Play To Kill

Chapter Twenty-four

Chief Frost hadn't been in an airport in years. After a lifetime of watching white tinsel contrails decorate the blue sky over his head, he still couldn't convince himself that any plane he boarded wouldn't plummet back to earth. Worse yet, it wouldn't plummet fast; it would take a long, long time so he could be good and scared before he got good and dead.

The fear mystified him. He wasn't afraid of high-speed car chases, confronting armed robbers or even walking into a domestic, but just sitting there listening to the roar and thrust of those fragile metal tubes shooting up into the air over the terminal made him sweat.

Last time he'd been on a plane he was a teenager, looking around at all the other passengers reading magazines, chatting and laughing, comfortable as could be to be mounted on a rocket filled with thousands of gallons of explosive fuel. If they thought it was okay, it had to be, right? A fatherly type sitting next to him saw through his thin ho-hum veneer and patted his hand. 'Flying scares me shitless, too, son,' he said, and that's when he realized everyone else was faking, pretending they actually thought airplanes were airworthy when they knew damn well they were going to crash. He never trusted people or planes again.

'You look a little pale, Chief.' Theo took the seat next to him, bracing knife-sharp elbows on nowhere thighs. It was a wonder they didn't slice right through what little flesh he had.

'I don't like airports.'

'Me neither. I hate flying. Everybody thinks skydiving is such a big macho thrill game. I always thought jumping out of a plane made a hell of a lot more sense than staying in one.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. Huttinger's flight is still on time. Should be touching down in the next fifteen minutes. And we're cleared through security if you want to go to the gate.'

'Not yet.'

Theo pulled out his notebook. 'I checked in with Ginny. They're still tossing the house with the on-site Feds. They pulled his PC first and sent it off to Cyber Crimes, but so far they haven't found the laptop.'

'He's got it with him.'

Theo smiled. 'And we've got a warrant. Judge said we had the go-ahead to search his nostrils with a power drill if we wanted.'

Frost looked at him. 'Judge Krinnen said that?'

'Actually, I left out a couple of really colorful words. I'm telling you, the man surprised me. He's like a million years old and as soft-spoken as a little girl and he scared me to death. You ever see his gun collection?'

'Didn't know he had one.'

'Hemingway would eat his heart out, and the judge was real set on showing me every one and describing what kind of damage it would do to Clinton Huttinger if he ever got a bead on the guy.'

Chief Frost sighed, pushed himself up out of the hard plastic chair and adjusted his belt. 'Can't say I blame him. I want to kill this guy myself.'

Goddamnit, he shouldn't have said that out loud. You didn't have that kind of luxury when you were a cop about to arrest a suspect who nearly killed a woman you'd loved twenty years ago. Police brutality wasn't a charge your career recovered from. It was always there on your record in black and white, and sometimes, God forbid, it gave the suspect a cause of action and let him walk. Now he'd really have to suck it up and treat Huttinger with an overdose of care and respect, and the prospect made him sick.

He'd spent the two-hour drive down here looking at the scenery, sucking in the intense greens of an Oregon early summer, smelling the pine coming in through the open window; but all he really saw was Marian's tortured eyes, and all he'd smelled was disinfectant and old blood and adhesive.

It was the same when he walked through security and showed the pass that let him carry fifteen pounds of metal on his belt down to the gate. The sensors beeped when he passed through the archway, and they sounded like the monitors measuring Marian's life back in the ICU.

It wasn't really a long walk to the gate. It just seemed that way. Halfway there Theo stopped for a cell call, then hurried to catch up. 'Crime Scene might have found the knife in Huttinger's dishwasher.'

'There goes that evidence.'

'Maybe not. It's serrated. They can pull a positive blade match from where he cut her.'

Frost stopped in his tracks, thinking autopsy. You didn't excise flesh and bone for a weapon match from a live person, which meant Marian was dead. He didn't have to say anything. All Theo had to do was look at his Chief to know what he was thinking.

'Oh, damn, Chief, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Marian's doing fine. Getting better.'

Frost closed his eyes and exhaled.

'But the thing is, well, the throat wound was pretty ragged, you know? So the surgeon had to do some trimming before he could close it. He'd done a turn as county coroner a few years back, so he knows evidence. He took care trimming and saved the flesh for a possible match someday.'

Frost was looking out the window at the 737 pulling up to the gate. His smile was slow in coming, and just a little scary.

Clinton Huttinger was one of the first off the plane, and never in a million years would Frost have passed him on the street and thought that this was an evil man. He looked just like the pictures Theo had pulled off the Web. Clean- cut, well-dressed but not pretentious, a little half-smile permanently placed on lips that told everyone who saw him what a fine, gentle fellow he was.

'Mr. Huttinger?'

Yes.' The smile broadened. 'Can I help you?'

He didn't even go pale when Frost started the very careful process of placing him under arrest. He just stood there with a baffled little-boy smile, cooperating in every way possible, looking to all the curious passers-by more like a Boy Scout than a crazed killer. Frost played to the gathering crowd, apologizing to Huttinger for the necessity of handcuffs, inquiring as to their comfort.

'They're fine, Officer.'

'Chief.'

'Excuse me?'

'It's Chief Frost, Medford Police Department.'

'Oh. Pardon me. It's just that I won't be able to carry my bags with my hands behind my back.'

Frost smiled benevolently. 'Of course not. We'll be happy to carry them for you. Just the single case and the laptop?'

'That's right.'

Theo moved to pick up the luggage but the Chief intercepted him, bending to pick up the hard-bodied Samsonite case with the metal reinforcements at the corners, then standing quickly, suitcase swinging as he turned back to face Huttinger. Centrifugal force was an amazing thing, he thought, as the case swung wide and fast with the turn, headed directly for the gentle English teacher's crotch. Huttinger took a quick, panicked step backward, and Frost managed to stop the case's momentum with an inch to spare. He looked head-on at Huttinger and smiled.

'Whew. That was a close one.'

Huttinger didn't say a thing, but he wasn't smiling anymore.