She was beginning to feel tense about seeing the body parts out of the natural environment by the freeway where the leaves and detritus had masked the brutality of the cuts. The clinical setting would make the body parts look more like a dismembered body – one body in particular, one person in particular: Benni – no, don’t think of him, don’t even conjure up his name. Jayne felt Steelie nudge her and she took the mask Steelie was holding out, shaking her head in response to the question in her friend’s eyes.

  She pulled up her hood and followed the others into the cool room, another windowless space whose chill was a shock. Most of the overhead lights were switched off but a panel illuminated the center of the room above the fluoroscope. The fluoroscope’s neck was cantilevered parallel to the floor, making the portable X-ray machine resemble an out-of-commission oil derrick. The body parts were in black body bags, each bag on its own gurney, and lined up next to the fluoroscope.

  ‘Sorry for the “CSI” effect with the lights,’ Tony said, only slightly muffled through his mask, ‘just trying
to keep radiant heat to a minimum but let me know if you need more light.’

  He pulled the nearest gurney towards the fluoroscope and unzipped the body bag. It held the severed leg.

  The pale flesh was damp and had defrosted. Blood pooled darkly in the recesses of the body bag. Jayne was relieved that her first instinct was to move closer to get a better look. She and Steelie positioned themselves on either side of the gurney, while Tony stayed by the fluoroscope.

  ‘The cut goes through the femoral shaft,’ commented Steelie. ‘Looks like midway up the thigh.’

  ‘And the other cut’s just under the patella,’ Jayne murmured.

  ‘Trying to avoid sawing through bone again?’

  ‘Maybe. Can’t tell which cut he tried first.’

  ‘How much of the patella have we got?’

  ‘I don’t think he even nicked it. Take a look.’ Jayne moved to the right to examine the proximal cut, while Steelie bent down to look at the patella, its tip just visible amongst the ligaments and fat of the knee.

  ‘We don’t have much to go on for sex,’ said Steelie.

  ‘Not when we can’t expose the femur to do a mid-shaft circumference.’

  ‘Even that’s just an indication.’

  There was silence as the anthropologists looked at the leg, tilting their heads this way and that.

  Tony cleared his throat. ‘The thigh’s not shaved. Would that indicate male?’

  ‘Possible, but not reliable,’ replied Jayne, her eyes still on the leg. ‘Not all women shave their thighs and plenty of men do, like swimmers and cyclists. If you can take photos of each cut and from above, we can move on to the fluoro.’

  ‘No problem.’ He went into action, the recharge of the camera’s flash whining as he took two shots from each vantage point, the latter requiring a stepladder that he wheeled over from the corner. Before turning on the fluoroscope, Tony brought over three lead vests and they all slipped the heavy material over their heads, adjusting them by the shoulder sections until the vests could rest there without too much discomfort.

  Tony turned two switches on the fluoroscope and began pushing and pulling the lens head over the severed leg on the gurney. An X-ray image of everything in the lens’ path beamed out of a monitor on an adjoining trolley.

  Jayne asked, ‘Can you bring it in a slow sweep from one end to the other?’

  The anthropologists’ eyes flicked between the partial leg and the fluoroscope screen, trying to orient the gradations of grey that represented bone and tissue.

  They all noticed that the cut at the top of the femur didn’t reveal any shards of metal or metallic fragments, as might have been expected from forceful cutting action. Steelie asked Tony about the apparent absence of trace evidence.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘There are indications that the perp washed the body parts after he’d done the cutting.’

  As the fluoroscope traveled down the thigh, faint, lighter marks were visible at the distal end of the femur.

  ‘Hold it there, just above the knee,’ said Steelie. ‘Lines of fusion?’ She looked questioningly at Jayne, who was staring at the screen.

  ‘Looks like it. Move it down a fraction, Tony . . . and back up?’

  He pushed the lens to where it had been a moment before.

  Steelie said, ‘Lines of fusion.’

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ breathed Jayne.

  ‘Talk to me, Thirty-two One,’ said Tony, glancing back and forth at each woman.

  Steelie pointed at the monitor. ‘See those lines at the top of the knee? That’s where the epiphysis, or growth plate, is in the process of fusing to the shaft of the femur. Fusion happens at standard ages across populations and sexes. So, because we can see that line, we know you’ve got a teenager or someone in their early twenties, regardless of sex.’

  He made a low whistle.

  ‘Make a print of what you’ve got on the screen now,’ Jayne said. ‘Then can you flip the leg over so we can see the same region from the posterior?’

  ‘What label do you want?’

  ‘Distal left femoral epiphysis.’

  ‘Can you spell that?’

  ‘Left femur will be fine,’ Steelie clarified.

  Jayne looked at the fluoroscope screen and felt a surge of excitement to see that pale jagged line. An identifying marker to narrow the search. A start.

  Tony tapped buttons at a keyboard beneath the screen, then raised the fluoroscope’s neck to make space to turn over the leg.

  He handled the leg carefully, supporting it at each end, barely raising it off of the gurney before laying it back down. He put it on a section of body bag that wasn’t bloody, then removed one of his two layers of gloves and returned to maneuver the fluoroscope towards the back side of the knee.

  Similar pale lines were again visible on the fluoroscope screen, this time clearer without the patella in the foreground.

  ‘I think it’s either close to fully fused or it finished fusing not long before death, and that’s why we can still see the line,’ said Steelie. ‘Another shot, Tony.’

  He worked with the machine, then asked, ‘Want to take it from the top again?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Steelie, ‘then let’s move on to the next bag.’

  Nothing remarkable came up on this second pass. Tony re-bagged the leg and Steelie and Jayne watched him discard his dirty gloves and double-glove again with clean ones. Tony then switched that gurney for the next one. Jayne was no longer apprehensive about how the contents of the next body bag would affect her. She had moved on to thinking about the person who made the cuts and did the killing. She was thinking about bringing them down.

  Scott and Eric barely talked until they were at the base of Jeffdale Avenue in Woodland Hills. The street didn’t extend far up the slope before making a sharp turn but the matching pastel split-level houses gave it a sense of suburban uniformity. 3180 Jeffdale was on the left side of the street. The double garage door was closed but there was an oil mark in the driveway concrete as though a vehicle that leaked fluids usually sat there.

  ‘OK,’ said Scott, his eyes on the oil stain. ‘It’s either in the garage or it’s on the road right now. Let’s get a look in the garage first.’

  ‘Then you’re on the front and I’m on back duty?’

  Scott nodded and jutted his chin at the glove box in front of Eric. Eric unlocked it and removed two guns in their holsters and two pieces of small electronic equipment. They strapped the gear on to their waistbands. Before they got out of the car, they put on FBI-marked windbreakers that covered their waistlines.

  They approached the side of the garage and looked in the window. The glass was dusty and had cobwebs in the corners but the van inside was clearly visible. It was white with a blue stripe down the side and sported a roof rack.

  Eric nodded to Scott and they put in the single earpieces that would allow them to communicate with each other through transmitters once they were separated. Eric started moving quietly down the side of the house. Scott waited until Eric said he was in position by a rear entrance, then he stepped out from the side of the house and rang the front doorbell.

  The woman who eventually answered the door looked like she’d been sleeping. Her strawberry-blonde hair was pushed up at the crown and the cut-off denim shorts she wore were creased. Scott waited for her to stop yawning in his face before he opened up his badge wallet.

  ‘Ma’am, Special Agent Houston, FBI. Are you Tracey Ellen Redding?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Does anyone besides you reside at this address, ma’am?’

  ‘No . . . I’ve got a friend here visiting, though.’

  ‘Is he or she at home with you right now?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Ma’am, could I step inside and speak with you, please?’

  She shrugged, apparently uninterested. ‘Sure.’

  The woman turned, leaving the door open behind her, and walked through the house, her flip-flops slapping against the floor tiles.


  Scott followed her to the kitchen, noting the rear entrance to the house, which was a sliding glass door from a patio. The sliding door was also visible from the kitchen counter where the woman was pouring herself a glass of flat Coca-Cola out of a two-liter bottle.

  Lighting a cigarette, she asked, ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Is the van parked in the garage yours, Ms Redding?’

  ‘Yeah. I own it. It’s paid off.’

  ‘And have you been fully cognizant of its whereabouts for the past several days?’

  She squinted at him through a haze of smoke. ‘You asking if I know where it was?’

  Scott nodded.

  ‘Sure I know. I mean, I let Sky use it the other day, but I know where he was.’

  ‘Who is Sky?’

  ‘My friend who’s visiting.’

  ‘Were you aware that the van was recently involved in an accident that required repair work, Ms Redding?’

  For the first time, the woman looked more alert and exhaled the smoke faster than she had been up to that point. ‘No . . .’

  She looked at the kitchen cabinets as though she could see through them into the garage, then shook her head. ‘I think you’re wrong about that. Sky would have told me.’

  ‘Where is Sky at the moment?’

  She hesitated, then took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘Actually, I don’t know where he is. I was taking a nap before you rang the doorbell and woke me up.’

  She stubbed the cigarette out in a small plate that held some toast crumbs. ‘He could be anywhere. He takes walks in the hills.’ She gestured with her hand as though waving away flies.

  Just then Scott’s earpiece reverberated and he heard Eric say, ‘FBI. Identify yourself, Sir,’ then a grunt followed by, ‘Code four!’

  This meant Eric was OK but Scott didn’t like what he’d heard. He ran to the sliding door while pulling his gun from its holster. He opened the door, quickly put his head out, pulled it back in and then stepped out fully, holding the gun at the ready by his shoulder.

  Eric was between a rangy evergreen bush and the stucco wall of the house, his knee squarely in the center of the back of a man who was facedown in the dirt, struggling and cursing. Eric was already handcuffing him so Scott holstered his own gun. He turned to locate the woman. She was coming to the door, eyes wide.