Freezer Burn

Thirty-eight

Bill’s house wasn’t hard to find, even by moonlight. He had given her a good description. Across from it was a clapboard shack that had once housed a firecracker stand.

Gidget parked the van she had bought in the backyard. She had purchased it with savings Frost had kept in a bank in Enid, Oklahoma. The freezer sat in the rear of the minivan, housing the Ice Man without electricity.

Gidget slipped on gloves, got out with a crowbar, and worked up the back window of the house. When she slid the window open a smell came out that made her swoon. She took deep breaths and went back to the car and got a handkerchief, put it over her nose, and climbed through the window.

Inside, Gidget moved her flashlight around. The bed in there was black with something greasy. She moved over closer and the smell got worse. It was not only a dead smell, but a sweet smell, like decay and sugar boiled together.

In the light of the flash Gidget could see there was a skull bathed in the black goo. Gray hairs were twisted about at the top of the skull. The corpse had been wrapped in trash bags at one point, but rats had gotten into it and ripped them open and exposed the body and eaten parts of it.

Gidget went into the living room. She poked around for thirty minutes before finding a desk drawer with the old woman’s checks in it. She poked around some more until she found an old checkbook and some things with Bill’s mother’s signature on them.

She put the copies of the signature and the checks in the coat pocket and went out the way she had come, closed the window.

She checked the mailbox for grins. Someone had stuck a phone book in there.

She tossed the phone book back inside the mailbox and drove away.