Polar (Book 1): Polar Night (7 page)

Chapter 15

Danny’s eyelids fluttered as he slowly
came to consciousness, a state he immediately regretted. He was spread out flat on his stomach, one arm hanging off the side of his disheveled bed. He was still wearing the clothes he had worn to meet with Amanda Fiske, and had no idea how much time had passed since that meeting.

He glanced at the clock on his nightstand. 1:00. He briefly wondered if that was AM or PM, then realized the sun filtering through his window blinds meant it had to be afternoon. So it was 1:00 on what he assumed was Christmas Day. But, for all he knew, that day had come and gone while he was too drunk to notice.

He slowly raised himself to a sitting position, keeping his throbbing head as still as possible. There were no voices to accompany him this morning. Or afternoon, to be more accurate. There was no Caroline. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

Setting his feet on the floor, he forced himself out of bed and stumbled down the hall to his kitchen. He turned on the light and squinted from the glare. The bright kitchen light was too much for his eyes to handle. Danny made a pot of coffee as quickly as he could and walked into his dark living room, where he collapsed on his couch. He briefly noticed his boots on the floor next to him and figured he must have kicked them off after he got home. Had it been last night? He still couldn’t remember.

Danny rubbed his eyes and tried to will himself back to a state of sobriety. It wasn’t going to work without coffee.

Grateful to hear the beeping that indicated his coffee was done brewing, he got up and headed back to the kitchen. This time, the light wasn’t quite as hard to take. He grabbed his biggest mug and filled it with coffee, then headed back to the couch.

He drank the hot coffee and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t going to work immediately, but at least he was on track to feeling like a human being again. If he could keep this mug down, he’d try to find some breakfast.

Danny rested his head on the back of the couch and tried again to focus. He turned on his television and was greeted with a Christmas parade from Hawaii. Hula dancers wearing Santa hats in addition to their traditional leis and grass skirts smiled at him through the television as they danced to a curiously Hawaiian version of “Jingle Bells.” So it was still Christmas Day.

Suddenly remembering he was on call for the department, he grabbed his cell phone. Fortunately, he had no messages. Apparently Fairbanks criminals also took a break for the holiday.

Danny took another gulp of coffee and tried to remember what he had been doing before going off on his latest bender. Amanda Fiske popped into his head and he groaned. How could he have forgotten the vampire lady?

He finished his coffee and sat up, resting his elbows on his knees and cradling his face in his hands. He was back to square one on Anna Alexander now that his big lead had turned out to be a crazy woman, so he had to figure out what he could do. He wasn’t willing to concede that he had nothing on Anna, or on the recently disappeared Maria Treibel.

He needed to go talk to Anna’s parents. He’d never actually met them, but he’d talked to them briefly on the phone when he first took over Anna’s case. The Alexanders had called in to the department to check on what, if any, progress had been made on finding out what had happened to their daughter

Mostly, Danny had relied on the case notes left by his predecessor to get up to speed. According to the records, Anna’s parents had been a dead end and, by all accounts, they were simply terrified, grieving parents who wanted answers about their only daughter. Danny wanted to give them those answers, but he’d have to figure them out for himself, first.

He wondered if he could talk with the Alexanders today. Would they be angry if he turned up on Christmas? A light bulb went off in his head as he mentally scanned the case notes about Anna and her family. The Alexanders were Jewish, so odds were good they wouldn’t care at all if a detective showed up at their door on Christmas.

Danny headed back to the kitchen and poured a second mug of coffee. He grabbed the last of his blueberry Pop-Tarts and ate one cold while he waited for the other to toast. He could feel his energy returning. For whatever reason, he had a good feeling about meeting the Alexanders. His gut told him the visit was going to be worthwhile.

He just needed to get cleaned up and make himself presentable. He finished the last of his coffee and headed for his bathroom and a steaming hot shower.

Chapter 16

An hour later, after more coffee
and several Excedrin tablets, Danny pulled into the Alexander’s driveway, glad he had remembered to call them and ask if they would be willing to talk to him before he had left his place. He was actually surprised he had been able to concentrate enough to make the call and relieved that the coffee combined with the shower had clearly had the desired sobering effect.

Danny trudged through the snow-covered sidewalk to the front door, anxious to get inside and out of the still falling snow. He wondered if the snow would stop falling before March. Danny had been sure the Alaskan winters wouldn’t bother him, as Chicagoans knew all about cold and snow. But he was now sure that this had been a naive assumption.

A man Danny assumed was Ted Alexander opened the front door to the house as Danny stepped onto the porch.

“Detective Fitzpatrick?” he asked.

Danny nodded. “Mr. Alexander, I assume?”

“Right. Call me Ted, please.” He opened the door and stepped aside to give Danny room. “Come on in and get out of the cold.”

“Thank you,” Danny said, stomping his boots on the floor mat. “This has to be the coldest day of the year.”

Ted raised an eyebrow. “You new to Alaska?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because this isn’t even all that cold. Wait until January.”

Danny shivered at the thought. “I was sure growing up in Chicago would prepare me for this.”

Ted took Danny’s parka and hung it up in the narrow hall closet.  “You’re more prepared than I was. I grew up in Florida.”

Ted led Danny into a small living area, where a petite woman with short silvery-blond hair stood up to greet him.

“Detective, this is my wife, Marilyn.”

Danny shook the woman’s small hand. “Mrs. Alexander.”

“I want to say it’s good to meet you, Detective, but in these circumstances…”

“Believe me, I understand. Social niceties usually don’t matter too much in my line of work.”

Marilyn nodded and gestured to an olive colored armchair. “Please, have a seat.”

She sat back down on the matching olive sofa and folder her hands in her lap. Ted rubbed his hand through his curly black hair and sat beside her.

“So you’re working on my daughter’s case now,” he said, his voice instantly strained.

“I am. I’ve been following up on my predecessor’s work.”

“I don’t mean this as a knock on him,” Ted said. “But I doubt there’s much for you to follow up on. He never found anything.”

“I know,” Danny said. “But I guess I want to start at the beginning with you. Try to see if I can dig up something that could have been missed.”

Marilyn clutched her hands more tightly together. “I don’t know what we can tell you that we didn’t already say.”

“Probably nothing,” Danny said. “But I’ve got a new angle I’m working on, another missing woman case. I’m hoping something will tie in that wouldn’t have made sense before.”

“Another girl’s gone missing now?” Ted asked.

“Yeah. A few days ago.”

“This is when Anna disappeared.”

“I know. That’s why I’m trying to see if I can find a connection.”

Both Alexanders seemed to perk up, however slightly. “What do you want to know?” Marilyn asked.

“Was there anything unusual that happened before Anna disappeared? Did she meet anyone new? A new job, maybe?”

Ted shook his head. “No. Not that we were aware of, anyway.”

“What about the winter solstice celebration that year? Was Anna involved in it?”

“You mean did she work there?”

“Any involvement, really. Work, volunteer…”

“No, she wasn’t working anywhere at the time because she was busy with her studies.”

“What about the studies? Did she mention anything new at college?”

Marilyn shook her head. “No. But you would be better off talking to her friends. They knew more about what she was doing at college than we did.”

Danny nodded. “I’ve no doubt of that. That’s the way it works at that age, isn’t it?”

“Most definitely.”

Danny sat forward in the plush armchair, his elbows on his knees. “Could I take a look at her things? I know it’s been a while but…”

“We still have all of Anna’s things,” Marilyn said, interrupting Danny. “You’re more than welcome to look at anything you think might help.”

Marilyn stood up from the couch and motioned for Danny to follow her. “Let me just show you her room.”

Danny got up from his chair and followed Marilyn, feeling a twinge of guilt that his request to search Anna’s belongings may have given her mother a false sense of hope. It was impossible to miss the sense of eagerness in her voice and on her face as she led him to her daughter’s room.

“We haven’t changed anything,” Marilyn said as she turned on the overhead light in the room she hoped would one day welcome her daughter back to it. “All of her things are here.”

“Anna lived with you while she was in school, didn’t she?” Danny asked, searching his memory for the details of Anna’s case. “She didn’t live on campus?”

“That’s right. She lived here with us to save money.”

Danny glanced around the room at the double-bed with a navy blue comforter and an assortment of blue and white pillows and a large mahogany desk filled with books and writing utensils. A laptop lay closed on top of the desk, and Danny knew from the case notes that his predecessor had involved the department’s computer forensic experts to go over every detail of the laptops’ contents, to no avail. Above the desk, Anna had hung a UAF Nanooks banner, proudly displaying the school’s traditional blue and gold colors.

“Anna is an athlete,” Marilyn said from behind him. “She runs cross-country.”

Danny wondered if Marilyn would ever be able to refer to her daughter in the past tense. He knew all too well how difficult that was.

“Do you mind if I look through her desk, Mrs. Alexander?”

“Of course not. As I said, you’re more than welcome to look at anything. I’ll leave you to it.”

Danny sat down on the Nanook cushion that lined the desk chair, and grabbed a pair of latex gloves out of his coat pocket. Regardless of how old this potential evidence was, the last thing he wanted to do was spoil it.

Rifling through the top drawer of the desk, Danny found what he supposed was normal for any college age girl. Her cell phone, which was almost certainly her prized possession and had been searched by the same forensics team that had searched her laptop, photos of a smiling Anna with friends, ticket stubs from movies and concerts, and various pens and colored pencils all fought for space in the drawer. Danny found nothing of interest.

He moved on to one of the side drawers and came upon notebooks with scribbled class notes mixed in with high school yearbooks and a few dog-eared paperbacks.  It was apparent that Anna had not been a particularly organized person. Danny liked that about her. He opened another drawer and found a brown leather journal tied closed with a long strand of multi-colored yarn.

Danny picked up the journal and gingerly removed the yarn. He opened the pages to reveal Anna’s flowery penmanship, full of exaggerated loops and crossbars. He didn’t remember anything in Cobman’s notes about a diary, but perhaps that was because he hadn’t believed it contained anything noteworthy. That was something Danny would need to decide for himself.

He skimmed through the pages of Anna’s writings, reading about her cross country exploits and decision to try out for the swim team in the upcoming spring. He read about a former boyfriend she wished she hadn’t broken up with, and a professor who regularly put her to sleep. He was feeling a bit drowsy himself until he turned another page and a folded brochure fell out of the journal onto the carpet.

Danny reached down and picked it up. The brochure was for the Snow Creek resort in Coldfoot, Alaska. Danny hadn’t heard of Coldfoot, but in his experience every town in the state deserved that name. He went back to Anna’s journal and read the page where the brochure had been tucked away.

Monday, December 1, 2009

Our Thanksgiving weekend in the Arctic was so much fun. I’m so glad I let Sara talk me in to going. What a crazy experience! We stayed at a haunted asylum and the guy who runs the place was so fucking hot. It was creepy as all hell but I’d go back in a minute just to see more of him. From there we went to Prudhoe Bay and...

Danny stopped reading as his meeting with Nate Clancy flickered in his mind. Clancy had mentioned a trip he and Maria had taken to Prudhoe Bay over the Thanksgiving weekend. Could it really be a coincidence that Anna had taken the same trip a few weeks before she disappeared? He didn’t need to read more of Anna’s recollections to find out. He didn’t believe in those kinds of coincidences.

As he’d been a detective long enough to know to never go to any sort of crime scene without being prepared, he pulled the evidence bag he had brought with him out of his pocked, and placed the journal and brochure inside it. He quickly perused the rest of the drawer but felt certain he’d already found the link he’d been looking for when he decided to visit the Alexander house.

Danny removed his gloves and walked out of the bedroom to rejoin the Alexanders.

“I need to bring this journal and brochure back to the station,” he said to Ted and Marilyn, who had risen from the couch the second Danny walked back into the living room.

“Why?” Ted asked. “What have you found?”

“I’m not sure,” Danny said, truthfully. “But I need to find out more about a trip your daughter took the Thanksgiving before she disappeared. Apparently she went up to the Arctic with friends. Do you remember this?”

“Of course,” Marilyn said. “Anna had wanted to go to Prudhoe Bay and see the Arctic Ocean for ages. They also went to an old asylum in Coldfoot. Anna loved it there.”

“That was the Snow Creek, right?” Danny asked.

“Right. Why do you ask? Do you think someone on that trip had something to do with all this?”

“I can’t say, Mrs. Alexander. I’m sorry,” Danny said. “But it’s something I’m going to look into more.”

He walked to the door and grabbed his parka from the coat closet. “I need to get going,” he said.

“But what’s going on?” Ted asked. “You can’t just walk out now without telling us anything.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything to tell you. I’ll be back in touch as soon as I know something though, one way or the other. I promise.”

“What the hell’s going on?”

Danny zipped up his parka and stepped outside. “I hope I’ll have an answer for you soon. Thank you.”

He ignored Ted’s repeated questions and got back into his car as quickly as possible. His pulse quickened as he started up his car and drove away from the Alexander home. He couldn’t wait to talk to Nate Clancy.