Frozen Stiff

by Patrick Logan

  Chase picked up the pace.

  They entered a small, well-lit room, with a bank of computers on one wall, and what looked to Chase like metal gurneys at the back of the room. She was reminded of Yolanda and Francine’s bodies, of how they had been laid out in the morgue, of how she had felt herself transported into the moments before they had been brutalized, stripped, and left out in the cold.

  She still hadn’t come to grips with what had happened when her hand brushed Yolanda’s stump.

  “Dr. Trenton, this is FBI Special Agents Martinez and Adams,” Chief Downs said, stepping to one side.

  Dr. Trenton was a man of average build, with closely cropped black hair, and dark eyes. He stood with his hands jammed into the pockets of his lab coat.

  The man pressed his lips together firmly before speaking.

  “As I’m sure Chief Downs has told you already, we went back out to the crime scene last night and took some more casts of tire impressions.”

  He led the way toward one of the gurneys near the back of the room. For some reason, Chase saw Yolanda lying there, her feet ending in scarred and blackened stumps.

  She shook her head and the image dissolved into a segment of a cast, a foot and a half long, half as wide. The white plaster was pushed down into a pattern reminiscent of a tire tread.

  Which was exactly what it was, of course.

  “We found this… tires standard on a 1998 Chevy Cargo Van. I believe it fits the bill of what you were looking for,” the man’s eyes darted to Chase as he said this last part.

  Agent Martinez nodded.

  “Chief, see if you can pull up records for all Chevy vans,” he shrugged, “between 95 and 99, let’s say. Focus on anything local.”

  Chief Downs agreed but didn’t immediately reach for his walkie as Agent Martinez clearly expected. Instead, he said, “Dr. Trenton? That other thing you told me about…?”

  Dr. Trenton pressed his lips together again. Chase didn’t know if the details of the case were affecting him, or if he was just bored and wanted to get back to a baking soda and vinegar paper mâché volcano. Tiny vertical creases formed above his lips, making his mouth temporarily look like a puckered anus.

  “Yes, please, come with me.”

  The three of them followed the scientist over to a large computer. Dr. Trenton sat down, and then typed in his username and password when prompted. On screen was a large, close-up image of one of the girl’s footless legs.

  Please… please, just let us go. We’ll do anything…

  Dr. Trenton extended a finger toward a particularly gnarled and blackened hunk of flesh.

  “See here?” he said.

  Chase looked closely, squinted, but didn’t see anything other than savagely burned flesh.

  Please… anything…

  She looked to Chief Downs, who was nodding, but she assumed this was only because Dr. Trenton had already pointed out what he was indicating.

  “I don’t see anything,” Martinez said at last.

  “Me neither,” Chase agreed.

  Dr. Trenton sighed, then grabbed the mouse. A few clicks and the image zoomed in even closer. At this scale, the outer areas started to blur, but there, in the center—

  “What’s that?” Chase asked, indicating what to her looked like half of a bulls-eye.

  Dr. Trenton didn’t turn as he answered.

  “That’s an outline from whatever the killer used to cauterize the wounds.”

  Chase thought about this for a moment before a fleeting image of a man in khaki pants and a booming voice came to her.

  On nights when she didn’t play online poker and couldn’t sleep either—haunted by what had happened all those years ago and what had happened in Seattle—Chase would lay on the couch, flipping through whatever was on, without really watching anything. And, occasionally, she would fall asleep, only to wake up to an infomercial in the wee hours of the morning.

  And this was where the shape, a bullseye on the bottom of a pan, seemed familiar.

  “It’s from a frying pan… the bastard cauterized the wounds with a frying pan.”

  Even though the words were coming out of her mouth, they sounded foreign to her.

  Jesus, a frying pan?

  She glanced over at Martinez who was still staring at the spot on the wound, the half bullseye, his head tilted to one side.

  “I think you’re right,” he admitted at last.

  Dr. Trenton nodded, and was already two steps ahead of them. He closed the image and opened a browser. A few more clicks, and a photograph of a frying pan appeared onscreen.

  “Paderno fryer,” he said, his voice strangely reminding Chase of the man in the infomercial. “We’ve narrowed it down to this one here. It’s fairly expensive, just a hair over a hundred bucks at most online retailers.”

  Now it was Chief Downs’s turn to lean in close.

  “Is it rare?”

  Dr. Trenton shook his head.

  “No. Not in the least.” He pulled up a map of Anchorage, one that was peppered with small red dots. “Here are the stores that sell this model. More than a hundred in Anchorage alone.”

  Downs sighed.

  “Still, I’ll get one of the grunts on it. Tell them to see if they can pull up records of all recent sales of this model.”

  “There’s also online, too,” Dr. Trenton continued, “Which are generally fifteen to twenty percent cheaper.”

  “I’ll have them talk to the stores anyway,” Downs said, a touch defensively.

  A thought occurred to Chase then.

  “Hey, Doc, how hot does it have to be to cauterize a wound?”

  Dr. Trenton turned to look at her.

  “It depends—generally 500 Fahrenheit and up, but in a medical setting it would be done using an electrical current and not heat, per se.”

  “And our vics?” she asked. “What about to cauterize their leg wounds? Can the Paderno cast iron pan get that hot?”

  Dr. Trenton pressed his lips together again.

  “It’s cast iron… it can get very, very hot. To do that to their stumps, though… yeah, I’m guessing it would have to be in the 5- to 600-degree range.”

  “Right, it was the pan that made the burns,” Chief Downs said quickly, his tone going from defensive to offensive. “But what—”

  “Hold on a second,” Chase said, holding up a finger. “Dr. Trenton, how can you get a cast iron pan that hot? I mean, would a little electric camper stove be sufficient?”

  Chief Downs scowled and looked about to say something, when Martinez calmed him with a stare.

  Chase was reminded of her conversation with Floyd, about how he had said that Downs and Martinez went back some time. Floyd might have only met Martinez once before, when he was much younger, but Chase was beginning to think that the two men before her knew each other much better than they were letting on.

  “I—I—I don’t think so,” Dr. Trenton said at last. For the first time since they had arrived in the man’s domain, they had taken him out of his comfort zone, and now he wasn’t so sure of himself. “I mean, probably not… it might but it would take a long time.”

  Chase mulled this over. She wasn’t much of a cook—that was Brad’s territory—but something about what Dr. Trenton said rang true with her. Brad had insisted on a gas stove for this very reason: electric stoves took too long to heat up and they never got hot enough.

  “But gas?”

  “Gas would be better—more efficient,” Dr. Trenton agreed.

  Chief Downs crossed his arms over his large stomach. Clearly, he wasn’t following along with her train of thought.

  “But—but,” Dr. Trenton continued. His eyes widened, as he caught on. “Even with a small gas camping stove, the propane would run out before you got hot enough. You’re going to need a lot of energy to get the pan up to 600 degrees, and then you are going to have to do that four times.”

  “Four times?” Chief Downs asked.

  Dr. Trenton looked at him as if he
had four heads.

  “For each of their legs. The killer would have to reheat it before he cauterized each of their wounds.”

  Chief Downs’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

  CHAPTER 15

  “What about the wounds? Any details on what made them?” Martinez asked.

  Dr. Trenton’s face morphed back into the epitome of smugness.

  “Generic handsaw. Cuts are rough, uneven. I can tell you that Yolanda’s left leg was first, followed by her right. Same order for Francine, who was done second—I can tell from the cut marks that it had started to dull considerably by the time the killer got around to her.”

  Chief Downs swallowed hard again.

  “I used to chop down trees in my younger days before I was a cop. Every once in a while, the chainsaw would bind, or I would run out of gas and we would have to resort to using a handsaw. I can tell you, that even cutting a tree as thick as… as… as a leg, it would tire you out something fierce.”

  Chase nodded; she was thinking the same thing. With this new information, she had a sudden strong desire to see the bodies again. She was hoping that her subconscious—that’s what it was, the gut feeling that Agent Jeremy Stitts had been so fond to speak of, it had to be—would put together more pieces to this puzzle.

  “So, we’re looking for someone in good shape, with at least a rudimentary knowledge of cooking and cooking devices. He drives a Chevy cargo van, which may or may not have some sort of cooking apparatus installed. A converted camping van, perhaps,” Martinez said, summing up their new information. Chase got the impression by the far off look in his eyes that he was adding all of this to a refined profile of their killer.

  Just don’t be too certain… that was our mistake with the Download Killer case, with Colin and Ryanne Elliot.

  “I can ask around at some of the local body shops to see if anyone has worked on a Chevy van, fitted one for camping. It’s a long shot, but…” Chief Downs let his sentence trail off.

  “Sounds good. In the meantime, Agent Adams and—”

  The Chief’s walkie suddenly squawked, interrupting Martinez. Downs reached for it, and brought it to his mouth.

  “Chief Downs,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

  “Chief? It’s Deputy Hascom. I’m out at The Barking Frog.”

  “Hascom, did you say Barking Frog?”

  “Yeah, I spoke to Francine’s roommates and they said that she was there, with Yolanda, a couple nights ago before she went missing. And guess what? They have cameras.”

  Even though the Chief had since turned his back to them, the deputy’s words came through loud and clear.

  “Great—great work. I’m coming down there. Send the address to my phone.”

  “Uh, Chief? The owner… well, he’s kinda being a dick about the whole thing. Says that he won’t give up the tapes unless we get a subpoena.”

  Chase looked at Martinez, who was staring intently at Chief’s Downs’s back.

  “Let the prick say what he wants, run his mouth. He might change his tune once I get down there with the feds. Just keep him talking—don’t let him go near the tapes.”

  “Alright. See you soon, Chief. Hascom Out.”

  Chief Downs tucked the walkie back into his belt, then turned to face them.

  “That it, Dr. Trenton?”

  Dr. Trenton nodded.

  “That’s all I have for now. Should I forward this information on to…?”

  “Send it to me,” Martinez said. “I’ll have one of my guys in the bureau see if they can find connection between the van, the pan, and the stove.”

  It sounded like the start of a bad joke to Chase, and she would have laughed.

  The van, the pan, and the stove…

  Except in this pan, they cooked human flesh. Burned it. Turned it into blackened meat only to keep the victims alive long enough to freeze to death.

  Dr. Trenton nodded.

  “And I’ll have my guys look into the auto shops, see if any of them have fitted a van with a propane stove,” Chief Downs added. “You guys coming with to The Barking Toad?”

  Frog… he said The Barking Frog.

  “Yep,” Martinez replied, rising to his feet.

  Chase’s brow furrowed.

  “You go ahead,” she said. “I’m going to go take another look at the bodies.”

  The corners of Martinez’s mouth twitched.

  “What for?”

  “Just want to see something, is all. Probably nothing. I’ll get Floyd to bring me to the bar as soon as I’m done.”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  Chase said nothing until Chief Downs snapped his meaty fingers in front of her face.

  She startled.

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll catch up. You see if you can help get the owner to give up the tapes.”

  Martinez looked about to say something, to protest, but Chief Downs stepped between them.

  “Fine. Let’s go, Chris.”

  When the two were gone, Chase turned to Dr. Trenton, who had since returned his attention to his computer.

  “Dr. Trenton? Can you take me to the morgue to see the bodies? Or are they here now?”

  The man didn’t turn.

  “Hmm?”

  Now it was Chase’s turn to be frustrated. Dr. Trenton only seemed mildly interested in finding the killer, a monster who had hacked the feet off two college girls, soldered their wounds with a frying pan, and then left them to freeze to death in the snow.

  His own life was far more important.

  If it doesn’t happen to you, it doesn’t matter.

  Hadn’t she heard that once? Wasn’t that a saying?

  Chase wasn’t sure, but thought that if it wasn’t, it ought to be.

  Why can’t you think about us? Brad had asked her long ago, About Felix, about how he misses his mom? About me? About how I miss you?

  Chase grimaced and she reached out and laid a hand on Dr. Trenton’s shoulder. The man jumped.

  “Take me to the bodies,” she said sternly.

  CHAPTER 16

  “They’re in here,” Dr. Trenton informed her. “Chief Downs asked that they be moved from the morgue to search for more trace evidence once the tire tracks came in.”

  The man had taken her down the hallway toward a room not unlike the one she had been in yesterday. While back in his domain, safe among his computers and facts, Dr. Trenton had been direct to the point of rude, confident bordering on arrogant, his steps slowed as they walked. By the time they stopped outside the door, his feet barely left the ground. The shuffling sound the man’s worn runners made reminded her of Felix when he was younger, when he woke up too early, before the sun was up, and hovered around hers and Brad’s bedroom door. Felix knew he would get in trouble if he came right in, or if he spoke, so he just shuffled about until the sound annoyed Chase enough to holler for him to enter.

  I should call them again later, she thought, let them know what’s going on, that I won’t be home for at least a few days. And Jeremy… I should call Agent Stitts. Ask him how he’s doing, see if he can shed some light on the enigma that is Special Agent Chris Martinez.

  Dr. Trenton put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. Only, he didn’t open the door; instead, the man simply stood there, waiting for Chase to make the next move.

  She frowned.

  “You’re not coming in?”

  Dr. Trenton shook his head.

  “No. Can’t. Have work to do. Francine and Yolanda are at the back, in the freezer. Their cubbies are clearly marked.”

  Chase nodded and pushed the door open.

  “Once you leave, however, you can’t get back in without a card,” Dr. Trenton said, holding up his CSU pass for her to see.

  Again, Chase nodded. She didn’t need to come back in.

  One more time would be enough.

  One more time was sufficient to find out if what had happened yesterday was a mistake, a fatigue-induced nightmare.

  “That’s
fine. Thank you.”

  Dr. Trenton grumbled something, but the door was already partway closed and she couldn’t make it out.

  With a shrug, Chase turned back to the room.

  Yesterday, Yolanda’s and Francine’s corpses had been on the gurneys out in the open, and Chase was grateful that they were no longer on display like cuts of prime meat.

  The room itself reeked of antiseptic cleansers and something else, something that tickled her nostrils and made the back of her throat itch.

  What was it that Dr. Beckett Campbell called the preservative they used on bodies nowadays? Not formaldehyde, not anymore, but…

  Chase’s eyes fell on a white plastic bottle on a table by the side of the room, alongside several medical tools, plastic baggies marked with orange bio-hazard symbols, and specimen containers of the like that Dr. Campbell had used the first time they had met, when he was busy scooping Monarch caterpillars from the mouths of the Butterfly Killer’s victims.

  Formalin, the bottle read.

  Yeah, that was it; not formaldehyde, but formalin.

  And it was strong enough to make her head spin.

  Chase made it quickly to the back of the room, stopping in front of a row of what looked like locker doors. But these weren’t your generic, high school variety, these didn’t contain an apple, a textbook, posters of a bare-chested boy bands.

  With a swallow, she moved in front of the locker marked, “Strand, Yolanda,” grabbed the handle and pulled.

  She had expected the smell of funk, of rot and decay, but was pleasantly surprised when this never materialized. In fact, the interior of the locker, or cubby as Dr. Trenton had called it, smelled fresher than the room itself. It was only after she grabbed the handle at chest-height and pulled, and the gurney with Yolanda’s body on it slid out, did she realize that a fan was running inside the locker.

  And when the body slid all the way out, she heard the fan click off.

  Yolanda looked identical to yesterday. Her black skin was still white-washed, as if she had been covered in a fine layer of chalk dust. Her eyes were closed, her hair braided, laying on the steel gurney like the fingers of the dead, splayed, reaching.

  Her feet—at least where her feet should have been—were closest to Chase, and she thought she could smell the faint odor of seared flesh.