Hard Freeze

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Kurtz let himself into the office about ten the next morning, only to find Arlene taking a coffee-and-cigarette break at her desk while reading a detective novel. Kurtz tossed his peacoat onto the coatrack and settled into the old chair behind his desk. Three new files on his desktop were labeled "Frears," "Hansen," and "Other Murder-Suicides/Common Factors."

"How's the book?" asked Kurtz. He squinted at the title. "Isn't that the same guy you were reading twelve years ago, before I got sent away?"

"Yeah. His detective fought in the Korean War, which makes the old fart in his late sixties at least, but he still kicks ass. A new book comes out every year, if not sooner."

"Good, huh?"

"Not anymore," said Arlene. "The P.I.'s got a girlfriend who's a real bitch. An arrogant piece of work. And she's got a dog."

"So?"

"A dog who eats on the table and sleeps in their bed. And the P.I. loves them both to bits."

"Then why do you keep reading him?"

"I keep hoping the P.I. will wake up and cap both the girlfriend and that ratty dog," said Arlene. She put the book down. "To what do I owe this Saturday-morning pleasure, Joe?"

He patted the three files on the desk. He started thumbing through the Frears folder. It was quite a biography—born to upper-class parents in 1945, John Wellington Frears was one of those rarest of anomalies—an African-American in mid-twentieth-century America who had been a child of privilege. Something of a musical prodigy, Frears had gone to Princeton as an undergraduate but had transferred to Juilliard for his junior year. Then something truly strange: after graduation from Juilliard, with offers from several prestigious city symphonic groups, John Wellington Frears had volunteered for the U.S. Army and had gone to Vietnam in 1967. The note said that he had been with the Army Engineers, a sergeant in charge of demolition and disarming booby traps. He'd served two tours in Vietnam and one year in the States before returning to civilian life and beginning his professional music career.

"Now that is truly weird," Kurtz said aloud. "Him joining the army. And demolitions, no less."

"I thought that violinists wouldn't even play catch, they were so protective of their hands," said Arlene.

"What's this thick stack of medical stuff?"

"Mr. Frears is dying of cancer," said Arlene, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another. "Colon cancer."

Kurtz was looking at the information from Sloan-Kettering Hospital.

"He's undergone every form of treatment, chemotherapy literally up the wazoo," continued Arlene, "but it's terminal. But look at the concert schedule he's been keeping during all of this."

Kurtz flipped to a separate printout. "Two hundred and ten days a year on the road," he said. "And except for the last couple of weeks, he's honored almost all of them."

"Tough guy," said Arlene.

Kurtz nodded and opened the James B. Hansen file.

"Dead guy there," said Arlene.

"So they say."

"A long time ago," said Arlene.

Kurtz nodded, reading the police report of young Crystal Frears's murder and the subsequent murder-suicide of Hansen and his family. The details matched what John Wellington Frears had told him.

"I couldn't help but notice the connection there," said Arlene. "Does Mr. Frears think that this Hansen is still alive?"

Kurtz looked up. Even when he was a practicing P.I., he'd shared only the necessary details of cases with Arlene, not seeing a need to dump such facts on her. But her husband and son had been alive then, and she'd probably had more important things on her mind. "Yeah," said Kurtz, "that's exactly what Frears thinks. He was leaving Buffalo a couple of weeks ago…"

"I saw the concert booking on his itinerary," said Arlene, motioning with her coffee cup for Kurtz to go on.

"He thought he saw Hansen at the airport."

"Our airport?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think he did, Joe? See Hansen, I mean."

Kurtz shrugged.

"Where is Mr. Frears now?"

"Still out at the Airport Sheraton. Waiting."

"For what?"

"I'm not sure," said Kurtz. "It sounds like Buffalo Homicide isn't looking into anything for him. Maybe Frears can't leave town while there's a chance he could find Hansen here, but he's too sick to look."

"So he's waiting here to die at the Airport Sheraton."

"I think it's more than that," said Kurtz. "Mr. Frears has made a big stink with the police, got a little sidebar in the Buffalo News about seeing his daughter's murderer at the airport, even got an interview on a local talk-radio station. And he always mentions that he's staying at the Sheraton."

"He wants Hansen—if Hansen exists—to find him," Arlene said softly. "He wants Hansen to come out of hiding to kill him. Make the police take it all seriously."

Kurtz closed the Hansen file and picked up the "Other Murder-Suicides/Common Factors" folder. In the last twenty years there had been 5,638 murders of children and wives followed by the suicide of the male killer. There had been 1,220 male suicides before the police could arrest the suspect after child molestation and/or murder of a female child or teenager.

"Oy," said Kurtz.

"Yeah," agreed Arlene. She had finished her coffee break, lit another cigarette, and was working at her computer again. Now she lifted another, thinner, folder and carried it over to Kurtz's desk. "So I narrowed the parameters to include just perps who raped and murdered a teenage girl about Crystal Frears's age and who then went home and killed either themselves or their own family, after burning the house down around themselves."

"There can't be too many of those," said Kurtz. There were 235 cases resembling that scenario, but only thirty-one of them involved men about the age of James B. Hansen at that time. It took only a minute for Kurtz to go through the photographs and compare them to the photo in the Hansen file from the Chicago P.D.

"Bingo," said Kurtz. Atlanta, Georgia, five years after the murder of Crystal Frears. A white man who looked very little like psychologist James B. Hansen—bald rather than long-haired, clean-shaven rather than bearded, brown eyes rather than blue, thick glasses where Hansen had worn none—but who was the same man. Lawrence Greenberg, age thirty-five, a certified public accountant, married three years, three children by his wife's former marriage, had kidnapped a neighbor girl, white, age thirteen, named Charlotte Hays, raped her repeatedly in a deserted farmhouse outside of Atlanta, and had then driven home, had dinner with his family, shot all four of them, and reportedly shot himself in the head after setting fire to his home. Police had identified him according to dental records and a charred Rolex that Mr. Greenberg had always worn.

"Dental records," said Kurtz.

"Yeah, but to look at those details, we'll need the printouts of the full reports," said Arlene. "The Chicago P.D. file hadn't been fully digitized—just the overview you have there—so we'd have to make an official request."

"Erie County District Attorney's Office at our third P.O. box," said Kurtz.

"Mail fraud as well as everything else," said Arlene. "At least three federal laws broken if we do it."

"Do it," said Kurtz.

"I called yesterday," said Arlene. "Requested the files from both Chicago and Atlanta. I had them Express Mailed since FedEx won't deliver to P.O. boxes. We'll get the reports on Monday."

"How did you pay?"

"Charged it to the D.A.'s office," said Arlene. "I still have their billing code."

"Won't they notice it?"

Arlene laughed and went back to her computer. "We could charge a fleet of Lexuses to that office, Joe. No one would notice. Do you have time to look at some possible office space with me today?"

"No, I've got things to do. But I do need your help on something."

Kurtz drove alone to the bar near Broadway Market, where he'd braced Donnie Rafferty. Detectives Brubaker and Myers had been driving a different unmarked car that morning when they had followed him from the Royal Delaware Arms to his office, and they had stayed several cars back and attempted a serious tail rather than just harassing him, but Kurtz had made them immediately. If they stopped him now with the two guns he was carrying, it would be bad news, but he suspected that they were actually on surveillance. He pulled into the parking lot, grabbed the camera bag he'd brought from the office, and went into the bar. He noticed that Brubaker and Myers parked across the street to watch the parking lot and the bar's only entrance. When he'd been waiting for Donald Rafferty here, Kurtz had noticed the alley running behind the row of buildings and the high board fence concealing the alley from the parking lot.

"Back door?" Kurtz said to the bartender in the dark, hops-smelling space within. Only three or four committed regulars were celebrating Saturday morning there.

"It's for emergency use only," said the bartender. "Hey!"

Kurtz stepped into the alley, Arlene guided her blue Buick to a stop, and he got in. They drove a block, turned north, then turned west on a street parallel to where the detectives were parked.

"Where to?" asked Arlene.

"Back to the office for you," said Kurtz. "I have to borrow your car for a few hours."

Arlene sighed. "We're not that far from Chippewa Street. We could check out an office space there."

"I bet it's over a Starbucks," said Kurtz.

"How did you know?"

"Every third store on Chippewa is a Starbucks these days," said Kurtz. "I don't have time today. And we don't want to pay yuppie leases. Let's find an office somewhere less gentrified."

Arlene sighed again. "It would be nice to have windows."

Kurtz said nothing on the ride back to the office.

The Tuscarora Indian Reservation was northeast of the city of Niagara Falls, curled around half of the big Power Reservoir that stored water to run through the Power Project's giant turbines. Big Bore Redhawk was not a Tuscarora, and quite possibly wasn't an Indian—word was that Big Bore had discovered his Native American ancestry when he was trying to fence stolen jewelry and learned that he would be tax-exempt as an Indian jewelry salesperson—but his trailer was on the reservation property. Kurtz knew so much about Redhawk's personal life because the big man had been one of the most talkative morons in C-Block.

Kurtz took Walmore Road into the reservation and turned left onto the third gravel road. Big Bore's rusted-out trailer squatted in the deep snow just short of where Garlow Road ran along the reservoir. A clapped-out Dodge Powerwagon with a blade sat in the Indian's driveway and snow was heaped eight feet high on either side. Big Bore earned his drinking money from plowing the reservation's private roads during the winter. Kurtz pulled the Buick back behind one of these snowpiles so he could see the door to Redhawk's trailer. Snow was falling, stopping, then falling harder.

Twenty-five minutes later, all six-feet-five-inches of Big Bore came stumbling out the door wearing only jeans and a loose plaid shirt—he did not seem aware of Kurtz's car—climbed one of the higher drifts, and urinated toward the line of trees.

Kurtz drove the Buick up, slid to a stop, and got out quickly with the.40 Smith & Wesson in his hand. "Good morning, B.B."

Redhawk turned with mouth and fly agape. His bloodshot eyes flickered toward the trailer, and Kurtz guessed that the half-breed's gun was still inside. Big Bore had always been a shank man.

"Kurtz? Hey, man, fucking good to see you, man. You out on parole too?"

Kurtz smiled. "You drinking the advance on my hit, B.B.?"

Big Bore worked his face into a puzzled frown, glanced down, and zipped up his fly. "Huh?" he said. "What's the piece for? We were friends, man."

"Yeah," said Kurtz.

"Fuck, man," said Big Bore. "I don't know what you heard, but we can talk it out, man. Come on inside." He took a half step toward his trailer.

Kurtz raised the semiauto's aim slightly and shook his head.

Big Bore raised his hands and squinted. "You're a big man with that gun, aren't you, Kurtz?"

Kurtz said nothing.

"You put that fucking piece down and fight me like a fucking man, we'll see who's hot shit," slurred Big Bore.

"I beat you in a fair fight, you tell me who hired you?" said Kurtz.

The Indian jumped down from the drift, landing lightly for three hundred pounds of muscled fat, and raised his huge arms, flexing his fingers. "Whatever," he said, showing prison dentistry.

Kurtz thought about it, nodded, and tossed his pistol onto the hood of the Buick, out of reach. He turned back to Redhawk.

"Fucking moron," said Big Bore, pulling an eight-inch hunting knife from a scabbard under his shirt. "Easiest fucking ten grand I ever earned." He grinned more broadly and took two crouched steps forward, flicking the fingers of his huge left hand in an invitation. "Let's see what you got, Kurtz."

"I've got a forty-five," said Kurtz. He pulled Angelina's Compact Witness from his coat pocket and shot Big Bore in the left knee.

The hunting knife went flying over the drift, blood and cartilage doing a Jackson Pollock on the snow, and Big Bore went down heavily.

Kurtz retrieved his S&W and walked over to the moaning, cursing Indian.

"I'm going to fucking kill your fucking ass, Kurtz, you fucking…" began Big Bore, then trailed away into a groan.

Kurtz waited for the monologue to continue.

"And fucking call the cops and fucking send you away until I'm motherfucking ready to kill your fucking ass," gasped the big man, wanting to hold his shattered knee together but unwilling to touch the mess.

"No," said Kurtz. "Remember telling everyone in the exercise yard how you killed your first two wives and where they're buried?"

"Aww, fuck, man," moaned Big Bore.

"Yeah," said Kurtz. He went into the trailer and rummaged through the mess there a bit, finding $1,410 in small bills hidden under a hardcase holding a shiny new.45 Colt. Kurtz was no thief, but this was a down payment on his own death, so he took the money and went back to the Buick. Big Bore had begun the crawl to the trailer and was leaving an unpleasant trail in the snow.