Their Frozen Graves: A completely addictive crime thriller and mystery novel

by Choudhary, Ruhi

  “Shut it.”

  “I didn’t say anything.” He chuckled.

  Mackenzie fished out change from a drawer and headed to the vending machine. She needed a soda and some chocolate to wake her up after another sleepless night. Her usual smoothie wasn’t quite cutting it today.

  She was playing with the change in her hands when a familiar voice hauled her attention to the television.

  “We are joined by the most famous reporter in Lakemore.” Debbie, the anchor, smiled at the camera, her face caked in makeup. “The man who broke the story that took Lakemore by storm. Vincent Hawkins, welcome.”

  The camera panned out to accommodate a guffawing Vincent in the frame. His gray hair had been cut short, but the thin mustache capping his lips was intact. He was dressed in a beige suit, unlike the casual jeans and T-shirt he wore when he’d visited Mackenzie a few months ago.

  “Thank you for having me, Deb.”

  “Did you anticipate that this story would blow up like this?”

  “Of course I did.” He shrugged. “As it should. Lakemore put its trust in the wrong people. The public needed to know.”

  “But the path to justice is complicated.”

  Vincent nodded. “It often is. But that should never stop anyone from doing what’s right.”

  Mackenzie selected a Sprite and a Milky Way and went back to her office. It was wise to stay away from the news. It stressed her out. Back in her chair, she munched on the candy. She checked her watch. Nick was dropping off Luna at school. He was about to return anytime.

  She noted Robbie Elfman’s information and his address—a man with a history of stalking women, appearing to orbit around Katy. They needed to pay him a visit.

  Thirty

  Robbie Elfman lived a five-minute walk from Woodburn Park. The single-story house was painted an ugly blue, with cabling from nearby poles dangling loose when it reached the roofline. An old Impala with dents and scratches stood in the driveway. The neighborhood was fraught with poverty and dread. Even after several knocks, no one opened the door.

  “His car’s here,” Nick said.

  “He could’ve—”

  There was a sound on the other side of the door. “Someone’s home.” Mackenzie moved to a window and peered inside. A shadow scurried across the hallway.

  “The back door!” she yelled.

  Nick circled around the house, Mackenzie right behind him. A door squeaked open and shut. A round man with curly brown hair stumbled toward the thick spread of trees behind the house.

  “Lakemore PD! Stop!”

  The man ignored them, but struggled to run fast as his loose pants kept slipping down his waist.

  Nick launched himself forward and tackled him. The man face-planted on the ground with a growl. Nick tried restraining him, but the man got to his knees and swung a fist, landing a glancing blow.

  Mackenzie grabbed the man from behind and, using her entire strength, tossed him onto his side. He crashed into the ground with a groan. Before he could recover, she pulled out handcuffs and slipped them round his wrists.

  “Robbie Elfman, you’re under arrest for battery against a police officer. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—”

  “Please, no! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I just got out of jail.” He writhed on the ground. Mackenzie pressed a knee into his lower back to keep him down. “You punched my partner, you asshole.”

  “I panicked! It was a reflex. Please. My record is screwed up already.”

  She looked at Nick. He had a bloody nose. He took out his handkerchief and gestured for her to go easy on him. “Will you cooperate with us?”

  “I know nothing!”

  “Will you?” She tightened the cuffs.

  “Okay, okay. Fine.”

  She pulled him up by the back of his collar. The stench of cigarettes overwhelmed her nostrils. “You want to tell us why you ran away?”

  Robbie shivered in the crisp winter air. “Because I saw on the news that Katy Becker was abducted.”

  “And?” Nick raised his eyebrows. “What do you know about that?”

  He licked his lips. “Nothing. But I knew you wouldn’t like what you’ll find in there.”

  Robbie signaled to his house with a resigned look on his face.

  Mackenzie dragged him over to the house with Nick on her heels. She didn’t know what to prepare for. Was Katy inside?

  She kicked open the door. When it slammed into the wall, a puff of dust blew into their faces. But once the dust settled, the sight in front of them was appalling.

  Wires ran across the living room with Katy’s pictures hanging from them. The walls were covered in her pictures too. Her face was everywhere.

  “What the hell?” Nick muttered.

  “I told you!” Robbie’s skin was mottled red. “It looks bad.”

  She instructed him to sit on a chair. “I’m going to check your house. Is that okay?”

  “You need a search warrant, right?”

  “Not if you give us permission.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  Mackenzie raised her eyebrow. He recoiled. “Okay! Fine! Go ahead!”

  Nick stayed with him, making sure that he didn’t run while Mackenzie navigated her way through his small house. She had to duck and push the photographs out of her way. Katy was everywhere. One wire had at least thirty copies of the same picture hanging on it. She recognized some others from her social media accounts. None of them looked like surveillance pictures. She checked his closets, the bathroom, and the tiny kitchen.

  Katy wasn’t in this house.

  “You’re obsessed with her.” Mackenzie’s tone was curt when she returned to the living room.

  “I’m not obsessed with her. I love her.”

  Nick sighed, exasperated. “We checked your record, Robbie. You’ve been in love with a lot of women over the years.”

  “This time it’s real,” he insisted. “She’s special.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “No!”

  “Where were you on Monday morning?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Here.”

  “Can anyone vouch for you?”

  He pressed his lips in a hard line. “No. I want a lawyer. I don’t like how I’m being treated. This is harassment.”

  “Funny. Because I can arrest you for a lot of things right now,” Mackenzie said.

  “How long have you been following Katy for?” Nick demanded.

  “I don’t follow her. I like to look at her,” he hissed through his teeth.

  Mackenzie got in his face, towering over his pudgy, short frame, and placed her strong arms on her either side of him. “Cut the crap, Robbie. We have evidence of you following her around like a puppy dog. Since when?”

  He wilted. “April. I was driving past this vigil outside city hall after that cop was shot dead. She was standing next to the cop’s mother. I saw her… and I fell for her compassion.”

  “Have you ever tried to contact her?”

  “No.”

  “You know where she lives?”

  Robbie grunted and looked at Nick helplessly. “I… yes. But that doesn’t mean I took her!”

  Nick furrowed his eyebrows. “Have you ever been to her house?”

  “Y-yes.” He hung his head low. “Only when she was there. I never went inside. It was nice to watch her sit in the front yard and read.”

  “Does she know about you?”

  A dreamy look crossed his face. “No. She’s married. She’s the best person I know. I never wanted to confuse her.”

  “What do you do for a living, Robbie?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I’m in between jobs.”

  “When was the last time you had a job?”

  “Two months ago. I was a busboy, but they gave me the can for taking too many smoke breaks.”

  She jutted her thumb behind her. “You got a fancy PC setup.”

  “So?�
� he glowered.

  “When did you buy it?”

  “Few months ago.” He shrugged.

  “How did you afford it?”

  Robbie pursed his lips and gritted his teeth. “My grandmother left me some inheritance. I used part of it.”

  “How much inheritance?”

  “Around ten grand.”

  “Do you have any proof of that?”

  “No. Just take me for my word.”

  Mackenzie eyed him. Sweat collected on his upper lip and on the tips of his brown beard. He rocked back and forth on the chair, his hands still secured behind his back. His beady eyes looked smaller than they had in his DMV picture. He was clearly a delusional man with a history of stalking women. He couldn’t hold down a job and lived in a dusty house that desperately needed more ventilation and fewer pictures of Katy.

  He was unstable and alienated. But did that make him violent?

  “You know we’ll go through your financial statements, right?” she spat out. “And if you’re lying, I’ll haul your ass into jail myself.”

  “I… I responded to an ad.” His voice was tinged with guilt. “It looks bad.”

  “What ad?”

  “I’ll show it to you. Have to dig through that drawer.”

  Mackenzie released the cuffs but hovered close as he scrambled to a chest of drawers.

  “He’s a nutjob,” Nick whispered.

  “This was the ad.” He handed them the small piece of paper sheepishly. “It was on the dark web. I printed it out.”

  Mackenzie took it, and her heart stopped.

  Looking for a woman who looks like her and wants a fresh start in life.

  There was a picture of Katy Becker below and more details promising a healthy lifestyle.

  “When was this?” Nick was the first of them to recover.

  “May.”

  “And you had to deliver a lookalike?”

  Robbie rolled his eyes. “You make it sound like trafficking. It’s common. We like Katy but can’t be with her, so we like to become friends with someone like her.”

  “We?” The word sounded like an accusation coming out of Mackenzie’s mouth.

  “People like me, who fall in love with someone from afar.”

  “You found someone?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah… yeah, I did. Bella Fox. She’s from Riverview. It was consensual. I didn’t force her into anything. She had issues of her own. Pretty sure she did heroin.”

  Bella Fox. They finally had a name for their Jane Doe.

  “How did you find her?” Mackenzie asked.

  “On a prostitution website.” His face colored crimson. “It’s the best place to look for girls. There’s a lot of variety.”

  “Who did you give her to?”

  “I don’t know. I was supposed to drop her off at Crescent Lake in Woodburn Park on June first, at noon. I did, and I never saw her again.”

  Mackenzie’s blood fizzed with anger. She crumpled the paper in her hand. He took a woman with a drug problem and dropped her off in those woods and months later she was murdered. Unfortunately, there was no surveillance there. Lakemore hid dark secrets in the woods. She knew that only too well.

  “How did you get the money? Deposited to your bank account?” Nick asked.

  “Bitcoin. Which I sold.”

  The dark web was a bottomless black box.

  “We’re going to take your hard drive.”

  “You need a warrant.”

  “Not if we have your consent, Robbie.”

  Robbie looked between them and fidgeted. Sighing, he unplugged his laptop and handed it to them.

  “You’re coming with us to the station, Robbie.” Mackenzie nudged him forward.

  He looked appalled. “What? No! I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know what happened to her!”

  “We have to take your formal statement. Will you cooperate or are you going to make this hard?”

  He sulked and grabbed his jacket before stepping out with them. Nick locked him in the backseat and turned to Mackenzie. “I’ll ask Clint to crack this open, but he’ll need assistance.”

  Their IT guy was good, but his caseload was heavy. “Maybe Andrea from Special Investigations can help him.”

  “Good call. At least we have a name now. Bella Fox.”

  “This ad changes things.”

  As Nick pulled out of Robbie’s driveway, Mackenzie’s mind raced. Someone had paid Robbie Elfman thousands of dollars in bitcoin to get a girl who looked like Katy Becker. Bella Fox, a troubled young woman with a drug problem, was dropped off in Woodburn Park by Crescent Lake. A few months later, her body washed up on the shore of Westley River along with Kim’s, her face surgically enhanced to look more like Katy. Both women had been murdered together in the last two weeks. They needed to find Katy, before she became the next victim.

  Thirty-One

  “We’re looking for a gut hook knife,” Mackenzie announced to the uniformed cops who had accompanied her to Robbie Elfman’s house to execute a search warrant. “But bag anything you feel is out of place.”

  They nodded and began turning the place inside out. Emptying out drawers, tearing open mattresses, rummaging through piles of clothes. Most of their efforts were concentrated around the kitchen, but Mackenzie had instructed them to keep an eye out for a secret place—anywhere a knife could be stashed.

  Robbie Elfman had spent hours being questioned and was then charged for trafficking. After all, he had received payment for providing a “service,” which was finding and delivering a woman. He had been assigned a public prosecutor and with his record it was likely he would spend a good amount of time in jail. Robbie was willing to cooperate, getting spooked when told that the girl was found murdered. He’d even provided a detailed sketch of her before the procedures. But he maintained his innocence in both the murders and the surgery, swearing blind his only role had been to deliver Bella.

  Mackenzie looked out the window of Robbie’s home. Lakemore was like a ghost town, buried in blinding white snow, the dense woods looming menacingly in the background. The nightly blizzards had held the town hostage and Mackenzie couldn’t recall the last time she had seen it so dead.

  She thought of Bella, bought and sold like chattel, and her chest tightened. What had she and Kim been involved in? And where was Katy now?

  Her phone rang. “Hey.”

  “Anything yet?” Nick asked.

  “Just started. Will let you know. Anything in Riverview?”

  “Yeah, I contacted Kevin in Riverview PD and forwarded him the sketch Robbie gave us of Bella. None of their missing persons match the description.” Papers shuffled in the background. “And no Bella Fox was reported missing either.”

  Mackenzie paced the room. “Okay, Robbie said she was a prostitute, right? And we know she was a drug addict. It’s possible no one reported her.”

  “It’s going to be an uphill battle. But hopefully we’ll retrieve something from his laptop, and we can go from there.”

  “Bella Fox could be her work name. Prostitutes often don’t use their real name.”

  “Good point. I’ll get on it.”

  Mackenzie hung up soon after and focused on sifting through Robbie’s place. She thought again of the pictures of Katy, decorating every surface. Could they really believe he’d had no other involvement? He was clearly obsessed; no doubt he would have welcomed the prospect of making replicas of the woman he “loved.” By all accounts he lacked the expertise to do it alone, but was there someone else? Mackenzie thought of the gift Steven had received. A fan of Steven’s work; most likely someone with medical knowledge. They needed to find out who had sent that pen.

  It was hours before Mackenzie and the team of officers finished digging through Robbie’s place. They had searched it from top to bottom, but there was nothing more to be found. Empty-handed and disappointed, Mackenzie headed back to the station.

  “Go home, Mad Mack,” Sully grumbled without really meanin
g it. He shook his head when she didn’t reply and walked out the door, leaving her alone. It was eleven. The floor was empty. Motion-sensitive lights in the hallway turned off.

  Mackenzie sat alone at her desk in the silence. She had spent the rest of the day after the search going over the evidence they had gathered again. She had Katy’s and Cole’s phone records, forensics reports on Kim and Bella, Robbie’s history, the crime scene unit pictures from Katy’s abduction, and the ad looking for a woman who resembled Katy. Everything she knew about the case was right in front of her. But something important was escaping her notice; something was hiding in plain sight.

  Clint and Andrea were still working with Robbie’s laptop. Kim’s files from the center would be received tomorrow. Maybe the answer lay in her history? What if Kim had put out the ad in an effort to look for Katy? Mackenzie quickly dismissed the idea. Katy’s entire life was all over social media for anyone to see. Kim wouldn’t have needed to resort to such extreme measures just to find her.

  Mackenzie clicked her pen incessantly. The sound kept her tethered to the case. In the silence, it was too easy for her mind to float away; she’d hear Melody’s shallow breathing in her ears. She’d hear the sound of dirt hitting the ground, as her mother buried a man Mackenzie had never met.

  Her ringing phone startled her.

  “Hello?” she answered without looking.

  “Mack, I know you’re working late tonight, did you get a chance to eat? I could bring you something,” Sterling said.

  “No. I’m good.”

  “It’s getting really bad out there. Do you want me to pick you up? I know you don’t like driving in the snow.”

  Her chest squeezed. “Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up. He called back again but she declined it. She was still hopping mad at him, still gutted by his betrayal.

  Mackenzie let her long tresses be free. She stretched and moved around, trying to relax.

  What if what she was looking for was not in the physical evidence? She stopped and took out her notebook. There had to be something in her notes; she wrote everything down. Maybe she’d missed something in a witness statement, or her own observations. She settled down and started to read.