Ice Where There Was None

by A S MacKenzie

  “Anna George.”

  * * *

  Twenty-five minutes later, Ben and Joe stepped out of their cruiser. They looked at each other, then to the other car that had followed them which was now parked about 200 feet away. Looking back at Ben, Joe nodded, and they walked up the path to Anna George’s home.

  The front window drapes were closed, and there wasn’t a car in the covered carport to the side. They walked up to the door, exchanging another quick glance, then drew their sidearms. With their guns pointed down in front of them, they stacked on either side of the door, and Ben knocked hard while shouting, “This is the Orlando Police. Open—”

  Ben stopped abruptly as the door swung open by the force of the knock. He drew his arm back, re-secured his hands on his sidearm, and called again into the room beyond the open door.

  “This is the Orlando Police. We are entering the home. Present yourselves with your hands empty and raised.”

  No response.

  They waited for a moment, then Joe raised his left hand and presented three fingers. He lowered one, then the next in a silent countdown. When he finished, he lowered his hand and said in a loud voice, “We are entering the home. Present yourselves with your hands raised and empty.”

  Ben entered first, sweeping to the right while Joe followed behind, sweeping his weapon to the left.

  “Clear,” Ben said.

  Moving forward together, they left the front room, which appeared to be the living area. In front of them was a kitchen and a hallway leading to the right. They briefly swept the kitchen, then stacked on either side of the hallway entrance, exactly as they had before. They swept through the remaining two bedrooms and the bathroom. They also looked out the back sliding-glass doors in one of the bedrooms to the backyard, which was empty. All clear.

  Ben called over the radio to the detectives to join them.

  As the detectives entered the home, they started looking intently around the living room. Picking up the stack of mail next to the door and leafing through it. Reading through the titles of the books on the shelves along one wall. They hardly paid much attention to the two officers, who stood in the kitchen looking around.

  “Here,” Joe said.

  Turning to look where he was pointing, Ben called to the detectives to join them. The refrigerator was an older model with the freezer above. On the freezer door was a small stick figure drawing made with a permanent marker. The figurine was wearing a dress and had curly hair jutting out of its circle head. Beside it was one word next to a small arrow pointing at the handle.

  Me.

  Using a gloved hand, the detective reached over and opened the freezer door. Inside, there was only one item sitting in the middle of the bottom of the freezer.

  An ice cube. Perfectly square and clear.

  Chapter Twelve

  “What …what does that mean?” Joe asked, standing with his gloved hand still on the freezer door, his eyes not leaving the ice.

  Ben mimicked his expression, staring into the freezer, shaking his head slightly. “I honestly have no idea.”

  The two detectives saw the cube of ice but didn’t stay to stare at it. One took a picture with his phone, then went back to the stack of mail he was sorting through before the discovery. The other was on the phone calling for their forensic unit to come and then called the Captain to give an update.

  Joe and Ben nearly simultaneously woke from their stupor, closed the freezer door, and joined the detectives in searching the remainder of Anna George’s home. They were in the midst of looking through her bedroom when they heard the forensic unit arrive, as well as a few other patrol cars to cordon off the area. Within a few minutes, the tape went up and the home was an official crime scene.

  “Joe, take a look here. This feel, I don’t know, odd to you?”

  Joe walked over to where Ben stood in front of the open closet doors. He had opened them when he had finished with her nightstands. Both of which had revealed very little, except for some saline eye drops and a love of political thriller books by Brad Meltzer.

  “What? What do you …” Joe said, his words trailing off when he saw where his partner was looking. “Huh,” was all he added.

  “Yeah, you see it too, right?”

  The closet was what most in the U.S. would consider average size, which meant it was approximately eight feet wide and about three feet deep. Two accordion doors opened from the middle to reveal a single, horizontal rod that spanned the length of the space with a shelf above. Hanging on the rod were roughly a dozen or so hangers, each with a single article of clothing on it. Coats, jackets, blouses, pants, and skirts all hung neatly; too neatly.

  Each article of clothing faced the same direction, in order from coats to skirts, and was spaced evenly. Very evenly. Joe held his hand up to the space between two articles of clothing, spanned his fingers to gauge the distance, then went down the row. Each space was the exact same distance.

  Ben nodded as Joe did this, and when he finished, pointed up and said, “Yeah, and look at the sweaters and blankets, too.”

  Joe looked at the shelf above the rod and whistled low. He saw that each sweater and blanket were stacked two at a time, spaced just as evenly as the hangers, and were even the same thickness of their fold. If an item was thick, it was stacked with another thick item; thin with thin and so on. He also noted that even the colors went in some sort of hue-inspired order from left to right.

  They both looked down at the same time to the various shoes on the floor. Here, however, the similarities to the hanging and folded items ceased. The shoes were scattered around the floor. No two same pairs were together and none were upright. They looked as though someone had taken a box of shoes, upended it into the closet, then left them there.

  Joe stepped away from his partner and walked to the hallway. “Detectives, you might want to see this.”

  A few moments later, the two detectives walked into the room and Ben pointed them to the closet.

  One of the detectives walked past them to a nightstand, seemingly oblivious to where Ben had been pointing. The other followed Ben’s direction and looked into the closet.

  “What am I looking at?”

  Ben cleared his throat and gave a small head shake and imperceptible eye roll. “Well, this doesn’t look like a closet of someone who lives here, does it? It’s way too—”

  “Orderly,” the detective cut in. “Yeah, I can see that. But these shoes tell a different story.”

  “Yeah, this whole thing just feels off.”

  “Way off,” the detective said as he knelt down and examined a shoe without touching it. “This one is a size eight from what I can see, but this one over here …” he said while pointing to a different shoe a couple feet over, “is a size five.”

  Ben scrunched his forehead.

  “Yeah,” the detective continued. “It looks like these are just a bunch of random shoes. I don’t even think she wore them.” Standing up, he pointed to the neatly arranged clothes. “These either. Look, this one is a four and this one is a ten.”

  Joe leaned in from the hallway. “What does this tell us? She didn’t live here?”

  The other detective who was going through the nightstand stood and joined the conversation. “Yeah, I think that’s right. The mail out there is recent, and there is no dust or signs of abandonment. But these clothes and shoes combined with the fact that each of these books in the nightstand are from the same used bookstore and the weird food in the kitchen, all point to her staging this place to look like she lives here when she actually doesn’t.”

  “Wait, what about the food?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah, the food in the cupboards. All of it is expired and unopened. Cereal boxes and such, just positioned in there. Still, no dust though. It’s just odd.”

  “Detective!” the Captain called from the living room. All four left the bedroom as a forensic photographer came in to document it.

  “I didn’t ask for all four of you,” the Capta
in said as they filed into the room. “Salk, Obvari, go out and help secure the perimeter. I need the detectives on this case to do their damn job and not worry about you two mucking up the place.”

  They were a little shocked and dismayed that the Captain spoke to them like this. He’d always been a little rough around the edges, but never dismissive, and he’d never insinuated they were anything but good at their job. They shared a glance, then said in unison, “Yes, sir.” They then filed past the growing number of forensic techs as they went out the door. Ben was about to say something, but Joe held up his hand as they crossed the threshold. He heard the Captain start to say something to the detectives.

  “Those two are neck deep in this and we need the arrest to be clean. They aren’t to interfere with your investigation while—”

  Joe didn’t hear the rest because a loud siren chirped a couple times. He scowled and beckoned for Ben to follow him to the carport where few people congregated.

  “Captain doesn’t want us interfering because we are quote, ‘neck deep,’ in this. I didn’t get to hear what he said next because of the damn siren.”

  Ben looked down at his shoes, then back up to Joe. His expression was one of relief and resignation. “Good,” he said. “I don’t think I want to know where this goes.”

  “But, Ben, come on. We’re—”

  Ben held up a hand to silence him. “Yeah, we,” he emphasized. “We are neck deep in this, and I don’t think it is going to end well. I’ve got a feeling I’ve had since the first victim in the park. This is not going to end well.”

  Joe leaned his head back, hands on his belt, and let out a sigh through his nose. Looking back at his partner, he said, “Fine, OK, whatever. I’d like to see this woman put away and put away quickly. I think we can help with that. But, yeah, OK, let’s go secure this perimeter.”

  Ben said nothing as he turned and walked to the police tape. Holding up his hands to silence the growing crowd, he asked in his strongest ‘cop’ voice for everyone to back away and let the police do their work. Joe watched him, sighed again, and followed down to his partner, calling the same message to the crowd.

  * * *

  Officer Salk walked into his house a few hours later and called for his wife. When he didn’t get an answer, he went to the whiteboard they used to pass notes to each other, next to the phone in the kitchen. On it was written: We’re at church. Food is in fridge.

  The message was written inside a large heart. He smiled and grabbed for the refrigerator handle. As he pulled it open, his pants pocket started to buzz. He ignored it as he pulled out the two Pyrex containers in the front. The buzzing stopped and started again right away as he examined the contents.

  “Fine, what!?” he said with exasperation. Setting the containers down on the counter, he pulled his phone out and saw the ID showed Ben’s name. Hitting the accept button, he didn’t say hello or wait to hear what his partner was going to say, he just started in with, “Man, seriously, we just saw each other. Give a guy a chance to eat some food.”

  No answer on the other end. It was silent, save for some very low static. He looked at the phone’s screen and saw it was still connected. Puzzled, he said into it, “Ben, you there? I can’t hear you if you are saying something.”

  A weak sound, like a small grunt, but Joe couldn’t be sure.

  “Ben? Ben?!”

  “J-J-Joe … uh …” said a small, quiet voice sounding like someone who had just come to after an accident.

  Joe leaned onto the counter and spoke hard into the phone. “Ben? I’m here. Are you OK? You sound hurt. Talk to me.”

  “Joe … she was … at … my house …”

  “What? Ben! She? You mean Anna? Anna was at your house? Did she hurt you? Did she hurt Patricia?” Joe was frantic to grab the house phone and dial the Captain. He misdialed three times as he kept calling for Ben to give him more information. He finally hit the right sequence and the Captain’s phone rang. It went to voicemail. Joe cursed, hit mute on his phone and nearly yelled to the voicemail recording, “Captain! She has Ben! I don’t know if Patricia is alright. Send someone there now!”

  He hung up and heard Ben on his phone saying, “She wants us, Joe, … she … wants us …”

  “Ben! Come on, man, talk to me! Where are you?” He was already grabbing his keys from the entry table and opening the front door as he asked, the leftovers still sitting on the counter. He scrambled to his car and got in. When he started it, he heard some shuffling sounds come through, then breathing. Joe didn’t move and held as still as he could while he listened.

  Finally, after a few tense and quiet moments, a woman’s voice spoke. “Joe. Joe, you know you need to be here.”

  “Anna?” Joe answered. “Anna, if you took Ben I need to know where!”

  “Yeah,” she said and he heard a low chuckle in her voice. “Yeah, I took him because for some reason you two are too slow to understand what you are supposed to do. I’ve given you every chance to come to me, and you’ve failed on every chance. I was going to let you two decide who stayed, but now I had to decide! You made me decide, Joe! Me!”

  “What are you talking about? We didn’t know it was you until the note on our car—”

  “Don’t play dumb, Joe. You aren’t good at it. You’ve known damn well it was me all along. Ice! Ice, Joe! Who else could it have been? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you knew. And you made me choose.”

  Anger welled up in Joe, his fists tightening around the steering wheel, turning his knuckles bone white. “I didn’t make you choose anything! We didn’t know we were a part of your game! Tell me where he is right now, damn it!”

  A sigh, followed by silence. Then a small chuckle. “You really want to drag this out, huh? Fine, I’ll pretend you don’t know. Fine. I’ll pretend you weren’t ignoring me. I’ll pretend you are still the guy I thought you were.”

  “Please,” Joe said in a much quieter voice. “Just tell me where he is.”

  “I’m where the ice is, Joe. I’m always where the ice is.”

  The line went dead.

  Joe pulled the phone in front of him and stared at the home screen. He was so stunned he didn’t even react when the phone started to buzz loudly in his hand. The Captain’s name was on the caller ID.

  * * *

  “She called you?”

  “Yes, Captain. I don’t …”

  Joe heard the sigh on the other end of the line. His captain had just told him about the 911 call he heard from Patricia Obvari about her husband’s abduction. She said that when she was in the kitchen, she heard a loud noise from the garage where Ben was working on the lawnmower. She yelled out to him, and when she didn’t get an answer she went out to find him missing. There was a sign of a struggle and some blood. She called in immediately.

  Joe heard most of the Captain’s call while he was still sitting in the driver’s seat of his car. The engine was on, but he didn’t move because he realized he had no idea where to go. There was some of the call he didn’t hear because his mind started to run through the worst possible outcomes.

  Like finding his best friend encased in a block of ice somewhere.

  “You listening to me?”

  “Huh?” Joe asked, still in his nightmare-filled stupor.

  “I said, Officer Salk, are you listening to me? We found out she has not been in that home for quite some time. There is a cleaning company that comes in once a week to clean everything. That’s why it looked like she was living there.”

  “Uh huh,” Joe replied, his eyes still in the middle space, not focusing on anything.

  “We need to know what you two know. She said you knew where she was. Think, damn it. Where is that?”

  “I truly don’t—” he started but was interrupted by the rising bile in his throat and the need to open his door and vomit, which he did.

  “Hold on,” Joe heard the Captain say over the small phone speaker as it sat in his hand by the center console. A few moments of silence passed
before the Captain’s voice came back. “Joe? Are you there?”

  With a numb expression, Joe put the phone back to his ear. “Yeah?”

  “Detective Doyle just called. They tracked down some financials of hers and got a weird hit on some construction material. It was picked up in person, so no luck on a delivery address, but it was some squares of AstroTurf, white roof paint, and the thick plastic sheeting for the bottoms of koi ponds. Does that mean anything to you?”

  For a moment, Joe was confused by his Captain’s words. He shook his head to clear a the fog, and while using a napkin from the glove compartment to wipe away the vomit on his lips, he asked him to repeat it. When he did, Joe nearly dropped the phone as a dawning memory came into view.

  He remembered sitting with Anna George the day of her attack. He and Ben sat with her, getting her statement as she tried to work through everything that had happened. He remembered her comments. In particular, he remembered something strange she’d said at the time. He even wrote it down on his notepad as he took her statement because it felt like such an odd thing to say.

  “Captain, I know where she is.”

  * * *

  Ben Obvari was having difficulty staying awake. He wanted to and was trying his absolute best to, but whatever she had used to knock him out was still lingering in his system, threatening to return him to sleep, which was what he was terrified he’d never come out of.

  “Anna …” he managed to say. She wasn’t in his direct line of sight; blurry as his vision was, he could at least see that. He thought he heard her off to the side, over in an area to his left.

  “Anna …” he called again when he didn’t get a reply.

  “What is it, love?” she answered.

  “What … what are you do—why are you …?”

  “Oh, come now,” Anna said as she came into his field of view. “Big, bad, Obvari still feeling a little drugged? You are a lightweight! I barely used as much as I did for that white-trash thing in the shed. Remember her? She was tiny, so I used a small amount. That’s how much you got. Shake it off, love, shake it off.”