Hard Freeze

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Hansen could not get in touch with Dr. Howard Conway by phone and this bothered him. It bothered him a lot. He considered driving to Cleveland to check on Conway—make sure that the old fart hadn't died or finally run out on him—but there simply wasn't time. Too much was happening too fast, and too much had to happen even faster in the next twenty-four hours.

He canceled his meetings for the rest of the afternoon, called Donna to say that he'd be home soon, called Brubaker to make sure that he hadn't found Kurtz at his office or home, called Myers to make sure he was on surveillance at the secretary's house, and then he drove to a rotting industrial cold-storage facility near the Buffalo River. Behind an abandoned mill, a line of walk-in freezers—each with its own backup generator—had been rented to restaurateurs, meat wholesalers, and others needing overflow freezer storage. Hansen had kept a locker there since he'd driven a freezer truck up from Miami nine months ago.

Hansen unlocked the two expensive padlocks he kept on the unit and stepped into the frigid interior. Five halves of beef hung on hooks. Hansen had planned to use one of these during the July cookout he was going to throw at his Tonawanda home for his detectives and their wives, but it looked as if he would not be around Buffalo in July. Against the back wall were tall wire racks, and on these were four long, opaque plastic bags holding more frozen meat.

He unzipped the bag on the middle shelf. Mr. Gabriel Kendall, fifty years old, the same height, weight, and general build as James B. Hansen, stared up through a rim of frost covering his open eyes. The cadaver's lips were blue and pulled back, frozen into the position where Dr. Conway had X-rayed the teeth in Cleveland the previous summer. All four of the men's bodies stored here had a similar rictus. Kendall was the one Hansen had chosen for Captain Robert Gaines Millworth's suicide and the dental records should be on file, ready for the blanks to be filled in.

If he could get in touch with that miserable wretch Conway.

Satisfied that no one had been in the freezer or tampered with its contents, Hansen zipped the body bag shut, locked the freezer behind him, and drove back home in his Cadillac SUV. The sight of the hanging sides of beef had made him hungry. He used his cell phone to call Donna and tell her to set aside whatever else she had planned for dinner; they would grill steaks on the GrillAire Range tonight.

Arlene's sister-in-law Gail's home was the second floor of an old duplex on Colvin Avenue north of the park. Gail was divorced and was working a double shift at the Medical Center; Arlene had explained that Gail was sleeping at the hospital and wouldn't be home until late the following afternoon. Good thing, thought Kurtz as Arlene unlocked the door and led Pruno and him up the side stairway. Upstairs, Kurtz looked at the herd of refugees he was collecting—Frears hugging Pruno affectionately as if the old addict didn't smell like a urinal—Arlene with the.45 still in her sweater pocket. For all the years that he had used Pruno as a street source when he was a P.I., Arlene had never met the old wino, and now the two were busy with their introductions and conversation. Kurtz, a loner all his life, was beginning to feel like Noah, and he suspected that he might need a bigger ark if this refugee crap kept up.

The four of them sat in the tiny living room. Cooking smells came from the adjoining kitchen, and occasionally she would stand and go in to check on something and the conversation would pause until she returned.

"What is going on, Mr. Kurtz?" asked John Wellington Frears when they were all gathered around like a happy chipmunk family again.

Kurtz slipped his peacoat off—it was hot in the little apartment—and explained what he could about James B. Hansen being the esteemed Homicide Captain Robert Millworth.

"This dentist… Conway… admitted this to you?" asked Pruno.

"Not in so many words," said Kurtz. "But let's say that I confirmed it with him."

"I would guess that this Dr. Conway's life wouldn't be worth much right now," said Frears.

Kurtz had to agree with that.

"So how do you think this Millworth… Hansen… made the connection between Mr. Frears and you, Joe?" asked Arlene.

"We're not certain that he has."

"But it would be dangerous to assume anything else," said Frears.

"It is folly," said Pruno, "to form policy based on assumptions of the enemy's intentions… judge his capabilities and prepare accordingly."

"Well," said Arlene, "a captain in Homicide is capable of using the entire police department to track down Mr. Frears and the rest of us."

Kurtz shook his head. "Not without blowing his cover. We have to remember that this Hansen isn't a real cop."

"No," Frears said evenly, "he is a serial rapist and child killer."

That stopped conversation for a while. Finally Arlene said, "Can he trace us here, Joe?"

"I doubt it. Not if Myers didn't follow you."

"No," said Arlene. "I made sure that we weren't followed. But they'll get suspicious when Mr. Frears and I don't leave my house tomorrow."

"Or when the lights don't come on tonight," said Pruno. It was getting dark outside.

"I left the lamps in the front room on a timer I use when on vacation," said Arlene. "They're on now and will go off at eleven."

Kurtz, who was suddenly feeling exhausted, looked up at that. "When have you ever taken a vacation?"

Arlene gave him a look. Kurtz took it as his cue to leave. "I have to return a car," he said, standing and tugging on his peacoat.

"Not until you eat," said Arlene.

"I'm not hungry."

"No? When was the last time you ate, Joe? Did you have lunch?"

Kurtz paused to think. His last meal had been a sweet roll he'd grabbed with coffee at a Thruway stop during his midnight drive back from Cleveland. He hadn't eaten all this Wednesday and hadn't slept since Tuesday night.

"We're all going to have a good meal," Arlene said in a tone that brooked no argument. "I've made lots of spaghetti, fresh bread, some roast beef. You all have about twenty minutes to wash up."

"I may need all of that time," said Pruno. Kurtz laughed but the old man shot him a glance, lifted the bundle of his garment bag, and disappeared into the bathroom with dignity.

The family of Robert Gaines Millworth—his wife Donna and fourteen-year-old stepson Jason—ate as a family every night because James Hansen knew it was important that a family eat together. This night they had steak and salad and rice. Donna had wine. Hansen did not drink alcohol, but he allowed his wives to, in moderation.

While they ate. Donna talked about her work at the library. Jason talked about basketball and about ice hockey. Hansen listened and thought about his next move in this rather interesting chess game he had become involved in. At one point, Hansen found himself looking around the dining room—the art, the glimpse of bookcases from the family room beyond, the expensive furniture and Delft china. It would be a shame, all this lost to the fire. But James B. Hansen had never been one to confuse material possessions with the more important things of the soul.

After dinner, he would go down to his office, keeping his cell phone with him in case Brubaker or Myers called, and contemplate what he had to do tomorrow and in the days to come.

It was a strange dinner for Kurtz—a good dinner, lots of spaghetti and roast beef and gravy and real bread and a good salad and coffee—but strange. It had been a while since his last home-cooked dinner eaten with other people. How long? Twelve years. Twelve years and a month. A dinner with Sam at her place, also spaghetti that night, with the baby, the toddler, in a tall chair—not a high chair, it didn't have a tray—what had Sam called it? A youth chair. With little Rachel in the youth chair at the table, chattering away, reaching over to tug at Kurtz's napkin, the child babbling even as Sam told him about this interesting case she was pursuing—a teenage runaway missing, drugs involved.

Kurtz stopped eating. Only Arlene noticed and she looked away after a second.

Pruno had come out of the bathroom showered, shaven, skin pink and scalded-looking, his fingernails still yellowed and cracked but no longer grimy, his thinning gray hair—which Kurtz had never seen except as a sort of nimbus floating around the old wino's head—slicked back. He was wearing a suit that might have been two decades out of style and no longer fit. Pruno's frail form was lost in it, but it also looked clean. How? wondered Kurtz. How could this old heroin addict keep a suit clean when he lived in a packing crate and in cubbies under the Thruway?

Pruno—or "Dr. Frederick," as Frears kept addressing him—looked older and frailer and more fragile without his protective crusts of grime and rags. But the old man sat very upright as he ate and drank and nodded his head to accept more food and addressed John Wellington Frears in measured tones. Frears had been his student at Princeton. One old man dying of cancer and his ancient teacher sitting there in his double-breasted, pinstripe suit—making conversation about Mozart as a prodigy and about the Palestinian situation and about global warming.

Kurtz shook his head. He'd not had any wine because he was so damned tired already and because he might have to keep his head clear for several hours more on this endless day, but enough was enough. This scene was not just unreal, it was surreal. He needed a drink.

Arlene followed him out to the kitchen.

"Doesn't your sister-in-law keep any booze in the house?" asked Kurtz.

"That top cupboard. Johnnie Walker Red."

"That'll do," said Kurtz. He poured himself three fingers' worth.

"What's the matter, Joe?"

"Nothing's the matter. Other than this serial-killer police captain after all of us, I mean. Everything's great."

"You're thinking about Rachel."

Kurtz shook his head and took a drink. The two old men in the dining room laughed at something.

"What are you going to do about that, Joe?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. You can't let her go back to Donald Rafferty."

Kurtz shrugged. He remembered tearing up the photograph of Frears's dead daughter—Crystal. He remembered leaving the torn bits of the photograph on the scarred table at Blues Franklin.

Arlene lit a cigarette and pulled down a small bowl for an ashtray. "Gail won't let me smoke in her house. She'll be furious when she gets home tomorrow."

Kurtz studied the amber liquid in his glass.

"What if the police don't arrest Rafferty, Joe?"

He shrugged again.

"Or if they do?" said Arlene. "Either way, Rachel is going to be at risk. A foster home? Samantha had no other family. Just her ex-husband. Unless he has family who can take care of her."

Kurtz poured another finger of scotch. Rafferty's only living family was an alcoholic bitch of a mother who lived in Las Vegas and a younger brother who was doing time in an Indiana state prison for armed robbery. He'd listened to the phone conversations.

"But if she goes into some sort of temporary foster home…" began Arlene.

"Look," said Kurtz, slamming the empty glass down on the counter, "what the hell do you want me to do about it?"

Arlene blinked. Joe Kurtz had never yelled at her in all their years of working together. She exhaled smoke and batted ashes into the dainty little ceramic bowl. "DNA," she said.

"What?"

"DNA testing would show paternity, Joe. You could—"

"Are you fucking nuts? An ex-con who served time for manslaughter? A former P.I. who will never get his license back? Somebody with at least three death sentences out on him?" Kurtz laughed. "Yeah, I don't see why the courts wouldn't place the kid with someone like that. Besides, I don't know for sure that I'm the—"

"Don't," said Arlene, her finger raised and pointed. "Don't say that. Don't even pretend to me that you think it."

Kurtz went out into the tiny living room, retrieved his peacoat and the S&W.40 from where he'd left them and went down the stairs and out of the house. It was dark out and it had begun to snow again.