Chapter 1

It was somewhere between midnight and morning when Chase tore through the thick gray shroud and came up on the last road into Binghamton: A total zipsville town upstate, home to secrets, lies, and dead people. Her black Lincoln moved silent and smooth through the sleet. Well oiled, well tuned. The FBI was meant to work that way. The government was meant to work that way. In a perfect system, in a perfect world.

Heather Chase didn’t live in a perfect world. Nor did she work for a perfect government. They had been caught with their pants down, and it was her job to pull them back up before anyone noticed.

She watched a silent icy road slip by in the rear view, then saw her own pale, heart-shaped face framed by dark auburn hair in a ghost-like silhouette. Her dark brown eyes reflected tired blue in the low light. The road rumbled underneath. She wondered what time it was. Well after 4 am now. The wipers hypnotized as they struggled to cut through the opaque mask over the windshield. How could anyone live out here? Maybe it was easy. Maybe it was just as easy as dying out here. Bare trees lined an empty road, where the only source of light were her two high beams that lit up a dance of sprinkling snow.

The road wound around the side of a mountain and finally entered city limits. This place was a dying echo of a past war, where some defense companies were still holding their breath for the Big Red Threat to rear its head again. Hell, they practically prayed for it to happen. Their daily prayers to the blood gods had not gone unanswered. They’d gotten blood alright. They’d gotten it all over their nice school carpet. The professor it came from wouldn’t be needing it anymore: They’d found him with a red ring around his neck, sprawled over his desk.

That had been nearly 20 hours ago. That meant Chase was playing catch up. She hated being served a stale crime scene. The first 48 hours of a homicide are the most crucial—you lose that, there’s a less than 50% chance you’ll solve it. It had been why she opted to drive all the way up here from the city at three in the morning after ASAC Hogan dropped the case on her. Because who needed sleep anyway?

The bleak expanse of hostile nature loomed at the edges of the ersatz city and its mismatched architecture: Gothic buildings, Colonial buildings, big boxes of concrete. The town was practically dead at this hour. Chase didn’t mind. She could use a break from the rush and charge of bustling city life, the steel crumple of Manhattan traffic, its tornado of hollering horns and morning fury. What she hoped, desperately, was that this newfound silence wouldn’t give her inner demons the message to come out and play.

The Lincoln Continental’s slick wheels strained to cling to the iced-over route. But she kept her speed, powered through the warm orange glow of street lights and traffic lights, rippling in melted gutter snow. She penetrated deeper downtown, crossed south over the Susquehanna River. The murky water reflected a dead sky, its clouds so low you could breathe them in. The car rumbled over the rusty bridge onto Conklin. Thickets of evergreen trees lined the road as she turned onto Glenn G. Bartle Drive and neared Binghamton University. The office she wanted was buried deep inside its confines. A quaint path ran into the school grounds in a long sloping curve sided by lawns dotted with park benches and stylized lamps. Then came a series of low rise red brick buildings of three floors a piece, each of them capped with snow like gingerbread houses, a warm yellow glow coming from some of the windows. The joint looked like it could be printed on a tin of Christmas cookies.

To Chase the place didn’t smell like cookies. It smelled like Death.

She was sitting there in her parked car watching her breath stream out like fog when she heard a sudden rap on the clouded door window that made her heart jump from her chest. She rolled down to see a short, pudgy man with uncombed hair and a bright red face.

“Hello—are you the agent from the FBI?” He puffed out in fat steaming smoke signals.

He’s not the killer. The message rushed through her mind like an express train.

“Yes, I’m Special Agent Heather Chase from the New York Field Office.”

“Ah, perfect, perfect. I’m Mullin, the dean of this humble establishment. You came in plenty of time before the first class. Let’s go on up. Did you manage to have a nice drive? You must have come up through Scranton I suppose? At this hour you didn’t—”

Dean Mullin’s words drifted in and out like a cool morning mist as Chase crunched across the iced lawn and beelined to the teacher’s offices. Mullin could effectively be ruled out from the investigation. She didn’t know why she knew, she just did. Sometimes she caught an answer straight off the airwaves. Not always though. She had come alone this time, which certainly helped. Being around too many people made her second guess herself—made her inhibit her own intuitions subconsciously, knowing they would not be accepted by those around her. In the past she had tried things their way. She had traded her insights for hard evidence, fact and rigor, step-by-step deduction. Where had it gotten her? A dead end, that’s where. And almost a dead partner to boot. Bob Fairfax hadn’t been a total obstruction of course—in fact his command of facts and data had grasped them a crucial link in their last case. But if Chase had been given the freedom to perceive, to intuit, to feel—she likely would have known the killer the moment she stared into his cold gray eyes, eyes that had peered out at her from a place of pure darkness. She knew that darkness well. She had been forged by it. It was where she had developed her nose for the violent disposition.

“And now we’re on the third floor,” Mullin was saying. “The uh—area in question is just down the hall.”

“The body was discovered yesterday morning, correct?”

“Yes, at around 8:15 am by a cleaning lady.”

“Was this building sealed off after that?”

Mullin chewed the right side of his lip and looked away. “Well, the third floor, yes. And most of the second floor. But the first floor classrooms…”

“You mean to say you still had classes here yesterday? With a dead body in the building?”

“Well no, of course not. That would be crazy.”

“Okay, thank God.”

“The body was taken away by the police before we had any classes in here.”

Chase froze over like the windows outside.

“Something the matter?” Mullin asked meekly.

“Oh nothing,” Chase said. “We just have a crime scene that’s been contaminated by an entire campus of students.”

“I’m terribly sorry, you see we aren’t an overly large institution. It was a nightmare just relocating the third floor classes. There was simply no space. And as for rescheduling classes—on that much short notice, it proved an impossibility.”

“They told you that you could do it? The police,” Chase said.

“Of course.”

“Then it’s not your fault.” Chase withdrew her laser gaze from the man, whose pale blue eyes and doughy cheeks momentarily softened her. “The police should have told you to seal the building until it could be examined. It’s their screw up.”

“If it’s any consolation, Forensics did do a sweep of the place.”

It wasn’t. Chase knew not to trust the dinky forensics teams of local PDs. Especially not in a town of this size. This conversation wasn’t over. There was just no point having it with the dean.

“Anyway, let’s take a look at the scene.” Chase said. Standing around wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She had to see where it happened, breathe it in. From there, everything began. From there, she would start to know the killer on an intimate basis.

They made their way across a carpeted floor that felt springy underneath. The floorboards likely hadn’t been replaced since the building was first constructed. The place had the same incongruent mix of old and new as the rest of the town. It was still black out there behind the windows, but that purplish black when the night finally gives way to dawn.

Chase took a deep breath at the door to the room.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” the dean said.

“No thanks,” Chase said. “I prefer to be alone.”

 

 

Chapter 2

Heather Chase stepped into the room of a dead man. It was your standard teacher’s office: Somber colors, reds, and deep mustard yellow. A heavy wooden desk in the corner, book-lined shelves running the wall. A high pile beige colored rug in the center of the room. Three chairs total: Two mahogany backed, almost ornamental. One leather-backed exec chair behind the desk that didn’t fit the decor. Built for comfort, heavy duty. The desk was stacked with various files and folders. A big screen monitor stood in its center. BenQ. No cheap Samsung junk. A quality display for long hours of reading.

The place was lived-in. It smelled like stale sweat, tobacco ash, and even carried the faintest trace of a microwave meal.

“Professor Claybourne,” Chase muttered. “This had been your hideaway. Your home.”

But these were all surface aspects. Chase had to go deeper. Had to touch upon the victim—only then could she touch upon his murderer.

She stepped closer to the desk. Underneath the chair, the rug had been stained dark crimson. A yellow crime scene marker noted it as ‘four.’ Chase kicked it out of the way. She wanted the scene as it had been before the cops had run roughshod over it. She wanted to see the deed happen before her. She reached out with a shivering hand and touched the leather back of the chair: Cool, hard, shiny. Her fingers slid down the surface, ran over its various indentations, and landed on the seat. This time a warmth came through her fingers. All those hours spent sitting here had sunken into the seat permanently. The dead lived on posthumously through the items they left behind. Their essence permeated into things over time.

This was enough. Chase took off her shoes, then her socks. Felt the thick, comforting softness of the rug under her bare feet. She took a step closer to the chair. Then another. She was standing right where the professor had been at the time of his death. The deep red fibers tickled her soles. Her hands brushed the leather. A hot frisson jumped inside her, her mouth opened wide, her head tilted back. The shiver shot down her spine and spread hot-and-cold over her forearms, making her break out in gooseflesh. She sucked in an icy breath, swiveled around and dumped herself into the chair.

“I was sitting here working,” Chase murmured in a low droning voice. “And I am about to die.”

Her stomach jumped: Here it came. The moment.

There’s moments like that. Moments that come only when you’re free of interruption. When your mind is clear as an open field and even the air you breathe rushes through you so freely you can taste it at the bottom of your lungs, and behind your eyes is infinity, and all boundaries slip away. As if the limits had only ever been shadows, obscuring something more permanent, more tangible. Something that had always been there waiting for you to grasp it.

Chase grasped it.

And blood pumped through her body, through her thick, strong arteries down to her narrowest of capillaries. Her brain sparked and popped like an electric chair. Her mind and body blended. Present and past unsplit. This space and time was no longer a link in a chain that ran in one direction. Here was an entire web, a universe spread out beneath her bare feet like a map. Things in the here and now became just part of the always and everywhere. When the dirt runs off the windows, when the smoke clears from the glass, see inside. She saw.

But something inside was wrong. She couldn’t find the real man. A man died. Why? Where? Who? A mark around his neck. A wire around his neck. The slamming of his veins in his ears and his mind going white as the lights blinked out forever. But it was wrong, something was wrong. A man had died but not like this. Not like this. Who or what or why, something wrong.

The boom of the deadman’s blood in Chase’s ears made itself a distraction. It moved her away from the image she needed to see. It had meant to bring her closer to the killer, let her see his fear and desire, smell the murderous odor on his body. But instead the pounding made her look elsewhere. Made her look away from the blood, which was his, no doubt about it, but somehow wrong.

It was then, sitting barefoot in the professor’s leather chair, and sensing death leave her, that Chase knew she was in trouble. If asked she wouldn’t be able to articulate why. The way it worked for her was that the actuality of a thing came first, and the rest was just a series of viewpoints on something she already knew. She didn’t know what she knew, nor what it meant. But that pounding in her ears didn’t leave her. It was the sound of a great oak door slamming on the truth.

And that pounding would stay in her ears, lower, less distinct, but present. It would stay there playing back over the low burble of the Susquehanna and through the hot heaving wheeze of the heating pipes. It would hide behind the drip-drip of snow down the eaves and mingle in the crunch of frozen ground. It would never quite disappear in the rustle of the wind in the trees, it would lurk in the chirping of blue jays and thump inside the shuffle of feet in daytime streets. The deadman’s blood would throb through Chase’s mind right up until the end, until she set right this injustice.

Space bulged like an apple and split down the middle. She opened her eyes in spite of herself and saw the detritus of coffee mug stains and pastry flakes over dogeared printouts. When you think of government-funded researchers, you expect meticulous men with crew cuts and square frame glasses, stiff white shirts, crossed ts and dotted is. This guy had been a slob. She cleared her throat—looked up to find the dean staring blankly at her. Expecting her to explain herself, or explain anything.

“He would have been slightly overweight,” Chase said. “Frazzled by the coming and going of students. Chronic smoker—place stinks like an ashtray.” She walked over to the ventilator and ran a finger inside—it came out black. She showed it to the dean. He nodded. “You landed here just as the defense industry was going broke, didn’t you, Benjamin?” Chase went on. “Your career was meant to be on the up and up but this one bad move set the tone for your entire career. But you were resourceful. You still had your old school ties. You didn’t stay here out of necessity. You wanted to be here. Why ? Something else. Something secret. This whole messy desk is only half of you. A front. It’s your needled brush, you hedgehog. But you had your needles stuck in deeper than anyone could have imagined. Anyone, that is, except the guy who slit your throat…”

Dean Millner stepped in place, awkwardly shifted his gaze between Chase and the room.

Chase went on. “So, he didn’t want people screwing with his work, he locked himself into this building, into this room. Not the big research compound down the road from here. He did the bulk of his work here. He needed the peace and quiet. He needed to work under the radar. When he finished his mandatory classes and powered through office hours, he sat there at his—”

Chase turned, her eyes heavy, but wide. She stared at the desk again. The 21 inch screen monitor sat there silently, unplugged, its HDMI cable dangling in the breeze.

“Where’s his computer?” Chase said, her voice louder now. “Did Homicide take it?”

“Uh,” the dean said. Chase wasn’t psychic, but she was capable of putting two and two together.

“It’s missing, isn’t it?”

The dean shrugged, his head lowered apologetically. “It appears so.”

“And Professor Claybourne was working on some pretty heavy material, isn’t that correct?”

“If you mean important research, then yes. He was the star of this college, academically speaking.”

“So, do you have some kind of GPS tracker installed?”

“Uh,” the dean said, pondering the question. “I’d have to check. We had no mandatory rule enforcing that on personal laptops, but it’s possible Professor Claybourne took those measures himself.”

Dean Millner stared at her some more. “Anything else, Special Agent Chase?”

“Yes. I want to know why he was in this room using a personal laptop to work. Doesn’t that break protocol? If he was working on sensitive research. He was allowed to take it out of the research building?”

The dean grimaced. “Well, Ben was rather particular about his surroundings. We had to bend the rules for him a touch.”

“What you didn’t tell the police,” Chase said. “Was that Claybourne was connected to something of incredible value—perhaps even more value than his own life.”

Millner’s eyes opened like a flood gate. But he kept clammed. He knew the trouble he was in.

“Dean Millner, there’s a glaring factor about this crime scene that says one thing and one thing only: The murder wasn’t the real crime. We’re looking at potentially high security information being snatched right out of here. Well—at least that gives us motive.”

The dean brightened a little. “Does that mean you can find who did this?”

“There’s no guarantee of anything at this stage.” Chase said. But she’d woken up now. The animation of each possibility playing in her periphery, like floaters after staring into a bright bulb.

Millner leaned forward, his round, innocent eyes glowing with wonder. If he was playacting, he was damn good.

“There’s one more thing I can tell about this scene,” Chase said.

“Yes?”

“The PD didn’t bag and tag the place. Everything aside from the body itself has been left in its exact place. The markers only go up to four. Meaning the body and maybe some effects. There’s only one reason for a homicide team to do that—if they were given explicit instruction. The scene was preserved.”

“Incredible,” Millner said. “You’re completely right, Agent Chase.”

“So, what I want to know is, who told them to preserve it?”

The crack of the door yanked Chase out of her focused haze and threw her back into grungy reality. “That’s some impressive deduction,” a non-specific male voice came from the doorway.

The owner of the voice was of medium height, medium build, perhaps a little on the skinny side. He had generic short blonde hair and a somewhat snub nose on a plain, pale but not too pale face, with medium-sized eyes under generic glasses and medium bone structure. Chase guessed that all of his clothes came strictly in M. This man was so average you could lose sight of him if he was standing right in front of you. He was the most nondescript man she’d ever seen: He seemed to barely exist at all.

“You did me a favor by not spoiling the scene,” Chase said to the man. “Now perhaps you can do me another.”

“Of course,” the plain man said, the bare curve of a smile playing on his regular-sized lips.

“You could tell me which agency you work for.”

Continue Reading Frozen Justice