Dan Simmons: Hard Freeze

Kurtz had said nothing to this. He'd patted the old man's quaking arm and left the shack.

Sitting in the Blues Franklin, waiting for the mysterious Mr. Frears, Kurtz wondered if it was coincidence that the two homicide cops were tailing him again this evening.

Coe Pierce's quartet was just wrapping up a fifteen-minute version of Miles Davis's "All Blues," filled with Oscar Peterson-like solo riffs for Pierce to fool around with on the piano, when Kurtz saw the well-dressed, middle-aged black man coming toward him from across the room. Kurtz was still wearing his peacoat and now he slipped his hand into the right-side pocket and slid the safety off the.40-caliber S&W semiauto there.

The dignified-looking man came up to the opposite side of Kurtz's table. "Mr. Kurtz?"

Kurtz nodded. If the man made a move for a weapon, Kurtz would have to fire through his own coat, and he was not crazy about putting a hole in his only jacket.

"I am John Wellington Frears," said the man. "I believe that our mutual acquaintance, Dr. Frederick, told you that I would be meeting you tonight."

Dr. Frederick? thought Kurtz. He had once heard Soul Dad refer to Pruno as Frederick, but he'd thought it was the old wino's first name. "Sit down," said Kurtz. He kept his hand on the S&W and the pistol aimed under the table as the man took a chair across the table, his back to the quartet that had just taken a break. "What do you want Mr. Frears?"

Frears sighed and rubbed his eyes as if weary. Kurtz noticed that the man was wearing a vest—as Pruno had said—but that it was part of a three-piece gray suit that must have cost several thousand dollars. Frears was a short man, with short curly hair and a perfectly trimmed short curly beard, all going gracefully to gray. His nails were manicured and his horn-rimmed glasses were classic Armani. His watch was subtle, classic and understated, but expensive. He wore no jewelry. He had the kind of intelligent gaze Kurtz had seen in photographs of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois, and in person only with Pruno's friend Soul Dad.

"I want you to find the man who murdered my little girl," said John Wellington Frears.

"Why talk to me?" asked Kurtz.

"You're an investigator."

"I'm not. I'm a convicted felon, on parole. I have no private investigator's license, nor will I ever have one again."

"But you're a trained investigator, Mr. Kurtz."

"Not anymore."

"Dr. Frederick says—"

"Pruno has a hard time telling what day it is," said Kurtz.

"He assures me that you and your partner, Ms. Fielding, were the finest—"

"That was more than twelve years ago," Kurtz said. "I can't help you."

Frears rubbed his eyes again and reached into his inside jacket pocket. Kurtz's right hand had never left his pistol. His finger remained on the trigger.

Frears pulled out a small color photograph and slid it across the table toward Kurtz: a black girl, thirteen or fourteen, wearing a black sweater and silver necklace. The girl was attractive and sweet looking, her eyes alive with a more vital version of John Welhngton Frears's intelligence. "My daughter Crystal," said Frears. "She was murdered twenty years ago next month. May I tell you the story?"

Kurtz said nothing.

"She was our darling," said Frears. "Marcia's and mine. Crystal was smart and talented. She played the viola… I'm a concert violinist, Mr. Kurtz, and I know that Crystal was gifted enough to become a professional musician, but that was not even her primary interest. She was a poet—not an adolescent poet, Mr. Kurtz, but a true poet. Dr. Frederick confirmed that, and as you know, Dr. Frederick was not only a philosopher, but a gifted literary critic…"

Kurtz remained silent.

"Twenty years ago next month, Crystal was killed by a man we all knew and trusted, a fellow faculty member—I was teaching at the University of Chicago then, we lived in Evanston. The man was a professor of psychology. His name was James B. Hansen, and he had a family—a wife, and a daughter Rachel's age. The two girls rode horses together. We had bought Crystal a gelding—Dusty was its name—and we boarded it at a stable outside of town where Crystal and Denise, that was Hansen's daughter's name, would ride every Saturday during clement weather. Hansen and I took turns driving Crystal and Denise to the stable and we would wait while they took lessons and rode, Hansen one weekend, me the next."

Frears stopped and took a bream. There was a noise behind him and he glanced over his shoulder. Coe and the quartet were returning to the stage. They began a slow, Patricia Barberish rendition of "Inchworm."

Frears looked back at Kurtz, who had clicked on the safety of the.40 Smith & Wesson, left it in his pocket and brought both hands up onto the table. He did not lift the photograph of the girl or look at it.

"One weekend," continued Frears, "James B. Hansen picked up Crystal saying that Denise was sick with a cold but that it was his turn to drive and he wanted to do so. But instead of driving her to the stable, he took her to a forest preserve on the outskirts of Chicago, raped our daughter, tortured her, killed her, and left her naked body to be found by hikers."

Frears's tone had remained cool and level, as if reciting a story that meant nothing to him, but now he paused for a minute. When he resumed, there was an undercurrent if not a quaver, in his voice. "You may wonder, Mr. Kurtz, how we know for sure that James B. Hansen was the perpetrator of this crime. Well, he called me, Mr. Kurtz. After killing Crystal, he called me from a pay phone—this was before cell phones were common—and told me what he had done. And he told me that he was going home to kill his wife and daughter."

The Coe Pierce Quartet shifted from the wandering «Inchworm» to a stylized "Flamenco Sketches" that would feature the young black trumpeter, Billy Eversol.

"I called the police, of course," said Frears. "They rushed to Hansen's home in Oak Park. He had arrived there first. His Range Rover was parked outside. The house was on fire. When the flames were extinguished, they found the bodies of Mrs. Hansen and Denise—they had each been shot in the back of the head by a large-caliber pistol—and the charred body of James. B. Hansen. They identified his body via dental records. The police determined that he had used the same pistol on himself."

Kurtz sipped his beer, set the glass down and said, "Twenty years ago."

"Next month."

"But your James B. Hansen isn't really dead."

John Wellington Frears blinked behind his round Armanis. "How did you know that?"

"Why would you need an investigator if he was?"

"Ah, precisely," said Frears. He licked his lips and took another bream. Kurtz realized that the man was in pain—not just existential or emotional pain, but serious physical pain, as if from a disease that made it hard for him to breathe. "He is not dead. I saw him ten days ago."

"Where?"

"Here in Buffalo."

"Where?"

"At the airport, Concourse Two to be precise. I was leaving Buffalo—I had performed twice at Kleinhan's Music Hall—and was catching a flight to LaGuardia. I live in Manhattan. I had just passed through that metal-detector device when I saw him on the other side of the security area. He was carrying an expensive tan-leather satchel and heading for the doors. I cried out—I called his name—I tried to give chase, but the security people stopped me. I could not go through the metal detectors in the direction I had to in order to catch him. By the time the security people allowed me to go on, he was long gone."

"And you're sure it was Hansen?" said Kurtz. "He looked the same?"

"Not at all the same," said Frears. "He was twenty years older and thirty pounds heavier. Hansen was always a big man, he had played football back in Nebraska when he was in college, but now he seemed even larger, stronger. His hair had been long and he had worn a beard in Chicago—it was the early eighties, after all—and now he had short gray hair, a military sort of crew cut, and was clean-shaven. No, he looked nothing like the James B. Hansen of Chicago twenty years ago."