Cold Case

Gordon was shocked. “I thought the Revised Privacy Act of 2013 was supposed to protect consumers against things like this.”

“And I suppose this little clause is what the lawyers came up with to get around that law,” Marissa Hunter said grimly. “It’s also in my flight simulator. As Matt says, it appears to be an industry standard.”

“I’ll bet we could challenge that in court,” Matt’s father said.

His wife merely gave him a look.

Sure, we could challenge it, Matt thought. If we had money like Leif’s father, we could even afford the time and the lawyers. But Dad was a teacher, and Mom a career Navy officer. Their income wouldn’t let them hire a fraction of the kind of legal talent the Callivants already had working on this.

Dad must have realized the same thing even as the words were coming out of his mouth. Silently he led the way back to the kitchen to watch the hands of the clock advance.

The deadline came, then dinnertime. Everybody in the Hunter family barely touched the food on their plates, waiting for…something. A call, a virtmail message — Matt had ordered his program to sound a special chime if anything came in.

There was only silence as they tried to eat, silence as they cleared the table, silence as they cleaned the dishes.

“You would think Saunders would let us know, one way or the other,” Matt complained as he stacked plates in the kitchen cabinet. “Unless it might have something to do with the weather?”

Marissa Hunter gave her son a wry smile. “They don’t usually declare snow days for legal problems,” she said.

Matt waited a little while longer, then finally said, “I’m going to call him.”

Going to the living room console, he recited the Net address that had engraved itself into his memory. The computer display blinked for a moment, then Ed Saunders appeared. “Can’t talk to you right now,” his image announced. “But you can leave a detailed visual or virtmail message — your choice.”

Disgusted, Matt cut the connection. “He’s not there! What would he be doing out on a night like this?”

“He could be hiding behind his automated answering system,” Matt’s father suggested, “using it to screen his calls.”

“You mean he doesn’t have the nerve to face us.” Matt angrily returned to the computer, giving it a new set of orders. The machine took a moment or two to sift through the Net. But it finally came up with a physical address to match the owner of the Net site.

Matt told the computer to plot the location on a map of D.C., marking the nearest Metro stations.

“What are you thinking of, Matthew?” his father asked, his voice concerned.

“I want to know where we stand with this mess,” Matt replied. “It looks as though Saunders lives only a couple of blocks from the Waterfront Metro station.”

“You’re not thinking of going out in this ice storm,” his mother said.

“I’m thinking of going under it.” Matt looked at his parents. “Do we really just want to sit here and wait for whatever it is to fall on us?”

In the end Matt and his father, bundled up like Eskimos, wound up setting off for Ed Saunders’s house. Several times on the long, slippery walk to the Metro station, Matt wished he hadn’t been so persuasive. The frozen rain was coming down in tiny pellets of ice, which flew along on a howling wind. And no matter which direction they walked in, the wind seemed to be gusting right into their faces.

Now I know how it feels to be sandblasted, Matt thought as a new crop of sleet tore across his exposed skin. He could barely see where he was going through his slitted eyes, and every step he took along the slick sidewalk threatened to dump him on his butt.

It was a distinct relief to skid down the stairs to the station. But then they faced an infuriating wait for a train. “A good part of the Metro system is open to the sky,” Dad said. “I guess even the rails are getting iced up.”

At last their train arrived and took them, along with a few other harassed-looking evening commuters, across town. Clinging to an ice-crusted handrail, they made their way up the stairs. Of course, the wind had swung around again so that it was in their faces.

Head down, his cheeks feeling as if they were being peppered with tiny buckshot, Matt half-walked, half- skated through deserted streets.

Sure, he thought. Anybody with an ounce of brains in their heads would stay indoors and warm during a storm like this.

He and his dad slogged along until Gordon Hunter asked, “Two blocks, you said. How many blocks have we gone now?”

Holding on to a glazed light pole, Matt swung around to squint up at the street sign. Great. Now only half his face was being ice-blasted. “It’s right around the—”

He broke off as he spotted the lump in the middle of the block off to their left, almost beyond the wan circle of light thrown by the ice-frosted streetlight. It was a human-shaped lump, half-on, half-off the sidewalk.

“Dad!” Matt burst out, skidding toward the still form.

When he got close enough to make out details, Matt stopped so quickly, his father almost rammed into him from behind.

The ice-crusted lump was human. Worse, it was familiar.

Ed Saunders’s bluish face stared blankly up into the pelting ice storm, immobile despite the stinging particles rattling down on his cheeks, his nose…his open eyes.

Matt didn’t need to see the reddish-black stain on the curb beneath Saunders’s head to know that the man wouldn’t feel anything ever again.

6

After nearly having his face peeled off by gusts of wind-borne ice, Matt was glad for the shelter of the police patrol car. He’d had to open his coat to get out his wallet-phone and call for help. For the rest of the time he and his father had stood at the scene of the accident, Matt hadn’t been able to shake the resulting chill.

Maybe it was psychological, a reaction to standing beside a dead body. There was no doubt that Ed Saunders was dead. Matt had tried to resuscitate him, but it was like working with a very stiff dummy. He knew it was hopeless, but he’d had to try. Saunders’s cold flesh had just sucked away more of Matt’s body heat. Worst of all was the knowledge that the effort was a lost cause. Saunders already had a thin coating of ice over his eyeballs.

All in all, Matt had been glad when the police officers had arrived and put him in the stuffy warmth of their squad car. But the smell was wearing on him now. It stank of harsh cleanser and, under that, just the barest trace of vomit. Matt gulped against a suddenly rebellious stomach, wishing he hadn’t recognized that other scent.

He tried to distract himself by thinking of what lay ahead. His dad wasn’t with him. Gordon Hunter was sitting in the sector sergeant’s car, which had arrived just a moment after the ambulance Matt had called. But the paramedics had stayed in the meat wagon while the cops stood hunched in their blue parkas, guarding the scene of the accident — or, perhaps, of the crime.

It looked to Matt as if Saunders had slipped on the ice and cracked his head on the curb. But as he sat in the caged rear of the patrol car, he had to admit the possibility that Saunders might have had his head cracked before he hit the ground. No wonder the cops had been so interested in the people who had found the body and called in the accident. That’s why they’d separated him from his father — so neither would hear the other’s story.

So, what would Monty Newman have done in this situation? There was at least one Lucullus Marten novel where the assistant sleuth had been accused of murder….

Annoyingly, Matt’s thoughts refused to get together and stay together. His eyes kept closing. The warm air wafting from the car’s heater was putting him to sleep.

The blast of cold air and ice that invaded the car when the door opened was a shock. But Matt got an even bigger shock when he managed to focus his eyes. He knew the man leaning into the car. It was David Gray’s