Free Frozen by Jay Bonansinga Page A

tumbled hard. Her body folded into the dirt, a rag doll tossed by a petulant child.
    The killer approached.
    Carolyn Kenly clung to life for several minutes. Over the course of those minutes, as she gasped for breath, choking on her own blood, convulsing in the agony of a pierced vertebra, she thought of her children, and she thought of her husband of twenty-two years, and she thought of her dreams and plans that would never come to fruition. But mostly she listened to the muffled footsteps approaching.
    The woman expired just as the killer came into view, pulling a pair of rubber-handled pliers from his tool belt.
    Â 
    Â 
    Grove couldn’t sleep again. He tried everything he could think of short of taking a sleeping pill—which he didn’t like to do unless absolutely necessary—but nothing worked. He watched infomercials on TV, he paced, he turned the fan up on the heater in order to fill the air with white noise. All to no avail. The motel room with its burnt-orange carpet and hideous seascape paintings was the inside of a kettledrum, and Grove’s heart beat its insidious music, pounding in his ear, keeping him awake. His mind refused to shut down.
    A repeating series of images and feelings would not leave his brain: the vision of being on an ancient mountain in the snow, the fleck of gold in Maura County’s eye, the day he found out about Hannah’s cancer, the Iceman’s contorted look of horror, the curve of Maura County’s neck, a fragmented memory of the last time he had masturbated, when an unexpected tear fell from his eye and mixed with droplets of semen on his wrist. Finally, some time around four o’clock that morning, Grove gave up trying to sleep and got up.
    For the next couple of hours—right up until the moment dawn pushed back the shadows and sent rays of early morning light through his venetian blinds—the profiler sat at the desk by the window, studying notes from the Iceman project and copies of X-rays and files from the Sun City murders. The clues were in front of him, buried in the documents, but the answers were still just out of reach. Like a word on the tip of Grove’s tongue, a name or place just beyond his grasp.
    At some time around six o’clock, Grove’s cell phone tweeted, and when he answered it he was not at all surprised to hear Terry Zorn’s impudent drawl in his ear. “Hope I didn’t wake ya’ll up,” the voice crackled.
    â€œTerry . . . no . . . I was up already.”
    â€œHow’s it going up there in the Great White North?”
    â€œIt’s cold.”
    â€œUnderstand y’all got some kinda mummy up there.”
    â€œUh . . . yeah, it’s a long story.”
    â€œI’d love to hear it. Y’all want some company?”
    â€œYeah, great. Tom mentioned he might be able to tear you off the Baltimore sniper.”
    â€œI’m all yours, buddy.”
    â€œGreat.”
    â€œFixin’ to get on the nine-oh-three outta Dulles, be touchin’ down in Anchorage about one o’clock Alaska time. Any chance you could pick me up?”
    â€œOf course. Be happy to. Give me your flight number.”
    Zorn gave him the information, and Grove told him to have a good flight.
    Grove clicked off his phone and felt a slight twinge of nervous tension in his belly. He had worked with Zorn a couple of times in the past, and respected the Texan’s abilities, but there was something about the man that had always bothered Grove. Maybe it was the subtle contempt just beneath the surface of Zorn’s constant joking, or the faint spark of hostility behind the man’s gaze. And that good old boy facade had always gotten under Grove’s skin. Zorn was the guy who had started the running gag at Quantico that Grove looked like a member of the Nation of Islam. The two men had worked together on the Oregon Happy Face Killer case, and Zorn had been a competent partner, but the jokes had