Out of the Shadows (11 page)

“Hey, Colt,” she mocked enthusiasm, trying to pretend that her mind wasn’t preoccupied.

He handed her the daisy and said, “For you.”

“Aw, that’s so nice of you!” she jabbed sarcastically.

“Come off it! It’s from Leslie,” he informed, dropping it in her lap.

Pulling out of the driveway, she asked, “Your wife got me a flower?”

“
Ayuh
. She wanted to do somethin’ nice for you today.”

“Ugh,” she grimaced. “How did you end up with someone so perfect? It’s disgusting.”

He grinned broadly. “You’re just jealous.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“You hear about the blizzard comin’?”

“I call dibs on driver’s seat for doing donuts in the parking lot.”

“Is there
evah
a time you let me drive anyway?”

“Not if the calls are time-sensitive, no.” She grinned slyly, glancing sideways at him as she sped down the road toward the station.

He smiled and turned to look out the window, watching the mixture of bare twigs and pine needles streak by. He felt that he should say something to her… something about the day. But at the same time, he knew this woman well, and if he—.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she blurted out of nowhere, knowing that the pregnant silence that had been growing between them was Jonathan’s way of building the courage to broach the sensitive topic.

He looked over at her and stammered. “I was just gonna say that—.”

“I know what you were going to say.”

“—that you’re speedin’ like a
bastid
,” he added, allowing his thick accent to carry the full weight of his playful insult, “and I should pull you over.”

She sighed, slowing down a bit but purposefully not enough to appease him.

The radio crackled to life with a woman’s stern, quick voice. “All units: be advised. We’ve got a possible one-eight-seven at Elm and Spruce. We need any available persons to report immediately.”

“Jesus, Brody!” Jonathan exclaimed, his breath caught tightly in his throat.

She snatched the radio from its holster on the dash, depressing its side button. “This is Alpha-Tango-three-three-five responding. We’re only a few blocks from there.”

“Ten-Two. Approach with caution, three-three-five,” came the callback.

Christine replaced the radio on the dash and turned on the overhead beacons and siren, stepping harder on the accelerator.

Jonathan sat in the passenger’s seat, heart racing, eyes wide, trying to catch his breath.

Christine noticed her partner’s discomfort. “Colt?”

“Wha?”

“I need you with me now!”

“I’m fine. I just…” He sat up in his seat and took a breath. “A homicide…”

“
Possible
homicide. Let’s not count our chickens before they’ve hatched.”

“Right.”

Jonathan clutched the door handle as the car skidded around a corner, Christine slamming the brakes, stopping in front of a two-story house. The officers jumped from the vehicle in a swift, dexterous motion, their guns in their hands defensively.

Christine spotted a young, blonde woman standing on the sidewalk with an older man and a Chihuahua. “Are you the ones that called this in?”

The young woman stepped forward. “Yes, I called. He was walking his dog, and I came from the other direction when we heard an awful scream from inside the house.”

“A man’s scream or a woman’s?” Jonathan inquired.

“A man.”

“For your safety, please stay here. Someone will need to take your statements.”

As the two officers ran toward the house, the blonde woman yelled out, “I thought I saw something in the backyard.”

Christine stopped and spun on her heels. “You
think
you did, or you did?”

The woman looked stunned, as if she were suddenly being questioned. She stammered, “I… I don’t know!”

“You did, or you didn’t?!”

“I think I did!”

Jonathan swept forward, his gun pointed at the ground. “I’ll take the back.”

“No, I got it,” Christine argued.

“Brody!”

“Colt, I got it. Take the front!”

Jonathan stopped arguing, knowing there would be no way to convince his partner to go through the front instead. He proceeded toward the entrance door, watching his best friend already circling around to the potentially dangerous backyard.

As he reached for the simple golden doorknob, he was shocked to discover that it turned effortlessly. Because the door had been left unlocked, the man that had screamed was either foolish, or he voluntarily allowed his attacker to enter. He pushed the door open far enough to step inside the home.

Holding his police-issued gun with both hands, pointed low toward the ground, he stepped quietly through the dark foyer, his senses alert for any indication of an intruder. The house was fairly open, with few places one could hide. Mostly hardwood floors. No lights on. It seemed old and creaky. The man that occupied the home clearly had lived there a while and was the type to resist change.

In the parlor, the tattered couch with its thick wooden frame housed hideous cushions and an afghan, colored in decades old plaid patterns. The small television on the simple stand sprouted rabbit-ear antennae. Next to the couch, a non-descript brass ashtray rested on a round end table covered with wood stain that had faded over the years. The remaining embers of a still-lit cigarette sent a thin string of gray smoke into the air, which hung throughout the room like a fog of tension. Many white rings covered the top of the nearby wooden coffee table from wet glasses left to sit too long, likely full of whiskey, of which there was a bottle on the floor next to the couch. It appeared as though not a single improvement had been made to the house since the 1970s.

As Jonathan eased through the rest of the dark home (decorated mostly in drab earth tones, the stale stench of years of cigarette smoke permeating the air), he noticed very few photos on the walls or tables. The tenant of the home was definitely not a family man. He poked his head into the messy kitchen and found a few stains covering the laminated flooring. A plate of last night’s food remained on the cheap, aluminum table.

He spotted the back door through which Christine would soon be entering, and he decided that the first floor was clear. Backtracking toward the front of the house, he made his way to the rickety wooden stairs that led up to the second floor. With each slow step, the wood groaned with agony, announcing his presence to anyone that might be hiding in the shadows. But there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He had to check the second floor.

The moment he escaped the traitorous steps and entered the long hallway that spanned both directions, he felt the temperature of the air around him drop significantly, like a nearby window had been left open. A long carpet runner ran the length of the wooden hallway, giving Jonathan a brief respite from the creaky planks. There was only one door to his right, so he decided to start his search there.

A room filled with various cardboard boxes greeted him when he quickly swept in, staying low and ready for anything. He halted, listening intently for the sounds of movement within the darkened storage room, his hand tensed on his raised weapon. The house shook softly as the billowing wind outside grew stronger, making the old New England house protest the abuse. As his fears howled harshly down the bitter winter wind, raising goose bumps up his spine, only one thought floated to the forefront of his mind:

The calm before the storm was ending sooner than expected.

He exited the storage room and continued down the hallway, quickly searching a bathroom and what appeared to be a spare bedroom that hadn’t been used in ages. Clearly, the owner of the home didn’t have many guests.

Except those intent on murder.

Finally, only one door remained. At the end of the hallway stood the only room still to be searched, and he guessed it was the master bedroom. Upon getting closer, he saw that the door was slightly ajar. Step by cautious step, he moved forward, and as he did so, it seemed as though the air was getting cooler. Unless there was a secret room hidden under the rotting floorboards or behind the thin wall panels somewhere within the house, this final room contained the intruder or the dead man’s body. Or both.

Jonathan stood before the threshold now, his heart beating faster, his breathing becoming labored. He felt his palms grow moist and clammy on the grip of his gun, and the small of his back began sweating. Faint plumes of breath could be seen escaping his lips as he realized that the temperature had definitely decreased. He placed the muzzle of his weapon against the wooden door, pushing softly.

As it inched open, excruciating screeches of rusted metal hinges rang out through the decrepit house. At this point, whoever was waiting for him inside the room would be fully ready and alerted to his presence. The groaning door tingled the nerves under the fillings in his teeth, and he trembled from the chilling dread that overtook him.

He wasn’t a fearful man in the usual sense, but rather the idea of making Leslie a widow was what would often make him hesitant to jump into dangerous situations for his job. He knew she hated his line of work, even though she never said it out loud. She was supportive in every way possible, and that’s what made these situations all the more unbearable. He wasn’t sure what he would do when they finally decided to start a family.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then he swiftly crouched low and pivoted into the room, gun aimed forward, his eyes focused and mind alert. And then he screamed.

*     *     *

After dismissing her partner’s urges to let
him
take the more dangerous path, Christine swiftly made her way past the front porch and to the side of the house. If there was one thing she could not stand, it was men that tried to be the hero. Jonathan knew that she was capable of taking care of herself, so why had he tried to be chivalrous?! She wondered this for far too long before finally letting it go and refocusing her attentions on her work.

Her boots crunched on the frozen earth under her feet, and the chill of the air made her shiver. She held her gun comfortably in her hands, pointed low, and she swiftly continued past the balding shrubs that covered part of the house’s cheap aluminum siding. Thoughts of the day slowly crept back into her mind, and she damned herself for allowing the awful past to make her so vulnerable when she should be focused on her work.

Tall hedges separated the yard from the neighbor’s, and judging by what she could see from her current position, the same was the case all around the property. She felt like she was in an alleyway between buildings, slightly cramped and claustrophobic.

Spotting something on the ground, she slowed herself and crouched to examine the area further. In a small patch of icy slush left behind from a previous snowfall, she spotted a small shoeprint. She estimated it to be around a size nine in men’s. She would be sure to notify the forensics team when they arrived.

The dormant grass was too solid to yield any other footprints, so she continued, slowing as she neared the corner of the house that turned into the backyard. As she leaned against the frigid aluminum siding, her gun pulled close to her body and aimed toward the sky, she took a few deep breaths, preparing to engage whoever may be in the backyard.

She felt as though the tall hedges in front of her reached out, their twiggy fingers of death yearning to tear her limb from limb. Shaking away the nonsense from her mind, she took one final breath and swept quickly into the backyard, her gun aimed in front of her.

Eyes darting side to side, she scanned the environment: an old picnic table with two wooden benches, an empty fire pit in the center of the yard, a flimsy enclosed patio that looked like it had been added to the original house years ago.

But no intruder.

The wind picked up forcefully, sending tremors throughout her body as the gray sky grew one shade darker. The gusts created eerie whistling noises around her, and she noticed a few snow flurries flutter past. The storm was beginning earlier than expected.

She pulled open the white screen door that led into the enclosed patio, and she slipped into the house through the back entrance. In the small kitchen, she crouched low, listening closely for sounds of movement.

She flinched, bringing her gun to the ready when she heard the creak of an old door slowly swinging open coming from somewhere on the floor above. She waited as seconds felt like hours, wondering whether the noise was her partner, the intruder, or the man that had screamed. Moments like these didn’t happen often for the police force in Rockport, Maine. But every time they did, the same nauseating dread crept into her stomach as she wondered whether Jonathan would survive.

“Colt,” she found herself whispering softly.

She loved that he took to calling her by her last name, Brody. It was a fresh nickname that aurally stripped away her feminine qualities, making her feel like an equal in what people considered to be a man’s world, not to mention a man’s profession.

As if on cue, she heard his voice bellow from upstairs, “Brody!”

Without hesitation, she ran, precariously turning corners and narrowly avoiding end tables, charging up the creaky steps two at a time. She halted briefly at the top, looking right then left. “Colt?” she called out.

The door to her left at the end of the hall screeched farther open, and she spun on her heels to meet the offender with her weapon, not immediately noticing the severe drop in temperature.

“Colt?” she asked hesitantly, seeing her partner in the open doorway, focused on something within the room, his gun hanging loosely at his side. His skin was whiter than usual.

She approached slowly, her weapon still trained ahead, not at Jonathan but at whatever may pop out into the threshold.

“Colt…”

Finally, he turned to look at her and nodded toward something in the room. “You gotta frikkin’ see this.”

From the expression on his face, she wasn’t sure she
wanted
to see. She slowly lowered her gun and stepped into the master bedroom. The second her boot made contact with the floor, she slipped on something slick and lost her balance, Jonathan grasping her arm to steady her.

Along the wall to her right was a large dresser with a mirror on top; at the far end of the room was the draped window that pointed toward the front of the house; along the left wall was the unmade queen-sized bed with an end table next to it that contained a wrist watch and an old alarm clock.

In the center of the room, standing on the large overly-ornate rug that covered most of the wooden floorboards, was a sculpture of a man encased in a thin layer of ice, twisted into a horrific position, head looking back over his shoulder as if trying to flee from something terrible. Christine marveled at the incredible level of detail on the macabre effigy, like she were viewing an attraction at a wax museum. The vivid fear in his eyes. The fluid way the button-down shirt flowed behind him, like a snapshot of motion. The goose pimples that covered the bluish hypothermic skin. The strands of hair slicked back on his head.

It looked as though once the temperature warmed up, the statue would come alive and shake off the thin ice, going about its day.

“I think we found our vic,” Jonathan announced, waiting for Christine’s reaction.

She looked at him with confusion, her brow furrowed, and then the realization dawned on her. She turned and examined the iceman once more, and upon closer inspection, she realized why the level of detail was so great: this was no statue; it
was
a man!

“Shit!” she muttered quietly, holstering her weapon and circling the frozen masterpiece. She slowly reached out her hand, wiping a few fingers across the man’s shoulder. “He’s… it’s…” she wasn’t totally sure what to say. “He’s solid ice.”

“
Ayuh
.”

“So… what did this?” Christine asked the first obvious question.

“Or
who
…” Jonathan followed, a bit less obviously.

“You think some
one
did this?”

Jonathan shrugged, holding his arms out. “What do ya see around here that could a’ frozen a full-grown man in his late fifties so quickly that he had no time to escape?”

Christine grew irate with his irrational leap of logic. “You show me a
person
that could have frozen a full-grown man!” The two stood in silence, allowing thoughts of the impossible to swirl through their brains. And then another thought struck her, and she gasped. “Oh, shit! What if he’s not dead, Colt?”

“If whateva’ happened didn’t kill him, he probably suffocated.”

She reached out to touch the icy corpse, futilely hoping that she might see a flicker of life within his arctic gaze. As she closed her hand around his, all of the frosted fingers shattered and crumbled to the floor. She screamed and leapt back, jumping up and down and shaking her hands out, as if a slew of insects had just crawled across her arm.

Jonathan snickered at her display, enjoying the rare moments when she let a silly reaction slip past her personality filter.

She glared at him. “You’re laughing?!”

“Your reaction was—.”

“You’re seriously
laughing?!”
She advanced on him, slipping on a patch of ice on the floor, struggling to balance herself.