Deep Freeze

by Lisa Jackson

  Carter glanced at his watch, felt the urgency of the passing of time. Where was the murdering bastard who had Jenna? If the weather were better, there could be helicopters or planes searching the surrounding hills, but as it was, they were forced to the ground, and with the storm, a search would be nearly impossible.

  The crime techs went to work, and Shane trudged through the snow toward the house. He was wired. Anxious. Felt that time was slipping away and with it, Jenna’s chances of survival.

  What did he know about this guy?

  Lived in the area.

  Obsessed with Jenna Hughes.

  Considered himself some kind of poet.

  A hunter, someone strong.

  Someone who was connected to Hollywood and worked with alginate to make masks.

  Someone who knew the layout of the grounds, understood Jenna’s routine. Knew about Cassie’s trysts with her boyfriend. About the logging road.

  Someone close…

  Someone who called himself Steven White, after a character in Resurrection.

  By the time Carter returned to the house, Lieutenant Sparks and another officer from the OSP had arrived. Sparks was standing near the fire in the den, talking on the phone. Rinda, Allie, and the dog were hunkered on the couch, a quilt tossed over them, and another technician from the Oregon State Police was searching the place. “Haven’t heard on the GPS chips,” Sparks said after hanging up, “and Brennan, Settler, Falletti, and Dvorak are all accounted for. I had officers check.”

  “Can we leave now?” Rinda asked. “Allie can come with me. I’ll take care of her. But I’ve got to find Scott.”

  “He’s missing?” Carter asked and remembered that Rinda’s son could recite lines from Jenna’s movies, that he was near the top of the list for rental/purchase of every piece of film she’d made.

  “He went into Portland, and Jesus, Carter, don’t give me that look. Scott’s not a part of this. Just like Wes wasn’t.” When he didn’t respond, she threw the cover off. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Shane, get a grip. You’re grasping at straws!”

  “Hey!” the technician shouted from the stairs. “Up here!”

  “Stay with her,” Carter ordered Rinda as he and Sparks headed up the steps, passing the landing with its window. The tech was standing in the doorway; he led them into Jenna’s closet and a pull-down ladder that opened to an attic space above. Within the attic, beneath a thick layer of insulation, he pointed to a wire with a small, bulbous end. “A camera,” he said, “not part of the normal wiring, back here.” He showed them more of the same, hidden deep beneath the batting and run along a beam, barely noticeable, threading through the upper floor. “This is a professional job. Pretty high-tech, and he would have had to have time to do it. My guess, whoever wired this place did it before she moved in…like an inspector or someone hired to do work to bring it up to code. This insulation is pretty new, certainly added long after the house was built, probably before Ms. Hughes bought the place. So our guy, he does the legitimate electrical stuff, has the place inspected, then adds his own special little devices.”

  Shane thought about Scott Dalinsky. Yeah, the kid had some of the know-how, but not the opportunity. Wes Allen? Or someone else. Seth Whitaker came quickly to mind. And he was a transplant, wasn’t he?

  Shane whipped out his cell phone and called BJ. “Get to someone at city hall, find out who did the remodel work on Jenna Hughes’s place, and where the hell Seth Whitaker lives…Isn’t it up past Juniper?”

  “I know that one. I’ve been checking,” BJ said. “He bought the Farris property about two and a half years back. Before Jenna Hughes plunked down her money.”

  “But she might have already been looking. Where’s Whitaker’s place?”

  “Remember the private ski resort project that was abandoned? That’s the spot.”

  Carter felt that sense of awareness, the prickle of knowledge, a quick rush that accompanies cracking a particularly troublesome puzzle.

  The acres surrounding the abandoned ski lodge overlooked this ranch. Located high upon a cliff, the very spot where Pious Falls started its furious descent, the acres set deep into the forest. The fact that some Arizona developer had actually thought about building a ski lodge up there had been considered folly by most of the locals. The access was nearly impossible, the permits unlikely, that side of the mountain ravaged by winter winds screaming down the gorge. The entire idea had fizzled before it had ever taken off. The man who’d dreamed up the crazy plan had died after some initial construction had been bogged down in red tape and red ink. His heirs had spent two or three years trying to unload the place.

  Enter Seth Whitaker. The loner. A handyman. Electrician. Had he worked in L.A.? Was he connected to Jenna and her movies?

  “You think Whitaker is involved?” BJ asked.

  “I think he could be, yes. Check his alibis for the nights Sonja Hatchell, Roxie Olmstead, and Lynnetta Swaggert were abducted, then see if he was in Medford last year, around the time Mavis Gette was thumbing her way to Oregon. It may take some time, but there may be some credit card receipts indicating he was in Southern Oregon or Northern California. I need to know if this guy has changed his name legally, or illegally, for that matter, if he ever lived in the L.A. area, was associated with Hazzard Brothers or any other company that worked with Jenna Hughes’s films. Find out everything you can about him.”

  “Tall order.”

  “In a short time. I need all this ASAP.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but remember, you also thought Wes Allen was our man.”

  “Wishful thinking,” he joked.

  She didn’t laugh.

  “Dispatch a unit to Whitaker’s place on the mountain, too.”

  “We don’t have a unit, not so much as one deputy who isn’t at another emergency,” she said. “And wait a sec…the roads up on Wildcat Mountain are so steep, they’re shut down. I just got the call. They’re impassable up there, and a chopper won’t work in this mess.”

  The mountain retreat was his lair…Carter felt it in his bones.

  “Call the forest service. Get some of their equipment. Find a way to get up there and get back to me.”

  “Jesus, Carter, why not ask for the moon while you’re at it?”

  “Just do it, damn it, BJ,” he said, impatient. Every minute wasted was a minute Jenna Hughes was with the psycho.

  He clicked off his phone and turned to Sparks. “It’s Seth Whitaker. He’s our guy.”

  “You’re sure?” Sparks was skeptical as they walked into the den.

  “He’s an electrician. Lives fairly close. Has only been in town two or three years.”

  Sparks was shaking his head. “That’s still real thin.”

  “No reason not to go visit him.” At the bottom of the steps, Carter turned into the den. Jenna’s daughter was seated in a corner of the couch, a hand-held video game in her lap, but her eyes turned toward the window. “Hey, Allie,” Carter said, careful not to lead her to a conclusion. “Does the man who took your mom have the same build of anyone you know, anyone who might have been at the house?”

  “Maybe.” She was still scared to death, regarded Shane with wary eyes.

  “Like who?”

  “Like the bodyguard, big like him.”

  “Tall and muscular?”

  “Yeah…” She turned away, scratched at her cheek.

  “But you didn’t recognize him?”

  Her face squeezed together. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes.

  “Leave her alone,” Rinda said. “Carter, enough!”

  She was right.

  The kid had done all she could.

  He walked into the kitchen. “Can you stay with them?” he asked Sparks. “Until I get back.”

  “I’ve got to be here for the M.E. and the D.A. As long as the crime scene team is here.” His cell phone jangled and Sparks answered. The conversation was short. His dark eyes narrowed and he snapped the phone off. “GPS found the location of t
he phones, along with Turnquist’s. Looks like they were ditched along Wildcat Road, east of here.”

  “On the way to Whitaker’s place.”

  “On the way to a lot of places, but yeah.” Larry nodded. “You think he’s our guy?”

  “I’d bet on it. Call the feds. Send backup.”

  “You’re going up there?”

  “No other choice,” Carter said and was out the door and into the freezing weather. “Get me a search warrant.”

  “Tonight?”

  “That’s right. Call Amanda Pratt with the D.A.’s office and let her know this is her big chance. She’ll love it. Trust me, if there’s a chance she can break this case open, she’ll find a judge if she has to crawl into bed with one tonight. But I need to get into Seth Whitaker’s property.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but how the hell you plan on getting to his place?” Sparks asked, his voice drowned by the wind.

  “The only way I can,” Carter said, and opened the door to his Blazer.

  He’d have to climb the damned falls.

  CHAPTER 46

  The cold caressed him as he slid out of the pickup. Like a lover, it wrapped around him, sending icy thrills along his spine. He trudged to the back of the pickup and opened the tailgate. Jenna was lying as he’d left her, seemingly still unconscious, though she should be waking up.

  Carefully, wary that she could be faking her state of unconsciousnes, he touched her leg. She didn’t budge. Then he raised a fist as if to strike her, slamming it toward her face, only to pull his hand back before he touched her. She didn’t so much as flinch.

  Satisfied that she was still out, he carefully untied the cord holding her in place from the pickup’s grommets.

  Her black hair tumbled over her face, her ebony lashes swept the crest of her sculpted cheeks, and he imagined what she’d look like as Anne Parks…well, he knew. He’d watched Resurrection so many times that he could recite the dialogue from memory, knew every nuance of her gestures, anticipated her actions.

  But before he created Anne, he had one more lifelike mannequin to create, compliments of the woman who looked so much like Jenna that she stole the breath from his lungs. Cassie Kramer, Jenna’s firstborn, would be the perfect mold for Katrina in Innocence Lost. Her features were spot-on with her mother’s, only her hair needed to be a darker color.

  Once he’d finished with Cassie, he’d create his replication of Anne Parks by using Jenna, herself, as the mold. She would be immortalized, caught in her most beautiful role forever.

  His shrine would be complete—the only character that would be missing would be Rebecca Lange of White Out. That part he’d reserved for Jenna’s sister, Jill, but he’d fouled up years before and caused an accident he hadn’t meant to. Not that the idea of an avalanche hadn’t been an erotic fantasy, with snow and ice exploding down the hillside in a thunderous, rolling plume. But he hadn’t meant to kill a woman who would have been ideal for the lifelike replica of Rebecca Lange from White Out, though of course, at that time, his shrine had only been a far-flung and half-formed plan. Only in the tragedy’s aftermath, when he’d been injured and collected an insurance settlement, had he first thought of his special tribute to her. The movie had been scrapped and Jenna’s marriage had broken up. She had pulled away from the glitter of Hollywood and had started talking about leaving L.A. Upon learning that she wanted to move north, he took it as an omen. Fate. That they were destined to be together. One. An incredibly perfect union of bodies and minds.

  And now she was his.

  Alone.

  But he was running out of time. Could feel it. Had even altered his routine a bit, and that angered him. There had been no time to file down Cassie Kramer’s teeth…

  Not good. A bad sign. Things should be planned.

  He gathered her gently from the truck and carried her, like a bridegroom lifting his new bride over a threshold, to the waiting snowmobile with its webbed stretcher behind, the same kind of stretcher used to transport the injured off a ski run.

  As the wind whispered through the trees, he gently placed her into the stretcher’s cradle. “It won’t be long now,” he promised.

  Jenna waited. It was all she could do not to hurl herself at the madman, but she knew that if she blew it now, she wouldn’t be able to disarm him. Nor would she be able to locate Cassie.

  Be patient, she told herself as she felt him strap her into a webbed canoe of sorts, fire up an engine, and take off. She didn’t dare even chance the slit of an eye opening until she felt the sharp tug; the stretcher shuddered, then slid across the snow. A rush of cold air swept past her, and only then did she risk viewing the snow-crusted trees and brush flying by in a blur, old-growth timber rising high above her. She was strapped into some kind of sled that was anchored to a snowmobile, spraying snow.

  Fear clawed its way through her, but she gritted her teeth. She would suffer through whatever he had planned.

  Just take me to Cassie, you freak, then we’ll see.

  The equipment was old. Ropes and crampons and an ice pick that he hadn’t used since the accident that had taken David Landis’s life. Carter had never planned to use the ice-climbing gear again, but had kept it in the garage, never understanding the reason why. Tonight he piled everything in the back of his Blazer and headed to the logging road that intersected the falls about two hundred feet off the valley floor. He wore boots with cleats, gloves that were flexible yet warm, his body-fitting ski gear, and he never questioned his mission.

  BJ was right—the road to Whitaker’s land was closed, a back forest-service access road miles out of the way. Up the falls was dangerous as hell, but it was the quickest and stealthiest way to Whitaker’s door.

  He drove as far as he could up an abandoned logging road, where his tires spun in the snow and his Blazer lurched and lunged, four-wheel drive forcing the SUV upward, the engine grinding. He nosed his rig along the ancient road, driving as fast as he dared, as quickly as the Blazer would go, past trees that knifed into the cloudy sky, and steep, sheer canyons that fell away from the narrow road.

  He stared through the windshield, trying to make out where the road was stable and where the bluff, hidden by snow, gave way. His teeth ground together, his jaw aching, every minute anticipating a wheel sliding off the gravel, sending snow and rocks over the edge, his truck pitching into the darkness, but still he climbed. Upward. Lurching. Grinding. Clawing, the Blazer roared upward until the road ran out.

  Carter didn’t so much as think twice. He set the emergency brake and grabbed the gear from the back of his rig, then slogged through the snow. The hike was severe, ever upward through the deep snow, following a narrow trail that switched back and forth before it reached the falls and ended abruptly.

  In the darkness, Carter shined his flashlight on the silvery sheen of thick ice—water frozen in time as it tumbled down the rocky cliffs to the gorge. In an instant he saw David Landis climbing up this very stretch of frozen water, heard his taunts as he’d scaled the sheer, slippery slope, the same taunts that had echoed through his head for so many years.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid.”

  Hell, yes, I’m afraid.

  “The ultimate chickenshit? Pussy-to-the-max?”

  Carter’s guts knotted as he remembered the fall…how he couldn’t save David. And now, the wind whispered through the trees, seeming to echo David’s jeers.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid.”

  Carter set his jaw.

  Strapped on his crampons and didn’t look down.

  He’d either save Jenna, or die trying.

  They slowed and the snowmobile’s engine died.

  Jenna told herself to relax, to feign being unconscious, to keep up the act. So far, it had worked.

  Oh, yeah, like a charm. Now you’re a million miles away from anyone, trapped with a psycho.

  She heard him stow the snowmobile, then felt him lift her again and it was all she could do not to recoil at the feel of him c
arrying her. She let her head loll back over his arm, felt her hair falling free and catching in the frigid wind.

  He paused. Stopped dead in his tracks. As if he sensed something was wrong.

  Breathe normally. Remain limp. You’re Raggedy Ann. Don’t shiver, don’t look, don’t so much as lift an eyebrow.

  “Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, and she thought she recognized his voice. Inwardly, she cringed. Outwardly, she didn’t react. “I’ve waited so long.” He shifted, lifted her higher, and she felt his hot breath against her face.

  Don’t move, Jenna. Whatever he does, do NOT react.

  “You are every woman…my woman…”

  She thought she might get sick.

  He brushed his lips across her neck, his warm flesh making her own chilled skin crawl. Still she didn’t react, not even when his mouth nibbled at the corner of hers and he let the tip of his tongue press against the seam of her lips. She wanted to lock her jaw, but reminded herself of all the love scenes she’d played where the actor who was her love interest in the script was a nauseating, arrogant bastard.

  You can do this, Jenna. You can.

  She felt her abductor shudder with desire, and it was all she could do not to shrivel away from him.

  Gratefully, he started moving again and she heard a door open, then slam shut with a heavy, metallic thud. His footsteps were steady and Jenna told herself she could do this…until she heard the voice—Cassie’s voice. Relief mingled with fear.

  “Hey! You! Let me down from here! Do you hear me? I said…oh…nooooooo. You have my mother? You bastard you put her down, right now!”

  Don’t, Cassie! Don’t taunt him.

  “What the hell are you doing with her? Leave her the fuck alone!”

  Her abductor stiffened.

  “Shut up!”

  “Let her go. You’re never going to get away with this…this sick thing you’ve got going, whatever it is.”