Richard Hale - Frozen Past

He looked up finding the tree again and watched as the flash of black stepped back behind it. Jaxon pointed to the tree and then turned around and began gesturing to the uniformed men around him. Victoria turned to the chief and whispered something in his ear and Jaxon watched the man scowl. Jaxon moved quickly to the edge of the crowd, Victoria and Holt on his heels, and murmurs began traveling through the crowd as Jaxon’s actions disrupted the proceedings. The phone continued to vibrate in his hand while Jaxon kept an eye on the distant tree. It was difficult to make anything out as the people attending the service kept getting between him and his view of the tree. He answered the phone on the move.

“Jaxon.”

“Hello, Detective,” the electronically altered voice drew out his title just like before, the mocking tone finding its way through the eerily irritating voice. Jaxon cringed but his anger boiled through.

“What the fuck do you want?” Jaxon tried gesturing toward the distant tree but Victoria wasn’t quite getting it. He put his hand over the phone and whispered, “He’s behind that tree over there. Get some men to it.” She nodded and moved away.

“Now, now, Detective, no reason to be so angry. I’d thought you’d be a little more appreciative of me by now. I did give you a gift.”

“You’re going down.”

“Probably-eventually. But not before we have our little fun. I’m not finished yet.”

Jaxon could see cops fitted in their dress blues making their way out of the crowd. Many were already drawing their weapons. A murmur was building in the crowd as people began to realize something was happening.

“What do you want?” Jaxon asked.

“We’ve been through this Detective. I thought I made myself clear the last time we had this discussion.”

“Enlighten me.” Victoria was directing the action and as she moved men into position, Jaxon saw the flash of black appear again from behind the tree. He pointed and she finally saw.

“I want to help. We’re helping each other.”

“Why don’t I make it easy for you,” Jaxon said. “I’m here waiting. Come help me.”

The laugh that came through the speakers made Jaxon pull the phone away from his ear. The metallic quality of the voice vibrated nerves in his head he didn’t know existed. Jaxon watched as the police officers approached the tree from both sides and then he could hear shouts as they ordered the man down on the ground. He put the phone to his ear and listened. More laughter echoed in his head and then the voice said, “Did you really think it would be that easy.”

Jaxon could see the officers holding up something black that moved in the breeze. It looked to be a coat, or jacket, on a hanger. One of the maintenance men was walking over to them, gesturing. The laughter grew louder in his ear and then it abruptly stopped.

“The girl is next,” and the line went dead.

Ellie lay on her bed, bored. Three days cooped up in her house was getting to her. The swim team was on hold, the pool closed, Luke was trapped in his own house, and her mom was being a total bitch. She really didn’t blame her, she just wished her mother could see things through her eyes. All her mother wanted to do was lecture her about how irresponsible she’d been keeping all this to herself. She tried arguing with her that if she hadn’t, her mother might be attending her own daughter’s funeral, but it hadn’t seemed to phase her. She rambled on and on until Ellie couldn’t take it anymore and got up in the middle of one of the speeches and left the room. Her mother yelled at her, but Ellie showed her her back and stomped up to her room. That had been yesterday. Her mother hadn’t talked to her since.

She sat up and went to her desk. Maybe Luke was online and he would tell her he loved her again. Even if he was just typing it into a computer screen it was still pretty epic. She knew they were young and it didn’t matter what other people said, her mother included, she felt what she felt, and no one could take that away from her. Up until last year she hadn’t even known she could feel this way. When Luke held her or stroked her hair, the world and all its stupid crap would disappear and everything else didn’t matter. She only prayed it would last.

Luke wasn’t online so she checked her Facebook page and saw she had a message. It used to be so cool, the messages exciting and fun, but lately the feeling that washed over her when she saw the notification, was panic. What if it was from him? Would there be some awful picture embedded in it? Would he tell her something else she didn’t want to know? She hesitated, the curser hovering over the link. She pressed it.

It was from him. Her heart leapt into her throat and her hand recoiled as if shocked. She didn’t want to open it, didn’t want to see it, yet she couldn’t help herself. She had to know what he wanted. Had to see the horrible picture. Had to know the new lie he needed to tell her. If the fear she felt equaled her sick curiosity, the computer would probably have found its way through her upstairs window, crashing into a million pieces on the ground outside, but her curiosity won and she opened the message.

I know your father.

She sat back, deflated. To her, her father was dead. She had never met the man, never hugged him or felt his rough beard scrape her soft skin as he kissed her goodnight, never felt him pick her up to play or lay her down to sleep. He was a mystery to her. She had only ever seen one picture of him and she had been very little, almost too little to even remember. The picture was old and worn, a Polaroid stuffed in her mother’s drawer under some old coloring books, and the memory of it even more worn than the tattered shot. If someone asked her to describe her father, all she could come up with was tall. Big and tall. He had towered over her mother in the photo.

So why did she feel like her world was crushing her under its weight? If she cared so little about the stranger known to her only as Leonard Worthington, the father she never knew, why did it matter if the killer knew him? Why was she letting this madman push her buttons?

Because if he knows my father, he knows me, and I don’t want to know him.

She felt violated. Dirty. Everything about her was unclean. She shivered and rubbed her hands unconsciously on her pants. If he even knew a little bit about the man who fathered her, then he knew intimate things about her that she couldn’t stand thinking. What had her father said to him? What did he show him? Did he have pictures of her or some other mementos she couldn’t even fathom? If Smith knew her father, than he knew her and this terrified her beyond all other things he had done so far.

The psycho knew her.

She suddenly felt very sick. She ran to the bathroom and gave up her lunch.

Another web cam had been found mounted in a tree at the cemetery and when the FBI contacted the company administering the relay service for the camera, the IP address they gave led Jaxon to an internet cafe in downtown Washington D.C. The security cameras in the cafe gave them very little information despite having the timing down to the second. The killer kept his face hidden the whole time though they got a good indication of his body type. He was big, but it had only confirmed what the kids had told them the night of the attack in The Woods neighborhood. The man knew how to avoid detection.

The remainder of Sally’s funeral service had been a fiasco. Her parents had not appreciated the gravity of the situation and vocalized their disappointment at the outcome in as few words as possible. Most of them starting with the letter ‘F.’