Stalking The Phoenix Part 22

Even telling myself that, I felt sick, defiled, and shaky.

I forced myself to lie back on the bed and close my eyes. Then I took a series of deep, slow, breaths to calm myself.

The hour had just past four in the afternoon. I was looking through the refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen, hoping for inspiration. Dinner wouldn't be anything outstanding. Yet, I was hoping for the ingredients for more than another humdrum meal.

I don't know why I was inspecting the cabinet's contents. I knew all too well what was contained there since I had replaced everything only this morning.

Finally, I decided that deliciously different food was not going to magically appear upstairs in the kitchen. So, I went to the cellar stairs. Flipping on the light, I made my way down into the dank, poorly lit, inadequate excuse for a bas.e.m.e.nt.

I walked over to the freezer with the intent of retrieving a package of steaks from the large, older, chest freezer. I pulled the chain on the porcelain light fixture that hung just above the freezer. The light coming from the single 100 watt bare bulb was harsh, yet adequate for the use.

I lifted the heavy white metal lid and peered into the frosty box.

The last thing that I expected was to find another set of eyes staring back at me ... A set of dead eyes ... In a face contorted by pain ... encased in a block of ice, no less ... a little girl's face, as familiar to me as my own.

Joanie.

I looked at the brownish/red tinged cube of ice for the longest moment, not daring to believe my eyes.

In the small part of my mind still working, I knew that I couldn't touch it, shouldn't touch it. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't real, that it couldn't be real.

I dropped the lid of the chest with a resounding thud as I heard someone screaming. It wasn't until the bodyguards had thundered down the steps that I realized that I was the one screaming.

*Chapter 29*

'Phil'

Al was sitting on the long living room sofa with her legs drawn up to her chest and with her arms hugging her denim covered legs tightly to herself. Geoff sat beside her, speaking far too lowly for me to hear his words, although I recognized the soothing tone.

"Can't you stay out of trouble?" I only half teased, as I saw the strained and nearly shocky expression on her face.

"Obviously not," she answered. She rocked herself gently, slowly, back and forth.

"The city is running up quite a bill by having the State Police Crime Scene Services here of late," I replied, again only half in jest. "You've got to stop this, Al. We can't afford the tax hike to pay the bills."

She smiled weakly at me. "Funny," she replied in a tone which belied her words.

"That's better, Al. Don't let the b.a.s.t.a.r.d get to you," I advised.

"It's not his getting to me that I am worried about," Al said in a strained tone. "I wish that he would show his face so that I could get this over with, one way or the other. I am so sick of this tension that I could scream."

Geoff touched his fiancee's arm. "'Licia. Hang on. Fight back, baby."

Tears streamed down her face. "He killed Joanie, Geoff. Joanie, whose only connection to me was the circ.u.mstances of her birth. I can't believe that he killed Joanie. She was a Hernandez. The last link to his brothers. Why would he kill her? Just to get back at me? It doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't make any sense."

"You said that he had sworn to take everything from you that you cared for."

"But, Joanie, Geoff?" Alicia demanded. "She was just a child. I had never even seen her except for photographs since the morning that I gave her over to Clay and Maggie Houston."

I took a seat and opened my notepad. When have you ever seen a cop without a notebook? People think of guns as police equipment, but cops use pen and paper far more than we ever use our guns. In fact, anymore, I tend to think that I am at a far greater danger from a nasty paper cut than I am from an armed a.s.sailant.

"I hate to have to do this, but I have to take a statement, Al. I'll try to make this as straightforward as possible."

"I'm sure 'Licia appreciates that, Phil," Geoff replied with strain in his voice.

"Tell me about today..."

I listened to her tale.

"Did you check the freezer when you got rid of the open packages?"

"Yes. It wasn't there last night."

"Al..."

"I know," she said, "you have to establish a time frame on this. I know that."

I sat, staring at a blank wall in my office at the munic.i.p.al services building. The further that this case evolved, the more that there was which didn't fit.

The phone rang. I picked it up before the second ring.

"Mallory."

"Phil? Bill Gregory here."

I sat up a bit straighter in the seat. William Gregory, M.D., was the local physician who served as the county's Medical Examiner.

"Yes, Bill? Do you have a cause of death?"

"I think that you had better get over here. You aren't going to believe this."

"Tell me."

"You have to see it to believe it."

"Right there, Bill."

It was less than a ten-minute drive from the munic.i.p.al services building to the local hospital. I parked in back and walked into the bas.e.m.e.nt door. Down a hall, past cla.s.srooms which were inhabited by student nurses and EMT training, then turning right and down another hall, he finally came to the suite of rooms that were used, thankfully rarely, for autopsies.

I entered without knocking.

"Bill?"

Bill looked up from the report he was writing. "Come on in, Phil. Like I told you on the phone, you aren't going to believe this without seeing it," he said with a puzzled smile.

"Do you have a cause of death?"

"Nope. Thank G.o.d."

"You had better explain that. I'm not following you."

"Come on through."

The inner room was very similar to the rooms in the surgical suite on the fourth floor. It was very well lighted, appointed in stainless steel, and chilly. My eyes went immediately to the head that still lay on the table. Only now, it was no longer encased in the block of ice in which Alicia had found it.

"Go, take a closer look," the doctor suggested. "Look closely."

I fought back the revulsion that I always felt in a morgue. You'd think that I would have gotten used to this by now, but I haven't. I walked to the table.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned! I'll be G.o.d-d.a.m.ned and boiled in oil!" It was fake, a gruesome work of an obviously twisted mind.

The medical examiner snorted. "Probably. If it is any consolation, it had me going too, for about a half a second. But, I couldn't prove what I was thinking until some of the ice came off."

I reached out to touch the head, then pulled my hands away before doing that.

"Who has handled this?"

"Only the officers who brought it and me," Bill stated.

"I doubt that we'll get any good prints off of it, but I have to try. Dump it into an evidence bag. I'll see that it is dusted for prints."

"You had probably better tell Alicia about this," Bill said.

I nodded. "That isn't something that I'm looking forward to."

"How's she holding up?" Bill asked in concern.

"Considering everything, not too badly. Not too badly, at all. She was pretty shaken up over this, though."

"I'd like to get my hands on the person who did this to her," the doctor said. "Just for five minutes. This was not funny. Just five minutes, Phil. Do you think that you can arrange it?"

"Not likely, Bill. There are too many people who would like to get a shot at this guy. Too many people."

I didn't have to tell him that I was one of the first two on the list. I could see that he understood that.

"Find him."

"We'll get him."

Bill nodded in agreement. "Give Geoff and Alicia my best regards."

"Will do."

John, the bodyguard, answered the door.

"Is Doctor Jenkins at home?"

Al stood at the doorway between the living room and the entrance hall. "Weren't you the one who said that I was running up quite a bill for the city to pay?" she drawled.

I smiled slightly.

"What's happened now?"

"Good news."

"I could use some. Come on into the living room."

Al looked at me in disbelief from across the room. "Fake?" Her voice rose in

volume and shrillness, "Fake?"

"Someone is trying to drive you nuts, Al."

"Tell me about it," she replied. Then she smiled a forced smile. "And he's doing a

very fine job of it. I hope that Hernandez is getting a thrill out of this."

Geoff looked at me and then at his fiancee. "So, Phil? Where do we go from here?"

I ran a hand through my dark hair. "Hernandez obviously learned his trade well."

"A bit too well," Al responded.

"His trade?" Geoff asked.

"Before he took it upon himself to go after Al, he was in an apprentice special

effects man in Hollywood. And he was starting to make a name for himself," I explained. "He was the only one in the family with a straight career. Although, it was suspected that he was involved in the film end of the family business."