Chasing the Dime

32

With his sunglasses and hat on, Pierce entered the office at the U-Store-It in Van Nuys and went to the counter, his driver's license in his hand. A young woman in a green golf shirt and tan pants was sitting there reading a book called Hell to Pay. It seemed to be a struggle for her to take her eyes from it and bring them up to Pierce. When she did her chin dropped, as she was startled by the ugly stitch zipper that wandered down Pierce's nose from beneath his sunglasses.

She tried to quickly cover up like she hadn't noticed anything unusual.

"That's okay," Pierce said. "I'm getting that a lot."

He slid his license across the counter.

"I called a little while ago about the storage space I rented. I can't remember the number."

She picked up the license and looked at it and then back up at his face, studying it. Pierce took off his hat but not the sunglasses.

"It's me."

"Sorry, I just had to be sure."

She used her legs to kick backwards, rolling and spinning on her chair until she came to the computer that was on a table on the other side of the office.

The screen was too far away for Pierce to read. He watched her type in his name. In a few moments a data screen appeared and she started checking information from his driver's license against the screen. He knew his license still had the Amalfi Drive address, which she had earlier informed him was on the rental record for the storage unit.

Satisfied, she scrolled down and read something. Running her finger across the screen.

"Three three one," she said.

She kicked off the opposite wall and came rolling and spinning back to the counter. She slapped the driver's license down on the surface and Pierce took it back.

"Just take the elevator up, right?"

"You remember the code?"

"No. Sorry. I guess I'm pretty useless today."

"Four five four plus the last four digits of your license number."

He nodded his thanks and started to turn from the counter. He looked back at her.

"Do I owe you any money?"

"Excuse me?"

"I can't remember how I paid for the unit. I was wondering if I have a bill coming."

"Oh."

She kicked her chair back across the floor to the computer. Pierce liked the way she did it. One smooth, turning move.

His information was still on the screen. She scrolled down and then said without looking back at him, "No, you're fine. You paid six months up front in cash. You still have a while."

"Okay. Great. Thank you."

He stepped out of the office and over to the elevator area. After punching in the call code, he rode up to the third floor and stepped out into a deserted hallway as long as a football field with roll-down doors running along both sides. The walls were gray and the floor a matching linoleum that had been scuffed a million times by the black wheels of movers' dollies. He walked down the hall until he came to a roll-down door marked 331.

The door was a rusty brown color. There were no other markings on it but the numbers, painted in yellow with a stencil. To the right of the door was a scramble card reader with a glowing red light next to the reader. But at the bottom of the door was a hasp with a padlock holding the door secure. Pierce realized that the scramble card he had found in his backpack was only an alarm card. It would not open the door.

He pulled the U-Store-It card from his pocket and slid it through the reader. The light turned green -the unit's alarm was off. He then squatted down and took hold of the lock.

He pulled it but it was secure. He couldn't open the door.

After a long moment of weighing his next move, he stood up and headed back toward the elevator. He decided he would go to the car and check the backpack again. The key to the padlock must be there. Why plant the scramble card and not the key? If it was not there, then he would return to the U-Store-It office. The woman behind the counter would surely have a lock cutter he could borrow after explaining he had forgotten his key.

In the parking lot Pierce raised his electronic key and unlocked his car. The moment he heard the snap of the locks disengaging he stopped in his tracks and looked down at his raised hand. A memory vision played through his mind. Wentz walking in front of him, moving down the hallway to his apartment door. Pierce reheard the sound of his keys in the little man's hands, the comment on the craftsmanship of the BMW.

One by one Pierce turned the keys on the ring, identifying them and the locks they corresponded to: apartment, garage, gym, Amalfi Drive front and back, office backup, desk, lab backup, computer room. He also had a key to the house he had grown up in, though it had long ago been passed from his family. He'd always kept it. It was a last connection to that time and place, to his sister. He realized he had a habit of keeping keys to places where he no longer lived.

He identified all keys on the ring but two. The strangers were stainless steel and small, not door locks. One was slightly larger than the other. Stamped on both along the circumference of the tab was the word MASTER.

His scalp seemed to draw tight on his skull as he looked at it. Instinctively he knew that one of the keys would open the lock on the storage room door.

Wentz. The little man was the one. He had slipped the keys on the ring as they had moved down the hall. Or maybe afterward, while Pierce had been dangled off the balcony. When he had returned from the hospital he had to be let into his apartment by building security. He found his keys on the living room floor. He knew Wentz had had plenty of time to slip the keys on the ring.

Pierce couldn't fathom it. Why? What was going on? Though he had no answers, he did know where he would find them -or begin to find them. He turned and headed back to the elevator.

Three minutes later Pierce slid the larger of the two stranger keys into the padlock at the bottom of the door to storage unit 331. He turned it and the lock snapped open with tooled precision. He pulled it out of the hasp and dropped it on the floor. He then gripped the door handle and began to raise it.

As the door rolled up it made a loud metallic screech that echoed right through Pierce and all the way down the hallway. The door banged loudly when it reached the top. Pierce stood with his arm raised, his hand still attached to the handle.

The space was twelve by ten and dark. But the corridor threw light in over his shoulder.

Standing at center in the room was a large white box. There was a low humming sound coming from the room. Pierce stepped in and his eyes registered the white string of a pull cord for the overhead light. He pulled it and the room filled with light.

The white box was a freezer. A chest freezer with a top door that was held closed with a small padlock that Pierce knew he would be able to open with the second stranger key.

He didn't have to open the freezer to know what was in it but he opened it anyway. He felt compelled, possibly by a dream that it might be empty and that this was all part of an elaborate hoax. More likely it was simply because he knew he had to see with his own eyes, so that there would be no doubts and no going back.

He raised the second stranger key, the smaller one, and opened the padlock. He removed it and flipped up the latch. He then lifted the top of the freezer, the air lock breaking and the rubber seal making a snik sound as he raised it. He felt cold air puff out of the box and a damp, fetid smell invaded his nose.

With one arm he held the lid open. He looked down through the mist that was rising up out of the box like a ghost. And he saw the form of a body at the bottom of the freezer. A woman naked and crumpled in the fetal position, her neck a terrible mess of blood and damage. She lay on her right side. Blood was pooled and frozen black at the bottom of the freezer. White frost had crusted on her dark hair and upturned hip. Hair had fallen across her face but did not totally obscure it. He readily recognized the face. He had seen it only in photos but he recognized it.

It was Lilly Quinlan.

"Ah, Jesus…"

He said it quietly. Not in surprise but in horrible confirmation. He let go of the lid and it slammed closed with a heavy thump that was louder than he had expected. It scared him, but not enough to obscure the complete sense of dread that had engulfed him. He turned and slid down the front of the freezer until he was sitting on the floor, elbows on his knees, hands gathering the hair at the back of his head.

He closed his eyes and heard a rising pounding sound like someone running toward him down the hallway. He then realized it was internal, blood pounding in his ears as he grew light-headed. He thought he might pass out but realized he had to hold on and stay alert.

What if I pass out? What if I am found here?

Pierce shook it off, reached for the top of the freezer and pulled himself up. He fought for his balance and to hold back the nausea creeping into his stomach. He pulled himself across the freezer and hugged it, putting his cheek down on the cold white top. He breathed in deeply and after a few moments it all passed and his mind was clear. He stood up straight and stepped back from the freezer. He studied it, listened to its quiet hum. He knew it was time for more AE work. Analyze and evaluate. When the unknown or unexpected came up in the lab you stopped and went into AE mode. What do you see?

What do you know? What does it mean?

Pierce was standing there, looking at a freezer sitting in the middle of a storage room that he -according to the office records -had rented. The freezer contained the body of a woman he had never met before but for whose death he would certainly now be blamed.

What Pierce knew was that he had been carefully and convincingly set up. Wentz was behind it, or at least part of it. What he didn't know was why.

He decided not to be distracted by the why. Not yet. He needed more information to get to that. Instead, he decided on more AE. If he could disassemble the setup and study all the moving parts, then it might give him a chance at figuring out why and who was behind it.

Pacing in the small space in front of the freezer, he began with the things that had led him to discover the setup. The scramble card and the padlock keys. They had been hidden, or at least camouflaged. Had it been meant for him to find them? After stopping his pacing and contemplating this for a long moment, he decided no. It had been luck that he had noticed that his car had been entered. A plan of this magnitude and complication could not rely on such luck.

So he now concluded that he had an edge. He knew what he was not supposed to know.

He knew about the body and the freezer and the storage unit. He knew the location of the trap before it had been sprung.

Next question. What if he had not found the scramble card and had not been led to the body? He considered this. Langwiser had warned him of an impending police search.

Surely, Renner and his fellow searchers would leave no stone unturned. They would find the scramble card and be led to the storage space. They would check his key ring for keys to the padlocks and they would find the body. End of story. Pierce would be left to defend himself against a seemingly perfect frame.

He felt his scalp grow warm as he realized how narrowly he had escaped that -if only for the time being. And in the same moment he felt a full understanding of how complete and careful the setup had been. It was reliant on the police investigation. It relied on Renner making the moves he was making.

It also relied on Pierce. And as he came to understand this he felt the sweat start to bead in his hair. He grew hot beneath his shirt. He needed air-conditioning. The confusion and sorrow that had gripped him -maybe even the awe in which he viewed the careful plan -were now turning to anger, being forged into steel-point rage.

He now understood that the setup -his setup -had counted on his own moves. Every one of them. The setup was reliant on his own history and the likelihood of his moves based on that history. Like chemicals on a silicon wafer, elements that could be relied upon to act in a predictable manner, to bond in expected patterns.

He stepped forward and opened the freezer again. He had to. He needed to look again so the shock of it all would hit him in the face like cold water. He had to move. He had to act in an unpredictable pattern. He needed a plan and needed a clear head to come up with it.

The body obviously hadn't moved. Pierce held the top of the freezer open with one hand and clasped the other over his mouth. In her final repose Lilly Quinlan seemed tiny. Like a child. He tried to remember the height and weight dimensions she so dutifully advertised on her web page but it seemed so long since the day he first read it that he couldn't remember.

He shifted his own weight on his feet and the movement changed the light from overhead into the freezer. A glint from her hair caught his eye and he bent down into the box.

With his free hand Pierce attempted to pull back the hair from her face. It was frozen and individual strands broke as he moved them. He uncovered her upturned ear and there attached to the lobe was an earring. A silver cup holding a drop of amber with a silver feather below. He turned his hand so that the amber caught more of the light leaking into the box. It was then that he could see it. A tiny bug of some kind frozen in the amber, long ago drawn to sweetness and sustenance but caught in one of nature's deadly traps.

Pierce thought about that bug's fate and knew what he had to do. He, too, had to hide her.

Hide Lilly. Move her. Keep her from discovery. From Renner. From everyone.

A sigh escaped through his mouth as he considered this. The moment was surreal, even bizarre. He was contemplating how to hide a frozen body, how to hide it in such a way as to hold no immediate connection to him. It was a task fraught with impossibility.

He quickly closed and relocked the freezer, as if it were a measure that would stop its contents from ever coming out and haunting him.

But the simple action broke the inertia in his mind. He started thinking.

He knew he had to move the freezer. No choice. Renner was coming. It was possible that he would find the storage unit even without the clues of keys and scramble card.

Whoever had set this up could just make an anonymous call. He could count on nothing.

He had to move her. If Renner found the freezer, then everything ended. Amedeo Tech, Proteus, his life, everything. He would be a bug in amber after that.

Pierce leaned down and placed his hands on the front corners of the freezer. He applied pressure to see if it was movable. The freezer slid the last remaining six inches to the rear wall of the storage unit without much resistance. It had rollers. It was movable. The question now was, movable to where?

A quick fix was needed, something that at a minimum would work safely in the short run while he figured out a plan for the long run. He left the storage unit and moved quickly down the corridor, his eyes sweeping back and forth from door to door as he searched for an unlocked, unrented unit.

He passed by the elevator and was halfway down the other wing before he found a door with no lock through the hasp. The door was marked 307. The light on the card reader to the right of the door glowed neither green nor red. The alarm appeared to be inactive, probably left so until the unit was rented. Pierce reached down, flipped the hasp and pulled up the door. The space was dark. No alarm sounded. He found and flipped on the light switch and saw that the space was identical to the unit rented under his own name.

He checked the rear wall and saw the electric socket.

He ran down the corridor back to unit 331. He moved behind the freezer and yanked out the plug. He heard the hum of the freezer's electric heart go silent. He threw the cord over the top of the appliance and then leaned his weight into it. The freezer rolled toward the hallway with relative ease. In a few seconds he had it out of the storage room and into the corridor.

The freezer's rollers were set in line, designed to make it convenient to move the appliance backwards and forward in tight spaces, and to provide access for service.

Pierce had to bend down and put his full strength into pushing it into the turn into the hallway. The rollers scraped loudly on the floor. Once he had it pointed in the right direction, he pushed harder and got the heavy box moving with momentum. He wasn't quite halfway to unit 307 when he heard the sound of the elevator moving. He dropped into a crouch to put more power into his pushing. But it seemed that no matter how much strength he expended, he could not pick up speed. The rollers were small and not built for speed.

Pierce crossed in front of the elevator just as the humming from the shaft silenced. He turned his face away and kept pushing, listening for the door of one of the cars to open.

It didn't happen. The elevator had apparently stopped on another floor. He blew out his breath in relief and exhaustion. And just as he got to the open door of unit 307 the stairwell door at the end of the hallway nearest him banged open and a man stepped into the hallway. Pierce jumped and nearly cursed out loud.

The man, wearing painter's whites, his hair and skin flecked with white paint, approached. He seemed winded by his climb up the stairs.

"You the one holding up the elevator?" he asked good-naturedly.

"No," Pierce said, too defensively. "I've been up here."

"Just asking. You need a hand with that?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm just…"

The painter ignored his response and came up next to Pierce. He put his hands on the back of the freezer and nodded toward the open door of the storage room.

"In there?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Together they pushed and the freezer moved quickly into the turn and then into the storage room.

"There," the painter said, seemingly winded again. He then stuck out his right hand.

"Frank Aiello."

Pierce shook his hand. Aiello's left hand went into the pocket of his shirt and came out with a business card. He handed it to Pierce.

"You need any work, give me a call."

"Okay."

The painter looked down at the freezer, seemingly noticing for the first time what it was he had helped move into the storage area.

"That thing's a bear. What do you have in there, a frozen body?"

Pierce faked a small guffaw and shook his head, keeping his chin down the whole time.

"Actually, it's empty. I'm just storing it."

Aiello reached over and flicked the padlock on the freezer.

"Making sure nobody steals the air in there, huh?"

"No, I… it's just that with the way kids get into things, I've always kept it locked."

"Probably a good idea."

Pierce had turned and the light was on his face. The painter noticed the stitch zipper running down his nose.

"That looks like it hurt."

Pierce nodded.

"It's a long story."

"Not the kind I want to hear. Remember what I said."

"What do you mean?"

"You need a painter, you call."

"Oh. Yeah. I've got your card."

He nodded and watched as Aiello walked out of the room, his footsteps moving down the hallway. Pierce thought about the comment about a body being in the freezer. Was it a lucky guess, or was Aiello not what he appeared to be?

Pierce heard a set of keys jangling out in the hallway and then the metallic snap of a lock.

It was followed by the screeching of an overhead door being lifted. He guessed that Aiello might be getting equipment from his storage space. He waited and after a few minutes he heard the door being pulled down and closed. Soon the hum of the elevator followed. Aiello was going to take it down instead of the stairs.

As soon as he was sure he was alone on the floor again he plugged the freezer in and waited until he heard the compressor begin working.

He then pulled his shirt out of his pants and used the tail to wipe every surface on the freezer and electrical cord that he could have conceivably touched. When he was sure he had covered his tracks he backed out of the space and pulled the door down. He locked it with the padlock from the other unit and wiped the lock and door with his shirttail.

As he moved away from the unit and toward the elevator alcove a terrible guilt and fear swept over him. He knew that this was because he had been operating for the last half hour on instincts and adrenaline. He hadn't been thinking out his moves as much as just making them. Now the adrenaline tank's needle was on empty and there was nothing left but his thoughts to contend with.

He knew he was far from harm's way. Moving the freezer was like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. He needed to know what was happening to him and why. He needed to come up with a plan that would save his life.