Kerry finds herself on a case that involves Cryonics and ice cream, and leaves her chilled to the bone.
Scene 1
Human flesh freezes at somewhere near seventy below zero. At least that was what Kerry remembered from some obscure web site. The five below temperature in Chicago that January morning wasn’t even close, but she decided not to take any chances when she dumped the trash.
Barely two inches of pink flesh showed between the bottom of her wool hat and top of a wool scarf that she had wrapped around her face a time or two. Kerry braced herself to make the twenty foot run from the back door of her apartment building to the dumpster.
She had considered dropping the overflowing trash bag from the kitchen window of her third floor apartment, but wisely changed her mind. If it overshot the target by even an inch, she would spend more time outside retrieving debris than if she carried it down.
A week of artic temperatures unexpectedly blew in off Lake Michigan increasing the challenges crime fighters faced. Average citizens rarely welcomed the intrusion, but cops considered the icy temperatures an obstruction of justice. An arctic chill of that scale, challenged the toughest detective, causing muscles to stiffen and fingers to go numb. Even wearing specially lined gloves they could find themselves unable to draw, no less fire a weapon.
Kerry believed that most of Mother Nature’s decisions were faultless. Yet, as she approached the dumpster, she questioned the purpose served by weather that frigidly cold.
She tossed the bag over the side and her eyes caught something that took a second to register. The phrase ‘be careful what you ask for’ popped into her brain. Amid a few plastic trash bags, she spotted a naked body. Below freezing temperatures slowed decomposition and lessened the smell of decaying flesh. Kerry’s faith in Mother Nature remained unblemished.
From the few body parts she could identify, Kerry guessed it was a woman lying on her stomach. After observing the uncovered purple blue skin, she felt no desire to jump in and move trash bags for a closer look.
The garbage truck picked up the previous day. If someone buried her deep in a dumpster filled with rubbish, the body would have gone into the truck unseen. They hadn’t. They tossed her in an almost empty bin without even trying to cover her. It was possible that whoever made the deposit hoped that new garbage bags would fill it again by the following day. Not many people looked in when they threw their trash, and for good reason.
Kerry’s long legs had until recently carried her up or down any flight of stairs with good speed. An accident a few months earlier that broke her right leg in two places slowed her down. She healed but it forced her to climb with caution. Caution and patience were not traits natural to the detective, especially when she had to call the discovery into the station. She rarely brought her cell phone to take out the trash.
After the call, Kerry grabbed an additional scarf to wrap around her head, and returned to the alley to wait for the squad and ambulance.
“Do you always go dumpster diving for bodies on your day off, Detective Grant?”
The uniformed officer took a nervous step back when he saw Kerry ready to bite off his head. She stifled the attack. Everyone in the Twenty-third Precinct knew she had more excitement on her days off than most cops did on duty.
Cases Kerry and her partner, Mike Sullivan, usually handled were less likely to turn up a dead body. They worked fraud and computer crime.
She pulled the scarf from her face to answer. “Not intentionally.” Kerry read the name pinned to his heavy blue overcoat. “Officer Kazak, tell the detective that winds up with this to keep me informed. I’m going inside. I’m frozen stiff.” She grimaced at her remark and looked at the body, apologizing under her breath.
A Chilling Goodbye
ISBN: 978-0-9723541-5-8
Bast Press
To be released in spring 2008
Frozen bodies are okay by me, so long as they belong to someone else.
Here where I live on the SoCal coastline, a 2-minute drive to Tijuana, Mexico, even the ice cream at 3l Flavors has trouble staying frozen.
We'll watch for your book's release, Jean. Good luck!
Richard
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