Page 60 of Her Frozen Heart

“No, I don’t. Except for our run-in earlier. How do you know me?”

“I’m an old colleague of your mother’s, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen her. And my face is definitely forgettable.” He leaned closer, his pupils dilated. “See what I’m holding?”

Sweat pooled at the bottom of her back. “Looks like a remote or something…”

“It is,” the man said. “To something hidden in Nickelodeon Universe just over there, and if you don’t come with me right now, it goes off, Kesha.”

He said the words so pleasantly that their conversation probably looked normal to anyone paying attention, and most people weren’t. Kesha’s vision slowly tunneled until she saw only the man’s face.

Was he really telling her he’d planted a bomb in the middle of the Mall of America? Where were the mall security guards? What happened to the increased presence on Black Friday? Why had he chosen her? What did he intend to do to her? Would he just use her to escape?

The look in his eyes suggested he had more than that planned.

Kesha’s armpits dampened, sweat trickling down her spine and pooling in the small of her back. The self-defense training she’d taken two years ago urged her to scream and fight, but her brain froze on the image of all the little ones at Nickelodeon Universe, running and screaming and eating. “You’re bluffing.” She finally managed to speak.

“I never bluff,” he said. “I’ve got enough explosives rigged that hundreds will die, and most of them little, helpless kids. You want that on your conscience?”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can.”

TWENTY

AFTERNOON, MONDAY, DECEMBER 27

“Expect temperatures to drop below zero tonight, with windchills as low as minus twenty. Tomorrow will barely reach zero, but strong winds will make it feel more like ten below.”

“Fantastic.” The dangerous cold made searching for Parker even more difficult. A night search would be out of the question, and they only had a couple of hours until the sun went down.

Nikki killed the engine and headed inside the sheriff’s station to meet Liam and Miller. They’d both spent the afternoon re-interviewing Parker’s friends and family. Nikki doubted they’d uncover any new information, but she also wanted the family to know that the sheriff’s department and FBI were involved. She caught up with Miller outside conference room B. “Any luck with the interviews?”

“Nope,” he said. “Parker lives in a basement apartment, nothing unusual occurred in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. The only person he complained about is Colton. You get the chance to talk to him?”

“I did, and it sounds like someone might have been watching Parker.” She set her things on the table and sat down next to Liam. He didn’t look up from his computer, and red splotches had spread over his cheeks when she’d entered the room. So, he was still pissed off at her.

Nikki ran through her conversations with Colton and Maria Lopez. “Two different occasions of someone possibly scouting the location, although Maria could be lying for Danny. Has anyone heard from Dover about the eyewitness who claimed she saw Parker in a white truck after he was taken?”

“Just spoke with her,” Liam said, still without looking at Nikki. “The witness said that the photo of Stanton’s truck definitely wasn’t the one she saw.”

“Danny’s got an alibi for the night Parker disappeared, too. I think we can take him off our suspect list once we’ve verified it. He’s a pothead and borderline creep, but he isn’t our guy.”

“Dover also sent a copy of the sales receipts from the co-op, starting about a week before Parker was taken. We’ve been looking through them and trying to cross-reference,” Miller said. “They were slow on the seventeenth, which is why he closed early. Only about half the sales were paid by card, the rest were cash.”

“Damn,” Nikki said. “I assume no red flags on the card receipts?”

“All women,” Liam answered, flipping through his notes. “There’s a cash sale at 3:27 p.m. that day, for twelve bucks. A soy candle. I cross referenced it, along with the others in the days leading up to, with the security video. All but two customers were women, and the man who bought the candle is short and round, probably in his sixties, with a cane.”

“So not our guy,” Nikki said, disappointed.

“I called the Shakopee police liaison for the tribe down at Mystic Lake,” Liam said. “He confirmed the missing woman wore a bracelet similar to the one we saw on the victim with the dark hair. I told him we’d let him handle things with her family once we have an ID.”

“Forest Lake PD really screwed the pooch on this one,” Miller said. “And Chief Peek can come up with any excuse he wants, but the truth is he’s a racist who didn’t want to ask a black sheriff for help. And no, I don’t have proof of that. I just know.”

“I’m sure you’re right, and it’s frustrating,” Nikki said. “But all we can do now is move forward. Liam, did you get hold of the Anchorage guys?”

He turned his laptop so that she could see the photo on the screen. A petite, lighter-haired female appeared to be hanging from her shackled wrists, her head slack but eyes open, staring blankly at the camera. The killer had sent a photocopy of a Polaroid photo, making it impossible to trace and hard to decipher the details of her face. Parker’s photo was clearer, but other than the body bag hanging next to him, the poses were nearly identical.

“The Anchorage guys said Monday sent this photo for a ransom, ten days after the girl disappeared. When they finally caught him, he admitted she was dead when he took it. He’d killed her within the first twenty-four hours of the kidnapping, but he had to leave for a business trip, so he stored her in his shed in the backyard, under a tarp. January in Alaska means the victim was frozen solid when Monday returned four days later. He had to use space heaters to thaw her out because he wanted to have sex with her again since she looked ‘incorruptible after death.’ If you’re not familiar with that term, it’s Catholic. Divine intervention keeps select saints and beati from decomposing, and the lack of decomp is a sign the individual may be a saint. He bought some cheap makeup at the store to make her look more alive.”

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