“I hope that will give her parents some peace,” he said, a catch in his voice.
“Here's the crazy thing,” Jack said. “They said one of these bodies had been up there for at three or four decades. Obviously not one of Nechayev's victims. But I wonder if he was copying some other piece of shit when he started all this.”
No, Danny thought. Whoever she was, she was one of Aleksei's victims too. But there was no way Danny could explain Aleksei's real age and decades of crime to his boss.
“I guess we'll never know, sir,” he said.
“Of course, they haven't found Nechayev himself. Or the dead girl from Seattle. No sign of Katie.”
Danny tried his best not to grimace as he recalled that dead girl flashing her fangs at him while she prepared to leave Alaska with Aleksei. She was Katya now. While Katie was most definitely dead, Katya was not. She was a monster, just like her creator Aleksei.
“I doubt we'll ever find Nechayev,” Danny said.
“So you've said. But I think that's just the trauma talking, Fitzpatrick. There's no way in hell he could have gotten out of the Arctic alive. We'll find his body eventually.”
Danny flashed back to the postcard he had received from the vampire a few months earlier. At that time, he and Katya had been in Aleksei's hometown of St. Petersburg in Russia. Danny had no doubt they were long gone from there by now. He wondered how many residents of St. Petersburg had fallen victim to them before they'd left.
“Are you alright?” Jack asked.
Danny forced a smile onto his pale face. “Fine, sir. All of this just brings back bad memories.”
“Of course it does. But I thought you'd want to know.”
“I do. And I appreciate the update.” Danny got up from his chair and lifted his coffee cup from the table. “Do you need me for anything else?”
Jack shook his head. “No.”
Danny nodded and left the room.
Jack watched him leave and wondered, not for the first time, if he had made a mistake promoting Danny to homicide. He didn't doubt his excellent detective skills; Fitzpatrick had proven those and then some when he'd solved the Nechayev case, but Jack knew the man had been emotionally fragile even before he'd nearly been killed in Nechayev's Arctic home. By all accounts, Danny was managing well now and had even sobered up, something Jack would never have believed possible just a few months before. But he knew the stress of homicide could sometimes unhinge even the most stable detective.
Jack had seen the shadow cross over Danny's face as soon as he had mentioned the Arctic. It was obvious the man wasn't over what had happened to him. Jack doubted he ever would be.
****
Chapter 7
Jamie Dzubenko sat at his lab table and tried to focus on the slide under the microscope in front of him. In spite of the fact that he'd had three cups of coffee in the last hour, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Last night had been exhilarating beyond his wildest dreams, but it had also been more exhausting than he ever could have imagined.
It continued to surprise him that the invisible spell took nearly as much energy as the fire spell. He had assumed nothing would require as much focus and concentration as creating fire out of thin air, but he'd been wrong. It turned out most of his spells required the same amount of stamina. In short, they were all exhausting on their own and nearly crippling when performed together.
But oh my, were they ever worth it. Jamie's plans for the Midnight Sun baseball game had gone off without a hitch, and he was still walking on air as he remembered the chaos and destruction he'd unleashed. The burning man had been even more spectacular than his first victim and seeing the revelry of the idiots at the game turn to terror had been one of the biggest thrills of Jamie's life.
“Dzubenko?”
The sound of his boss calling his name snapped Jamie out of his own revelry.
“Over here,” he answered, quickly pretending to be concentrating while staring through his microscope.
Stephen Ramey, his supervisor in the Fairbanks hospital medical technology lab, came to his side.
“Do you have the results for patient Tu643?” Ramey asked, checking the number with the paper on his clipboard.
Jamie turned to his computer and quickly typed in his password to bring up his log. “Sure,” he said, scanning the screen in front of him. “Positive, I'm afraid. Let me print this out for you.”
He printed out the results and handed them to his boss. “Anything else?”
Ramey shook his head. “No, not now.” He held up the paper before walking away. “Thanks for getting this so quickly.”
“Not a problem.”
As always, Jamie was relieved to be left alone. While he had no interest in the patients whose lab work he routinely performed, he loved his job. For as long as he could remember, he'd loved science. Even during the darkest and most mundane days of his childhood, he'd loved chemistry and biology. Test tubes and specimens were infinitely more interesting to him than people had ever been. Once he'd aged out of foster care and needed a way to take care of himself he'd stumbled upon medical technology and knew he'd found the perfect field. Now, Jamie spent his days alone in his lab with his science and his nights alone with his plans.
When Jamie had stumbled upon the secret his family had kept hidden for decades he was sure it was too good to be true. It seemed impossible that he possessed the ability to take his beloved science to a whole new and surreal level. His parents had tried to hide the magic that was rightfully his from him, but Jamie had not put up with that for long. He'd never allowed his parents or his siblings to stand in his way. He had made sure of that.
The power had been exhilarating since the very first time he had tried it out as a child, even when he had no idea what he was saying while chanting the spells. As he'd grown older and learned to read the Ukrainian texts his great-grandfather had brought with him from his homeland, the power became intoxicating. Jamie knew he was someone special.
But he was edgy now in addition to being exhausted. After being interviewed by one of the stunned Fairbanks detectives at the ball field and dutifully expressing his own shock and terror, Jamie had left Growden Park to return to the scene of his first triumph in Griffin Park the previous month. As he'd suspected, the park was empty, as anyone in Fairbanks who hadn't already been at the baseball game had run to witness the chaos for themselves upon hearing the news of the fire. Jamie had Griffin Park to himself.
The sun had finally set by the time he arrived and he tried in vain to suppress his glee as he made use of the few hours of twilight before the sun made its return. This was as dark as it got in Fairbanks during the summer. Jamie knew exactly where he had hidden his first victim last month and he was thrilled to see that Max Fugate’s remains had not yet been found. He assumed they hadn’t since he hadn’t heard anything on the news about such a gruesome discovery, but it was still a relief to know for sure that his plan was going to play out exactly as he wanted it to. It took only minutes to brush away the leaves and sticks that hid the charred corpse from passers-by. Jamie only wished he could be on the scene to see the terror on some unsuspecting jogger's face when they came upon such a macabre and horrifying sight as they trotted along the trail.
Now, Jamie repeatedly refreshed the Fairbanks news websites looking for word of the discovery. Surely someone would find the remains today. The timing had to be perfect.
Jamie's lips curled into a smile as he refreshed a page yet again and saw a breaking news bulletin flash at the top. Now that he finally had what he was waiting for, his exhaustion was quickly forgotten.
He had been preparing for years for this, and it was starting now. This summer, Fairbanks was going to see his masterpiece.
****
Chapter 8
“Oh my Lord,” Tessa said, echoing the thoughts of all who stood around the blackened human remains that had been discovered an hour earlier by a jogger in Griffin Park.
Danny remained silent, unable to fo
rm any words that would do justice to the fear that was threatening to overtake him. With the previous night’s horror so fresh in his mind that he could still smell the burning flesh, the body in front of them now was too much to process. He stared at the carnage at his feet and heard the voice and the laughter of Aleksei Nechayev in his mind.
“What kind of monster are you dealing with now, Detective? I was never the only one, you knew that, right?”
“Danny, are you okay?”
Danny heard Tessa’s voice and wondered why she sounded so far away when the last he’d noticed she’d been standing right next to him.
“Danny? What’s wrong?”
He felt Tessa’s hand on his arm and looked down at her as the sound of Nechayev’s laughter disappeared.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m fine. Just spaced out for a minute I guess.”
Danny could feel Jack Meyer’s eyes on him. The captain had been pressuring him to take advantage of the department’s counseling services ever since the Nechayev case. Danny had consistently refused. Not wanting to give his boss any reason to push the counseling again, Danny forcefully banished all thoughts of the vampire from his mind and put on his game face.
“Where’s the woman who found the body?” he asked.
Tessa pointed in the direction of a young woman who was doubled over against a nearby tree. She had clearly vomited several times and now clutched her stomach.
“I’m gonna go talk to her,” Danny said, anxious to be away from the corpse.
“Ma’am,” he said as he walked up beside the woman. “Are you okay? Do you need me to get the paramedics over here?”
The woman stood up and ran her fingers through her short, spiky blond hair, causing it to stick out in all directions. Her face was so pale it was nearly translucent and her thin lips trembled as she stared at Danny with puffy and tear-filled eyes.
“I’m okay,” she said.
Danny held out his hand. “I’m Detective Danny Fitzpatrick, Fairbanks PD. If you’re up to it, I’d like to talk with you about what happened here.”
The woman nodded and returned Danny’s handshake with a clammy and trembling hand. “That’s fine.”
“What’s your name?”
“Emily Schumacher.”
“Do you jog here often, Ms. Schumacher?”
“Almost every morning. This is my favorite park.”
“I like it too,” Danny said. “I bring my dog here a lot. Were you here yesterday? On this same trail?”
“Yes. I’ve been here every day this week. I come here to run before I go in to work. I’m a nurse and work second shift at Fairbanks General.”
“Did you see anyone else jogging or walking here this morning?”
Emily shook her head. “No. I had the park to myself.”
Danny kept quiet, watching Emily stare at the corpse and the medical examiners who had now shown up to do their work.
“I was jogging and noticed piles of branches and leaves off to the side of the trail. I glanced over and saw that,” she said, pointing at the corpse with a shaking hand.
“But you didn’t see anyone else around? Maybe ahead of you on the trail?”
“No.”
“How long had you been jogging?”
“About 15 minutes I guess.” She gestured around her. “This is the halfway point of the trail.”
Danny was aware of that. It was also the point farthest from the entrance to the park and the passing street.
“What about any weird noises? Did you hear anything strange while you were jogging?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry, I just…” Emily shook her head again. “There was nothing.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
Emily slid down the trunk of the tree and sat on the grass.
“Do you think this is connected to that jogger who died at the game last night?”
“I couldn’t say.”
A uniformed officer Danny recognized as a young rookie named Randy approached with a plastic cup of water in his hand.
“Detective?” he asked. “Can I take the witness’s statement?”
“Of course,” Danny said. “And I think she could use that water too, good idea.” He nodded towards Emily, who remained on the grass. “Thanks for answering my questions.”
Danny walked back over to Tessa and Jack, who were now conferring with Joanna Mickens, the chief medical examiner. He nodded a greeting to Mickens.
“Joanna,” he said.
“Hello, Danny. I was just telling your colleagues here that my preliminary estimate is that this body’s been here for at least two weeks, probably more like a month.”
Danny glanced at the pile of branches Emily Schumacher had initially noticed. “So someone covered this body up with all that crap so it would be hidden from anyone coming by on the trail. And then that same someone dug the body up last night or this morning so someone using the trail would find it.”
“That’s a safe bet,” Jack said.
“Did he burn to death?” Danny asked. “Or is it a she? Do you know?”
“It’s a male. But as for the cause of death, I can’t say for sure,” Joanna said. “We’ll need to examine the remains to determine whether he was still alive when he burned. It’s possible he was killed another way and then the body was burned.”
“But not all that likely considering what happened last night,” Tessa said. “We all know this isn’t a coincidence.”
“Christ let’s not jump ahead of ourselves,” Jack said. “I may agree with you that this timing would be one hell of a coincidence but let’s take it slowly. We all need to get a grip.”
Anthony Rizzo walked up to the group, looking even more exhausted and disheartened than he had that morning in the conference room. Danny had no doubt that Rizzo hated life right now and wished he’d been able to retire six months earlier.
“There are signs of a relatively recent grass fire not far from the grave,” he said, pointing towards a few weeds and ferns sticking out of a patch of dirt along the jogging trail. “The weeds are starting to come back but the ground is charred. I can’t find any traces of an accelerant or combustible material on it though. It was contained to that small circle.”
“Why wouldn’t it have spread?” Danny asked. “We haven’t had any rain in months, have we? This grass all looks really dry.”
“Someone must have put it out before it spread.”
“It’s strange that it’s such a small area,” Tessa said.
Anthony’s expression showed his agreement. “It is,” he said.
“As strange as last night’s situation,” Danny said.
“Goddammit, Fitzpatrick. I just said we don’t need to get ahead of ourselves,” Jack said, glancing over at approaching reporters. “You want the media to get a hold of this and turn it into a fiasco?”
“I’d say it’s already a fiasco, sir,” Danny said. “You know it too.”
Jack glared at Danny but the ringing of his phone stopped him from responding. He grabbed the phone from his pocket and turned his back on Danny.
“Meyer,” he said. “Yeah? What’s the name? Okay, we’ll get on it.”
Jack turned back to the group. “That was the station. A man named Andrew Cushings called from Anchorage and said his partner Nick Torrance is here in Fairbanks for an IT conference. Last he talked to him Torrance said he was going jogging in Growden Park. I probably don’t have to tell you this was last night. Cushings hasn’t heard from him since and he’s not answering his phone or the phone in his hotel room.”
“What’s his partner look like?” Danny asked.
“Tall, fit, gray hair…”
“That matches the jogger I saw before he started to burn.”
Tessa frowned. “Where was he staying?”
“The Marriott on Bentley. He told his partner he wanted to check out the baseball game while he was jogging.”
“You want us to head over there?”
“Yea
h. I’ll handle this here and we’ll meet back up at the office. And let’s start looking through last month’s missing person reports. With luck maybe we can figure out who this poor bastard is too.”
****
Chapter 9
While Tessa drove, Danny took out his iPad and logged into the police department files. He quickly brought up the missing persons reports made during the previous month.
“So all we know is we’re looking for a male, right?” he said.
“Well, we can guess he was probably jogging since he was so close to the trail.”
“What the hell does this lunatic have against joggers?”
“It’s weird, isn’t it? Although we don’t know for sure that these cases are connected.”
“Oh, come on, Tessa.”
“You know I think they are too. I’m just saying it could still be a coincidence.”
“Right. And Nick Torrance could still be alive and simply hiding from his partner.”
“He could be,” Tessa said.
Danny rolled his eyes. They had found nothing of interest in the hotel room of Nick Torrance, but the fact that his cell phone and wallet were gone, his work clothes and laptop remained in the hotel room, he hadn’t shown up for his scheduled conference that morning, and no one in the hotel had seen him since he left to go jogging the previous evening told a fairly clear story. As did the missing persons reports.
While the number of people who went missing in Alaska could be high due to the vastness and remoteness of the state, the number of people reported missing in Fairbanks was usually minuscule. The majority of cases were closed within a few days of being opened because the missing person turned up safe and sound, unaware that he or she had even been considered missing.
Danny skimmed through reports made in the month of May and landed on one that was still open.
Polar (Book 2): Polar Day Page 4