Frozen

by Jay Bonansinga

  Maura glanced over her shoulder only once at the sad, elegant matron wandering off into the night. And for a brief moment, Maura wondered if she would ever see the woman again. She thought not. She felt as though her role in this drama had ended.

  She would soon learn, however, how wrong she was on both counts.

  21

  Everything Is a Ritual

  At some point in the lowest chasm of the night, Ulysses Grove had another vision. His third over the course of a single, tumultuous week. This time there was no hospital bed, no tether to reality.

  This time he was the Iceman, and he was suffocating. Buried under tons of snow. Gasping for air. Convulsing. Dying. And all he could see was a black, serpentine object in the ice above him, burrowing down toward him.

  At first he thought it was a snake. Blurred by layers of snow and slush, pulsing with horrible, malignant life, the dark object wormed its way closer and closer, until Grove started screaming. He tried to turn away from this terrible thing coming for him, reeking of menace, infected with disease and evil.

  Shuddering in his death throes, lungs heaving, his body numb and useless, Grove let out a howl of terror as the object broke through the ice only inches from his face.

  The hand was ancient and blackened, the hand of a mummified corpse, and it beckoned to Grove, tempted him: if only he would grasp it, accept it, surrender to it. Touch it!—

  —and that’s when he was literally jolted back to the here and now.

  He jerked forward in the darkness of the hospital room, a paroxysm of gasping and shuddering. It took him a moment just to catch his breath, and another few moments to realize he was crying. The tears had already left salty tracks on his face and soaked the collar of his cotton gown, and he fought them for a moment. What is wrong with you!

  But the more he fought those tears, the more he realized that this vision had revealed something important. Something critical about the mummy, and the connection to Ackerman, and, most importantly, what Grove would be expected to do in order to stop the killing. Which was the saddest part. It was too late. Grove was finished. Someone else would have to live out this destiny.

  Someone stronger than Grove.

  He lay there for a moment, letting go of his emotions, letting the tears sluice through him, the whispery noise of his bitter, breathless weeping filling the empty room. It went on for some time, the IV drips and monitors unhooked and shut down, the silence absorbing the noise . . . until finally Grove realized his sobbing was not the only sound in the room.

  At first it sounded like an electronic hum just underneath the noise of Grove’s sobs, but the more audible it became, the more Grove listened to it . . . and the more he listened to it, the more his cries dwindled. Before long he had stopped weeping altogether, and now he simply tried to breathe, his respiration hitching and hyperventilating like the chugging gasps of a frightened boy. He listened more closely to the humming sound and realized it was another voice in the room with him.

  “Wha—”

  A shadow hovered over his shoulder, and he recoiled from it, jerking back with an involuntary gasp. The shadow cooed softly then, an arm appearing out of nowhere, settling gently on Grove’s forearm.

  He looked down and saw the ashy brown fingers of his mother on his arm, and he realized Vida was in the room with him. He had been hearing her voice in the darkness, softly humming an African lullaby, comforting him.

  “Mom?”

  “It is all right now,” she whispered. “I am here, Uly, I am with you.”

  His eyes adjusting to the darkness, Grove saw his mother on a stool next to the bed, illuminated by a slender thread of moonlight seeping under the blinds. She leaned over the rail and put a slender arm around Grove’s shoulders. And her touch, the warmth of it, momentarily stirred a cauldron of contrary emotions inside Grove—shame, loneliness, regret—until the feelings all burned off like a flame kissing a pool of denatured alcohol.

  Grove felt another tide of sobs rising in him, and he let it come.

  He leaned over and cried in his mother’s arms. He cried for all the years of vague hostility toward his mother, all the years of resentment, of betrayal, of misdirected anger. Vida held him and went on humming her tender lullaby. Soon she was singing softly, slightly off-key, in a smoky voice—and the song penetrated Grove’s sorrow, and he recognized it: an old Zambian lullaby called “Mayo Mpapa,” a folktale that teaches children about the protection a parent provides a child:

  “Mayo mpapa naine nka ku papa

  Ukwenda babili kwali wama pa chalo,

  Ndeya ndeya ndeya no mwana ndeya

  Ndeya no mwana wandi munshila ba mpapula,

  Munshila ba mpapaula

  Iye, iye, iye yangu umwnaa wandi

  Yangu umwana wandi mushila ba mpapula.”

  (“Mother, carry me.

  I will care for you one day.

  It’s not good to be alone in this world.

  Mother, carry me.

  I will carry you one day

  The way a crocodile carries its young on her

  back.”)

  When she was done singing, Vida held her son in the silent darkness. Grove was still. He felt changed somehow, like the remnant of a fuse that had burned out.

  At last, he got out of bed—

  —but the moment his bare feet hit the floor the dizziness and pain washed over him, and he had to grasp the bed rail for purchase. The dizziness passed. He took a deep breath and shuffle-limped—very slowly—over to the switch panel, then turned on the lights. Then he managed to painfully shove an armchair around to the other side of the bed so that his mother could sit more comfortably. Grove’s injured hip throbbed, and his face tingled as his tears dried. He sat back down on the bed very carefully.

  They talked then. Well into the predawn hours of the morning. They talked and talked. About the old days in Chicago, about the old neighborhood and old relatives who had passed away. They laughed at certain things, and they got very quiet at others. At one point, Vida held her son’s hand, and Grove made no effort to pull it away. It was as though he could see clearly for the first time in his adult life.

  Eventually the conversation circled back to their troubled relationship.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Grove said at last. “I’m sorry for a lot of things. I should have—”

  “Please, Uly,” she interrupted. “Do not ever say you are sorry.” She smiled when she saw his puzzled face. “There is no need for apologies, because this is the way that the spirits meant it all to happen.”

  Grove smiled back at her for a moment, then his smile faded slightly as he wondered what else the spirits had in store for him.

  After his talk with his mother, Grove took two Vicoden and slumbered for nearly four hours while Vida sat in the corner of the room, reading, watching her son sleep. And for that brief interlude, as the dawn lightened the window behind the blinds, that hospital room felt as safe and sane as any room had ever felt in the history of Grove’s stormy life.

  When he finally awoke, shortly before 9:00 a.m., his body felt oddly replenished—albeit still very sore. His hands had most of their mobility back, but were stiff, and the wounds along his torso and upper thighs had swollen and tightened. Every movement brought a twinge of deep pain, and the dizziness had worsened, but he felt strangely energized.

  He said good morning to his mom, then carefully climbed out of bed and prepared to be released. For old times’ sake Vida helped him get dressed. Grove grinned to himself as she laid his jacket—still in its plastic dry cleaner’s bag—on the foot of the bed just as she had laid his flour sack dashikis on his little trundle bed a million times when he was a kid. She also carefully positioned his briefcase, which had been retrieved from Special Agent Flannery’s Jeep Cherokee, next to the pillow. Grove took another painkiller and pondered the briefcase for a moment.

  He debated about what he should do with the contents of the attaché—the .357 Tracker still in its holster, the speed-loa
der belt, the Palm Pilot, the notebooks, the battered tape recorder, the gloves (both rubber and white cloth), the case folders, and the old Polaroid Land Camera. The tools of his trade. He never wanted to see them again. He was done with them. He reached down and flicked the case open.

  The lid crackled.

  Inside the attaché, among the hardware and notebooks and electronics, Hannah’s lucky key chain was nestled in its little cloth pouch, wedged behind an elastic pocket. Grove rooted the pouch out of the case and opened it. The talisman was burnished from years of nervous fondling. Grove looked at the tiny magnifying glass—a hairline crack zagging across it. He ran his fingertip across the leather spindle, gently brushing the embossed word: SHERLOCK. He wondered if he should give it to Maura County.

  Something sharp stabbed at his heart.

  Maura County. Had he given her the big brush-off merely to protect her . . . or was he afraid of something? He could not stop thinking about those tiny flecks of gold in her pale blue eyes, or that goofy, whiskey-cured voice, or that swanlike curve to her neck. Had he rejected her for heroic reasons . . . or was he simply afraid that he would fall in love with someone other than Hannah? Which was ridiculous. Hannah would have kicked his ass all the way to Sunday.

  All at once Grove made a decision. He would change his life. Today. He would go and find Maura, and he would get her back.

  “What is next?” Vida asked, standing near the doorway, wringing her skinny brown hands as though she had read his thoughts.

  Grove put on his sport coat and carefully shot his sleeves, looking at himself in the mirror—ever the fashionista. “Some unfinished business, and then I’m quitting. I’m going home and I’m going to sleep for a week.”

  “That is good, a boy needs his rest.”

  Grove smiled then, snapping the briefcase closed. He went over to his mom and took her by the arms. “And as soon as possible, I’m going to come visit you in Chicago, so you better get that pot of Harissa stew cooking.”

  Vida’s smile could have powered Commonwealth Edison for a week.

  Everything is a ritual for an African. Even a fallen, assimilated one like Grove.

  After receiving a clean bill of health from Dr. Man-Child and being released from Olympia General, Grove hailed a taxi and traveled to the nearest post office. He proceeded to meticulously, ceremoniously package his FBI investigator shield in a small priority mail carton. He addressed it without notation or explanation to:

  Chief Thomas Geisel

  Section BSD-1333

  Federal Bureau of Investigation

  J. Edgar Hoover Building

  935 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

  Washington, D.C. 20535

  When the package was ready, Grove waited in line, thinking about Maura and what he would say to her. He wanted to start over with her, start clean. He wanted to court her the old-fashioned way. He imagined taking her to a coffeehouse in San Francisco, some beatnik place, and listening to her life story. He finally reached the head of the line, and when the next window opened up, he limped over and decisively shoved the package across the counter.

  Good . . . now there was one last thing to do.

  22

  Reunion

  The cab was waiting for him outside the post office, the meter still ticking, running up an enormous bill. Grove didn’t care. He stiffly climbed into the backseat, still lugging his suit bag and briefcase. Letting out a pained sigh, he told the cabbie to take him to the airport.

  The driver made the trip in record time. Before entering the terminal, Grove dismantled the .357 in order to avoid detection, putting the pieces in his briefcase, then putting the briefcase inside the suit bag and checking it with a red cap at the curb. Without his bureau tin, he was a civilian in the eyes of security.

  The flight to the Bay Area left on time and barely lasted an hour and a half.

  On the ground in San Francisco, Grove rented a car at the airport and drove through a steady mist, using a map he had gotten off-line in Olympia. It was just after five o’clock, and he hoped that Maura would be home.

  Grove couldn’t remember ever paying an unannounced visit to somebody like this—anal-retentive criminologists simply did not do such things—but somehow it seemed appropriate that day. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to say to her. He planned on going with his gut, apologizing to her and maybe even telling her that he loved her. He could tell her about his epiphany, about his reconciliation with his mom. No . . . maybe not. Best to keep that to himself.

  Maura lived north of the city, across the Golden Gate Bridge, up in the hills of Mount Tamalpa. Grove had to consult the map twice—once when he was stuck in rush-hour traffic on the bridge, and again, as he wound his way up the slope north of Sausalito.

  He reached Corte Madera around six o’clock and started looking for Maura’s place through the rain-beaded window glass of the Avis sedan. He could see the suburban sprawl of Marin County in the distant hills up ahead like cave dwellings tucked into the gray-green ocean of redwoods.

  A sign loomed in the fog on his right: PLAZA DE MADERA - 1 MI.

  He sensed something not quite right the moment he reached the cul-de-sac that bordered Maura’s salt-grayed condo building. Maybe it was his natural paranoia—acquired from years of entering chambers of horror. Or maybe it was a simple case of flop sweat, the tension of dropping in unannounced, not knowing exactly what he was going to say. But whatever the cause, the hair on his arms and neck stiffened as he pulled his car over to the curb behind Maura’s rust-bucket Geo that she had described in casual conversation with Grove a week earlier.

  Grove recognized the bumper sticker as pure Maura County—REAL WOMEN DIG FOSSILS! The car’s driver’s-side door was hanging open.

  He parked and got out of his car. The air was clammy and fragrant with the smell of pines and the wharf. He lifted his collar, then struggled up the narrow gray wooden steps, his hip humming with constant pain now. He needed another Vicoden. The stairs ended at Maura’s door—number 1C.

  Her entrance was the only one on the south side of the building, and when Grove knocked on the hardwood jamb, the rapping noise sounded hollow and dead in his ears. As though he were knocking on a tomb. He waited. He knocked again. Nothing stirred inside the silent condo.

  Grove leaned down over the edge of the porch, stretching over a low tangle of eucalyptus to see inside a gap between the blinds and the front window. One of his stitches popped under his jacket. His heart jumped.

  “Jesus!”

  He whirled around almost involuntarily, his brain seizing up with panic—the pain forgotten now. He scanned the deserted property. All at once he felt naked and impotent without his shield, without his gun, without his bureau tag.

  He trundled back down the wooden steps to his rental, tore open the back door, and clawed the .357 pistol out of his suit bag. Crackling through his brain like a dissonant counterpoint: Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s nothing, maybe, maybe—

  Back up the steps to the door. His spine twinged, his wounds completely numb now. He knocked again on the door. Harder this time. “Maura, it’s Ulysses! You there? Maura!”

  Nothing.

  Grove wrenched open the screen door, then slammed his three-hundred-dollar Armani shoe against the inner door. A cracking sound and pain erupting in his hip, his stitches tearing. The door held. Another kick and the door gave, and then Grove was inside the condo.

  The blood shouted at him. It was everywhere. The shock made him crouch down. Made his testicles contract. Made his pupils dilate.

  The atmosphere in the cluttered condo was empty and electric—as though the dust motes had frozen in midair.

  Grove gaped everywhere at once, not seeing much of anything other than the slash marks.

  “Maura! Maura!”

  His cry slapped back at him off the desecrated walls, then died.

  What was he doing? He swallowed hard. He tried to think straight: Calm down and look at the place, look at it, that’s what y
ou do, you look and you see things, you reconstruct what happened, so do it now, reconstruct, RECONSTRUCT!

  He quickly scanned the modest living room with its exposed brick and hardwood floors and framed posters of Johnny Rotten and Jane Goodall, and he saw the signs of a struggle, an overturned lamp shade, an upended coffee table, books strewn across the place. The blood on the walls formed crude handwritten words that made no sense yet made terrible sense.

  His gaze lingered on a newspaper on the floor, spattered with blood. It was the Weekly World News with the article about Grove and the Iceman. The photograph in the bottom right-hand corner clearly showed Maura County’s face, now speckled with deep scarlet red.

  All at once a series of realizations flooded Grove, and he stood there with his gun in both hands, sticking out and shaking, his heart slamming. Oh my God, oh my God, don’t do this to me, don’t do this!

  There were other rooms to check.

  Grove sucked a deep breath and shuffled sideways, his gun still raised and twitching as though he were in a war zone. Through the closest doorway. Into the kitchen: the refrigerator was open, a carton of eggs broken across the tiles. Not much else.

  In the bedroom Grove found more writing on the walls—that same nonsensical uggah-buggah language— and the furniture in disarray. But no body. Thank God, there was no body.

  Thank God.

  By the time he checked the bathroom and saw the medicine cabinet door hanging open and all the tiny bottles shattered in the sink, he became convinced that Ackerman had done this, the motherfucker had found Maura through the article, and had come here and kidnapped her and he was probably torturing her at this very moment if she wasn’t already—

  No! Grove bit off the thought and stood in the bathroom doorway for a moment, the gun still cradled in his hands, his lungs heaving.