Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing (19 page)

‘Which house did he come from?' Scott asked quietly.

‘Garage of fifteen-oh-one.'

On the screen, the man pulled a thick metal chain from between the rear door handles, opened the doors, and jumped in. The doors closed before they could see the interior of the van and then they heard the sound of a padlock being closed.

Eric put on a headset to focus on the audio while Scott tried to monitor both stations. The video screen remained static. The sound of someone moving around. Another lock being turned, then a hydraulic sound. A voice came through, somewhat muffled. Scott glanced sharply at his partner, brow furrowed. Eric shook his head. He hadn't understood the words either.

The audio feed hummed, then the sound of locks again. The man emerged from the rear of the van and suddenly bent down by the corner of the rear bumper. Scott couldn't see what the man was doing until he twisted to look under the van. Something narrow and dark was dangling down from the van to the ground. It hadn't been visible on the surveillance screen before because the bumper camouflaged it.

‘What the hell is that?' asked Scott, pointing at the screen.

‘He's not saying anything,' Eric said, his voice slightly raised.

Scott leaned in closer to the screen but that didn't help. The man replaced the chain through the van's door handles, locked the padlock, and walked back to the garage. His gait was unhurried and he didn't look around. As soon as he was out of the frame, Scott said, ‘What did he say when he was inside?'

‘It sounded like “Good for my pincers”.' Eric looked at him.

‘Go over that again until you can confirm it.' Scott sounded edgy. He noticed Eric's expression and lightened his tone. ‘And make it make sense.'

Eric smiled grimly and rewound the audio.

Scott sat at the monitoring station and used another screen to run the video back. He enhanced the image until it was just pixels and then zoomed it back out again, considering and rejecting conclusions as he did so. Suddenly, he pushed away from the counter, swiveled in his seat to a cabinet behind him and pulled out a file. Inside were eight sheets of smooth fax paper stapled together. He flipped the pages over one by one, quickly scanning the top of each sheet. When he got to the final sheet, he swore.

Eric had turned around to look at him and now pulled off the headset. ‘What?'

‘This fax from Phoenix PD?' Scott waved the sheets in the air. ‘It's got pages one through eight of a nine page document.'

Eric groaned. ‘That fucking fax machine.'

Scott was up and trying to pace in the tiny camper.

Eric asked, ‘What do you think was on page nine?'

‘How about, “Yeah, we've got your gold van out here and guess what? It's got an electrical extension cord running out its back end and into fifteen-oh-one”?' He threw the papers on to the monitoring station, pulled his chair up next to Eric, and sat down again. Eric stared at the screen. ‘You're probably right about that being an extension cord. Who lives in fifteen-oh-one again?' He picked up the papers. ‘The Spicers. Sally and Frank.' He put them back on the counter. ‘About the fax. I should have checked it when I grabbed it on Friday.'

Scott slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Doesn't matter. Page nine might have just said, “Drive safe, boys”. Whatever it said, we'll confirm the extension cord tonight.'

Eric nodded. He rewound the tape and pushed
Pause
. ‘I'm going with “Gold for my princess” on the audio.'

He pushed
Play
. The man's voice came through more clearly this time. Now it sounded loving and triumphant: ‘Gold for my princess.'

SIXTEEN

A
bathrobe-clad Frank Spicer first turned on his porch light and then opened his front door at 1501 Prickly Pear Close to find four people on his doorstep. They had been pounding on it for the entire minute it had taken him to get to the front of the house. Two were men holding Federal Bureau of Investigation badges open towards him. The other two were wearing Phoenix Police Department uniforms. One of the FBI people handed him some papers. The front page had
WARRANT
typed across it in letters big enough for Frank to read without his glasses. He did need glasses for the rest of it, so he invited the authorities into the house. After all, he had nothing to hide.

As it turned out, the law enforcement officers did not want to search his house. It had all been a mistake, as Frank was sure it would be. They wanted to search that old van parked in front of their house, a vehicle they had nothing to do with. Frank told them that and his wife, Sally, seconded him, now that she had joined them in the front room, wearing a pink terrycloth muumuu.

‘That's right, the van isn't ours. We have a Saturn. It's in the driveway.'

‘Ma'am,' the blond FBI agent said. ‘The van has an extension cord running into your garage.'

She reared back. ‘I beg your pardon?' She crossed to the window, pulling her husband with her. ‘Frank, had you noticed that?' She looked at him in wonder.

Frank felt tired. ‘No, I sure didn't.'

She appealed to the four people standing like statues in her living room. ‘We've been out of town for a few weeks. Maybe someone was trying to steal our electricity while we were gone?' She broke off and looked at Frank again, who shrugged. ‘We thought the van belonged to someone visiting a neighbor. I never noticed the extension cord.'

Scott regarded Frank and Sally Spicer. Neither fit the image of the person he'd seen going into the van the previous evening. ‘Mr and Mrs Spicer, does anyone else live here with you?'

‘Our son, Wayne, lives with us.' Sally sounded puzzled.

‘We'll need to speak with him to determine if he's the owner of the van. Where can we find him?'

‘It's not his—' Sally began.

‘Let me get him,' said Frank. ‘It'll be easier that way. He doesn't like to be disturbed,' he said over his shoulder as he began to leave the room. One of the police officers followed him.

Scott stood across the room from Sally Spicer. She didn't look concerned about the unfolding events, only as befuddled as would someone who had been woken up abruptly after having gone to bed for the night. She tried to fluff her short grey hair, then smiled self-consciously at him. He maintained a polite expression.

The person who followed Frank into the room was a very good match for the tall man seen by Scott and Eric on the surveillance video. He was still wearing dark sweatpants but now had on a white vest. His body hair was long and pale and stuck to his skin in rivulets of sweat, as though he had come from a room without air conditioning.

Scott turned to the newcomer as the two police officers quietly moved to block the doorway.

‘Are you Wayne Spicer?'

‘Yes.' The man seemed surprised that anyone knew his name.

‘Do you own the van sitting in front of this property?'

‘Yes. It's mine.'

Scott noticed Sally grip Frank's arm.

‘We have a warrant to search your van, sir.'

Eric came to stand next to Scott, holding a second copy of the warrant papers they had had issued.

Wayne's eyes darted between Scott and the window.

‘Why? It's not parked illegally. I didn't do anything wrong.' Wayne's voice took on a higher pitch with every phrase.

‘Take a seat there, sir.' Scott indicated the flowered sofa. ‘Here's your copy of the warrant.'

Eric handed the papers to Wayne. Scott expected the large man to resist in some way but he looked like he no longer heard or saw them.

Sally pleaded, ‘Wayne?'

He didn't respond.

One police officer remained in the living room with the Spicer family while Scott, Eric, and Officer Perez walked outside.

Perez went to her cruiser, which was parked across the Spicer's driveway, and put her spotlight full beam on the back of the van. Eric brought a camera out of an equipment bag he carried with him. Using the flash, he photographed the entire van and then took several shots of the padlock securing the rear doors. Perez arrived with a bolt cutter she had retrieved from the trunk of the cruiser and Eric photographed her actions as she cut through the padlock and removed the chain from between the door handles. She then carefully opened both doors to their widest position while Eric photographed. Scott flicked on a flashlight and surveyed the scene before him.

The extension cord traveled up from under the bumper and into the van's floor via a rusty hole partially ringed with short pieces of black electrical tape. Scott's eyes followed the cord. It met another, this one white and protruding from the back of a white, mid-sized chest freezer. A grey rubber strap ran like a belt around the front of the freezer and was bolted to the wall with shiny screws that looked new. There was barely space for a path between the freezer on the right and an army cot on the left. At the far end of the van, a tarp hung from the ceiling and obscured the front seats.

Eric photographed the van's interior. Perez climbed in to cut through the padlock securing the freezer's lid and then Eric traded places with her. Scott lifted the lid so Eric could photograph the inside. Scott couldn't see in from his position, so watched Eric's face. But Eric lowered the camera without taking a photograph.

‘What is it?' Scott asked.

‘You gotta see this.' Eric took three flash photographs in quick succession and jumped down.

Scott climbed into the van and shined light into the freezer. There was a dead woman tucked inside it. She was resting on her back, held in a crouch with her head against the left wall and chin tucked down. Dark hair curled about the young face and across shoulders pushed slightly inwards by the front and back walls. Her arms were extended and crossed over her body, which was clothed in a bra and underpants. Her hands lay palms-down over her abdomen. Her appearance was innocent and peaceful, preserved intact by the cold.

Scott locked eyes with Eric. ‘We got him. We finally got the bastard. Perez, get us hooked up with a flatbed. We're impounding this vehicle.'

Wayne Spicer remained silent throughout his arrest. He nodded to indicate that he understood his Miranda rights and looked dully at his parents before being led out of the house in handcuffs. Scott glanced at Frank and Sally Spicer as he left their living room. They looked as though they had fallen into the sofa and weren't getting up any time soon. He closed the front door quietly behind him.

Eric stayed with the van. He would maintain continuity of evidence for the transport crew from the Medical Examiner's Office after they arrived to formally confirm death and he would wait for the police tow truck unit who would take the van away on a flatbed.

Wayne sat in the back of the police cruiser as Officer Perez drove out of Prickly Pear Close and through the quiet streets of Mesa. He looked out of the window, taking shallow breaths and sweating. Sitting next to him, Scott was trying to keep his own breathing under control as he thought about how they would be able to use the body in the freezer against the suspect during interview. He couldn't imagine this guy didn't know he was going down. They would make him cough up the locations of the other women he'd killed and then he and Eric would finally close the cases in Atlanta.

DAY EIGHT

Tuesday

SEVENTEEN

S
cott and Eric left their hotel in downtown Phoenix, having decided to get the coroner's preliminary report on the girl in the freezer before starting the interview with Wayne Spicer. Scott was aware he hadn't yet returned Jayne's call from the previous day and vowed to do it that afternoon. He checked the paper in his lap. Dr Bodell was the forensic pathologist on duty at the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office.

At the ME's Office, the agents were able to stay in their street clothes by standing in the viewing room whose window overlooked the large suite where Dr Bodell was working at an autopsy table. The window took up most of the dividing wall and Scott felt as though he was in the room with the pathologist. He was startled when her voice came through a wall-mounted speaker as a tinny amplification of the rich British timbre he'd heard when they'd met in her office earlier.

‘Can you hear me all right?' A Tyvek-suited Dr Bodell was directing her chin upwards to a microphone hanging from the ceiling as she looked at them through the window. The young autopsy assistant pulled the microphone slightly closer to the pathologist.

The agents nodded even though they'd been shown how to operate the wall-mounted microphone so the pathologist could hear them.

‘I understand you found the body in a freezer,' she stated. ‘Any idea how long it had been there?'

When the agents shook their heads, Dr Bodell continued.

‘Well, I'll be able to give you more information when the body's thawed some more and we do a full post, but for now I can tell you that your Jane Doe is Caucasian, in her twenties, five-feet-six-inches tall, with a slim build, and X-ray shows a COD of broken neck.'

Dr Bodell paused to give Eric time to take notes. She watched him, then continued. ‘I thought you'd like to know that we've got good material for an ID. Take a look at your screen.'

They looked down at a video screen mounted in a console in front of them. The screen was black at first, then an image took up the whole screen, blurry and full of motion. Scott glanced at Dr Bodell, who was manipulating a pen-sized tube around the body's mouth. The autopsy assistant moved to the nearside of the table and immediately but unwittingly blocked Scott's view. He looked back to the screen and saw teeth as the camera moved around the mouth.

Dr Bodell's voice came through the speakers again. ‘There. You see the filling in the canine?'

They replied simultaneously, ‘No.' Then Scott remembered to press the microphone button so the pathologist could hear them. He pressed it and repeated, ‘No.'