Tess Gerritsen - Ice Cold

“She always paid on time,” said Dottie Dugan. “Every October, I’d get a check for the whole year’s rent. And this is one of our bigger units, a ten-by-thirty. It’s not exactly cheap.”

“Who is the renter?” asked Jane.

“Betty Ann Baumeister,” Frost answered. He flipped through his notes, reading the info he’d already jotted down. “She rented this unit for eleven years. Address was in Dorchester.”

“Was?”

“She’s dead,” said Dottie Dugan. “I heard it was a heart attack. Happened awhile back, but I didn’t find out about it until I tried collecting the rent. It’s the first time she didn’t send me a check, so I knew something was wrong. I tried to locate her relatives, but all I found was some senile old uncle down in South Carolina. That’s where she came from. Had a southern accent, really soft and pretty. Thought it was such a shame that she moved all the way up here to Boston, just to die alone. That’s what I thought then, anyway.” She gave a rueful laugh and shuddered inside her puffy jacket. “You just can never tell, can you? Sweet-looking southern lady like that. I felt really guilty about auctioning off her stuff, but I couldn’t just let it sit here.” She looked around. “Not that it’s worth much.”

“Where did you find it?” asked Jane.

“Against that wall back there. That’s where the electrical outlet is.” Dottie Dugan led them through the canyon of stacked chairs to a large chest freezer. “I figured she was storing expensive meats or something. I mean, why bother to keep this thing running all year round, unless you’ve got something worth freezing?” She paused and looked at Jane and Frost. “If you don’t mind, I’d just as soon get out of your way. I don’t really want to see it again.” She turned and retreated toward the door.

Jane and Frost exchanged glances. It was Jane who lifted the lid. Cold mist rose from the freezer, obscuring what lay within. Then the mist cleared and the contents came into view.

Shrouded in clear plastic, a man’s face stared up at them, icy rime coating his brows and lashes. His nude body had been folded into a fetal position, his knees crammed up against his chest to better fit in the small space. Although his cheeks were parched with freezer burn, his skin was unwrinkled, his youthful flesh preserved like a good cut of meat, wrapped and frozen and put aside for later use.

“When she rented this unit, the one thing she insisted on was a reliable power outlet,” said Dottie, her face averted to avoid seeing the occupant of the freezer. “Said she couldn’t afford to have the electricity cut out on her. Now I know why.”

“Do you know anything else about Ms. Baumeister?” asked Jane.

“Just what I already told Detective Frost here. Paid on time, and her checks were always good. My renters, they’re mostly just in and out, don’t necessarily want to chat much. A lot of them have sad stories. They lose their homes, and this is where their stuff ends up. Hardly ever anything worth auctioning off. Most of the time it’s like this.” She waved at the tired furniture stacked up against the walls. “Valuable only to the people who own it.”

Jane slowly scanned the objects that Betty Ann Baumeister had felt were worth storing these past eleven years. At $250 a month, it would have cost her $3,000 a year, and over a decade that was $30,000 just to hold on to these possessions. There was enough here to furnish a four-bedroom house, though not in style. The dressers and bookshelves were made of warped particleboard. The yellowed lamp shades looked fragile enough to disintegrate at a touch. Worthless junk, to Jane’s eye. But when Betty Ann looked at the frayed couch and the wobbly chairs, did she see treasures or trash?

And which category was the man in the freezer?

“Do you think she killed him?” asked Dottie Dugan.

Jane looked at her. “I don’t know, ma’am. We don’t even know who he is. We’ll have to wait and see what the medical examiner says.”

“If she didn’t kill him, why did she stuff him in the freezer?”

“You’d be surprised what people do.” Jane closed the freezer lid, glad to shut off her view of the frozen face, the ice-encrusted lashes. “Maybe she just didn’t want to lose him.”

“I guess you detectives see a lot of weird stuff.”

“More than I care to think about.” Jane sighed, exhaling steam. She did not look forward to combing for evidence in this miserably cold locker. At least time was not their enemy; neither the evidence nor the suspect was at risk of slipping away from them.

Her cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, moving a few paces away to answer it. “Detective Rizzoli.”

“I’m sorry to bother you this late at night,” said Father Daniel Brophy. “I just spoke to your husband, and he said you were working a scene.”

She was not surprised to be hearing from Brophy. As the clergyman assigned to Boston PD, he was often called to crime scenes, to minister to the grieving. “We’re okay here, Daniel,” she said. “There don’t seem to be any family members who’ll need any counseling.”

“I’m calling about Maura, actually.” He paused. It was a subject he no doubt found difficult to broach, and no wonder. His affair with Maura was hardly a secret to Jane, and he had to know that she disapproved of it, even if she’d never said so to his face.

“She hasn’t been answering her cell phone,” he said. “I’m concerned.”

“Maybe she’s just not taking calls.” Your calls was what she thought.

“I’ve left half a dozen voice mails. I just wondered if you’ve been able to reach her.”

“I haven’t tried.”

“I want to be sure she’s all right.”

“She’s attending a conference, isn’t she? Maybe she turned off her phone.”

“So you don’t know where she is.”

“I thought it was somewhere out in Wyoming.”

“Yes, I know where she’s supposed to be.”

“Have you tried calling her hotel?”

“That’s just it. She checked out this morning.”

Jane turned as the storage unit door opened again and the medical examiner ducked inside. “I’m kind of busy at the moment,” she said to Brophy.

“She wasn’t supposed to check out until tomorrow.”

“So she changed her mind. She made other plans.”

“She didn’t tell me. What worries me is that I can’t reach her.”

Jane waved at the ME, who squeezed through the mountains of furniture and joined Frost at the freezer. Impatient to get back to work, she said bluntly: “Maybe she doesn’t want to be reached. Have you considered the possibility that she might need time alone?”

He was silent.

It had been a cruel question, and she was sorry she’d asked it. “You do know,” she said more gently, “it’s been hard for her this year.”

“I know.”

“You hold all the cards, Daniel. It’s all about your decision, your choice.”

“Do you think that makes it easier for me, knowing that I’m the one who has to choose?”

She heard his pain and thought: Why do people do this to themselves? How do two intelligent and decent human beings trap themselves in such misery? She’d predicted months ago that it would come to this, that after the hormones faded and the luster was off their shiny new affair, they’d be left with regret as their bitter companion.

“I just want to be sure she’s all right,” he said. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if I wasn’t worried.”

“I don’t keep track of her whereabouts.”

“But could you check on her for me?”

“How?”

“Call her. Maybe you’re right, maybe she’s just screening my calls. Our last conversation wasn’t…” He paused. “It could have ended on a better note.”