Frozen Stiff Page 4

  What had it been like?

  Truthfully, it had felt like she, Chase Edith Adams, 32 years old, had become Yolanda Strand, 22 years old.

  Like she had been her.

  It had also felt like the first time she injected heroin. It had been an out of body experience, it had been disorienting, and it had made her feel sick when she finally came down.

  But, of course, this latter part wasn’t something she could share with Martinez.

  She looked across the table at the man, who sat, beer poised but not quite touching his lips.

  He wanted an answer, so Chase gave him one.

  “It was like reading a book,” was the best she could come up with—the most benign analogy her tired brain could generate. “Reading a really good book.”

  It was obtuse, but Martinez seemed to accept her answer, and finally took a sip of his beer.

  “Not hungry?” he asked after swallowing. His dark eyes flicked to the plate of food that lay in front of her.

  Chase had ordered a club sandwich on brown bread—trying to be healthy after the greasy mess of a burger she had devoured at lunch—and a green salad, but the wilted lettuce leaves, which appeared to have been scraped from a picky patron’s burger, made her stomach churn.

  She still hadn’t completely recovered from her… vision.

  “Just tired,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

  Martinez nodded, jammed some fries into his mouth and chased them with another sip of beer.

  “I hear you.”

  Except Martinez didn’t look tired in the least.

  “How about you?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m alright. Arrived four days ago. More than enough time to acclimate.”

  Chase raised an eyebrow. Four days ago was before the murders had been committed. Martinez must have recognized something on her face, as he said, “Was here on other business. Me and the Chief have… history.”

  The way he said the word history made it clear that he wasn’t keen on discussing it further.

  Which was fine by Chase; everyone had their secrets, including her, and save sitting around in a circle with incense burning and singing Kumbaya, she intended on keeping it this way.

  “Listen, I got you set up at a Motel not ten minutes from here. It’s nothing special—” Martinez laughed, “—but it should do the trick. I’ve got a room just a few doors down.”

  He produced a key with a ridiculously large dongle that had the number 17 engraved on one side.

  Chase took it from his hand.

  “Thanks,” she said, to which Martinez nodded.

  “Just let me finish up here, and then we’ll get going. Tired or not, I need to sleep. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘Nothing special’ turned out to be one of the most ridiculous understatements that Chase had ever heard.

  Girdwood Motel looked on the verge of being condemned. Chase’s experience on her flight had dissolved any illusions of private jets and champagne, but this? This was too much.

  Or too little, as it were.

  “Does the trick,” Martinez said as he pulled the rental into the empty lot. There was a hint of defensiveness in the man’s voice, something that suggested that he had stayed here before.

  Why that would be the case, Chase had absolutely no clue.

  “Hey, what’s with the kid, Floyd?” she asked before they exited the vehicle.

  Martinez turned off the car and turned to face her.

  “What do you mean?”

  Chase shrugged. She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, anymore than she knew what had happened to her in the morgue. Still, she felt compelled to open a dialog about the man.

  “Is he really the Chief’s nephew?”

  Although her experience at the morgue had set her mind into a frenzy, she had actively pushed these thoughts into deeper faculties, not wanting to bias herself by creating a profile before she had all the facts. And yet something about Floyd had struck her as… off. And it wasn’t just the fact that he was a little slow.

  After all, a man with a stutter, of a similar age to the victims… it wouldn’t be the first time that someone had gone off the deep end and extracted revenge for incessant bullying.

  “Huh. I’m not sure. He calls Chief Downs his uncle, and they sure as hell look alike, but the Chief hasn’t directly told me that they’re related. He’s always just hanging around… for as long as I’ve known the Chief, Floyd has been in the picture.” Martinez paused. “Why? You getting a vibe?”

  Chase hesitated before replying.

  “No, not really. Just curious. Is he going to drive me again tomorrow?”

  “If you want. I’m a notorious early riser, and I can see that you need some rest. If I’m gone before you wake, I’ll have him swing by.”

  “And he’ll be alright with that?”

  Martinez laughed.

  “Alright? The guy thinks he’s some sort of driver for the president. The boy’s in heaven.”

  Chase nodded, thinking about how nervous the man had been when he had first approached her in the airport.

  “What’s the plan for tomorrow, anyway?”

  Martinez’s hand hovered over the door handle, and Chase suddenly felt foolish—no, not foolish, but amateurish for asking such a question.

  “I thought you’d want to speak to the truck driver who found the bodies.”

  “Yes, of course,” Chase said quickly, trying to recover. “And then maybe we can talk to some of Yolanda and Francine’s friends at the university.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Martinez replied as he stepped out into the cold.

  They walked in silence toward the rows of rooms, half of which were missing either part or all of the numbers indicating which room they actually were.

  Martinez stopped in front of a door with a one—the second number had long since either rotted away or had been stolen—his key poised by the lock.

  “This is me,” he said without turning. “Yours is three down. Get some rest, Adams, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Chase said goodnight and continued down the row of rooms. She identified number 17 not be the digits on the door, it was, in fact, missing both number, but because it was sandwiched between 1— and 18. She tried her key and the door opened.

  To her surprise, the interior of the small motel room was in considerably better shape than the exterior. Still no Four Seasons, she realized that what Martinez had said had some ring of truth to it.

  Nothing special.

  And yet it would do the trick.

  She checked the glowing numbers on the clock beside the bed.

  It was five minutes to nine, which meant in NYC time, it was almost one in the morning.

  Her first inclination was to shower, to scrape the residue of the day from her skin, but when she sat on the quilted mattress to remove her Choos, it was clear that she wasn’t going to make it that far.

  I’ll just rest for a minute or two, she thought, knowing that these were famous last words even as they formulated in her mind.

  Sleep took her like the moon takes night.

  “Chase? Chase? Please, you need to help me.”

  Georgina’s words were haunting, desperate.

  “Tell me where you are,” Chase whispered into the dark. “Please, Georgie, just tell me where you are.”

  Chase was somewhere cold and damp, the walls slick with condensation. She tried to look around, but everything seemed to blur, as if she were moving extremely fast instead of rooted in place.

  “Chase? Are you there?”

  She felt her heart rate quicken.

  “I’m here, Georgie. I’m here, just tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

  Chase’s voice sounded like her own, like her 32-year-old self, but when Georgina replied, she did so in the same voice as the day she had been abducted: that of a five-year-old girl, hot, nervous, and afraid.

  My god,
she seemed terrified.

  “Why did you run, Chase? Why didn’t you stay? We could have gotten away together.”

  Chase felt her chest hitch.

  “I wanted to… I wanted to stay, but he would have grabbed us both. I had—” no choice, she tried to say, but her throat was suddenly too constricted to answer.

  It was a lie. She had had a choice, and her decision was to run. But she was only seven, and although she was two years Georgina’s elder, she too was just a child.

  “I—I—”

  The shadows in front of her, previously impenetrable, suddenly started to pixelate.

  And then Chase saw her sister as she had been that day. Her blond hair damp with sweat, her eyes wide, her face glistening in whatever dream lights existed in this place.

  Strangely, she was crawling.

  Chase tried to stand, but her body was frozen in place. When Georgina continued to crawl toward her, fear suddenly struck Chase, and instead of wanting to go to her sister, she suddenly felt a strong urge to run in the opposite direction.

  Just as she had that summer day.

  “Please,” she moaned. “Please, Georgina. I’m sorry…”

  Georgina continued toward her, eyes wide, mouth twisted in a grimace of exertion.

  When she was nearly on top of Chase, she suddenly turned back.

  “My legs… there’s something wrong with my legs…” the girl whispered.

  Chase followed her sister’s gaze, then she started to scream.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sleep vacated Chase Adams nearly as quickly as it had come.

  She was awake when Martinez’s door opened, and watched as he made his way toward his car, breathing large puffs of warm air into cupped hands to warm them.

  He didn’t turn to look at her, didn’t so much as glance in the direction of Room 17.

  He’s letting me sleep, she thought.

  But Chase couldn’t sleep, not after the harrowing nightmare of seeing her sister relieved of her feet.

  And yet Chase didn’t open the door. In fact, after Martinez started his car, she closed the cheap plastic blinds completely.

  There was something about Floyd, something that didn’t seem right to her. And she relished the opportunity to speak to him again.

  A glance at the clock indicated that it wasn’t quite six yet, local time. Chase had been awake since one, only cat-napping from then until now, and was still feeling the effects of jet lag and fatigue.

  Still, after a warm shower, Chase found that most of the exhaustion sluiced off her. After dabbing cover-up beneath her eyes, and on the inside of her elbows to hide the scars, she moved to the bed… and realized that the only clothes she had were the ones that she had worn all day yesterday.

  “Shit,” she grumbled. Wrapping the towel, which had a thread count of about seven, around her waist, Chase reached for her cell phone.

  She turned it on, and her frown became intractable. There were no missed calls, no texts waiting. The airline was one thing, but Brad? Brad and Felix?

  It had been a few days since she had spoken to either of them, and it wasn’t like them not to check in, especially given the messages she had left. But rather than call her family, she dialed the number scrawled on the back of the luggage ticket instead.

  Now close to seven, she was surprised when it was answered on the first ring. What didn’t impress her, however, was that she was fairly certain it was the same man she had spoken to the day before. The one with the temperament of a sedated goat.

  “Hi,” Chase said, trying not to let exasperation creep into her voice. “I’m calling about my luggage… it never made it to Anchorage from Seattle.”

  “Can I have your name and ticket number, please.”

  Chase’s eyes darted to the luggage tag.

  “Chase Adams, number 101A434.”

  “Please hold.”

  Before she could say anything, the line clicked and she was acquainted with the sound of a tuba playing at the end of a long hallway.

  Movement in her periphery caught her eye, and Chase looked toward the window. Even though she had closed the blinds after Martinez had left, they were bent in several places and she could still see into the parking lot. A black Lincoln Town Car appeared, slowed, and then stopped outside her door.

  The line clicked.

  “Mrs. Adams?”

  “Yes? Has my stuff arrived?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What? What do you mean, you don’t think so? It’s either there, or it isn’t.”

  “Well there are several bags without tags. Can you please describe your bag to me?”

  Chase sighed and closed her eyes, recalling the image of her suitcase.

  “It’s a plain black suitcase, has ADAMS written on the tag.”

  “Is that all?”

  Chase opened her eyes and shook her head.

  What else do you need?

  “Yes, that’s all.”

  “One moment, please.”

  The tuba returned, and Chase had to breathe through her mouth and nose to retain control.

  Eventually, just as the driver side door of the Lincoln Town Car started to open, the man returned.

  “No, I’m sorry, but there is no luggage that meets your description.”

  “Fine,” Chase snapped. “I have an address now, if you could be so kind as to take that down?”

  “Mmm, hmm, go ahead.”

  Chase gave the man Girdwood Motel’s address from a book of matches on the bedside table, and told him that she was in Room 17.

  “Okay, we’ll be in touch as soon as—”

  Chase hung up the phone, and, almost as if he had been waiting for this moment, Floyd knocked on the door.

  “A-A-Agent Adams? It’s Floyd. Agent M-M-Martinez said to come by and p-p-pick you up.”

  Chase begrudgingly started to dress in the same clothes as yesterday.

  “I’ll be right out,” she said.

  “O-Okay, I’ll w-w-wait in the car,” Floyd replied.

  She saw him walk, hunched, to his car and get back into the driver seat.

  After dressing and trying her best to smooth out the wrinkles on her white blouse, Chase took the pistol still in the holster and strapped it around her waist. Next, she pulled the red parka on, and zipped it up tight.

  Out of habit, she turned back to the room before she stepped out into the cold, to see if she had left anything behind, before realizing that she had nothing to leave behind.

  With a frown, she opened the door and stepped outside.

  Chase immediately turned her eyes upward. The sun shone brightly in the sky, and it must have been a good twenty degrees warmer than yesterday. The dark clouds that had formed on their drive from the crime scene to Alaska Regional Hospital had since disappeared, and it felt more like October in New York than March in Alaska.

  Floyd rolled down the window.

  “O-O-Over here, Chase,” he said with a grin.

  Chase couldn’t help but return the expression. Floyd’s unmistakable Town Car was the only one in the motel parking lot.

  “I can see that, Floyd. I can see that.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Welcome, Agent Adams,” Chief Downs said when Chase pulled the door to the conference room wide.

  She was surprised to see that three of the Chief’s men—likely the grand total of Girdwood officers—were already seated at small desks in front of the man, with Martinez standing at his side.

  Chase felt her face redden as she made her way toward an open desk.

  “So glad that you could finally join us.”

  Chase kept her head low.

  What the hell? Why didn’t Martinez tell me that there was a pow-wow scheduled?

  At the greasy spoon the night prior, he had told her the plan was just to interview the driver again.

  Shaking her head, Chase pulled a chair out and was about to sit, when Martinez addressed her directly.

  “Up here, Agent Ada
ms,” he said.

  Chase raised her head, and realized that all eyes were on her. If her face had been red before, it had now turned a shade of purple that Oprah would have been proud of.

  “Sorry,” she grumbled, pushing the chair back into place. She walked to the front of the room, doing her best to keep her head held high this time.

  She didn’t know if this was some sort of rookie initiation by Agent Martinez, or if he was simply being a dick, but she didn’t much care, either.

  This petty act reminded her of how the old Sergeant at 62nd precinct NYPD had treated her before she had taken his position.

  Do these people not take anything seriously? There are two dead girls sans feet, in a morgue not a twenty-minute drive from here, and their priority is to embarrass me?

  Chase swallowed hard and ground her teeth.

  Maybe it was her stature, the fact that she was a woman, or the fact that she was attractive, or maybe it was all of these things, working in concert to ensure that others didn’t take her seriously.

  Didn’t treat her with respect.

  “Thank you,” Chief Downs said with a sly grin when she had finally taken up residence beside him.

  The charade apparently complete, Martinez stepped forward and said, “This is Special Agent Chase Adams, she will be assisting me on this investigation. I ask that you give her your full cooperation.”

  Chase glared at him.

  You want them to show me respect? After what you just pulled?

  Chase desperately wanted to say something, to come back with a quip, but bit her tongue.

  It had been her dream, her goal to become an FBI Agent, and she wasn’t going to jeopardize this on her first case, no matter how unconventional things had been up to this point.

  Instead, she locked eyes with any of the Girdwood PD who dared look in her direction.

  She had been through this before, of course, and knew that the one thing that these bullies craved more than anything was a response.

  And Chase refused to give them one.

  “Now that the introductions are done,” Downs said, “I’ll give you a rundown of what we know to date. As you guys are probably aware, two days ago a truck driver,” he used a pointer to tap at a photograph taped to the blackboard behind him, “Henry Buckly found the bodies as he was shipping goods north. The frozen stiffs—” Chase cringed at the term as he moved the pointer to photos of the two girls, “—were Yolanda Strand and Francine Butler, both 22, both sophomores at University of Alaska, Anchorage. Their feet had been hacked off with what CSU thinks is a heavy-duty hacksaw, and then the wounds were crudely cauterized with something very hot.” The pointer moved to images of the stumps, and Chase saw several of the men in the audience cringe. “Forensic pathology has confirmed that while it would have been difficult to remove the feet, the cauterizing was extremely crude—our unsub likely has some, but not extensive, medical knowledge. Or a good internet connection, I suppose. Agent Martinez?”