Frozen

by Jay Bonansinga

  He latched the stall door and sat down on the edge of the stool, his pants still buckled, his hands shaking, his leather portfolio still slung over his shoulder. He did not have to move his bowels. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a matchbox bound with Scotch tape and a rubber band.

  Inside the matchbox lay a tiny glassine vial of heroin, which Okuda rooted out carefully and peeled open. He got his dope from a graduate student over at the chemistry building, and it was gourmet shit. Laboratory grade. Okuda had gotten to the point that he couldn’t function throughout the day without at least one pop, or maybe two. So far, he had been able to keep his drug use a secret, but discretion was getting more difficult every day. Mathis had walked in on him in the lunchroom the other day, and Okuda had been forced to dump about seventy-five dollars’ worth of powder down the sink.

  Thumbing through his portfolio, he found a stiff piece of plastic—a copy of one of Keanu’s X-rays—and laid a tiny little snake of beige powder across its shiny surface. He plucked a hollow coffee stirrer from the matchbox, and greedily sniffed the dope off the X-ray.

  A bolt of cold pushed down his nasal passage and into his throat. He had always preferred snorting the dope to smoking it or, God forbid, shooting it. Okuda hated needles. He sat back, resting his head against the wall, waiting for the buzz to calm him down and steady him. His hands trembled. Nervous tension knotted his gut. He gazed down at the X-ray on his lap, still frosted with powder. He looked at the milky, unfocused image of the Iceman’s skull, the eye sockets like great gaping craters in some awful relief map.

  From the moment the FBI profiler had started snooping around the lab and making connections between the mummy and the modern serial killer, Okuda had been exceedingly spooked. There was something going on now that was simply beyond his grasp, beyond the prosaic world of laboratory analysis and scientific method.

  A noise out in the main corridor sent gooseflesh up Okuda’s back.

  It sounded like muffled footsteps, or maybe a voice, Okuda wasn’t sure. The janitors roamed at this hour. It was probably a janitor. Okuda was just being paranoid and jumpy. He wondered how bad off he would be without the heroin. He wondered if the panic attacks would be constant, if his nerves would eventually send him to an institution. He had a therapist once who told him that he did drugs because his mom and dad were so judgmental and hard on him. First-generation Okinawans, the elder Okudas had always pushed their son to enter academic competitions—spelling bees, debates, essay contests—because that was what America was all about: competing, winning, beating the other guy. By the time the boy was a senior in high school, he had developed a full-blown ulcer.

  The noise was outside the men’s room now—hasty footsteps and a muffled voice.

  “Michael? You in there?”

  The sound of knocking made Okuda jerk. He dropped the X-ray, and the matchbox bounced off his lap. Adrenaline surged in his veins, and a Roman candle exploded in his line of vision, the buzz kicking in all once. He brushed himself off and swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. He took a deep breath and tried to blink away the shock. Who the hell would be looking for him at five o’clock in the morning?

  “Y-yeah—who is it?” Okuda’s voice was wobbly.

  “It’s Grove, Agent Grove. The guard let me in, said you were down here.”

  “Just a minute!” For a moment Okuda could not swallow, his mouth was so dry. He dropped to his hands and knees and gathered up the X-ray and the matchbox. He put the X-ray back in his portfolio and zipped it closed. Then he stuffed the matchbox back in his pocket.

  “You okay?” the voice wanted to know.

  “Coming!”

  Okuda pushed the stall door open and went over to the mirror. His face was ashen. His eyes watered with the telltale glaze of a fresh dope buzz. Would the profiler recognize the druggy stare in Okuda’s eyes? In a weird way, Okuda didn’t really care. Was that the high working on him? Was that the false courage of a heroin surge? The Asian splashed some water on his face, dried off, and went over to the door.

  “Sorry to barge in on you,” the tall black man said after Okuda had opened the door. Grove stood in the hallway in his tweed overcoat, his hands in his pockets, his expression burning with urgency. His shoulders looked damp with rain. “I tried your apartment, then figured you might be working the early shift,” Grove said.

  “What is it?” Okuda asked, his own voice sounding meek and strangled in his ears. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need your help,” he said.

  “Anything.”

  “I need to know about that day.”

  “What day?”

  “When they found him.”

  “Keanu?”

  “That’s right, I need to know who found him, who saw him first.”

  Okuda thought for a moment. “They were . . . hikers, I guess. They were on vacation.”

  Grove’s eyes burned. “I need everything you got, names, addresses, phone numbers—I need to know about every single person who was on that mountain that day.”

  Okuda shrugged. “We got files on it . . . you might also want to talk to the cops.”

  “Mind showing me what you’ve got?”

  “Come on,” Okuda said, pushing past the door and into the hall.

  The Asian led the profiler down a deserted corridor, past mazes of cubicles, light tables, electron microscopes, and examination areas. Known as the “dry lab,” this area encompassed much of the basement level, and now sat completely empty, dark, and silent. Okuda’s buzz had completely kicked in by that point, and the shadows seemed to pulse with a weird kind of energy. Energy radiated off Grove as well. Okuda sensed it like a red wake curling behind the handsome profiler. The man’s expression was fixed and set, almost like a pitcher about to deliver a fastball on a full count.

  Turning a corner at the end of the main corridor, Okuda remembered the diary. “You know what?” he said over his shoulder, snapping his fingers. “There’s a document you might want to check out.”

  “What kind of document?” Grove was striding briskly along behind Okuda.

  “A park ranger there that day, she kept a journal.”

  “A journal.”

  “A diary, yeah, we used excerpts in our presentation to the Royal Academy last year.”

  “And you’ve got her entry from that day?”

  “Yes, absolutely, that’s what I’m saying.” Okuda nodded as they marched along. “We’ve got her journal entry from the day they found the Iceman.”

  They turned another corner and headed down a narrow side corridor bordered by unmarked doors.

  Grove looked intrigued. “This is a private journal?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s personal, right? It’s not an official logbook, or job-related thing.”

  “No, no. This is a copy of a girl’s personal diary. She was pretty freaked out by the whole thing. Here we go.” At the end of the hall Okuda paused in front of a painted iron door with an elaborate magnetic lock. He dug in his pocket for his wallet, found the little magnetic card, pulled it out, and swiped it through the lock. The door clicked, and Okuda led the profiler into a dark archive room.

  Fluorescent lights stuttered on, illuminating a musty chamber of interlocking shelves brimming with hand-labeled binders, bound reports, and dog-eared old volumes reaching up to the acoustic tile ceiling fifteen feet overhead. A single shopworn conference table cluttered with index cards sat in the center of the room. The worn carpet was the color of old mustard. The air smelled of mold.

  “If I’m not mistaken, that journal is still in the ID bin,” Okuda muttered, more to himself than Grove, as he crossed the room and knelt down by a row of black vinyl binders packed as tightly as a huge tin of sardines.

  “ID bin?”

  “Interdepartmental . . . here we go.” Okuda felt pleasantly giddy as he pried one of the binders out of its row and opened it. He saw the telltale labeling on the first page, a series of coded numbers over a Xerox of
a freehand signature. Okuda smiled. Contrary to popular myth, heroin addicts are not antisocial creatures who nod off in shadowy opium dens with needles sticking out of their arms. The heroin high is so transformative, so monolithic to the central nervous system, that the junkie cannot help but become a hail-fellow-well-met. It’s only when sobriety kicks in a few hours later that the addict wakes up in hell. “I believe the first ten pages or so are from that day,” Okuda said as he handed over the binder. “The ranger’s a young lady named Lori Havers. Can’t tell you much about her . . . except that she was assigned to the Mount Cairn trailhead, which was the area in which the mummy was found.”

  The profiler opened the binder and started reading.

  “If memory serves, I think she came from Denver, had a master’s degree in social work, something like that,” Okuda went on. “She left the ranger service shortly after all this happened. I think she moved back to Denver. Feel free to take a seat.” Okuda gestured at the conference table. “Take all the time you need, and use the interoffice phone to call me if you need anything, just dial eight-two-one.”

  The profiler nodded a thank-you and sat down at the conference table.

  His eyes never left the pages of the diary.

  March 19

  What happened today . . . it started like any other day and it ended like a dream. But I feel like I should get it all down on paper before I start forgetting stuff. So . . . here goes.

  It was about 6:45 in the morning and I was sitting in my ranger shack and I think I was actually reading a newspaper and having my first cup of coffee of the day. I should mention that I heard them before I saw them. That much I remember really well. I heard this intense bickering over the sound of the creek and the birds. I heard this man and woman bickering. I couldn’t tell what they were arguing about, but they were mad. You could hear the anger in their voices. Mostly it was the woman, ranting and raving at her husband.

  I looked out the shack’s window and saw them about a hundred yards away, at the trailhead, where the birch trees clear, a middle-aged couple with this big object between them. At first I thought it was a big cocoon or a wasp nest or something. It was dark and oblong shaped and it had sticks at each end. I grabbed my walkie-talkie and rushed out of the shack.

  And I’m going, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” I remember my heart was beating, because I could tell they were trying to remove something from the park—whatever the hell it was—and all I could think of was the strict guidelines they hammer into our brains in training about not removing any natural flora or fauna from the park, and I’m going, “Sir! Ma’am! EXCUSE ME!”

  And here they come—this wealthy couple in their designer hiking garb—and I start telling them they can’t remove anything from the park, regulations and all that, and this lady starts yelling at me!

  “You don’t understand, you don’t understand,” she kept saying, huffing and puffing as she dragged this thing toward me. She looked exhausted, lugging her end of the thing with veins bulging in her skinny neck.

  I have to pause here for a brief aside: usually this kind of woman would make me want to wretch—up here with her designer hiking gear and straight-off-the-rack hiking boots, scared to death of breaking one of her manicured nails—but this woman looked rattled. She looked like she had just seen a ghost and it was immediately putting me on my guard.

  Another aside: it had been a mild winter in Alaska this year—and was turning out to be a warm, wet spring—so the ground around the trailhead was really soft and moist. And I remember this thing they were carrying made a splat when they dropped it on the parkway in front of my shack. And the lady’s going, “I know we probably shouldn’t have touched anything, but I couldn’t see leaving it up there, you know, so sue me, I’m sorry.”

  Her husband was this big geeky guy in this stupid velour coat who looked like he wanted to scream but didn’t have the guts. And he just stood there in a sort of daze.

  Finally I took a closer look at it and realized what it was.

  It’s hard to explain, but staring down at that leathery thing, that corpse or mummy or whatever it was, I could not speak for the longest time. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but stare. I know I’m supposed to be a professional and all that, I’m supposed to be trained to handle emergencies, but Jesus God, they never said anything about human corpses in the Fisheries and Wildlife Handbook. I don’t even think I took a breath. The look on that thing’s face!

  I had no idea what to do. I tried to think. But all I remember is staring at that shriveled, brown body at our feet and not being able to formulate any thoughts whatsoever. They told me where they found it. Actually it was the husband who found the thing. And when he told me where he found it—by the 10k trail marker—I was even more puzzled. That part of the trail is one of the most traveled areas on the mountain. It’s like this crossroads where the beginner trail gives way to the intermediate. I’d guess about a million people have been over that spot since the park opened back in ‘27. Nearly eighty spring thaws. And it’s this idiot who finds the thing!

  Finally I told the two of them to go ahead and have a seat in my shack, and I would be right with them after I called the cops.

  I’ll never forget that couple: Helen and Richard Ackerman from Wilmette, Illinois. Later I found out all about their rich midwestern lifestyle, their dogs, their cars, their sailboat, and all that nonsense, as I was trying to piece together the chronology of their discovery. But anyway, I finally got them safely tucked away in the shack and then I took out my cell phone and dialed the sheriff’s department.

  The only person on duty at the sheriff’s department at that time of the morning was this young deputy named Nick Sabitine. I knew Nick from county softball games. He was a decent guy, kind of shy . . . anyway . . . Nick was also kinda fond of looking over the shoulders of detectives. I guess he had written a number of memos to his superiors requesting future placement in training programs. Anyway, needless to say, when my frantic call came over radio dispatch that morning, Nick Sabitine’s ears perked right up.

  The deputy made the drive up to the trailhead in less than 20 minutes. By the time he got there, I was a bundle of nerves, trying to simultaneously keep the gawkers away from the body while keeping the Ackermans from tearing the ranger shack apart.

  Taking one look at the body—especially the expression on its face—Nick got everybody out of there and cordoned off the area with yellow crime scene tape. He put the Ackermans in the back of his prowler (which wasn’t easy, I have to say), then he called in the crime lab.

  Another thing I should mention: Nick had no proof at that early stage—other than that hideous expression on the mummy’s face—that this case was anything other than an unlucky climber or a hiker who had wandered off the trail and into a ravine. Any suggestion that there was foul play involved or whatever would not come until about an hour later, when Lieutenant Alan Pinsky, a detective from the Anchorage District 7 Homicide Squad, showed up at the scene.

  Pinsky showed up around eleven o’clock, I think it was, and he totally took charge. I don’t know whether this guy has some kind of Napoleonic complex or what. He’s a little guy, totally bald, but he’s a powerful personality. Dressed in his Columbo trench coat. With those little cunning beady eyes. Anyway, I’m not complaining. He treated me with nothing but respect and courtesy. But he took charge immediately.

  I remember him saying that he thought the body might be the last missing member of that climbing team that got stranded a couple of years ago. I also remember the little detective’s eyes sparkling with interest as he knelt down by the corpse and looked it up and down.

  I told Pinsky we were keeping the folks who had found the mummy in the prowler.

  Pinsky looked up at me and he goes, “Do you think they found this poor schmuck’s johnson up there?”

  I went, “Huh?”

  And Pinsky says, “His penis, his cock.” And then he pointed at the mummy’s groin.

  Pinsky examine
d the body for a few minutes, and then he told Nick to call the college, the one in Anchorage, the one with a department of physical anthropology.

  By that point Nick already had his notebook out, and had his ballpoint pen clicked, and he was writing like crazy.

  So then Nick goes roaring off in his cruiser, leaving Pinsky and me to deal with the crowd of hikers gathering on the other side of the tape, and also with the Ackermans, who were, by that point, following me around and yelling at me.

  I watched Pinsky handle everybody like a pro. But he had his hands full with Helen Ackerman, who, by that point, was in no mood for another interview. She had some kind of nail wrap or facial or whatever scheduled for that afternoon at the Eskimo Village Resort in Anchorage, and no little “Jew” detective was going to keep her cooped up in this hideous shack one instant longer.

  Another aside: this lady was the vilest kind of anti-Semite, which was ironic, since, according to their interview, she had married a Jewish man. God, it takes all kinds.

  Anyway, Pinsky finally got so sick of her that he told the Ackermans they could go. The Ackermans left in a huff, the husband following the angry wife like a lapdog, and Pinsky and I sat on the hood of his car for a while, talking about whatever. I got the feeling that even then, just sitting in the sun, chatting, the little detective was getting information out of me. He was a real pro, this guy.

  The dude from the university arrived 45 minutes later. Michael Okuda was his name, a young Asian guy. He exchanged greetings with Pinsky and me, then carried his little backpack over to the thawing body.

  Pinsky and I stood close by as this guy knelt down by the body and studied it.

  Finally Pinsky goes, “What do you think?”

  And the young guy mumbled something without taking his eyes off the body.

  And Pinsky asked him what he just said.

  And this Okuda guy looked up at us and went, “Holy shit.” I swear to God that’s what he said. Those are Michael Okuda’s exact words. And he proceeds to tell us this body is really old.