Frozen Stiff

by Patrick Logan

  Immediately, Chase heard stirring from inside the room. Half expecting a groggy Martinez to answer given what he had said about his fatigue, she prepared a mental apology.

  She was surprised, however, that when the door opened, Martinez was fully dressed and looked alert.

  “Chase? What can I do for you?” he asked tentatively.

  Clearly, the man was also regretting what had happened the night before.

  “I just want to talk,” Chase said quietly. Martinez nodded, smiled, and opened the door wide.

  Chase was about to enter when the phone in her pocket buzzed.

  Is it Stitts finally getting back to me, or is it Brad?

  She resisted the urge to look and instead returned Martinez’s half-baked smile, fearing that hers was as fake as it felt.

  “I just want to talk,” she reiterated as she stepped inside.

  CHAPTER 38

  “I’m just… I’m just confused. I mean, I don’t know what to do. I don’t think that a desperate junkie chopped off Oren and his wife’s hands any more than I think the charming bartender removed Yolanda and Francine’s feet. Something’s not adding up—I’m almost positive that whoever did these horrible things, it was the same person, the same killer. I don’t know how or why, or what the connection is between the two besides drugs, but I’m sure of it. And, look, I know you don’t want to hear it, but Martinez…” Chase looked down at her hands. “You know how you said that you’ve been at this for a long time? While I might be new to the Agency, I’m not new to this… to murder, to pain. And I know that you said that things aren’t necessarily going to be wrapped up in a pretty little bow, that things don’t always connect or even make sense. But in this case… in these cases, they’re related—I just know it.”

  Martinez stared at her for so long that she began to shift uncomfortably on the corner of the bed.

  Was it a mistake coming to him?

  But the damage, if there was any, had already been done. She said her piece.

  In fact, her damage had happened long ago.

  “Don’t you want a ride, girls? I mean, it’s really hot out there. Really hot. And I have air conditioning. I bet you can even feel it from the sidewalk. What d’you say?”

  “Stitts really did get to you, didn’t he? Shit, he tried the same with me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, I guess,” Martinez said softly.

  Chase’s brow furrowed.

  “What do—”

  Martinez smiled and then clapped his hands together. The sound was so loud and unexpected that Chase jumped a little.

  “I need a drink,” he exclaimed.

  Chase’s brow furrowed, and it took her a moment to regain her composure. She hadn’t intended to offer such an outward display of emotion, and was usually good at keeping this sort of things close to her chest from playing poker, but Martinez’s response caught her completely off guard.

  Even considering last night, he didn’t strike her as a man who drank in the middle of the day.

  “Normally I don’t do this,” Martinez said, as if reading her mind. With that, he stood and turned away from her, making his way toward the bathroom where the minibar was located. He ducked out of sight and continued. “But this has been a messed-up day, wouldn’t you agree? And it looks like we have a lot to talk about.”

  Chase watched him go, and then teased her cell phone out of her pocket.

  “You want something?”

  “No, thanks, I’m fine,” she replied as she stared at the screen. It wasn’t a call that Chase had missed, but a message.

  And it wasn’t from Brad or Agent Stitts.

  It was from Floyd of all people, and it was a single word: ALONE.

  “What the hell?” she grumbled.

  “What’s that?” Martinez hollered from behind the wall.

  “Nothing, just talking to myself.”

  Why did Floyd send me this? Is it—

  Chase realized that while the message was just that single word—ALONE—there was a video attached to it. She raised her eyes and tilted her head to one side to determine if she could see Martinez from her vantage point.

  She couldn’t; he was out of sight.

  “You sure you don’t want anything? It’ll help with the hangover. How about a Bloody Mary?”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks,” Chase repeated. She switched the volume off on her phone and then clicked the video.

  It was grainy, but the time and date stamp in the bottom corner made it clear that it was security camera footage of some sort. Confused, Chase brought the screen closer to her face.

  “I’ve seen pretty much everything, and I’ve had many partners over the years, some good, some bad, some pretty much terrible. I can tell you one thing, however: the only time I’ve really had a problem with a partner is when they weren’t honest. Honesty and support, that’s the key to a good, working relationship.”

  Chase listened to Martinez with half an ear as she watched the video progress.

  It looked to have been taken from a bar of sorts, but the black and white footage gave no other hints as to where it was from.

  Why did Floyd send me this?

  Two women suddenly entered the scene, one dressed in a white jumper that came to well above her knee, the other a dark, low-cut blouse that matched her skin tone.

  Chase inhaled sharply.

  It was Yolanda Strand and Francine Butler, and they were laughing, arms locked, a drink in their free hand.

  And they were alive.

  It was security footage from inside The Barking Frog.

  “What happened last night… that was a mistake, I know that and I think you know that, too. But that’s fine, we’re both adults, we can get over it. That’s not what concerns me.”

  Chase watched as a hooded figure approached the two girls. She could only see his back in video, but she could tell by his posture that it was a man. He must have said something, because Yolanda unexpectedly threw her head back and laughed. But when the man held something out to them, something that looked like a small, black wallet, Yolanda grew serious again.

  Chase watched as Francine started to frown, then she quickly set her drink on the bar. Yolanda did the same, and then the hooded figure left the shot, and the two girls followed.

  Chase felt her heart skip a beat, knowing that these were the last images of the two girls taken while they were still alive.

  The video stopped, and Chase immediately started it again from the beginning, watching more closely this time.

  Who are you? She silently asked the hooded figure.

  “What I’m really worried about is lack of honesty.” Martinez said from behind the partition. “Have you been completely honest with me, Chase? I mean, from the beginning?”

  “Y-yeah, of course. Honesty is very important,” Chase replied absently, her attention still locked on the screen.

  Yolanda was smiling, laughing, as was Francine. Until the man showed them something.

  Chase paused the video. There was something here, something she wasn’t seeing. It wasn’t the thing the man was holding out to the girls, the video was far too small and grainy for her to make it out, but there was something…

  “Hey, Martinez?” she asked in a soft voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever hear back from Chief Downs about the video surveillance from The Barking Frog?”

  There was a pause, which was broken by the sound of ice falling into a glass.

  “It was deleted,” Martinez informed her. “The bastard who owns the place, the fat one with the mustache and alopecia? He erased it before Downs could get a search warrant. Trying to protect Brent Pine, I guess.”

  Another pause.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Chase zoomed into the video still.

  “No reason. Just wondering if there was any way that we can link the two crimes, is all.”

  The sigh from behind the wall was so loud it sounded almost pained.

  �
�Let it go, Chase. Seriously. I was a rookie once, I know what it’s like. You want to have a reason for everything, a motive. You think, or want, everything to be linked, to be connected. But you can’t apply rational logic to wholly irrational acts made by unstable people. You know those magic squares? I used to love them as a kid… like a Sudoku starter kit, you know? Well, it’s like trying to solve the squares using letters instead of numbers. It just doesn’t work. Let it go.”

  Chase was barely listening now.

  She blinked three times, and brought the screen right up to her face.

  The sleeves of the man’s dark sweatshirt were rolled up, and there was something on one of his forearms, the one that held out the badge or wallet or whatever it was.

  Chase shook her head, rubbed her eyes, and refocused her attention.

  And then her blood ran cold.

  The image was distorted at this magnification, but it was clear enough to make out an outline of a tattoo.

  A tattoo that depicted a snake devouring an eyeball.

  CHAPTER 39

  Adrenaline flooded Chase’s system. The first thing she did was check her holster, confirming that the gun that Martinez had given her was still there. The second thing she did was reply to Floyd’s message, typing so quickly that she made several typos: Floid, need FB Agent Jerey Stitts adres ASAPP.

  She cleared her throat, and when Chase spoke next, she called on all her poker skills, recalling every single time she had bluffed, every occasion that she had asked her opponent what cards he was holding in order to hear any change in the timber of his voice.

  “You’re probably right, Martinez, probably right. You know what?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think I might have that drink after all.”

  Martinez leaned out from behind the wall, a smirk on his face. Chase returned the expression.

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure, what the hell.”

  “What’ll you have then?”

  Chase thought about this for a moment. She needed something that would take some time to make, giving her just a little while longer to figure out what in the fuck it all meant.

  Martinez was there? With the girls? On the night they were murdered?

  “Well you offered a Bloody Mary, so I guess I’ll go with that. Extra spicy.”

  Martinez chuckled and moved back behind the wall.

  “Sure thing.”

  Chase silently rose to her feet and scanned the room. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she knew that she would find something that would help her make sense of all this. Chase moved to Martinez’s jacket, which hung on the back of his chair. She reached into the first pocket, but found nothing. Then she checked the second. Inside she found the evidence bag that Martinez had taken from Oren’s restaurant.

  Why does he have this? Why did he take it? Did he just forget to hand it back to Detective Jasper?

  Chase tried not to crinkle the bag as she stared at the plastic inside. On it was a design of sorts made with a sharpie, but split down the middle as it was, there was no way to—

  Chase folded the bag and the image suddenly made sense.

  It was the same symbol, the same snake eating the eye on the forearm of the man in the video… on Martinez’s forearm.

  It can’t be…

  Heart racing, Chase slipped the evidence bag back into Martinez’s jacket pocket, and then moved back to the bed. As she did, her eyes fell on the table by the corner of the room.

  It was empty, but it hadn’t always been that way.

  Last night, there had been a plane ticket on it. A ticket and a receipt. Chase hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but now…

  The ticket had been for Martinez’s flight out of Alaska to Logan International in Boston, but that in itself wasn’t what finally sealed it for Chase.

  It was the time.

  Not of the flight, but on the receipt. Although Detective Jasper had pegged Oren and Julie’s murders as taking place a day before they arrived, Chase hadn’t been as certain. But without the hands, she hadn’t been able to generate an accurate estimate.

  But what she did know is that Agent Martinez had taken the call back in Anchorage around four in the afternoon. Only his receipt indicated that his ticket to Boston had been purchased at one, before the call came in.

  Martinez had already been in Anchorage when Francine and Yolanda had been murdered, and now it appeared that he had, in the very least, planned to come to Boston before Oren and Julie were abducted.

  These facts, along with the tattoo, were simply too big a coincidence for Chase to overlook.

  Her mind suddenly flashed back to Anchorage when she had approached the white van that had housed Francine and Yolanda until their feet were chopped off.

  Martinez had received a phone call just as they opened the van door. It had seemed off to her at the time, and the more she thought about it now, the more fake it seemed.

  As if there was no one on the line.

  And how quick he had been to accept that Brent the bartender had been their killer…

  “Extra spicy, you said?” Martinez asked from behind the wall.

  “Yeah,” Chase replied softly.

  Why? Why the fuck did he do this? Why did he kill those girls? Oren and Julie? Why would an FBI—

  “Well, here it is,” Martinez exclaimed, stepping out from around the corner.

  Chase looked up at the man and instantly froze.

  He was smirking and held an outstretched hand in her direction. Only it wasn’t holding any drink.

  Instead, Martinez was gripping the butt of a pistol.

  Chase instinctively reached for the gun in her waistband, but Martinez’s face went hard.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  Chase swallowed and held her hands up.

  Fuck!

  “You know, Stitts said that you were good, but you… you’re not just good,” he looked skyward. “It would have taken Jeremy a month to figure it out, if at all, but not you. It took you… what? Two weeks? Less?”

  Chase said nothing. She just stared, her mind working a mile a minute trying to figure out how she was going to get out of here alive.

  How not to end up like Francine or Yolanda.

  Or Oren or Julie.

  “Calm down, Martinez, I—”

  Martinez kept on talking as if she hadn’t even opened her mouth.

  “You almost got me, too. But you made a fatal error. Last night… you remember last night, right? Oh, I bet you do. Last night at the bar, you said that you’re a beer girl, beer and maybe scotch. Not one for the mixed drinks, like Bloody Mary, and especially—”

  The phone in Chase’s pocket suddenly buzzed and Martinez’s eyes dropped for a split second.

  Chase bolted.

  She sprinted for the door, yanking it wide. She moved quickly, but no one was fast enough to outrun a bullet.

  Chase almost made it into the hallway before the first gunshot rang out.

  She screamed as the bullet tore through the red parka and struck her just above the left hip.

  Her legs threatened to buckle, but Chase knew that if she went down, she would never get back up again.

  Gritting her teeth, Chase forced herself to stumble forward, to stay on her feet. And then, somehow, she managed to just keep on running as shots followed after her.

  CHAPTER 40

  Wheezing, Chase slammed her palms against the stairwell door. A siren sounded as it flung open, but she didn’t know if it was a security alarm on the door or a fire alarm.

  But Chase didn’t rightly care.

  Martinez was still after her, and he was going to kill her.

  With one arm wrapped protectively around her stomach, her hand sticking to the down feathers that spilled from the hole in the jacket, she took the stairs two at a time, her heels barely touching one step before sliding onto the next.

  She could hear muffled shouts from behind each of the doorways
that she passed, but continued without stopping. When she finally reached the bottom, Chase pulled her arm away from her stomach to slam both palms into the door marked EXIT.

  All she got for her efforts was sore wrists.

  “Shit!” she swore.

  Footsteps echoed down from above.

  “Chase! Get back here, Chase! Don’t you want to know my motive? Huh? Don’t you wanna know why?”

  Chase’s eyes darted around, and she saw a fire alarm beside the door. With blood smeared fingers, she reached out and pulled it.

  A bell rang, the sound so loud that it made her mind swim.

  “Chase! Chase!”

  Martinez’s voice brought her back from the brink.

  With both hands, she shoved the door again and this time it flung open. The cold air that blasted her in the face further shocked her into lucidity. It took Chase a split second to realize that she was in the back parking lot of the W, before she started to sprint across it, looking for something, anything that was familiar.

  A police car, maybe, or a—

  And then she saw it: a teal-colored sedan.

  Paul sat inside, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his face buried in his phone.

  He never even looked up as she approached.

  With the hand not gripping her burning stomach, Chase reached behind her and pulled out her pistol.

  “Get out!” she screamed. Paul’s eyes snapped up, and the cigarette fell from his mouth. “Get out of the fucking car!”

  But Paul didn’t get out of the car; in fact, he didn’t do anything at all, aside from shuttle his eyes from the pistol, to her face, to her torn parka. He yelped suddenly, and then swatted at the cigarette that burned his crotch.

  Chase didn’t hesitate; she grabbed the door handle and yanked it wide.

  “Get out!”

  Chase grabbed him by the collar as she shouted, and Paul, so confused and worried about the still burning cigarette, did exactly as she asked.

  Chase gave him a weak shove, then hopped into the car, slamming the door closed behind her.

  She groaned when pain flared up her side, but managed to slam the already running car into drive without wasting any more time.

  Chase sped out of the parking lot without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.