Before I could speculate, the Coroner’s investigators and then the crime scene investigators arrived. They did their bloodhound routine, videotaped the scene, snapped their photos, dusted the outside of the freezer for prints, and looked for further clues in the vacant warehouse. Scolari and I also made a search, but found nothing that stood out.

Scolari left to do a premise history. All that remained was the transportation of the body, the arrangements having been made by the Coroner’s investigators. Unsure what evidence might be disturbed should the ice crystals melt, they called for a crew to move the freezer, body and all, straight to the morgue.

It wasn’t until after the freezer was moved that I wondered what power source had been used to run the appliance. I strode over to the dust-free square where the freezer had once sat. The power cord had made a line in the dust that disappeared behind the pallets. I followed it, trying to find where the cord had been plugged in.

Scolari returned right about that time. "The last tenants were evicted six months ago," he said. "It’s been vacant ever since. You’ll never guess who."

"Okay, Scolari." I admit I was annoyed. I wanted to be on the road to Napa, not here at a homicide playing twenty questions with my partner, despite that it was only Reid waiting for me. "Tell me."

"Your dear friend. Nick Paolini."

I hoped like hell Scolari was joking, but even in the worst of moods, I didn’t think he’d do that to me. Nicholas Paolini was an affluent businessman who specialized in soliciting donations for a worthy cause—namely, Nicholas Paolini. Over a year ago, when I was assigned to the Narcotics detail, I’d arrested Paolini on drug charges.

Had that been the end of it, hearing his name wouldn’t have bothered me, but I’d received numerous death threats since then, all attempts to keep me from testifying at his trial.

"You okay?" Scolari asked, watching me carefully.

"Yeah, fine." I was determined not to let him see how much the very mention of Paolini’s name bothered me. Shining the light at the corner where the two walls met the floor, I saw the receptacle end of a black extension cord dangling about an inch off the floor. I ran the beam of light up the cloth-covered cord, revealing its frayed and tattered length; the thing must have been as old as the building. It disappeared into the ceiling, presumably over to the other side of the common wall of the warehouse next door.

"Wonder if Hilliard Pharmaceutical knows their electricity’s being sucked to store a frozen corpse," I said.

Scolari didn’t answer. He shuffled out, and I wondered what was up with him. It wasn’t like him to let me get in the last word.

I followed, squinting in the afternoon glare. Thinking of Paolini, I shivered, feeling as cold as the body we’d found.

Scolari called the main Hilliard Pharmaceutical facility to get someone to let us in next door. While we waited, I leaned against the side of the building, watching Scolari pace. At one point he paused beneath the Hilliard Pharmaceutical sign above the entrance. "Who would have guessed?"

"Guessed what?"

"That Hilliard’s nickel and dime stock would take off like it did." His gaze narrowed as he stared up at the sign. A vein in his temple pulsed. "Wish I’d bought some."

You and me both. I kept my thought to myself, however, since at the moment, Scolari seemed to be suffering from a major case of sour grapes. Hilliard Pharmaceutical researchers had taken the pharmaceutical world by storm. What started with an expedition in the jungle to find ingredients for Hilliard’s wife’s environmental project, Lost Forest Shampoo, ended with the discovery of a rare plant that had the potential to cure a number of cancers. Suddenly they were converged upon by Fortune 500 conglomerates eager to assimilate the moderate-sized company. I imagine those who had missed the boat with Apple computers, Microsoft, and California Cooler felt the same way.

"Why were you late?" I asked, figuring from his mood that he didn’t want to talk about Hilliard.

"Signing loan papers."

"For what?"

"New car for the wife."

Then again, maybe the subject change wasn’t so good an idea. "The wife," as Scolari so eloquently put it, was Doctor Patricia Mead-Scolari, a pathologist at the morgue. She’d recently booted Scolari from the house after allegedly walking in on him with his pants down around his ankles and a records clerk beneath him. "I don’t think a car’s gonna do it," I said.

He stopped his pacing long enough to give me a sarcastically paternal look he felt was his right to bestow. "I’m supposed to take advice from you? A woman whose marriage lasted all of what, five, six months? Hell, you’ve barely been divorced six months. Come back and talk to me after you been married twenty years."

I didn’t comment. I knew better. Scolari made it a point to voice his disapproval of Reid as well as my failed marriage, though what made him an authority, I didn’t know. Reid and my brother Sean had been college friends, up until the time Sean died of a drug overdose twelve years ago. Their friendship played a small part in why I married Reid, mostly because Sean had always been the biggest influence in my life. In fact, Sean’s overdose was what made me want to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a cop—to fight the ravages of drugs.

Continue reading