Freezing

TWENTY-FIVE

Eric and Angie waited in a small office that was clearly a later addition to the rambling two-story house used by the second battered women’s shelter on their list, Percy Gale. The first shelter, Horizons, hadn’t yielded results but they hadn’t crossed it off the list because the manager there had simply refused to discuss any of her clients. She had agreed to look at the photograph of Eleanor Patterson, at Eric’s insistence, but had said she didn’t recognize the woman. Eric hadn’t been convinced.

He liked Steelie’s theory that Patterson had come to Georgia to get away from her husband for good and it made sense that she would have started with a shelter. He wanted to follow every sniff of a lead and it was Angie who cut off the interview at Horizons by giving Eric a look he recognized from when they’d first worked together in Atlanta a year earlier: she was telling him to back off. He only complied because he knew she wasn’t going to let anything drop; that wasn’t Angie’s style.

On the drive to Percy Gale, she had suggested a new approach to the same theory: get the shelter to explain their methods so they’d get leads on how Patterson might have come into Georgia, even if they couldn’t find the shelter she used. They had agreed that Angie would lead the next interview, so when the Percy Gale site manager walked into her office, it was Angie who moved forward first.

The woman who introduced herself as ‘just Dora’ looked about 60. She wasn’t exactly overweight but looked as though she had been, then lost some and there was still enough skin to contain the old bulk. As she passed them to reach her desk, she left a fresh floral scent behind her.

She picked up a paper fan decorated with flowers and leaned back in the chair to cool herself with practiced flicks of the wrist. ‘Please sit down, both of you. It’s much too hot to stand.’

Angie began. ‘Dora, we’re looking for information on a woman who went missing while she may have been seeking assistance from a battered women’s shelter.’

‘Is there a missing person report out on her?’ Dora’s eyes were shrewd.

‘Yes.’

‘Put in by the woman’s husband?’

‘Yes.’

Dora leaned forward and snapped the fan shut, placing it on the desk. ‘Can’t help you.’

Eric’s impatience led him to fidget but Angie continued seamlessly. ‘We believe you can, in fact.’

‘We don’t reveal information on any of our clients, not even to the police, unless there’s a warrant out for their arrest. And it doesn’t sound like that applies here.’

‘She’s not a wanted person, she’s a missing person. And as I said, we believe she went missing while seeking shelter. It would be helpful to us if you could at least give us some information on how Percy Gale’s clients find the shelter.’

‘We’re in the phone book, we have fliers at libraries, we’re listed with all accredited counselors. Women who need our services find us.’

‘What about women from outside of Georgia?’

‘Same process. Now, I really must get back to the main house.’ She got up from her chair.

Neither Eric nor Angie rose.

Eric spoke. ‘The woman we’re searching for information on has actually been found. She’s dead.’

Dora looked away as she pursed her lips. She fiddled with some papers on the desk, then sat down. ‘Husband killed her?’

‘We’re investigating that now.’ Eric gave Angie a slight nod.

Angie continued, ‘We’re trying to trace her movements and we would appreciate it if you could at least tell us if she was a client you were expecting. Her name was Eleanor Patterson.’

Eric was surprised when Dora laughed. ‘My dears, you could give me any name you like but I wouldn’t recognize it. Didn’t you know that battered women’s shelters don’t use names?’

‘Wait,’ said Eric. ‘How do you know a client is who she says she is when she arrives here?’

‘We use code names, for everyone’s protection.’

‘How do they work?’

Dora opened her fan and cooled herself again. ‘When someone contacts us to seek sanctuary, we assign a code name to them, ask them to guard it safely and then use it when they arrive here.’

Eric looked at Angie with an expression of frustration.

Angie asked, ‘Would you look at this photograph and tell us if you recognize the woman in it?’

Dora lifted some papers and retrieved a pair of glasses from underneath. She cleaned the lenses and put them on, their silver frames highlighting her feathered white hair.

Angie handed over the photograph of Eleanor Patterson and Dora studied it before removing the glasses.

‘I don’t recognize her. And I’ll confess that I just looked at it out of curiosity. You see, we wouldn’t know what any of the women look like before they arrive here. We’ve never seen them before and as I said, we don’t know their names.’ She stood up and this time, she moved toward the door and held it open for the agents. ‘I wish you luck and I hope you get the bastard.’

It hadn’t taken long for Mark to get through to Gerrit Leuven on the telephone. First Mark had had to leave a message at the direct number Jayne had given them but, while he was tracking his way back to a main number at Leuven’s station, Mark’s own phone showed an incoming international call. Leuven’s accent was clipped and his tone open but Mark could barely believe his ears when he heard Leuven’s account.

Jayne sat at the table, feeling jet-lagged as she let Scott take her thoughts back to the minutes she had spent at the Agency with Gene.

‘You said he was interested in the All Coroners Bulletin?’

Her voice was quiet. ‘Yes.’

‘Did he say anything in particular?’

She sighed. ‘He said that it was something we could be legitimately positive about. He said that he understood how I handled the work, that I’d broken the big problem down into little ones.’

‘And you said you left him alone for a minute?’

‘When I went to the bathroom. I left him in the lab but when I came out, he was in my office, in my chair.’

‘Did you notice anything disturbed or moved on your desk or anywhere else?’

Jayne shook her head.

‘So you left and went straight to your apartment? What did you do there?’

‘Um, he used the bathroom. I made coffee. We sat on the deck, talked a bit more.’

‘Anything come up about your work or his?’

‘No, it was more . . . personal topics.’

‘Personal?’

Jayne fixed her eyes on the table between them. ‘He was wondering if I was involved with anyone.’ She felt as though a weight was on her chest as she anticipated Scott’s next question but none came. She looked at his face and saw he was staring at the recording equipment, rubbing his chin.

He didn’t look at her. ‘And you again left him alone at some point?’

‘I just went to get a photograph from my storage room downstairs. A photograph from Kigali that he wanted.’

‘About how long were you down there?’

‘A couple of minutes. Probably less than five.’

‘And then?’

‘We looked through a bunch of photos and he left.’

‘How did he leave? He say anything about staying in touch? Give you his number? Talk about getting together again?’

‘I never had his number. He said he’d keep in touch but he hasn’t been in touch yet. I understood he was flying out of LA in a day or two. He just left after giving me a kiss goodbye.’

Scott’s pen hovered over the page but he didn’t write down what she’d just said. ‘You didn’t drive him back to the hotel?’

‘No . . .’ Jayne now remembered how odd it had been at the time, that Gene had disappeared down her residential street into the night. ‘I thought he got a taxi.’

‘Did you see him get into a taxi or did you call a taxi for him?’

‘Neither. In fact, I ran out to get him so I could call a taxi but he was already gone.’

‘You get a lot of taxis on your street?’

Jayne shook her head firmly. ‘No.’

‘OK.’ Scott leafed back to an earlier page in his notes. ‘Steelie. You said Gene was “never your favorite person” and you didn’t meet up with him last week. Why didn’t you like him?’

Steelie assumed a more relaxed position in her chair, legs crossed and one arm slung across the back. ‘Ten years ago, he was arrogant. Smart, but arrogant with it. Self-important. And he had a tendency to act like a white settler in colonial-era Rwanda, which is never a good look thirty years after Independence. I thought he made the UN look bad.’

‘Was there something in particular? How’d you manage to work with him for so long if you felt that way?’

‘One, I’m a master at disguising my feelings – note my witty banter despite the grilling you’ve just given my best friend here. And two, he was good at his job once he got over the fact that he wasn’t in charge of everyone else’s job as well. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he—’

‘Guys.’ Mark Wilson slammed the door open and crossed to the computer hooked up to the projector. ‘Guys, listen up.’

Tripper pulled up the roller door and surveyed the storage unit in the sunlight slanting in around the corner of the concrete and steel building. He looked up and down the access lane he was in; no one. He’d chosen this particular unit when he’d signed the contract with an alias because it was at the farthest corner of the storage center. Most people didn’t want to drag their belongings any further than they had to once they were in the front gate, so his comings and goings were usually unobserved.

He walked in, turned on the light, and pulled the roller door down behind him, slotting into place a temporary lock. The items he’d left inside looked undisturbed: select pieces of his mother’s faded slip-covered furniture, the pile of old curtains with their hooks still attached, the aquarium whose ferns now resembled miniature ocotillo, and, right at the back, the motorcycle. He went to the motorcycle first.

He prized off a spoke and inserted it into the left exhaust pipe to retrieve a plastic bag. Out of the bag, he brought a knife and went to the sofa. He pulled off its slip-cover and began cutting through the stitching on its back. He worked without concern about any noise he was creating or with hiding the destruction. As soon as he’d opened a foot-long section, he dug within the stuffing and retrieved two more small plastic bags as well as a much larger padded one.

He pulled on the edges of the padded bag until it formed a box. He attached this to the motorcycle’s rear rack, ensuring its label faced out: Joey’s Pizza – We Deliver! He put the smaller bags in the false bottom inside the pizza delivery box.

He moved on to the slip-covers on the two easy chairs and repeated his actions, retrieving scalpels, tweezers, surgical gloves, telephone wire, twine, and duct tape. From the bottom of the aquarium, he pulled out bags holding the false driver’s license and insurance cards, license plates for the motorcycle, the cell phone pack, and the one grenade. Then he cut the lining off the curtains and peeled out a change of clothes, several Tyvek suits still in their plastic covers, and his motorcycle leathers.

Tripper changed clothes, stuffing the remainder of the cheap cop costume into the back of the sofa before putting the slip-covers back on all the furniture. He put on the leathers and turned on the cell phone to check its charge. The manufacturers had been good to their word; it had held its charge since he’d last been at the unit. He typed in a text message and pressed Send. When he saw it had gone through, he smiled and put on his helmet. He lifted the door and began to wheel out the motorcycle.