"His soul was in jeopardy," mom said as she looked up at me from where she sat. "I already knew he'd abandoned his job because it was too warm. Meant he was with a woman, just like your father had been when you and Jason were conceived—there was a drought then, did you know that? A heat wave just like this one. Meant he was human again…for a little while. And I know they can be hurt when they're human."
Swallowing a bit of bile I took a step back. "Mom, empty your purse on the table."
"I'm sorry I failed you, Jackson."
"Mom—"
She faced me head on, her gaze never wavering. "For killing you. But it's the only way to save you—"
What? Oh God. Oh fucking H Christ! "Mom…you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—"
If Jovita Frost was anything—it was fast. She came up off that chair and ran at me before I could draw in a breath to finish the old litany. I saw the flash of a knife as we fell back into the window and then on the floor. Mom held the knife by the handle, blade down, and repeatedly tried stabbing me. The edge sliced into the sides of my hands and lower arms before I could get a hold of her wrist. I locked my arm out, holding the knife away from me. "Mom—stop!"
"I can't let him have you!"
My initial instinct was to roll and get her off of me, then grab her arm, twist her while she's off balance and press her under me. The knife put a kink into things—I didn't want to get fatally stabbed by it, or stab mom.
Vibrations on the floor announced the arrival of several people. She was jerked away from me as other hands grabbed the knife and her arms. I rolled away on my side as a cacophony of voices, along with my mom's, helped me concentrate on holding it together.
My mom killed my brother. She just tried to kill me. I don't care if you're nine, fifteen or even forty—it's a traumatic experience.
"Jackson! Don't give in! Don't become Jack Frost!"
"Get her out of here!" That was the voice of authority.
That, was Crow.
"Jackson—"
And that was Sarah. Her touch on my shoulder was gentle. I turned over from the shoulder, twisting my waist and her eyes widened. "Hold still—where did she stab you?"
I and looked up at her. Once again the image was blurry. And from the expression on her face it looked bad.
"Hey Shawn? Can you get a gurney and get Detective Frost into an examination room? He's going into shock."
"Sure doc."
She leaned close to me and put a hand on my cheek. "Jackson? Can you hear me? What happened? Who was that woman?"
"That was his mother," Crow answered and he knelt down beside Sarah. "Shit, Jack. What'd you say to her?"
I wanted to answer, but something dark and ominous climbed over my shoulders, bringing a thick, warm blanket with it. I tried to fight against it, terrified it was would smother me in its heat as I closed my eyes.
-6-
Mom escaped the hospital. Well it was more like she just walked out because who's going to believe a sweet little Christian woman like Jovita Frost was mentally unstable? I saw heads rolling in the near future for that little cluster fuck.
Rucker wanted to put a shadow on me but I told her I'd be fine, especially with Crow by my side. He flexed his muscles.
My hero.
I did suffer a lot of stitches, mostly on my left hand and arm. Nothing I hadn't experienced before during my childhood—especially after the Jack Frost teasing that inevitably happened no matter what school my mother dragged me into.
With a slightly clean bill of health I was officially released around six 6:00 and once armed again with gun, holster, wallet and badge, was driven straight back to the precinct. Crow had taken the bagged knife to the GBI for testing. It was the same kind of knife Noel told us about. But was it the same one that took Jason's life?
Writing up the paperwork on the incident wasn't my priority—and it wasn't because I didn't want to include my mother—but learning more myself was. How could I have missed having a twin all this time, or not realized she wasn't my real mother? Well for one thing I didn't look anything like her. Maybe I looked like my dad?
And who was he? Other than a goat legged devil?
Clinging to what I knew as fact, I spent several hours abusing every database I had access too, using every trick I'd ever learned to dig into someone's past.
But Jason Frost didn't have a past.
Yeah there were hundreds of other people with the same name, but none with my birthday. It was as if he'd been completely removed from existence. But he was there, in the morgue, with my face and snowflake fingerprints.
Wow. I'd nearly forgotten that part. Glad I didn't tell my mom about those. It would have just fed her delusions.
After my third glass of iced coffee Crow sat down at his desk. Partners in the bullpen pushed their desks face to face to make it easier to communicate. He looked tired and even his Cherokee skin was pale. He'd braided his long hair and had it up under his hat. He'd shucked his usual peacoat in exchange for a white wife-beater shirt and a pair of jeans. The heat drove the department to forgo the usual standards of dress. It was more of a dress to survive atmosphere. Two air-conditioning units had already quit working so the building had one on the ground floor. Which meant the departments upstairs became saunas. And this was not good for computers.
Unlucky for us, we were on the top floor. I'd stopped by my own apartment after losing mom's trail, took a cold shower and I mean I never even turned the hot water nozzle on, before changing clothes into a white teeshirt—to hide the pit stains—and the softest, thinnest pair of jeans I owned. Sandals were the shoe of the evening. If it got any hotter I was going to start wearing my swim trunks.
And to add insult to injury, someone had put up the Christmas decorations. Silver garland sparkled from the doorways beneath hanging plastic mistletoe. Weird, since most of us in the pen were men. The tree sat in the corner, blinking forlornly, looking like it knew Christmas just wasn't what it should be.
"You look like I feel."
Crow gave me a withering look before he picked up my half glass of melted ice and coffee. He sniffed it and then finished it off. The face he made was enough recompense for me for him stealing my caffeine injection. "Yeah well that's bad because you look worse than you feel. Boy, you are white. Whiter than any white man I know," he narrowed his eyes as he leaned forward. "What's wrong with your hair? Did you step under someone painting?"
"What?"
"Your hair," he held out his hands, his fingers spread as he stood up and walked around to my desk. Hovering over me I noticed his gaze fixed on my head, not on my face. "This is no come on, bro but," He reached out and touched the left side of my head. My last barber shop visit was over two months ago so I knew I looked a bit scruffy. I had been contemplating shaving it off just to keep cool. But Crow's fingers didn't just touch my head. I felt him fingering several strands.
It tickled and felt a bit creepy so I pushed his hand away.
Crow stared a few more seconds before he went back to his desk, sat down and started opening drawers and rummaging in them. He grunted and pulled out a women's powder compact. "Here—take a look at your hair."
I eyed the compact. "Dude—why do you have that in your drawer?"
"I took it away from a hooker a month ago. Wouldn't put it down when I was questioning her so I confiscated it. Now take it and look at your hair."
Making a face in protest, I took the flat, oval contraption and opened it. The application pad fell out onto my desk, scattering a bit of dark powder on my paperwork, but I wasn't really looking at it. My gaze transfixed on the reflection of white and gunmetal gray hair in the mirror.
I had dark hair.
But this shit was silver and white!
The hair was soft to the touch, softer than the darker hair. "What the hell did you guys do to me in the hospital?"
"Your hair wasn't like that when I dropped you off at your place." He rested his elbows on his desk. "You care to tell me
what's going on?"
My gaze shifted from the reflection to Crow. "What do you mean what's going on?"
"That," he pointed at my hair. "Your mom trying to kill you—possibly killing your brother? A sudden twin brother? All this sudden research to hunt down a sibling you never even knew existed. And," he held up a finger. "What was with your mom telling you not to be Jack Frost? Seriously? She named you Jackson Frost and now she's attacking you because of your name? What the hell?"
I replaced the little sponge in the compact, closed it, and half tossed it at Crow who caught it. "It's nothing. Nevermind." I wasn't about to go over the crazy shit mom said before she started trying to kill me. I had given a full report to Rucker on what Jovita said that made me suspect she'd killed Jason—and the knife—but mostly the timeline of her driving up here and how she knew which hospital Jason was at. But right now I didn't want to deal with her. I mean—I had white hair! Was this like premature graying? "Have you found anything about the one suspect? The child molester? Until we can confirm it's the same knife we might as well keep looking."
"Nothing else. He's in town. We can confirm that from a few eye-witness accounts and a security camera at a drugstore. But that's not giving us any leads on where he is now. And if the blade your mom came after you with matches the one that killed Jason." He shrugged. "Then I doubt the DA's gonna wanna pursue Bishop."
He was right. But that didn't dispel this nagging feeling I had about Bishop. His entire file screamed "Asshole!"
Crow shuffled papers as he began his own report. I fixated on the glass of melting ice. A bit of the coffee and condensed milk remained in the very bottom of the glass. Didn't take much for my brain to steer back over to what happened in the cafeteria—besides mom going all psycho on me. I brought a clear image of the spreading frost on the window to mind before I put my index finger close to the glass but didn't touch it.
"Mom said my dad had goat legs and hooves," I heard myself saying while my practical side screamed at it to shut up. It did not want to be stuck with drugs and put in a little white rubber room.
Crow watched me, his expression unreadable. "She thinks your father is Pan?"
"Pan?"
"Yes. Or possibly Winter. My people call them Nunnehi."
"A what?"
"Never mind. Just tell me."
I'd told Crow the same story I'd told Rucker, without the Frost references. But now I just wanted to talk to someone I thought wouldn't judge me on my mom's…nuttiness. I wanted to talk to Sarah, but that damn analytical side of me thumbed Crow. I'd always been told if you can't trust your partner you can't trust anyone.
So I told him everything else. To the frost over the window to the air conditioning to her telling me it was her duty to save my soul.
The old Indian didn't move at first, just narrowed his eyes at me. After a few seconds he sucked in his bottom lip as he placed his hands his desk and pinned me with one of his Chieftain stares. "Show me."
When my finger hit the condensation on the side of the glass I wasn't expecting it to freeze immediately. Nor was I prepared for the ice to spread up and out and twist all the way around the glass until it stopped at the top rim. It was a thing of beauty as it sparkled under the bullpen's fluorescent lights. It reminded me of a set of candles my mom always kept on one of her pressboard shelves. There were three of them, white, in stair-step size. And they sat beside my Senior portrait. I'd always thought of them as the nicest candles I'd never seen lit.
I pulled my finger back. The ice didn't melt. Blinking, my line of sight moved from the top of the glass to the vision of Gawain Crow's shocked expression. If there was one thing I'd always respected about Crow it was his ability to not freak out.
After pursing his lips a bit, then sucking air in between his teeth, he picked the glass up and turned it upside down. The ice inside was frozen solid. Smoke danced about where his fingers touched the ice. "Neat trick." He put it back down. "And it does explain a lot about you."
"It doesn't explain jack shit," I said in a very unflattering way. I pushed back from the desk and slumped in my chair. "She's freak'n nuts."
"I wouldn't say that. You just froze a glass with a touch. I'd say there could be merit to what she claims. Did she just say he had a goat's lower half? Anything else?"
"She said a lot of things about my dad. Mostly just called him a devil."
"The legend of Jack Frost isn't an uncommon one, Jack. I believe most cultures have a similar mischievous imp." He winked.
"Watch it. I'm not Jack Frost. My mom's nuts."
He tapped the frozen glass, to indicate what I just did. The stifling heat took its toll on the ice. "Why do you think she's crazy?"
I frowned at him. "She just tried to kill me? Will that do as evidence? And she possibly killed a brother I never knew?"
"There are worst individuals to claim as one's parents," he said with a smile. If he was having trouble with this he wasn't showing it. "But her story does fit a chain of events explaining why there is nothing in the system or anywhere else on your brother."
I catapulted forward, hands on desk. "You believe this shit?"
"Jack—I'm a Cherokee. I believe what my eyes show me. I believe in many spirits, most of them I've never met. But the stories handed down from generation to generation stay the same. They are for teaching but they are also there to prolong the life of the earth."
"Is this Indian mumbo jumbo?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm not interested."
"Jack—" He smiled. "Just pretend for an instant that all things on the earth are manifestations of thought. Meaning it exists because someone thought about it. You. Me. The table. This paper. The computer. This building. All of these things exist because it started as a tiny spark of imagination."
"I was never a tiny spark."
"I'm not going there. My point is everything is thought. Every spirit. Every creature throughout your history, my history, your culture, my culture, all cultures, started as a thought. Early man didn't understand the moon, or fire, or what the seasons were, so they invented personifications of things, humanizing them so they could understand their existence. Say one culture looked at the moon and created the moon goddess. The deer god. And when those two mated, they gave birth to all manner of thought and spirit. Framing it this way made it easier to understand for the masses.
"So if all of man's creations were given form—table, desk, house—then why not the more abstract things? Like love, war, peace, spring, summer, and even winter. Why isn't it possible that such things still exist today? That over the centuries they've had to adapt to the changes wrought by their creators?"
My jaw hung low, almost touching the desk. "You're shitting me. You actually believe this."
"I don't shut my mind off to the what if, Jack. I accept you just froze that glass. I accept that your mother believes with all her heart your soul is in danger of becoming one of these creatures, just as her other son did."
"You saw and touched Jason's body. He wasn't a creature. He was a man."
"He was a man because he was in love."
During my dissertation to Rucker, and then the slightly more informative one to Crow, I never once let it slip that my mom had said something very similar. That Jason had abandoned his job because he was in love. And if I hadn't told Crow then why did he bring it up?
"I see from your expression you knew that."
Answering wasn't with me at that moment. I was too stunned. So much of the crazy my mom said was coming true and that did not make me feel any better. I cleared my throat. "Mom…mom said when the heat kept going through September and October and November she knew he'd left his job. That's how she said it. She said he did it because he was in love. Which was what my dad did when he conceived my brother an me."
Crow tilted his head to the side. "I suspect your brother fell in love with Donna Blankenship. So I think he was human because he wanted her to fall in love with him."
"So you think my broth
er, who mom says was Jack Frost, became human in the hopes a woman could fall in love with him."
"Yes."
I held up my hands, palms up. "Well there you go. I already have someone that loves me and we're going to have a baby. And, we're getting married Christmas Day."
His expression was unreadable. Never play poker with a Cherokee. Then, "I hope so, Jackson. I hope so."
-7-
Sarah stood on the balcony's edge, holding our child in her arms. The city stretched out beneath her like jewels scattered over black velvet. The moon shown large and round. So big it covered the sky. Wind blew her bright red hair about her face. In fact the only color I saw was her hair. She reached out for me, calling my name. I couldn't get to her at first. Something held me back. I couldn't see anything—no one was holding on to me. Nothing restrained me. But I couldn't move to her and I knew she was going to fall to her death if I didn't get to her.
I screamed as she lost her balance and fell back. Whatever restrained me disappeared as I called her name—and then I faced the business end of a knife as it plunged into my gut. It didn't hurt like I thought it should. It actually burned like the blade had been held in a fire and turned red hot. The heat burned me from the inside. I couldn't get away from the blade and I heard Sarah screaming, calling my name…
Someone knocked at my door, pulling me out of sleep. Sarah's voice calling to me in the dream still lingering in my mind. Why in the hell did I dream that? And what in the Holy Hell did it mean? With a wince I switched on the lamp on my nightstand and looked at my phone. Two in the morning? Christ I'd only been asleep a few hours.
The knocking grew more insistent. And then, "Detective! Are you in there? Please—I'm scared."
It sounded like Donna Blankenship.
Sarah had left after dinner, getting a page at work. I suggested she sleep at her place after she was finished since I'd be getting up early. I just didn't think it'd be this early.
Frost Page 4
