Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing (24 page)

‘That's correct, sir.'

‘And what'd the Crime Lab out there tell you on estimated time to get to the frame VIN?'

Eric spread his hands out. ‘I'm just waiting for the phone to ring.'

Turner fixed him with the stare again. ‘So, in sum, you have no leads on this suspect's name.'

‘Not yet, but I've got the IT guys working on getting the name of whoever registered the alias Tripper on the Internet.'

‘OK, so tell me this: if you have no sense of who this guy is, why have you activated a BOLO to all the local PD's in the state of Georgia, stating the make, model, and VIN of the vehicle you believe he just
might
be driving?'

Eric opened his mouth and then shut it quickly. He felt like he was on Day One at Quantico, sitting in the front of the class, and Turner had asked him a question that not only was he unable to answer but he'd also clearly missed the summer reading.

Eric tried to make sense of this. He hadn't issued a BOLO to Georgia law enforcement and, as far as he knew, Scott hadn't either. And if Scott
had
issued a BOLO but
not
told Eric, that would raise Turner's eyebrows. More to the point, if there was a special BOLO for Georgia police, how had Turner heard about it over here in LA?

Eric decided to hedge his bets. ‘No matter who's driving that vehicle, we need to locate it ASAP. It's part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the death of Katherine Alston.'

He could tell that Turner knew he'd sidestepped the question and was deeply relieved when his supervisor just responded with a slow nod. But then Turner loosened his tie, his bony fingers working themselves into the knot, and Eric knew he wasn't off the hook yet.

‘I had a feeling you were going to say something like that because I just got off the horn with SSA Franks. He wasn't happy.'

Eric wanted to say, ‘I was posted under Franks for three years and the man was never happy,' but he held his tongue.

‘And now I'm not happy because this is the second call I've had to field from him since you and Houston got posted out here.'

‘Sir—'

‘Are you familiar with these allegations, Eric?' Turner snapped his sheet of paper straight and cleared his throat. ‘An anonymous complaint was lodged direct with Franks regarding the conduct of SA Houston during the investigation into missing prostitutes in Atlanta. The complainant alleged that Houston was ‘friendly' with prostitutes who were part of the investigation, during Bureau hours and in a Bureau vehicle.'

‘This is just Franks—'

Turner cut him off with a look. ‘No. Franks protected Houston by not referring this to the OPR.'

Eric inwardly winced at the reference to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility. The image of those internal affairs agents competed with his thoughts on who the complainant could have been.

Turner continued. ‘Franks took an interest in Houston's activities and gained evidence of him giving prostitutes rides in his Bureau vehicle, which, as you know, is in itself against regulations. He purchased food and drink for them. He fraternized with them alone and after hours. Franks pointed out that, for all the attention SA Houston was giving these streetwalkers, it was ironic that two of them later went missing.'

Eric shook his head in disbelief but had learned not to interrupt his supervisor.

‘Now, in Franks' estimation, the reason you two never cleared that case was because you developed the erroneous theory that there was a lone abductor who was the lone serial killer. At the time you were transferred out here, he described you both as ‘obsessed'. I told him it was my practice to give experienced agents their reins. But as soon as your BOLO on this vehicle came across his radar, he called me to find out what you're working on. I only gave him an outline but it was enough for him to inform me in no uncertain terms that you and Houston are pursuing a dead-end theory that will now leave my office with a case that can't be cleared, taking valuable resources and man-hours. He advised me to take control of this case ASAP.'

Turner rubbed his fingers hard over the faint stubble on his chin, jutting his lower jaw out as if to stretch it. ‘Now, I'm capable of drawing my own conclusions about you and Houston but I do have one more item that needs clearing up.'

Eric braced himself.

‘What in Sam Hell did you think you were doing when you allowed two civilians into the crime scene at the freeway?'

Jayne recognized the symptoms. While she had fallen asleep like a baby in the passenger seat, Scott had not done the same at the wheel; nor was he ill. He was experiencing a flashback of some kind. She didn't know if it was about the Alston case or if the case had simply triggered something else, but she knew she had to get Scott out of the car. Long drives conducted alone, or, in this case, in silence, had a way of breeding meltdowns. Steelie had once referred to this as Jayne's Law. Steelie had probably seen this coming when they were still in the parking lot in Phoenix, where Jayne had thought Scott was suffering more from fatigue than anything else. She had to get him out.

She said his name again and he turned his face toward her but his eyes were still staring forward, out the front windshield. She was shocked by the vulnerability of his expression, the red rims of his eyes contrasting with a paleness around his lips. She took his hands and pulled on them, urging him out of the car and now he slipped down from the driver's seat. When his feet hit the ground, he pulled away from her, muttering ‘Christ' as he strode quickly away, walking along the edge of the tarmac, disturbing a ribbon of blown desert sand. Jayne let him go. He eventually stopped and she watched his back, seeing him apparently loosen his tie, then clasp his hands behind his head as he looked up at the dusky sky. After a minute, she walked over to him, purposely stopping slightly behind him but close enough so he'd know she was there.

He turned his head, putting her in his peripheral vision. ‘How do you guys do it?' His voice sounded choked, tired.

‘Do what?'

He turned his head away, his hair catching under his fingers. ‘I've gotta tell ya, it about killed me to meet the Alstons.' He paused. ‘I kept picturing their daughter in the freezer, at the morgue. Those teeth. I've never seen such perfect teeth. She was dead but there they were, just like life. For
Christ's
sake!' He brought his arms down and crossed them tightly against his chest.

Jayne was reaching to touch him when his voice came out in a whisper.

‘I feel inadequate.'

Shocked, she drew her hand back and looked at the back of his head. Could he really have said those words? Did he feel what she felt? She knew what he meant. The dead were still dead, despite everything you'd done – despite all the Good, all the Investigation, the Uncovering, the Recovery, the Holding Accountable, the dead were still dead and you couldn't bring them back. She
knew
. He was talking again.

‘I've never felt so glad to clear a case and then felt so . . . terrible.' Scott's head dropped down as his shoulders started to shake.

Jayne reached for him then, turning him and pulling his head to her chest, feeling his exhalations, hot and damp, on her shirtfront. She automatically began rubbing his back and her words came out despite her defences. ‘I know, I know.' She said them over and over until she was murmuring them into his hair, which muffled the words into noises only for them to resurface as kisses that landed on his ear, his brow, damp cheek, and then his arms were around her, tightening when his mouth found hers.

TWENTY-ONE

A
single glance was all it took for Chesterton Police Officers Cobb and Hayden to know that the man on the stretcher was not ‘one of theirs', as the security guard had announced when he had called the station minutes earlier frantically shouting, ‘Officer down! Officer down!' But he could have been from another substation. The paramedics would not let them speak to the barely conscious man so Cobb had let the ambulance leave for the hospital after they had searched the man's pockets and not found any proof of identity.

While Hayden took a statement from the security guard, who was sitting on the curb, Cobb searched the dark blue sedan for the officer's identification. There wasn't a single item in the body of the vehicle. He opened the trunk and looked in the dark interior. It was lined with several layers of heavy duty clear plastic. This struck Cobb as unusual but not outside the range of possibilities for an undercover unit. The only step he could take to determine who owned the vehicle was to run the license plate number through the NCIC hook-up in his cruiser.

NCIC listed the owner of the Georgia license plate but the plates were registered to a different car than the one illuminated in Cobb's spotlight. Plates can be moved from vehicle to vehicle but Vehicle Identification Numbers pose more of a problem, so Cobb walked back to the dark sedan and leaned in to read the VIN from where it was screwed into the dashboard on a metal plate. He transcribed the 17-digit number on to his pad, double-checked it, and returned to his cruiser.

When Cobb saw that there was an All Points Bulletin out on that VIN, it triggered a distant memory of a BOLO that had gone out earlier that night. But it was the APB information that caused his blood pressure to spike. The driver could be armed and dangerous and must be detained. His immediate thought was to race after the ambulance but he couldn't leave his partner on the side of the road with the witness. He radioed the station and hurriedly told the duty desk to dispatch a unit to Chesterton General to intercept the ambulance on the way to or at the entrance of the emergency room. Then he radioed a colleague on another floor of the station and asked him to enter an NCIC response report that the wanted vehicle had been recovered, along with an unconscious man who may or may not have been the driver.

Tripper had been careful to respond to the paramedics with enough vital signs to get them to relax about his condition but not so many that they were going to start asking him questions about his identity. They correctly deduced that he'd suffered a mild concussion, which he was coming out of, but they had no concerns about a cracked skull or fractured ribs that could cause major complications. They were driving with lights but not siren and not at great speed. He could hear the two of them at the front of the ambulance, joking about the construction site security guard and discussing where they would eat on their break: fast food or an all-night place called Rick's.

Tripper lifted his head. His eyesight was blurred but the blood that had been flowing from his nose was drying. He could feel clots deep inside his nostrils and the symptoms of a massive headache. Squinting down his body, he could see the seatbelt-like straps crisscrossing the ruined police costume and keeping him attached to the stretcher as the ambulance moved. It was easy to undo the straps but leave them looking as though still clipped into place. What he did next would depend on where the paramedics pulled in at the hospital: the emergency room or a main entrance. He waited, fighting the desire to close his eyes against the headache and fall into delicious sleep.

The ambulance coming to a stop jolted him into full consciousness. He stayed prone until he heard both paramedics jump down from the front of the ambulance and walk to the rear. He knew they had arrived at the main entrance; otherwise emergency room staff would already have opened the ambulance doors. In one swift movement, Tripper sat up on the stretcher and the searing pain in his head flared up, accompanied by flashes of white light in his peripheral vision. He pushed the straps clear of his body and swung his legs on to either side of the stretcher.

When the paramedics, still chewing the fat, opened the rear doors, he catapulted himself out on to the ground and ran toward the darkest part of the street he could see. He heard their startled ‘Hey!' but knew he had the advantage of surprise and as he ran, he felt every sense in his body sharpen while his legs and arms began to pump in perfect time, the blood clots in his nose clearing as he breathed deeply, the pain in his head masked by the adrenalin released by his body for this very purpose.

Eric didn't immediately respond to his supervisor's query about ‘civilians'. Turner had to be referring to Jayne and Steelie, but who had told Turner that the women had even been at the freeway site? The Highway Patrol officers wouldn't have gone over Scott's head and the Critters had no reason to talk to Turner. And what did this have to do with Franks over in Atlanta? How could he have known about Jayne and Steelie? It just didn't add up.

Turner looked up from his sheet when Eric didn't respond. ‘I've looked into this. They were not only at the crime scene but here in the building. You authorized SA Weiss to log two scientists from an outfit called Agency Thirty-two One into the building as visitors yet he took them up to the tenth floor. That's reading like a potential violation of chain of custody protocols. Clarify it.'

‘Sir, those scientists assisted us with gaining leads on this case.'

‘Dammit, Eric, those body parts were supposed to be en route to the LA Coroner's Office, not being pawed over by every Tom, Dick, and Harry while in our custody.'

‘At no time did the scientists come into physical contact with the remains, sir.'

Turner looked at him with interest. ‘Can anyone back you up on that?
Besides
your partner?'

‘Absolutely. Tony Lee.'

‘OK. Get him in here.'

Eric went to reach for the phone but, at that moment, the computer behind him emitted a beep. He whipped around in his chair, scanned through the green binary code on the old monitor, and quickly interpreted it. There had been a hit on the APB for Wayne Spicer's car. The responding agency was Chesterton Police Station in Atlanta, Georgia.

‘I need to make a call to a PD,' Eric said, reaching for the desk telephone.