Frozen Past (19 page)

“You guys can’t track him with the software I gave you?” Luke asked.

“He hasn’t turned that cell phone on again,” Jaxon said. “We think he’s ditched it. He called me two days ago from an untraceable cell number and it wasn’t the one you gave us. We’ve been monitoring it 24/7/365 and he hasn’t used it.”

“I don’t have the program my friend used to decode it. He didn’t give me that one.”

“Can we talk to your friend? It’s very important,” Jaxon said.

Luke looked down at the floor, uncomfortably. Then he looked at Ellie. She stared at him with a look that said, ‘Tell them.’

“I don’t want to give you his name without him saying it’s ok,” Luke said. “I promised.”

“Do you understand what’s at stake here, Lucas?” Victoria asked very seriously. “Ellie’s life is at stake. Do you think your friend’s feelings are more important than Ellie’s life?”

Jaxon watched the kid crumble. Victoria had been brutally honest with him. She stayed silent now, letting him work it out.

“His name is Q,” Luke said. “Quentin. I need to call him first if we’re going to see him. His family may not like a bunch of cops just showing up.”

“Do you want to use my phone?” Jaxon said.

He shook his head. “No. I’ll do it from mine. He knows my number.”

“Can you try now? The clock is ticking,” Jaxon said, “and we need to find this guy. Before it’s too late.”

Luke nodded and left the room. He returned a moment later with a cell phone against his ear. Jaxon could hear it ringing. After twenty rings or so, Luke hung up.

“He always answers his phone. Maybe he knows what’s going on. It’s been in the news. He could be hiding,” Luke said.

“Can we go to his house?” Victoria asked.

“His family won’t like it,” Luke said uneasily. “They have big dogs and I know his dad has guns. I don’t think they’re legit.”

“Legit?” Jaxon asked.

“Luke means his parents have both been to jail,” Ellie said. “They sell drugs.”

“We just want to talk. We don’t want to arrest them,” Victoria said. “Can you take us there?”

Luke looked at Ellie and she nodded slightly. “Alright,” he said. “It’s not far.”

* * *

They arrived at Q’s house and Jaxon was not impressed. The house was a shack. The last shack they had been to exploded on them and Jaxon looked apprehensively over this beat up 1950’s era block home. A chain link fence encircled the whole front yard and abandoned motorcycles, toys, washers, chests, and coolers littered it making it look deserted.

Luke said, “Where are his dogs?”

“They have dogs?” Jaxon asked.

“Yeah. Mean ones. I’m surprised they’re not here, snarling and frothing at the mouth.”

Jaxon looked at Victoria. She shrugged.

“You kids stay here. If anything happens, get on your cell phones and call 911. Don’t go near the house.”

“What’s wrong?” Ellie asked.

“Probably nothing,” Victoria said. “Just let us check it out.”

The two kids nodded their heads and stood close to each other. “Wait in the car,” Jaxon said. “And lock the doors.”

Jaxon walked to the gate and then stopped. He looked up at the trees and light poles, trying to see if any cameras or something unusual stood out against the trashy and run down neighborhood. He could see nothing that looked out of place. Victoria joined him in the search.

“Do you think he has it rigged?” she said.

“I don’t think he’s had time. I don’t know how he would even know about this kid.”

“He’s been one step ahead of us this whole time.”

He nodded. “We take it slow.”

“Do you want to call back up?”

“No. Do you?”

She grinned and shook her head.

He turned toward the house and whistled. “Here boy! Kujo! Fifi ! Here girl!”

She said, “That’s great. Will you just open the gate.”

“Just making sure,” he said. “That book was creepy.”

He reached over and lifted the latch. The gate swung open slowly on rusty hinges. No dogs attacked. They approached the front door and knocked. Nothing. He motioned to the side of the house and she nodded. Weaving through the trash, they stepped over a rather large dirty bathtub and came up on the rear yard. A window was to his left. He looked inside, but the grime coating the glass made it impenetrable. Nothing inside made a sound.

The backyard was worse than the front and an ancient above ground pool sagged onto the back porch, the remaining water black with algae and whatever else had accumulated over the years. As he scanned the backyard, brown fur caught his eye. Victoria saw it too. She motioned to the right and they worked their way around the pool.

Two dogs lay next to each other just outside their doghouse. Jaxon could not tell the breeds. Their heads were missing. He drew his weapon and Victoria did the same.

He noticed the back sliding glass door was broken. He motioned toward it and they worked their way through the yard to the back door. Dirty, grey, sheer curtains blew in and out of the broken glass, but nothing inside made a sound. Jaxon pushed the curtains out of the way and entered the house. The smell assaulted him instantly.

Victoria followed and said under her breath, “Ah, Jesus.”

Jaxon didn’t expect to find anyone dangerous still in the house but he kept his weapon out just the same. They stepped into the kitchen and found dirty dishes and trash littered throughout the room. Pushing the door open into the living room the smell grew stronger and as Jaxon’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he found the origin.

Two men and a woman were seated on a couch, bullet holes in their heads, flies buzzing around them. They looked to have been dead at least three days. Jaxon imagined the terror they must have felt as their killer lined them up and shot them one by one.

Victoria had moved to a hallway and he followed her down the short dark space. A door to the right yielded to a room full of junk. It was stacked to the ceiling in places with crap Jaxon remembered fondly growing up. Toy G.I. Joes, Atari game consoles, tricycles, big wheels, hundreds of board games, clothing. Jaxon could not believe these people had amassed so much useless crap over their pathetic lifetimes. And why had they kept it all?

The next room was locked. Jaxon felt along the top of the sill and found a key. He slipped it into the lock and it turned. They opened the door onto another world. A hacker’s dream realm laid out before them, computers and monitors and Ipads and PS3’s and Xbox360’s. Everything a computer geek could want. This computer geek was sitting is his chair in front of the three huge computer monitors arrayed across the littered desk. A video of a cat was playing on the screens, but the boy was not watching it. His head was missing.

Chapter 36

The killer’s rage was now a living thing. It boiled inside of him, the heat building to a degree that he felt his intestines would burst from his soft belly, a boiling mass of shit and blood exploding from within him. He paced back and forth across the small motel room in Herndon, the pain inside him unable to let him rest. He had emptied his stomach contents completely over the last hour and though he had little left, he felt full of acid and bile. He needed a release.

They were keeping the girl close to their chests, holding and coddling her like a baby. She hadn’t left her house except to visit the boy, who he now knew to be behind the discovery of his cell phone number.

The boy and the hacker.

The hacker and the boy.

The hacker was not a problem any longer, but he still needed to be careful. He had to dispose of the boy. Lucas Neal Harrison had hung on long enough, and since he no longer needed him to entertain the girl and keep her distracted, the time had come, and his boiling rage would cool to a simmer once the boy was eliminated.

But first, he needed to send her a gift. She would be so happy to get it. He could see her face smiling as she held it and he would be in her life. He would know her even more. He moved the hacker’s head to the side of the freezer and grabbed the gift. It would only take a moment to wrap. The busy work cooled his insides and his roiling stomach calmed and grew silent. He sighed and thought only of her.

Chapter 37

Jaxon stood outside the hacker’s home who he now knew belonged to one Bartholomew Jenson. The headless teen was more than likely Quentin Jenson, but since the head was not in the house, they would have to wait for fingerprint ID or DNA. The mother, Jeanette, had been the woman on the couch and the other male, Quentin’s older brother, John. All of them had rap sheets, including the hacker. Jaxon was confident it would only be a matter of minutes before they confirmed the headless kid’s identity.

Victoria was working with the Crime Scene Lab, trying to extract anything they could from the boy’s computer, but they had to collect any evidence from the room and the body before they could move the boy out and concentrate on the computers in the room. Initially, Victoria hadn’t been able to manipulate the main system to display anything other than the cat video where the feline tickled the ivories of a pink piano while a large mutt licked his balls in the background. Funny, but pretty much useless and annoying at this point. At least they could turn the sound off.

Jaxon had called the Harrison father and given him instructions so he could come and retrieve the two kids. They were a wreck and even the boy leaked a few tears when Victoria told him his friend and his friend’s family were dead. She didn’t provide specifics. The girl buried her face in Luke’s shoulder and sobbed until the father came and took them home. Jaxon gave explicit instructions to the man not to stop for anything. Take the kids straight to the house and do not leave until instructed. The girl was to remain at the Harrison’s until Jaxon came by to get her. The police officers stationed in the neighborhood would double their presence in front of both their houses. The father didn’t look impressed. “I have a gun,” he had said. Normally, Jaxon would scold the man or tell him to let the police do their job, but this time he didn’t.

“Do you know how to use it?” Jaxon asked.

Surprised, the father nodded his head. “I go to the range once a month.”
“A range is different than pointing it at a man. If you point it at a man, are you prepared to see it through?”

The father hesitated, but then nodded.

“Keep it close,” Jaxon said and looked the man hard in the eye. Mr. Harrison frowned but nodded once and got in his car. Jaxon watched him drive away
. If anything happens to those two…
but he didn’t let himself finish the thought.

Jaxon’s phone rang. It was him.

“You’re a busy Son-of-a-bitch, aren’t you?” Jaxon said.

“Hello, Detective. We’re getting to know each other now, aren’t we?” Same numbers—all zeroes—same altered voice.

“Oh, I know you good, asshole. You’re becoming predictable.”

“So you say, Detective. How is my girl? I see you’ve been spending a little time with her today. Did she enjoy her outing?”

Jaxon looked around again, trying to find a camera, but nothing was in plain sight. He had to have something around the area. “Why her? I thought this was between you and I. You take my son and I find you and screw you up beyond belief.”

“Your son was nothing to me…”

“Don’t you do that!” Jaxon shouted, people turning and staring at him. “Don’t you knock him down to some discarded toy you got tired of. He was everything!”

“No. She is everything. And she will be mine. I’ve changed the plan. See if you can guess what it is, Detective.”

“I’m coming for you!”

Suddenly the voice changed. The man must have turned off the filter device. What came across was a deep, gravely, rumble of rage and anger that shook Jaxon to the core.

“That’s what I told Michael. But you never came.”

* * *

Ellie held on to Luke tightly. She was done crying and Luke had shed a few tears of his own with her although he had tried not to. It had just been too much. The roller coaster they were riding was taking its toll on them both.

“I don’t want to go to my house,” she said. “I want to stay with you.”

“Maybe you can.”

She looked up at him. “Are you serious?”

“I think it would be cool. My parents won’t, but this is a messed up situation. If you’re over here, Smith won’t know that and you’ll be safer. I bet Jaxon and Victoria would think it a good idea.”

“My mom will never go for it. She’ll think it an excuse for us just to be together.”

“A bonus,” he said and grinned.

She smiled for the first time all afternoon and it warmed him. “It can’t hurt to ask, right?” she said.

“Right. Let me talk to my parents first and if they agree, it will be easier to have them convince your mom.”

She nodded and then kissed him. “Go ask,” she whispered.

Luke and Ellie approached his parents and at first his dad was against it but his mom saw the wisdom of it. She had some rules, though.

“Ellie will sleep in your brother’s room and your brother will sleep with you,” Luke’s mom said.

Luke didn’t like it, but he knew it would be the only way they would allow her to stay.

“I don’t want to put anybody out, Mrs. Harrison,” Ellie said. “I could sleep on a couch or even the floor.”

“Nonsense, it will be no trouble. There’s a spare bed in the room anyway and Christopher’s car bed is easy to move. This is not a party, you two. If your mom agrees, then you’re welcome for as long as she will let you stay. But if she wants you to come home, we’ll take you right away. She’ll probably be worried. And no funny business.”

“We promise, Mom,” Luke said and smiled at Ellie who nodded vigorously.

Luke’s mom grinned back at them and gave Ellie a hug. “You’ll be safe here, sweetheart.”

Luke’s dad made the call and after a little convincing, Ellie’s mom agreed to let her stay. She would gather some things for her and bring them over a little later. Luke’s dad pointed to him and said, “You, come with me for a minute. We need to talk.”

The conversation that followed was not what Luke expected. His dad was very worried about Ellie and he told Luke that if something happened, the gun would be in his sock drawer.

“Dad, I don’t…”

“Luke, I love you son. You may have to grow up a little quicker than you want. I know this is scary for you, hell, it’s scary for me, but you’ll do what you have to do, when you have to do it.”

“I’ve only fired it a couple of times with you at the range. Will you show me how to load it again?”

“Tonight, when your mother has gone to bed.”

Luke looked at his dad. He couldn’t remember a time when he seemed so tired. “Dad, we’re gonna be ok, right?”

His dad smiled weakly. “Yeah, we’re gonna be ok. The police are keeping an eye on things and I’ll watch over us too.”

“Ok.” Luke felt exhausted. He hoped the police would do what they said they could do. It just seemed like he and the other kids were doing better when it was only them dealing with the killer.

“Now, I don’t want you disrespecting that girl while she’s here. You get my meaning?” His dad grinned and Luke nodded, his face feeling hot all of a sudden. His dad did something that surprised him, then. He hugged him and said, “I’m proud of you son. I know you’ll keep her safe. Go on. Go be with her and make her feel better.”

The doorbell rang and his dad got up to answer it. It was Jaxon and Victoria to pick up Ellie. Luke heard his dad explaining the plan to them and they seemed to believe it was a good idea. Jaxon looked in and saw Luke watching and he turned back to his dad and said something Luke couldn’t hear. His dad closed the door and talked with them outside for a few minutes and then came back in looking pale.

“What is it, Dad?” Luke asked.

“Nothing.” But Luke could tell he was lying. It was something alright, and it looked like something big. His mother could see it too and she joined him in the kitchen where they murmured in low voices Luke and Ellie couldn’t hear.

Luke sat with Ellie who leaned into him and he closed his arms around her and stroked her soft, blonde hair.

“Thanks,” she said. “I couldn’t stand being alone in my house.”

“Your mom and your brother were there.”

“But I felt alone. My mom just wanted to yell at me.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

She kissed him softly on the lips, and then stared into his eyes.

“You know, my dad told me I wasn’t to ‘disrespect you’ while you’re here.”

She giggled. “Are you going to?”

“Depends on what you consider disrespectful, I guess,” and he smiled.

“Nothing you could do would make me love you less,” she said, a little smile on her lips, but her eyes were serious.

“I know,” he said in a whisper. He searched her face and was overcome by a desire to grab her and hold her as tight as he could. Never let her go. The feeling was so strong and so intense, it almost brought tears to his eyes. She must have seen it, because she grabbed him and pulled him close, holding on to him as if she would never see him again. They clung to each other like that for quite a while.