Polar (Book 1): Polar Night

by Julie Flanders

  “Mind you, my instinct is probably more reliable than most of the evidence we find. I’m always right.”

  Tessa laughed. “Yeah, I already knew that. Even in the short time we’ve known each other, it’s obvious.”

  “It is?”

  “Oh sure, honey. I tell everyone in the department that. You need something, go to Danny. That boy is never wrong.”

  Danny chuckled. “Joke all you want, but in this case, I really am right. Nechayev is guilty, whether I can prove it or not.”

  “Even so, it doesn’t help our case. Or bring us any closer to finding Maria Treibel.”

  “He’s got her up in that frozen hellhole somewhere, I know it. We just need something else to go on.”

  Tessa looked at the stack of papers on Danny’s desk. “Is that what you’ve got there? Something else we could go on?”

  “Maybe. I contacted an old friend in the FBI and had him send me records of missing women that matched our criteria. He sent me a hell of a list.”

  Tessa reached for the stack and flipped through the pages. “Interesting,” she said. “All the way back to 2002 or 2001? If this is our guy he’s been busy for a while.”

  “Why stop there? Didn’t you see the rest?”

  “I guess I just assumed…” Tessa stopped. “You met this guy last night. How old is he?”

  “Not old. I don’t know. Maybe 25. He looks young. Might be 30.”

  “25 or 30? And you think he was doing this before 2000? You think a kid could pull this kind of thing off?”

  Danny tapped his foot on the floor. How much did he want to tell Tessa? Not much, he decided. “Maybe he had someone he was working with, somebody who taught him the ropes.”

  “You mean like a family member? A father-son kidnap team?”

  “Could be.”

  “Or do you think he’s copying someone else now?”

  “That crossed my mind. He discovered these old crimes somehow and he’s a copycat.”

  Tessa stared at Danny. “But you don’t really think so.”

  Danny shrugged. “I don’t know what I think. Except for the fact that Nechayev’s a psycho. That, I don't just think. I know it.”

  Tessa glanced through more pages. “1930? What the hell are you up to, Danny?”

  “I just asked my friend for reports of missing women. I didn’t put any limit on him and asked for everything he could find.”

  “What’s the point of going through cases from the 1930s? Or the 50s? You think Nechayev had a grandfather involved too?”

  Danny sighed. “I told you, I don’t know what I think.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve got something on your mind.”

  Danny ran his hand through his hair and across the stubble that had returned to his face. As much as he liked Tessa, he simply couldn’t share his conversation with Amanda Fiske and subsequent suspicions. She’d think he should be committed and he wouldn’t even be able to argue the point.

  “I’m not lying to you, Tessa. I honestly don’t know what the hell I’m thinking here. I just know we have to put the screws to Nechayev.”

  “How do you think we should do that?”

  “I don’t know. We can’t exactly have a stake-out at his place, can we? The only way to be inconspicuous up there would be to be buried in snow.”

  Tessa booted up her computer. “I’ll go back over everything I’ve got on Maria. See if I can link Nechayev to her some other way.”

  Danny nodded and re-arranged his stack of FBI files. He put them in a folder and got up from his desk.

  “You going somewhere?” Tessa asked.

  “Yeah. I need to talk to someone.”

  “Who?”

  “No one you know. Just someone I think might have an idea about all this.”

  “Okay. If I find anything new here I’ll call you.”

  “Great. Here’s hoping.”

  Danny walked out of the office and back out into the never-ending snow. He pulled his hat and hood closer around his head, and wrapped a scarf around his face. He couldn’t possibly tell Tessa where he was going, as he couldn’t really believe it himself. But he couldn’t deny it. He wanted to talk to Amanda Fiske.

  Chapter 27

  Maria shuddered as she heard the door to the root cellar open. She pulled her blanket closer around her face, not wanting to look at Aleksei as he descended the stairs. His lantern cast flickers of light around the walls of the cellar.

  He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Let’s not play this game again, okay? I know perfectly well you’re not sleeping. Get up.”

  Maria sat up and pushed strands of blood-crusted, matted hair out of her eyes. She squinted at the light, as her own lantern had run out hours earlier and she had been in pitch black darkness ever since.

  “How was your Christmas dinner?” Aleksei asked.

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  Aleksei nodded. “Glad to see you’re remembering your manners.” He looked Maria up and down, scowling at her disheveled and generally filthy appearance. “God, you’re a mess.”

  “You can thank yourself for that.”

  Aleksei smirked. “Be careful. I just congratulated you on your manners. Don’t make me take that back.”

  Maria stared to reply but swallowed her words. She knew she wouldn’t be able to handle another lesson in manners at this point.

  “Now listen,” Aleksei said, with his voice the brisk tone of a businessman calling a meeting. “When I said get up, I meant get up. This is a big day for you. Stand up. Now.”

  Maria took a deep breath and forced herself to her feet. Immediately dizzy, she clutched at the dirt wall for balance, and nearly fell as her knees buckled beneath her.

  As he had before, Aleksei moved across the cellar too quickly to be seen. He grabbed her arm and steadied her before she fell back to the hard mud of the cellar floor.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” he said, holding her arm with a strength she had never felt before. Although he was trying to help her stand and walk, Maria felt as if he might break her arm in two.

  He pulled her across the cellar towards the stairs, and pushed her in front of him.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Get out of here.”

  Maria stumbled up the stairs and was hit square in the face with a mixture of ice pellets and wet snowflakes, and a blast of Arctic air. She cried out and fell face first into the snow.

  Aleksei slammed the root cellar door behind them. He grabbed Maria by the arm and pulled her off the ground as if she was a rag doll. “Just hurry up and get inside where it’s warm.”

  He quickly pushed Maria through the doorway of his home, where she again fell forward, this time onto a ceramic tile floor. Maria burst into tears and curled into the fetal position, pulling her legs around her chest and cradling herself.

  Aleksei glared at her and sat down in a nearby chair. “For God’s sake, get up,” he said.

  Maria glanced around and saw the bottoms of a stove and the cabinet of a sink, and the legs of a table and chairs. This was a kitchen. This monster’s kitchen.

  “I said get up!” Aleksei yelled.

  When Maria didn’t move quickly enough for him, he grabbed her again, jerking her arm and pulling her onto the chair next to his. “You better start doing what I say,” he said. “Do I have to remind you what I told you about my substitute? My backup plan? If you want to live through the winter, you’re going to need to do a lot better than this.”

  Maria bit her lip and tried to stop the sobs that were wracking her body. “I’m freezing,” she said.

  “I’ve no doubt you are. You’re the idiot who left your blanket down in the cellar. Did I tell you to leave it there?”

  “I didn’t know what we were doing.”

  Aleksei held up his hand. “Please, I don’t want to hear excuses for your stupidity. You didn’t know it would be cold outside in Alaska in December?” He shook his head. “Maybe I really do need to fall back on my other plan.”

 
“No, please,” Maria cried. “I’m just not thinking straight. I’m sorry.”

  Aleksei waved his hand as if dismissing her. “Forget it. We’ll just move forward.”

  Maria stared at him, noticing his perfectly hemmed and pressed black pants and grey t-shirt. The shirt was short-sleeved and, for the first time since he had come down to the root cellar, Maria noticed he was bare foot. Who walks in the snow with bare feet?

  “How come you’re not cold?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

  “Because I’m not,” Aleksei answered. “I like the cold. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “But how is that possible?”

  “Never mind how. What business is it of yours? And if you must know, remember that I’m Russian. I grew up cold.” He shook his head again. “You American girls are such wimps. Natasha wouldn’t have fussed about a little cold and snow.”

  Maria flashed back to his words about her “audition” to be his mysterious Natasha. She forced herself to stop shivering. “I’m fine. The cold is fine.”

  Aleksei jumped up from his chair with a quickness that startled her. “Let’s move on. I want you to be comfortable and I don’t want you in my kitchen in such a filthy state. It’s unseemly.”

  He grabbed her arm again and pulled her from the kitchen. “You need to get cleaned up.”

  Maria could barely make our her surroundings as Aleksei pulled her down a carpeted hallway and shoved her into a large bathroom with a small space heater in the corner. She nearly cried from joy at the blast of heat on her frozen legs.

  “As you can see, I have everything you need here,” Aleksei said. He gestured around the bathroom. “Towels, soap, shampoo, hair dryer, and a warm robe and slippers to change into when you are finished.”

  Maria nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Take as long as you need,” Aleksei said. “I’m not in a hurry. But I expect you to be clean and presentable when you come out. I won’t have a disgusting whore at my dinner table.”

  Maria nodded again.

  Aleksei turned on the shower and Maria watched as the steam quickly filled the tub. He pulled the curtain closed and grabbed the bathroom door.

  “I’ll give you your privacy,” he said. “Knock on the door when you’re finished.”

  With that, he left the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Maria heard a key turn in the door, and realized there was no knob on her side. She was locked in.

  She should have expected it, but she shuddered nonetheless. She pulled the shower curtain aside and was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that the bathroom had no window. There was no way out of this room except to do exactly as the monster had said. She would have to knock for him to let her out.

  The enormity of her situation hit her again, and the walls of the bathroom seemed to close in on her. Even the much welcome heat now felt suffocating. She wondered if she could turn the heater off, or if that would offend him. She didn’t want to risk it.

  Forcing herself to focus on the fact that she could at least get clean, she stripped herself of her filthy clothes and piled them on the floor. Part of her didn’t want to give them up, as they were the only connection she had to her real life. But she knew without a doubt that she would never be wearing them again.

  She stepped into the shower and let the hot water rush over her swollen, bruised face. She wondered if he was standing right on the other side of the door, listening for anything that might piss him off. Grabbing a wash towel, she leaned against the wall underneath the shower head and stuffed the towel into her mouth to muffle the sound of her sobs.

  Chapter 28

  Danny barely noticed his car slipping on the snowy roads as he once again made his way from the police station to the public library. He was fixated on the list John Fisher had sent him and on the names of all those young women. What had happened to them? Were there more?

  He pulled into the library parking lot and let out a deep breath as he turned off the ignition and stared at the brick building in front of him. Was he really going to pursue this vampire craziness? He shoved his keys in his pocket and answered his own question by getting out of the car and walked towards the library.

  Yes, he was.

  He walked inside and saw Amanda Fiske at her usual spot behind the reference desk. He briefly wondered if the woman ever took a day off. Then he realized she could easily wonder the same thing about him.

  “Ms. Fiske,” he said.

  Amanda looked up from her computer and frowned as her hand went to the cross around her neck. “What do you want, Detective?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “We’ve talked enough.”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  Amanda got up from her stool and slammed her hands on the desk. Her cheeks turned a fiery red. “Yes, we have. I can’t even believe you’re harassing me again.”

  Danny held up his hands. “I’m not harassing you. I just want to talk to you.”

  “One and the same.”

  “You didn’t think that on Christmas Eve.”

  “That’s right I didn’t. At least not until you decided I was a kook.”

  “Hey, that wasn’t me. That was my predecessor.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “Just leave me alone, will you? I told you my story and you didn’t believe me. I don’t have anything else to say to you.”

  Danny took off his gloves and hat and set them on Amanda’s desk. “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry, I really am. And, I admit, I didn’t believe you.”

  "Then why are you back here again?"

  “Because the situation’s changed. Or at least, the way I’m looking at it has changed.”

  Amanda raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “I met someone last night who scared the shit out of me. And he was the spitting image of the guy you described as your attacker.”

  “You mean the vampire I described?”

  Danny tried to keep from making a face. Jesus, what was he doing? “Yeah, whatever. I still don’t know if I believe the whole vampire thing.”

  “How did you meet him? Where is he?”

  “I can’t tell you the details about the case. But I can’t get him out of my mind. I think he’s the one who tried to abduct you.”

  “Then I want to see him. I want to testify and get him arrested.”

  “That’s not going to be so easy given your history. No one’s going to believe you if you come out again saying you were attacked by a vampire.”

  Amanda’s cheeks flared red again. “Then what’s the point of this? What the hell do you want?”

  “I’m not even sure. I just want to talk to you. I can’t explain it and to tell you the truth, I think I’m fucking crazy myself. But I can’t shake it. You’re the key to this, I know it.” He shook his head and scoffed. “Oh, fuck it. I believe you, okay? I met this psychopath and I believe you. I don’t think he’s human. I don’t know what the fuck he is, and I’m really not ready to start talking about vampires, but I know there’s something wrong with this guy.”

  Amanda sat back down in her chair. “You felt it too, didn’t you? That he’s a monster. You knew it.”

  Danny let out a breath. “Yeah, I felt it. But that’s part of the problem; I’ve met plenty of monsters before. Christ, I used to spend most of my time going after monsters.” He rubbed his eyes and dropped into the chair next to the desk. “I’ll tell you what it was. I was a homicide detective in Chicago for more than ten years. I’ve seen every kind of psychopath you can imagine, and then some. And never once did I get a chill down my spine when I looked one of them in the eyes.”

  “Obviously you did last night?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “I told you about his eyes. There’s nothing there but evil.”

  “I’m right there with you on that. Trouble is, I can’t arrest someone because they’ve got evil eyes.”

  Amanda came around from behind the desk and sat down next to Danny.

  Dan
ny seemed to barely notice her presence. “You know, I don’t have a career anymore to speak of. I mean, Jesus, how much worse could it get than cold cases in Fairbanks, Alaska? So it really doesn’t matter to me what this does to my career. But do you know what’s gonna happen if I start telling my superiors I know who’s kidnapping these women and he’s been at it since at least 1930, even though he looks about 25 years old right now in 2012? If I tell them he’s a vampire? Do you think they’re just going to say ‘sounds great, Danny, go get him,’?”

  “I think I know a bit about how people will react if you tell them your suspicions.”

  “I’ll end up in the god-damn psych ward. Especially with my reputation.”

  “What reputation is that?”

  “A booze hound who’s very tight-lipped about why he left Chicago homicide. A loner and a screw-up. A physical and emotional wreck whose life is in shambles. Do I need to go on?”

  Amanda smiled. “That’s okay. I think I get it.”

  Danny sat up and stared across the table at her. “I had an old friend at the FBI run through old missing person cases. There are cases that match this same criteria going all the way back to 1930. Young blond women or girls, going missing in December around the winter solstice, body never found and cases never solved…”

  He watched as the color drained from Amanda’s face.

  “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t be going on about all this with you.”

  Amanda rubbed the cross between her fingers. “No, it’s okay. I was just thinking though how close I came to being on your friend’s list of cases.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Amanda cleared her throat. “It’s okay. Really. She sat up and folded her hands in front of her on the table. “What do you want though? What do you think I can do?”

  “You can identify him. Even if you wouldn’t be considered a reliable witness, I’d believe you. I’d know I’m right about him. I don’t know how we’d get back up to Coldfoot right now in this weather, though. And there’s no record on him. I don’t have any pictures…”

  “If he’s a vampire, I don’t think he would show up in photographs. Or at least not in mirrors. That’s the legend, anyway.”