Freezing

‘Because she’ll be at your mother’s.’

She saw his mouth twitch and she smiled reflexively. The movement broke the surface tension that had kept her face taut since she’d hissed at him in the bedroom.

And then he was walking away from her, moving on, pushing through, going forward.

DAYS FIVE AND SIX

Saturday and Sunday

FOURTEEN

Scott caught the mayonnaise just in time as it squirted out the bottom of the sandwich. He looked to see how his partner was doing. Eric had the Suburban’s steering wheel in one hand and his sandwich in the other. On his first bite, barbeque sauce dripped out in a fat droplet. Part landed on his pant leg and part on the fabric seat, but, to his credit, the vehicle’s speed remained steady as it hurtled east along Interstate 10 towards Arizona.

‘Shit,’ Eric mumbled while he chewed, then noticed Scott. ‘What’s so funny? Turner’s not going to be laughing when you bring his vehicle back looking like a minivan after a trip to Disneyland.’

‘I got the impression from Turner that he couldn’t care less if we brought it back at all, so long as we secured a suspect.’

He leaned across and balanced a paper napkin on Eric’s thigh. ‘I’m not wiping it up, even if you ask me nice.’ But he forgot to keep an eye on his own food and mayo got on his shirt. ‘Dammit.’

Eric looked pleased. ‘Did Turner get a call from Franks?’

‘He didn’t say as much.’

‘But he was concerned we were on a wild-goose chase?’

Scott nodded as he chewed.

‘Did he actually use those words?’

‘No, but you know Craig Turner. He can be a diplomat. A nice quality in a boss.’

‘For a change. Man, when I think about how Franks held us back on this case in Atlanta! Who knows how many leads we missed.’

‘It’s not like we stopped following leads.’

‘Yeah, but we didn’t have the resources to do proper surveillance to generate the high quality leads. You know we were slowed down by only getting the leads the streetwalkers could remember to give us. We had a short list of suspects—’

‘Hey, you don’t have to remind me.’

‘And thanks to SSA Franks, we couldn’t do what was needed to rule ’em in or out. And now we’re tracking the same perp out here. He’s probably killed again, too.’

Scott balled up his napkin, put it in a paper bag, then balled that up and threw it in the footwell. ‘We don’t know that it’s the same guy. Our perp’s stomping grounds are in Atlanta. Right now, we’re in . . .’ He looked out the window just as they passed the sign for the Arizona State Line. ‘We’re fifteen miles west of Quartzsite. What’s our perp doing in Arizona?’

‘I don’t know,’ Eric admitted. ‘But it’s the same guy. Maybe he wanted to take a road trip. He took the northern route, killed Patterson in Oregon on the way down south, got rear-ended in LA—’

‘The van was going north when it was hit, Eric.’

‘So he was lost. He gets back on the road and goes to Arizona to get some sun. Or, wait . . . he could be from Arizona originally and it was time to come home. Things getting too hot in Georgia the past few months. I mean, you were on the news and in the paper, what, every couple of weeks for a while? Appealing to the public, “We’re looking for a van that might be driven by a man abducting women in Atlanta.” I’d get out of town if I had you on my tail.’ Eric put the last of the sandwich in his mouth and held out the trash to Scott. ‘You still think it’s the same guy, right?’

‘Yeah. But I’ll tell you what I didn’t tell Turner. I think it’s the same guy because I want it to be him. It’s not based solely on the evidence because the evidence isn’t strong enough to say it is our guy. It’s just a perp with a Georgia license plate hauling female body parts around.’

‘What did you tell Turner?’

‘I just told him there was no need to hand off to Phoenix, wasting time bringing them up to speed. At the very least, we’ll get forensics that relate to the LA body parts and we’ll get the van’s owner, who’s either the perp or someone who’s helping him. We can tie up the LA end of the case no matter what.’

‘And Turner doesn’t care about what happened with us in Georgia?’

‘I barely mentioned Georgia. I mean, if Franks has called him from Atlanta, then Turner already knows that when it comes to that case, I’m . . . what did Angie say Franks called me?’

‘An ego-driven maverick who can’t see the forest for the trees.’

‘Right.’ Scott looked at the instrument panel. ‘Watch your speed, Ramos.’

Eric immediately glanced at the speedometer and eased up on the accelerator pedal. ‘It’s thinking about Franks that does that to me.’

‘Remember, he’s our old boss.’ Scott reclined his seat and closed his eyes.

‘Not if he’s calling Turner with bedtime stories,’ Eric replied, an edge to his voice.

‘Turner’s too smart for that kind of game. And if you’re going to be thinking about Franks while I’m getting some shut-eye, put it on cruise control.’

Eric focused on the road. It was still another couple of hours to Mesa, so he turned the radio on with the volume low. He’d just missed the news.

An hour later, Scott woke suddenly and then oriented himself. He brought his seatback up and cleared his throat. ‘How far out are we?’

‘Thirty miles.’

‘You need to switch?’

‘No, I’ll take us to the location and get in some rest when we change vehicles.’

Scott drank from a bottle of water, then pulled a file folder from the seat behind them. ‘You get a chance to look at this stuff from Phoenix PD before we left?’

Eric shook his head. ‘Not in any detail. The D who I spoke with, Czuzak, is up to her neck on a drug bust so she sent a couple of rookies to babysit the van.’

‘She sure the van’s associated with that address?’ Scott was pulling papers out of the file and putting them in some kind of order.

‘Well, it’s parked in front of that address. The rookies have seen one man emerge from the van and go into that address but not by the front door. He went down the side. Could be a side entrance, could be nothing. Could be a shortcut to a neighbor’s.’

‘Right. Says here that the house at that address is owned by a couple in their seventies by the name of Spicer. Been there since ’ninety-nine. Previous address is Burbank, California. No arrests, no convictions. No problems with property taxes or mortgage payments. No van registered in their name or associated with the house.’ Scott paused.

‘They could know the perp. Let him park at their place.’

‘I see you’re presuming Mr Spicer isn’t our perp.’

Eric gave him a look. ‘He’s too old for the description we have. Plus, how many seventy-year-old active serial killers you heard of? What about the people who live on either side of that address?’

‘Uh, let’s see.’ Scott flipped through some pages until he found the right one. ‘To the west we have a Mr Knox, the owner since ’ninety-eight, unknown to police but resident with him is one Alice Elizabeth Smith whose priors include possession, dealing, and acquiring goods through deception.’

Eric raised his eyebrows. ‘Possession of what?’

‘Ah . . . pot. Same for the dealing.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Maybe.’

‘She could be someone who crossed paths with the perp.’