Tess Gerritsen - Ice Cold

No one laughed.

“They just left their dinner here,” said Elaine. “They poured milk, set food on the table. And then…” Her voice faded and she looked at Doug.

In the gloom, the oil lamp suddenly flickered as a draft swept the kitchen. Doug crossed to the window, which had been left open, and slid it shut. “This is weird, too,” he said, frowning down at a layer of snow that had accumulated in the sink. “Who leaves their windows open when it’s freezing outside?”

“Hey, look. There’s food in here!” Arlo had opened the pantry cabinet to reveal shelves stocked with supplies. “There’s flour. Dried beans. And enough canned corn, peaches, and pickles to last us till Doomsday.”

“Leave it to Arlo to find dinner,” said Elaine.

“Just call me the ultimate hunter-gatherer. At least we’re not going to starve.”

“As if you’d ever let that happen.”

“And if we light that woodstove,” said Maura, “it will heat up the place faster.”

Doug looked up toward the second floor. “Assuming they didn’t leave any other windows open. We should check the rest of the house.”

Again, no one wanted to be left behind. Doug poked his head into the empty garage, then moved to the foot of the staircase. He lifted his oil lamp, but the light revealed only shadowy steps rising into blackness. They started up, Maura in the rear, where it was darkest. In horror films, it was always the rear guard who got picked off first, the hapless character at the end of the column who caught the arrow in the back, the first blow of the ax. She glanced over her shoulder, but all she saw behind her was a well of shadows.

The first room Doug stopped at was a bedroom. They all crowded through the doorway and found a large sleigh bed neatly made up. At the foot was a pine hope chest over which a pair of blue jeans had been draped. A man’s size thirty-six with a worn leather belt. Across the floor was a dusting of snow, blown in through yet another open window. Doug closed it.

Maura went to the dresser and picked up a photo with a simple tin frame. Four faces gazed back: a man and a woman, flanking two young girls of about nine or ten, their blond hair neatly bound into braids. The man had slicked-back hair and an unyielding gaze that seemed to dare anyone to challenge his authority. The woman was plain and pale, her blond hair braided, her features so colorless she seemed to recede into the background. Maura pictured that woman working in the kitchen, wisps of white-blond hair escaping her braid and feathering her face. Imagined her setting down plates and forks and dishing out food. Mounds of mashed potatoes, helpings of meat and gravy.

And then what had happened? What would make a family abandon their meal and leave it to harden to ice?

Elaine grabbed Doug’s arm. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

They all went dead-still. Only then did Maura hear the creaking, like footsteps moving across the floor.

Slowly, Doug moved into the hall and toward the second doorway. Holding his lamp high, he stepped into the room, revealing another bedroom.

All at once Elaine laughed. “God, we’re idiots!” She pointed to the closet, where a door was creaking back and forth, propelled by gusts that blew in the open window. In relief, she sank onto one of the two twin beds. “An empty house, that’s all this is! And we’ve managed to scare the hell out of ourselves.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Arlo.

“Oh right. Like you weren’t freaking out.”

Maura closed the window and stared out at the night. She saw no lights, no sign that anyone else in the world was alive except them. On the desk was a stack of school workbooks. Independent Home Study Program. Level 4. She flipped open the cover to a page of spelling exercises. The pupil’s name had been printed on the inside cover: Abigail Stratton. One of the two girls in the photo, she thought. This is their room. But gazing around at the walls, she saw little to indicate that preteen girls lived here. There were no movie posters, no photos of teen idols. Only two twin beds, neatly made up, and those schoolbooks.

“I think we can now say this house is all ours,” said Doug. “We’ve just got to sit tight until someone comes looking for us.”

“What if no one does?” asked Elaine.

“Someone’s bound to miss us. We had reservations at that lodge.”

“They’ll just think we stood them up. And we’re not due back at work till after Thanksgiving. That’s nine days from now.”

Doug looked at Maura. “You’re supposed to fly home tomorrow, right?”

“Yes, but no one knows I came with you, Doug. They won’t know where to start looking.”

“Why the hell would anyone look here?” Arlo pointed out. “This is the middle of nowhere! It’ll be spring before the road clears, which means months could go by before they find us.” Arlo sank on the twin bed, next to Elaine, and dropped his head in his hands. “Jesus, we are fucked.”

Doug looked around at his dispirited companions. “Well, I’m not panicking. We have food and firewood, so we won’t starve and we won’t freeze.” He gave Arlo a hearty slap on the back. “Come on, man. It’s an adventure. It could be a lot worse.”

“How much worse?” said Arlo.

No one answered. No one wanted to.

BY THE TIME DETECTIVE JANE RIZZOLI ARRIVED AT THE SCENE, A group of bystanders had already gathered, attracted by the flashing lights of the Boston PD cruisers, and by the uncanny instinct that always seemed to draw crowds to places where bad things had happened. Violence gave off its version of pheromones, and these people had caught its scent and now stood pressed up against the U-Store-More chain-link fence, hoping for a glimpse of what had brought the police into their neighborhood.

Jane parked her car and stepped out, buttoning her coat against the cold. This morning the rain had stopped, but with clearing skies had come dropping temperatures, and she realized she hadn’t brought any warm gloves, only the latex ones. She wasn’t ready for winter yet, hadn’t put the ice scraper and snow brush in her car. But tonight, winter was definitely blowing in.

She walked through the gate and onto the property, checking in with the patrolman who stood guard. The bystanders were watching her, their camera phones out and snapping photos. Hey, Ma, check out my shots of the crime scene. Honestly, people, Jane thought. Get a life. She could feel those cameras trained on her as she walked across icy pavement, toward storage locker 22. Three well-bundled patrolmen stood outside the unit, hands buried in their pockets, caps pulled low against the cold.

“Hey, Detective,” one of them called out.

“It’s in there?”

“Yeah. Detective Frost is already inside with the manager.” The cop reached down for the handle and yanked up the aluminum door. It rattled open, and in the cluttered space beyond, Jane saw her partner, Barry Frost, standing with a middle-aged woman. The woman wore a white down jacket that was so voluminous, she looked like she had pillows strapped to her chest.

Frost introduced them. “This is Dottie Dugan, manager of U-Store-More. And this is my partner, Detective Jane Rizzoli,” he said.

They all kept their hands in their pockets; it was too cold for standard courtesies.

“You’re the one who called it in?” Jane asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I was just telling Detective Frost here how shocked I was when I found out what was in here.”

A gust of wind sent scraps of paper fluttering across the concrete floor. Jane said to the patrolman standing outside, “Can you close the door?”

They waited until the aluminum door rattled down, shutting them into a space that was just as frigid as outside, but at least shielded from the wind. A single bare lightbulb swung above them, and the harsh glow emphasized the bags under Dottie Dugan’s eyes. Even Frost, who was only in his late thirties, looked strained and middle-aged in that light, his face anemically pale. Cluttering the space was a collection of shabby furniture. Jane saw a frayed couch covered with garishly floral fabric, a stained Naugahyde lounger, and various wooden chairs, none of them matching. There was so much furniture that it was stacked ten feet high along the walls.