Freezing

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 give 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.

He turned his head, putting her in his peripheral vision. ‘How do you guys do it?’ His voice sounded choked, tired.

‘Do what?’

He turned his head away, his hair catching under his fingers. ‘I’ve gotta tell ya, it about killed me to meet the Alstons.’ He paused. ‘I kept picturing their daughter in the freezer, at the morgue. Those teeth. I’ve never seen such perfect teeth. She was dead but there they were, just like life. For Christ’s sake!’ He brought his arms down and crossed them tightly against his chest.

Jayne was reaching to touch him when his voice came out in a whisper.

‘I feel inadequate.’

Shocked, she drew her hand back and looked at the back of his head. Could he really have said those words? Did he feel what she felt? She knew what he meant. The dead were still dead, despite everything you’d done – despite all the Good, all the Investigation, the Uncovering, the Recovery, the Holding Accountable, the dead were still dead and you couldn’t bring them back. She knew. He was talking again.

‘I’ve never felt so glad to clear a case and then felt so . . . terrible.’ Scott’s head dropped down as his shoulders started to shake.

Jayne reached for him then, turning him and pulling his head to her chest, feeling his exhalations, hot and damp, on her shirtfront. She automatically began rubbing his back and her words came out despite her defences. ‘I know, I know.’ She said them over and over until she was murmuring them into his hair, which muffled the words into noises only for them to resurface as kisses that landed on his ear, his brow, damp cheek, and then his arms were around her, tightening when his mouth found hers.