Frost (6 page)

"Nothing else. He's in town. We can confirm that from a few eye-witness accounts and a security camera at a drugstore. But that's not giving us any leads on where he is now. And if the blade your mom came after you with matches the one that killed Jason." He shrugged. "Then I doubt the DA's gonna wanna pursue Bishop."
 

He was right. But that didn't dispel this nagging feeling I had about Bishop. His entire file screamed "Asshole!"
 

Crow shuffled papers as he began his own report. I fixated on the glass of melting ice. A bit of the coffee and condensed milk remained in the very bottom of the glass. Didn't take much for my brain to steer back over to what happened in the cafeteria—besides mom going all psycho on me. I brought a clear image of the spreading frost on the window to mind before I put my index finger close to the glass but didn't touch it.
 

"Mom said my dad had goat legs and hooves," I heard myself saying while my practical side screamed at it to shut up. It did not want to be stuck with drugs and put in a little white rubber room.
 

Crow watched me, his expression unreadable. "She thinks your father is Pan?"
 

"Pan?"
 

"Yes. Or possibly Winter. My people call them
Nunnehi
."

"A what?"
 

"Never mind. Just tell me."
 

I'd told Crow the same story I'd told Rucker, without the Frost references. But now I just wanted to talk to someone I thought wouldn't judge me on my mom's…nuttiness. I wanted to talk to Sarah, but that damn analytical side of me thumbed Crow. I'd always been told if you can't trust your partner you can't trust anyone.
 

So I told him everything
else
. To the frost over the window to the air conditioning to her telling me it was her duty to save my soul.
 

The old Indian didn't move at first, just narrowed his eyes at me. After a few seconds he sucked in his bottom lip as he placed his hands his desk and pinned me with one of his Chieftain stares. "Show me."
 

When my finger hit the condensation on the side of the glass I wasn't expecting it to freeze immediately. Nor was I prepared for the ice to spread up and out and twist all the way around the glass until it stopped at the top rim. It was a thing of beauty as it sparkled under the bullpen's fluorescent lights. It reminded me of a set of candles my mom always kept on one of her pressboard shelves. There were three of them, white, in stair-step size. And they sat beside my Senior portrait. I'd always thought of them as the nicest candles I'd never seen lit.
 

 
I pulled my finger back. The ice didn't melt. Blinking, my line of sight moved from the top of the glass to the vision of Gawain Crow's shocked expression. If there was one thing I'd always respected about Crow it was his ability to
not
freak out.
 

After pursing his lips a bit, then sucking air in between his teeth, he picked the glass up and turned it upside down. The ice inside was frozen solid. Smoke danced about where his fingers touched the ice. "Neat trick." He put it back down. "And it does explain a lot about you."
 

"It doesn't explain jack shit," I said in a very unflattering way. I pushed back from the desk and slumped in my chair. "She's freak'n nuts."
 

"I wouldn't say that. You just froze a glass with a touch. I'd say there could be merit to what she claims. Did she just say he had a goat's lower half? Anything else?"
 

"She said a lot of things about my dad. Mostly just called him a devil."
 

"The legend of Jack Frost isn't an uncommon one, Jack. I believe most cultures have a similar mischievous imp." He winked.
 

"Watch it. I'm not Jack Frost. My mom's nuts."
 

He tapped the frozen glass, to indicate what I just did. The stifling heat took its toll on the ice. "Why do
you
think
she's
crazy?"
 

I frowned at him. "She just tried to kill me? Will that do as evidence? And she possibly killed a brother I never knew?"
 

"There are worst individuals to claim as one's parents," he said with a smile. If he was having trouble with this he wasn't showing it. "But her story does fit a chain of events explaining why there is nothing in the system or anywhere else on your brother."
 

I catapulted forward, hands on desk. "You believe this shit?"
 

"Jack—I'm a Cherokee. I believe what my eyes show me. I believe in many spirits, most of them I've never met. But the stories handed down from generation to generation stay the same. They are for teaching but they are also there to prolong the life of the earth."

"Is this Indian mumbo jumbo?"
 

"Yes."
 

"Then I'm not interested."

"Jack—" He smiled. "Just pretend for an instant that all things on the earth are manifestations of thought. Meaning it exists because someone thought about it. You. Me. The table. This paper. The computer. This building. All of these things exist because it started as a tiny spark of imagination."
 

"I was never a tiny spark."
 

"I'm not going there. My point is everything is thought. Every spirit. Every creature throughout your history, my history, your culture, my culture, all cultures, started as a thought. Early man didn't understand the moon, or fire, or what the seasons were, so they invented personifications of things, humanizing them so they could understand their existence. Say one culture looked at the moon and created the moon goddess. The deer god. And when those two mated, they gave birth to all manner of thought and spirit. Framing it this way made it easier to understand for the masses.
 

"So if all of man's creations were given form—table, desk, house—then why not the more abstract things? Like love, war, peace, spring, summer, and even winter. Why isn't it possible that such things still exist today? That over the centuries they've had to adapt to the changes wrought by their creators?"
 

My jaw hung low, almost touching the desk. "You're shitting me. You actually believe this."
 

"I don't shut my mind off to the what if, Jack. I accept you just froze that glass. I accept that your mother believes with all her heart your soul is in danger of becoming one of these creatures, just as her other son did."
 

"You saw and touched Jason's body. He wasn't a creature. He was a man."
 

"He was a man because he was in love."
 

During my dissertation to Rucker, and then the slightly more informative one to Crow, I never once let it slip that my mom had said something very similar. That Jason had abandoned his job because he was in love. And if I hadn't told Crow then why did he bring it up?
 

"I see from your expression you knew that."
 

Answering wasn't with me at that moment. I was too stunned. So much of the crazy my mom said was coming true and that did not make me feel any better. I cleared my throat. "Mom…mom said when the heat kept going through September and October and November she knew he'd left his job. That's how she said it. She said he did it because he was in love. Which was what my dad did when he conceived my brother an me."
 

Crow tilted his head to the side. "I suspect your brother fell in love with Donna Blankenship. So I think he was human because he wanted her to fall in love with him."
 

"So you think my brother, who mom says was Jack Frost, became human in the hopes a woman could fall in love with him."
 

"Yes."
 

I held up my hands, palms up. "Well there you go. I already have someone that loves me and we're going to have a baby. And, we're getting married Christmas Day."
 

His expression was unreadable. Never play poker with a Cherokee. Then, "I hope so, Jackson. I hope so."
 

-7-

Sarah stood on the balcony's edge, holding our child in her arms. The city stretched out beneath her like jewels scattered over black velvet. The moon shown large and round. So big it covered the sky. Wind blew her bright red hair about her face. In fact the only color I saw was her hair. She reached out for me, calling my name. I couldn't get to her at first. Something held me back. I couldn't see anything—no one was holding on to me. Nothing restrained me. But I couldn't move to her and I knew she was going to fall to her death if I didn't get to her.
 

I screamed as she lost her balance and fell back. Whatever restrained me disappeared as I called her name—and then I faced the business end of a knife as it plunged into my gut. It didn't hurt like I thought it should. It actually burned like the blade had been held in a fire and turned red hot. The heat burned me from the inside. I couldn't get away from the blade and I heard Sarah screaming, calling my name…
 

Someone knocked at my door, pulling me out of sleep. Sarah's voice calling to me in the dream still lingering in my mind. Why in the hell did I dream that? And what in the Holy Hell did it mean? With a wince I switched on the lamp on my nightstand and looked at my phone. Two in the morning? Christ I'd only been asleep a few hours.

The knocking grew more insistent. And then, "Detective! Are you in there? Please—I'm scared."
 

It sounded like Donna Blankenship.
 

Sarah had left after dinner, getting a page at work. I suggested she sleep at her place after she was finished since I'd be getting up early. I just didn't think it'd be
this
early.
 

I grabbed a tee-shirt and pulled it on over my black plaid pajama bottoms as I stumbled to the door. The door shook as she beat on it. When I unlocked it and yanked it open her eyes widened. "Oh I'm sorry. I just…what did you do to your hair?" Then she looked down and took a step back.
 

Her fear was palpable, but I couldn't understand why she backed up. Seconds before she'd been banging on my door and yelling her head off. A beat later I realized I had my gun in my hand.
 

Damn. I'd zoned again and picked it up by habit. I held the gun up, barrel pointing at the ceiling and motioned her in. After she went past me I put one foot in the center of my door frame and looked around my front yard, then up and down the road. She stood just behind me so I talked to her as I continued looking out the door. "Just ignore the hair. I do. What's wrong? Why are you scared?"
 

The fear I'd sensed when I opened the door remained. My presence wasn't as reassuring as she'd hoped.
 

"When—when I got home I got out of the car and started up the walk when I saw a shadow. It moved inside my house. So I ran back to my car and watched as someone moved past my windows. I googled your house—"
 

"You should have called the police," I said in a low voice. I narrowed my eyes and took a last look at the darkened street before I shut the door and locked it. After making sure the safety was on I set the gun on the side table in front of the steps where I kept my keys. Two deep breaths before I looked at her again. Her wide eyes stared at me. "What is it?"
 

"You
are
the police." she had her arms crossed in front of her as if wrapping them around herself. "You just look so much like Jason, or you did at first. But like this," he nodded to me. "You don't. You're very different. I mean you're shaped different."
 

"I'm not Jason." I found myself watching her closely, drawn in by the curves of her face and the way her lips moved over her teeth. They were red, her lips. In fact, she looked nice for a counselor coming off a late shift. "Wait—how late were you working?"

"I didn't leave till 1:05 or so. I have a lot of paperwork I'm behind on and doing it sort of gets my mind off of Jason."
 

"So, you did care more about him than you thought."
 

Donna shrugged.
 
"I guess. I mean I don't know. I've never lost someone like him. And it sort of…I'm a little spooked." She took a step closer to me. "You really are shaped different."
 

"Shaped different?" I yawned. This was sort of an odd interruption but I wanted to go back to sleep.

"Jason wasn't as—" she shivered. "I don't know. Built? You're lean where he was skinny. You stand up straight and alert where he slumped and tended not to notice anything around himself. And you…have something very different about your eyes."
 

"You said I looked fiercer."
 

"Yeah. Your eyes are awake." She rubbed her upper arms with her hands. "And if you're living in this kind of cold no wonder you're awake. Geez Jack. You like it cold just like Jason did."
 

I hadn't even noticed it was cold. I shifted my attention from her to the environment. "Sorry—you're cold?"
 

"Yes." Her teeth chattered.
 

I kept my thermostat at seventy degrees normally, though due to the ongoing heat and the overtaxing on the city's power grid, there'd been a few rolling blackouts to prevent more transformers from shorting out. I'd compromised from keeping it higher while I was gone but cranking it way down when I was home.
 

"Jack? Are you okay? Now
you're
looking a little dazed."
 

I could see her breath. It shouldn't be
that
cold.
 

"I'll check the thermostat." The meter hung on the wall just behind her in the hall to the kitchen.
 

Twenty-nine degrees.
 

Fuuuuck.
 

The lever setting the temperature was pushed all the way down. I pushed it up to seventy and waited, listening for the furnace to kick in. When it did I turned to look at Sarah. She was watching me, smiling.