Heart of Ice

by Gregg Olsen

  Just an angry pimp with a slot to fill.

  Michael thought of killing prostitutes when rage fueled the desire to kill, when he’d outgrown mowing a kitten or stabbing a tortoise with a screwdriver. One time when he was cut off by a snot-nosed debutante in a midnight blue BMW on Sunset in L.A., he saw a young girl in a too-short skirt, her white thighs sticking together in the heat of a summer’s day.

  She’s Midwestern. Corn-fed. A cow. I could kill her and grill her bones on a hibachi, he thought. If I was that type. If I was like the others with the compulsion. But I’m not. I’m not. I am, most emphatically, not.

  He was proud of his ability to contain the compulsion. He knew that by containing it, part of who he was inside was dying, but that was fine. He was a father, a husband, but he could tell no one what else he was.

  What else he’d been.

  By holding back, by not killing a hooker who caught his eye or a waiter who gave him lousy service, Michael felt he was doing his family a favor. Nothing, he knew, was more important than his family. That meant Olivia and the kids. And his sister.

  He had to find Sarah.

  Despite the fact that he knew his way around complex computer systems, how to find back doors that programmers sometimes left just for the sheer fun of it and how to dig so deeply in a system yet remain undetected, he failed at every turn. The state’s records were in deep encryption because a teenage boy had hacked into the California Department of Social and Health Services to find his birth mother. He did. The story might have ended up happy enough, the boy meeting his long-lost mother. But not this one. Trevor Wilson was pissed off. He found his mom all right. He also set fire to the house she shared with her husband and three children in Tarzana. Two of the children died; the husband was burned on more than 60 percent of his body.

  It was not a happy reunion.

  Michael figured he’d have nothing to lose by going the conventional route. He placed an ad on the Finda Relative. com site:

  MISSING A SIB

  Brother looking for Sister. My name is Michael. Your name is Sarah. We were abandoned by our mom at Disneyland when you were little. We were in foster care before you were adopted out. I love you. Write to me in care of this site.

  A few private investigators contacted him within days of the posting—reminding him of the days after he and Olivia went to a Wedding Expo in Anaheim and stupidly entered a drawing for a discount honeymoon.

  “Never,” he said to Olivia, “give your address or e-mail or phone number to anyone whose sole purpose is to reach into your wallet.”

  Olivia urged her husband to continue his search. She prayed on it whenever they went to church. She knew that Michael had been hurt deeply by what his mother had done. She wasn’t sure that he’d been abused, but she knew some terrible things had happened to him when he was so very young.

  “A piece of his heart is missing,” she told herself. “Maybe Sarah can help put him back together.”

  It was after eight, and Olivia had just put Carla to bed for the third time when the landline phone in their spotless kitchen chimed its too-loud ring. She and Michael always let the phone go to voice mail, because the only people who seemed to use the old house number—and not their respective cell phones—were charities and election organizers.

  As the announcement played, she ran the tap into the tea-kettle. It was Michael’s voice.

  “We’re not in right now. If you’re selling something we’re not interested. If you’re telling us who to vote for, we’ve already made up our minds and we don’t need any suggestions. If you must leave a message, please do so. At the tone.”

  “Michael,” the voice said, a woman’s voice, tentative, and soft, “I hope I have the right number. I’m Sarah, your sister.”

  Olivia bolted for the phone and sprung it from its cradle as fast as she could.

  “Sarah? This is Michael’s wife, Olivia. Is this his sister? Is it really you?”

  The young woman on the other end of the line gulped. “Yeah,” she said, “it’s me.”

  “Oh, how I’ve prayed for this—how we’ve prayed for this!”

  “Me, too.” Sarah’s voice was soft, tentative.

  Olivia felt a surge of adrenaline. “He’s not here. He’s away on business. He’ll be back tomorrow night. Do you want his cell number? Or, wait, let me get your number and I’ll have him call you.”

  “I’ll call back. My folks don’t know that I’m trying to find my brother.”

  “I see. OK. No problem.” Olivia’s heart was aflutter. Her husband, whom she loved more than anything had found his missing piece. He’d be able to be whole.

  Sarah had called. Thank God! Whatever connection he needed from his past was there.

  “You have no idea how much this will mean to him,” Olivia said, a tear rolling down her cheek as the kettle, now hot, finally whistled.

  “Tell him I love him. Tell him that I’m doing OK.”

  Olivia looked down at the caller ID panel on the phone. It said: PRIVATE CALLER.

  “Where are you living?” Olivia asked.

  “I’m in Seattle. Things are great. Gotta go. Tell him we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  They both said good-bye, and Olivia leaned into the counter, facing the window. Moths had gathered around the patio lights, creating a beautiful halo of movement and light. She felt like breaking down and letting her emotions pour from her. In all her life, she’d never been so happy. Michael had found his sister.

  She was so sure that Michael would now find himself.

  She reached for her cell and dialed her husband. It was late in Chicago where he was away on business, but not so late that he wouldn’t want to hear from her. Not when the news was as welcome as this would be. She retraced each word of the conversation in her head. Sarah hadn’t asked her not to tell him that she had called. There was no “dibs” on who was going to break the news to Michael. She didn’t allow herself to think for one second that the call was a hoax. No one would do that to a man so lost as a brother in search of a sister.

  She got his voice mail.

  Michael, where are you?

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Olivia Barton considered that previous summer the happiest of her life with Michael. He was a new man. A happy man. The sometimes sullen expression that came over him for no apparent reason had been eclipsed by the joy of finding the one positive connection to his life before Olivia.

  His sister, Sarah. The exchanges between the two were tentative and emotional phone calls, then e-mails took over.

  Hi Mikey,

  It was fun talking to you last night. I was scared that maybe you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. You know, old, bad memories. You have a lot of those, don’t you? I really don’t have any memories of Portland, so I’ll have to trust yours. I guess I really don’t want to know, so if I ask, promise me you won’t tell me. OK? It is so strange to be talking to you again. Should I call you Mikey? We’re all grown up, but I still think of you as my big brother, but not that big. Not even a teenager.

  Love always,

  Sarah

  Dear Sarah,

  You can call me Mikey. No one else can. You are my only sister, so I guess you can get away with anything. I think it is a good idea not to talk about Portland too much. It was bad for both of us. I want you to know that when they took you away they told me that it was the best thing for me not to contact you. I fought them on it. I didn’t want you to think that I abandoned you like mom abandoned us at Disney.

  Mikey,

  The weird thing is, I never thought that. I just sort of imagined that you and I were on different airplanes or something, going to different airports. One day, we’d meet up at the same place. Do you know what I mean? Like we were supposed to be apart because it was part of the plan. Tell me about your wife and kids and I’ll tell you about my college plans.

  Love, S

  Dear Sarah,

  Olivia and the kids really are my greatest blessing. I know that
I don’t appreciate them as much as I should, given the kind of upbringing I’ve had it is really hard to stay positive about anything or anyone. I wonder if you’ve ever felt that way? You know, like people were disposable? Anyway, I don’t feel that way about Olivia or the kids. They are the only things that have kept me sane. Tell me more about your family.

  Love, your big bro

  Mikey,

  My adoptive family is great. I’ve been so lucky. Dad is an aerospace engineer, subcontracted to Boeing. He’s not the most exciting person. He sometimes talks in a strange emotionless code. Whatever you’ve heard about engineers is true. Mom is an art teacher for the junior high school a mile from our house. She’s fun, pretty, and helps make dad a whole person instead of a walking encyclopedia. They couldn’t have kids of their own, and, lucky me…they picked me.

  Michael remembered the day he’d heard that Sarah had been selected. He’d moved on for a short stint at the Madison Home for Boys in Chino, when the state of California sent him a letter saying that his sister had been adopted and that she’d be moving away to another state. He brought the letter to his counselor, a man with gray eyes, gray hair, and a protruding belly who thought he was the hippest man in the facility.

  “Kid, you just gotta let go of this,” he told Michael. “Let her be free. Let her start over somewhere, while she can.”

  “But she’s my blood,” Michael said.

  “Blood doesn’t matter anymore,” the counselor said. “Didn’t your mom prove that?’

  Michael glared at him. The remark was beyond cruel. He wanted to grab the pair of scissors off the man’s desk, open them, and stab out both of his eyes—which, it flashed through his mind, was exactly what he’d once done to a Jack Russell terrier.

  “You think you know about all of us here,” he said. “But you don’t know shit about anything. All you can do is talk about stuff. You’ve never lived any of this.”

  “I don’t have to live it to help you,” the counselor said, his tone clearly defensive. He looked at his wristwatch. It was a dismissive gesture if Michael Barton had ever seen one, and as much as he hated to admit it, it hurt. “Look,” the man said, “we’re about out of time for today. We never got to the occupational education brochure.”

  He handed Michael a brochure that detailed the kinds of jobs that the counselor felt most suitable for him. Restaurant work (dishwasher), newspaper industry (pressman), retail (clerking), and so on. Most of the training would have him working on the lowest rung, the ricketiest rung, of any corporate ladder.

  “I’m interested in computer science,” he said.

  “You mean, data entry?”

  “No, I mean programming or network engineering.” Michael had turned his anger into defiance just then, and for a second he felt his rage melt away. He was smart enough to do something more than the Madison counselor could ever envision.

  “I’m afraid that’s not in our program here,” the man said stiffly. “You might be better served by taking the TV repair training.”

  Michael imagined himself coming into the counselor’s living room in his crummy Chino apartment. The man bending over to point to the TV connection or something that wasn’t working properly. Michael pulling out a screwdriver from his tool kit and slamming it right into the man’s neck. Sweet Jesus! Blood spurting like one of those chocolate fountains at a chichi wedding in Beverly Hills. Twisting the handle of the screwdriver, feeling the man’s vertebrae snap as he slumped to the beige-carpeted floor.

  “You listening to me?” the counselor said.

  Michael snapped back. The fantasy of violence had been rudely interrupted.

  “Yeah. And I’m leaving now.”

  He walked out of the counselor’s office and searched for a bathroom, on the hunt for a place of relief.

  If her husband had always seemed a little melancholy, even in the midst of the happiest days of life, Olivia Barton always put it off to his dark history. She knew that he was the sum of everything that happened to him. She also knew that where her life with her impoverished family was bathed in love and light, his own was fraught with abandonment and terror. After he made contact with Sarah, some of that cloud seemed to lift. He seemed to enjoy his children more, her more. He even seemed to think that her cooking was borderline gourmet even though he had once sheepishly urged her to take one of those cooking classes at a kitchenware store in the mall.

  “When are we going to meet her?” Olivia asked while Michael gathered his things for work.

  “Soon, I hope.”

  “What’s the delay? I thought one of you would be on the first plane you could book.”

  “Me, too,” he said, still very upbeat. “She’s got some issues with her folks. I understand. They adopted her. They’ve tried to protect her from her past.”

  “But not from you?”

  “Oh, no. Not from me. She’s just going through some things. That’s all. I’ve waited for a long, long time. I can wait until she’s ready. She’ll still be my sister.”

  It was after dinner, that quiet time when the children were settling down and the sun was low in the sky. Peaceful. Hopeful. Olivia looked over her husband’s shoulder when he opened the MSN chat window to see if Sarah was online. She was. Since the first contact from the adopted siblings’ website, there had been numerous e-mails and online chats. Phone calls had been more infrequent because of Sarah’s family situation.

  MichaelTech: Hi sis. Olivia and I here.

  Sarah: Hi Mikey. Hi Olivia!

  MichaelTech: You know you’re the only one that calls me that. Olivia says hi back.

  Sarah: I’m special, huh.

  MichaelTech: Yup. You are. What’s going on this week?

  Sarah: Nothing.

  MichaelTech: Nothing?

  Sarah: OK. Something pretty big!

  MichaelTech: Out with it.

  Sarah: I got the scholarship! Four years!

  MichaelTech: Are you serious? Wow!

  Sarah: My parents are so proud of me. We’re going to Cascade to tour the campus next week.

  MichaelTech: Awesome. I knew you could do it.

  Sarah: Thanks. That’s my news. What’s yours? Olivia OK? The kids?

  MichaelTech: Everything’s good. Everyone wants you to come down here. Or we can come up.

  Sarah: Still haven’t told my folks yet. But I will.

  MichaelTech: Understood.

  Michael seemed elated by the exchange, but Olivia felt less so. She wondered why it was taking so long for Sarah to tell her folks that her long-lost brother had been found.

  “I wish she would tell them,” she said.

  Michael closed the chat window. “She will. This is a hard one for her. She doesn’t want to hurt them.”

  They had had the discussion once before, so there was no need to state the obvious. It isn’t like you are her birth father or something. You’re her brother!

  Chapter Sixty

  Cherrystone

  Jason Howard entered Emily’s office with a file folder and that kind of cat-that-killed-the-canary look that Emily knew all too well. She knew immediately he had something to go on.

  “Didn’t Samantha Phillips say that she and Amanda stopped talking?”

  Emily nodded. “Yes, not by her choice, I gathered.”

  “She lied, Sheriff.” He pulled out the phone records addressed to Mitchell Crawford, 21 Larkspur, Cherrystone.

  “What have you got?”

  “Ten calls.”

  “Ten?”

  “Yeah, between Halloween and the date of her disappearance.”

  “Good work, Jason. Anything else?”

  “A bunch of calls to and from different dealerships, his lawyer’s office, and calls to Mandy’s folks in Spokane. Not much else.”

  Emily looked the list over. Jason had highlighted the calls to Samantha.

  “When someone lies,” she said, “we just need to find out why, now don’t we?”

  “That we do.”

  A cal
l to the Phillips’ grand residence was answered by a housekeeper named Anna, who sweetly informed Emily that Samantha, “the lady of the house,” was volunteering at her children’s school for the day.

  Lady of the house? Emily thought, Why can’t I be the lady of the house? Why can’t I have a housekeeper? Oh, yeah. I’m a top elected official and I make $53,000 a year, that’s why.

  Emily grabbed her coat and keys for the drive to Crestview Elementary School. She knew the school well, of course. Jenna had attended there, just as she had. She parked by a maple tree that she could remember being a sapling when it was planted to commemorate an Earth Day celebration. In winter, it was an enormous skeleton, with four bird’s nests still clinging in the frozen air.

  She parked and made her way into the office.

  “Hi, Sheriff Kenyon,” said the woman behind the counter. Her glossy dark hair was held tight to her head, and her eyes were magnified behind the thick lenses of her glasses. Her name tag read MS. JONAS, but Emily didn’t know her.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Everything all right? Mr. Gray is out at a conference in Boise. I’m Heather Jonas, his assistant principal.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Emily said, extending her hand. “No problems here. I just need to speak to one of your parent volunteers. Can you tell me how to find Samantha Phillips?”

  Heather set down her clipboard. “I’ll ring her right now. She’s in computer lab helping Ms. Brennan’s class.” She retreated to the telephone/intercom console one desk over and made the call.

  “She’s on her way. Would you like to talk somewhere privately? You could use Mr. Gray’s office. He has a nice visitor’s table. Maybe I can find some refreshments in the staff room. I have a key to the fridge.”