“Hell,” Mortenson said, looking around. “Thanks…I was getting ready to put the cars into the garage when you and your partner knocked out front.”
Mortenson moved toward the door, but before he could close it, Nick—at the man’s side—was pointing into the garage at a white appliance against the back wall. “That a chest freezer?”
“Yeah.”
Boldly, Nick stepped through the door out into the garage. Voice pinging off cement, he said, “I’ve been thinking about getting one…. This baby expensive?”
Mortenson followed the CSI. “Not that much—less than $500.”
Nick whistled. “Hey, that’s not bad at all.” He gave Mortenson the look you give a used-car dealer. “Has it been good to you?”
Mortenson nodded, shrugged, then glanced back in the direction of the living room, mildly imposed upon, but not knowing what to do about it. “Had it three years,” he said. “Not a lick of trouble.”
Nick stood studying the freezer, admiringly. “Doesn’t hurt it any, to be out in the garage?”
“Naw,” Mortenson said, getting sucked into the seemingly mindless conversation. “Runs a little more, but there’s nowhere in the house for it. This works fine.” He opened the lid so Nick could peer inside.
While proud homeowner Mortenson droned on, Nick checked out the freezer, though not for the reason the other man likely thought. Three-quarters filled with white-butcher-paper-wrapped packages with very clear dates printed in Magic Marker, the Mortensons’ freezer was better organized than Nick’s office. Beef on one side, chicken and fish to the back, pork to the right and vegetables in the front. Though only about eight or nine cubic feet—and stacked with enough food to keep a homeless shelter going for weeks—the freezer did appear big enough to hold Missy Sherman’s body. A small layer of frost coated the walls, but Nick could still see every seam and the smoothness of the surface along the back.
What he did not see was something that could have made the round mark on Missy Sherman’s cheek.
Nick asked, “How often do you have to defrost one of these?”
Mortenson shrugged. “Once a year, maybe. Not so bad—there’s a drain plug in the bottom. Some of the more expensive ones coming out now are frost-free.”
“Sounds good. Looks like you defrosted yours, recently?”
“Yeah—maybe three weeks ago.”
Nick looked from the bottom of the freezer to a floor drain in the center of the garage floor. Pulling a plastic bag from his pocket, he asked, “Would you mind if I lifted a sample from your drain?”
Mortenson looked at him like he was crazy, then slowly, the man’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
The best Nick could come up with was, “It might be helpful. You said you wanted to help.”
“In Missy’s murder investigation.”
“Right.”
“In my garage.”
“Uh…yeah.”
“Which, means…what?” The eyes on the little face over the big body tightened; the goatee was like dirt smudged on his chin. “You suspect me of Missy’s murder?”
Shaking his head, Nick said, “I don’t suspect anybody yet…. I’m just doing my job.”
“And here I thought you were just this nice guy interested in buying a freezer.”
Risking Brass’s ire, Nick revealed: “Missy Sherman was frozen.”
Mortenson frowned. Trying to make sense of it, he said, “She was frozen to death? In Las Vegas? How the fuck cold was Lake Mead that—”
“No. Frozen. As in a freezer.”
“What, now you suspect us? Are you high?”
“No. I’m just a crime lab investigator who needs to check that freezer.” And Nick pointed to the appliance.
His voice rising and bouncing off the enclosed space, Mortenson yelled, “Alex told me you took his place apart, too! You really don’t have any goddamn decency, do you?”
Nick glanced toward the house, afraid that the man’s voice would carry and bring out the wife and Brass.
“Sir,” Nick said tightly, one ex-jock getting into the face of another. “You said you wanted to help. I need to have a look at that freezer.”
Looking down at Nick, noses almost touching, Mortenson blared, “There’s some murdering lunatic out there, and you people come around and bother us! The people who knew and loved Missy! Isn’t it enough that we lost our friend, that Alex lost his wife?”
Regan and Brass appeared in the doorway off the kitchen.
“Brian, what’s wrong?” Regan asked, her voice rising, ringing off the cement, making her sound a little like Minnie Mouse in an old movie house. She rushed to her husband’s side.
Brass trailed after, shooting a look at Nick, who could only shrug and nod toward the freezer.
The detective got the significance at once, and turned to Mortenson, who seemed just ready to launch into the next wave of his tirade.
Cutting him off, Brass said, “You’re right, Mr. Mortenson, there is a lunatic out there, a murderer, and we don’t have any idea who it is…so we have to suspect everyone, if only to start ruling people out.”
Trembling, the big man said, “You have no right, no right at all…”
“We can do this now,” Brass said, “and you can cooperate…or we can get a warrant and do it later. Either way, whatever evidence my criminalist wants, he’s going to get. The question is, do you want to slow us down, or not? You choose.”
Mortenson seemed to shrink a little, from King Kong to the son of Kong, his wife slipping an arm around his waist.
She said, “Just let them do what they want to do, Brian, and get them out of our house.”
He gave her a sick look. “This guy says Missy was frozen, that somebody stuffed her in a damn freezer or something. They think…” And he looked toward the appliance.
Regan paled, horror-struck, but nonetheless said, “Don’t make them come back here—I don’t ever want to see these terrible people again. Please, Brian, I’m begging you—just let them do what they want, take what they want, and leave us alone.”
“All right, baby,” he said with a sigh. Then he looked from Nick to Brass. “Do what you have to…then get the hell out of my house.”
Brass stood in the garage with the Mortensons, trying to make peace with them, while Nick went to the car, got his camera and his silver toolkit. When he returned, the husband and wife stood watch accusingly, near the door to the kitchen. Brass had parked himself close by, but no further words were exchanged with the couple.
Nick snapped off several shots of the freezer from both a distance and up close, concentrating particularly on the seams and side surfaces on the inside. When he was done, Nick set the camera aside, pulled on latex gloves, bent down to the floor drain, removed the cover and fished out whatever he could from the shallow trap; then he placed his findings in the bag. The tense silence in the room and the eyes of the Mortensons boring into his back as he worked weighed on him and he wished Brass would say something to break the hush, but the detective seemed content to stand by without comment.
Nick sealed the bag, replaced the cover on the drain, rose and nodded to Brass. He ended by taking another half-dozen photos, this time of the drain. Without a word, Mortenson pushed the button on the wall that activated the garage door opener. As the double door whirred upward, the detective and CSI took the hint and walked out into the evening and down the driveway to the Taurus at the curb.
Nick glanced back and saw Regan Mortenson silhouetted in the corner of the doorway, while Brian walked out of the garage onto the driveway, stopping next to his wife’s Camry. Mortenson stared at them until the car pulled away.
“That went well,” Nick said.
Brass said, “You know, outside of Grissom and Ecklie, I don’t know anyone who pisses people off like you do. At least they have an excuse, they’re supervisors, they’re supposed to piss people off. But you…”
“Some people like me,” Nick said, mildly amused by this rant. “Some people love
me.”
“Probably not the Mortensons.”
Nick hefted the bag of slime and grinned. “But I did win their door prize.”
Nodding toward the bag, Brass asked, “And if that turns out to be nothing?”
Nick shrugged. “Ruling out innocent people is just as important as finding guilty ones, right?”
“I guess,” Brass said, obviously not convinced.
Back in the lab, Nick went to work processing the goop from the Mortensons’ drain. The glass-walled DNA lab was one of the most elaborate in the CSI facility. Closed off by two sets of double glass doors, one on the north and another on the west, the room comprised five workstations, not counting the microwave oven. One station was for the thermocycler, one for each of the two polarized light microscopes, another for the gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer, plus the one where Nick was hard at work.
He was almost finished when Catherine came in and dropped onto the chair at the station immediately behind and to the left of him at the stereo microscope. Hunching over the tool, he used reflected light to study in three dimensions the grime from the drain.
“Hey,” she said.
Looking up, he said, “Hey.” Tonight, she wore brown slacks, a burnt-orange turtleneck sweater, and a look of either exhaustion or frustration, Nick couldn’t tell which.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked.
“Best Buy.”
He grinned. “Consumer heaven.” He looked at his watch. “They’re not open this late.”
She tapped her ID. “I had a special get-in-after-hours card.”
“Looking for the perfect DVD player, huh?”
Catherine closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “Is that all men think about?”
“No,” Nick said, carefully considering the question. “There’s sex and sports, too. Then comes toys like DVD players.”
She finally gave in and grinned.
“What were you up to, after closing at Best Buy?”
Sighing, stretching, she said, “I was going over every freezer in the place, trying to find one that matched the mark on Missy Sherman’s face.”
“Any luck?”
She shook her head. “I’ll try another store tomorrow.” Frowning, she asked, “Where’s Warrick, anyway?”
“Still working the tires, I think. Haven’t seen him for a while.”
“What are you up to?”
“Went with Brass to interview the Mortensons—the Shermans’ best friends?”
She nodded, interested.
He filled her in, building to the chest-freezer punch line and the slime he was currently processing.
Catherine perked up. “What did you get?”
“Just what you did.”
“Shit.”
Nick grunted a laugh. “I don’t know where Missy Sherman’s been for the last year, but it sure wasn’t in that freezer.”
A throat cleared, and they turned to see Warrick draped in the doorway. “FBI computer is taking its own sweet time with that tire mark.”
Nick said, “With no more of a casting than you got, it’s not going to help us much, anyway. We find a car to match it to, groovy…but for now…”
“I know,” Warrick said. “Coldest case ever…You guys catch any luck?”
“Same kind as you,” Catherine said.
Nick leaned on the counter and turned to Catherine. “What have we got so far, besides no overtime?”
Catherine flinched a little nonsmile. “A dead woman who has been frozen for the last year.”
“A few tire tracks,” Warrick added. “An indentation in the victim’s cheek. Another longer, narrower indentation on her arm. Some Chinese food in her stomach…”
“And no fortune cookie,” Nick said. “But I have ruled out one of the many chest freezers in Las Vegas. How many more d’you suppose there are to check?”
Warrick just looked at Nick, while Catherine sat there, apparently wondering whether to laugh or cry.
7
S ara Sidle’s nostalgia for the bracing weather of her Harvard days had long since blown away with one of the many gusts of winter wind. Ensconced in the shelter Constable Maher had made in the snow, huddled against a tree, rifle gripped in fingers going numb despite Thinsulate gloves, Sara now clearly recalled why she’d gone west after graduation.
Guarding a snow-covered crime scene in the midst of a blizzard was a duty that neither training nor experience had prepared her for. Thank God the two hours were almost up. She wondered if, on her return, she should round up Amy Barlow—not that the woman would likely go anywhere, in the middle of this snowbound night. But the waitress remained the closest thing to a witness they had.
Prior to taking her first crime-scene shift, Sara had returned to the dining room, where she spoke briefly to Pearl Cormier. The half-hearted dinner rush was already over, and Amy was nowhere in sight.
Pearl, holding down the hostess station, explained: “Amy’s helping in the kitchen—short-handed back there. Short-handed everywhere in the hotel.”
“You’ll provide her with a room tonight?”
“Can’t hardly make Amy sleep in her car, honey.”
“Could you let me know the room number?”
And Sara had gone up to catch a little sleep, which the phone interrupted in what seemed like a few seconds, with Pearl informing the CSI that Amy Barlow had room 307; but right now the waitress was still working, helping waiter Tony Dominguez set the massive dining room for breakfast—a big task for two people.
Which meant that before Sara could follow up with the waitress, she had her outdoor duty to do. And so she’d followed Herm Cormier over the hill and through the woods to babysit a snowbound corpse who had not been content just to be shot, he had to be half-burned to a crisp, too.
When she’d thought about this duty, she had, frankly, pictured a winter wonderland, despite the dead body—sparkling crystal on white rolling drifts, reflecting the moon and stars. The reality? Clouds covered the stars and what little moon there was, and she was miles away from the nearest streetlight, and even the hotel wasn’t in view. This was a darkness like she’d never known, an all-encompassing inside-of-a-closed-fist nothingness that embraced her in its frigid fingers—and also disconcerted the hell out of her, despite her hardheaded, scientific bent.
She had her flashlight, but was loath to turn it on for fear of taxing the batteries, which would really put her in hot water…well, cold water, anyway. Nestled there in her pocket, the flashlight provided a small reassurance, a promise of light more important to her, at the moment, than the light itself.
Pushing the button on her watch, illuminating the dial, Sara noted that another fifteen minutes remained before Maher was due to relieve her. Leaning the rifle against her shoulder, she pulled off one glove, reached carefully into her pocket and withdrew her flash.
Going left to right, she made her arc of the crime scene with the beam. The sticks that Maher had planted in the snow were all but buried. Grissom had told her that several inches had been exposed, when he’d noticed them. Now, the stakes would soon be memories under the white blanket. She continued the arc past where the body should be, the other set of sticks and on around to her right.
She saw nothing—no animal, no person. That was comforting. Also creepy.
Switching off the light and tucking it away again, a sudden sense of loneliness descended on Sara, heavier even than the falling snow. It was as if extinguishing the light had somehow shut off the lights on the entire world and every soul in it, and Sara—who normally didn’t mind a little quiet time to herself—felt like the only person left. That was when she heard something crunch in the snow.
She held her breath and strained to hear over the wind as her fingers clawed for the flashlight in her pocket; what she heard, first, was her own heart pounding.
Then, another crunch—this one to her right.
She fumbled with the Maglite, then the beam came to life and she thrust it out like a sword toward
the sound.
She saw nothing.
Then, panning left, the light caught a flash of…fur!
Whatever-it-was had outrun her beam, and she whipped the shaft of light in pursuit, catching a glimpse of a furry form, going past it, then coming back to settle on the cold brown beautiful eyes of a big cat.
Not a house cat: a bobcat or a lynx.
Poised to leap, the beast bared its teeth and snarled—the sound was brittle in the night, yet it echoed. With each fang as long as one of Sara’s fingers, the cat seemed torn between its desire to get at the corpse and being almost as afraid of Sara as she was of it.
Trying to raise the rifle with one hand, in a steady motion—not wanting to make a swift move that might inspire an attack—and yet keeping the beam on the growling animal, Sara knew that the cat could cover the ground between them in mere seconds. Carefully she traded hands, shifting the flashlight to her left, the rifle to her right, propping the rifle against her shoulder—all with no sudden moves. Once she had the rifle more or less in place, her right index finger settled on the trigger….
Sighting down the barrel as she’d been taught, she kept the light trained on the growling cat, muscles rippling under its fur, and exerted pressure on the trigger. Don’t jerk it, she thought, just squeeze…nice and easy…. When the trigger was about halfway down, she heard a loud pop!
But she had not fired.
A bullet thwacked into a tree behind the cat, and the animal jumped to one side—beautiful, graceful—and sprinted off, a brownish blur dissolving into the night.
Sara swiveled toward where the shot had originated—just behind her, and to her left, her ears still ringing from the rifle report—and captured Maher and Cormier in the Maglite’s beam.
The Canadian handed a rifle over to the hotel owner. Both men looked like Eskimos, wrapped up in those parkas, hoods up, only the centers of their faces truly visible in the beam of the flashlight, perhaps ten yards from her.
“You scared the shit out of me!” Sara screamed, the adrenaline of the moment somehow combining to ratchet the volume of her voice in these woods, where the only other sound was the dying echo of Maher’s gunshot.
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