Ice Cold Murder

The cars in the employee parking lot at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport stood empty in the cold night air, waiting for their owners to return from late shifts or vacations abroad. Airport workers enjoyed the benefits of leaving their vehicles in a free and somewhat secure area for days, while they worked or traveled across the country.

Tonight, a few overhead lamps cast a feeble glow in the abandoned parking lot. Except for a lone shadowy figure, walking between the cars, with the confidence that comes with being unobserved. Clouds of condensation from exhaled breath lingered for a second then vanished in the wake of the visitor, until it stopped next to a red Volkswagen Beetle. Dropping to the pavement, the shadow scooted on its back underneath the late model import. A dim light appeared from underneath the chassis. It vanished after a few seconds and the mysterious person retreated the way it came.

Adam Palmquist stretched his long legs from his front row seat as far as he could given the cramped confines of the regional jet, waiting for the flight attendant to open the door. The trip from Washington, DC left before the crack of dawn and chased the earth’s rotation to the west landing in Minneapolis/St. Paul during the height of morning rush hour.

The other passengers rose to their feet in a sleepy ritual of retrieving luggage from overhead, turning on cell phones and waking up from a three-hour nap.

In energetic contrast to everyone else, a woman shoved her way up the aisle from the back section of the plane, before bumping into a phalanx of groggy passengers who refused to yield to her. Adam thought she appeared to have a sense of urgency about her, instead of just being rude.

He and the flight attendant watched her from their vantage point at the front as she humphed in annoyance at the halt in her advance. He turned to the attendant who rolled her eyes. Adam chuckled at her response, which communicated her feelings without speaking a word.

The pounding on the door woke everyone out of their sleepy stupor and the passengers exited the plane, up the gangway into the airport. Once inside, Adam’s stride carried him ahead of the others, but the impatient woman rushed by him, huffing in exertion from her pace and the apparent weight of her backpack. With her burden and short legs, she never ventured far enough ahead of Adam for him to lose sight of her, until they reached the baggage claim area.

Adam watched her with curiosity as she waited with growing impatience for the checked luggage to be delivered. He felt a light touch on his arm.

Turning, he found a short, middle-aged lady looking up at him with the same icy blue eyes as his.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, bending down to hug her.

“Hello, dear,” she replied as she returned his hug, holding onto him for a few seconds.

“Where’s my lovely wife?” Adam asked glancing around the vicinity.

“Sandra got invited to breakfast by some girlfriends of hers in your neighborhood so she asked me to pick you up.”

Marta Palmquist ran a critical eye over her son, observing with distaste his sleeveless T-shirt which exposed the Minnesota Viking tattoo on his upper right arm and his blue jeans frayed at the hem. “You’re one of the most prosperous men in the state and definitely the best-looking and yet you dress like a bum,” she scolded without much scorn. “You can at least afford a decent set of shoes,” she continued, pointing at his flip-flops. “And that ball cap hides your beautiful blue eyes.”

“I missed you, too, Mom.” Adam grinned down at her.

Marta grimaced trying to suppress a pleased smile. She refused to believe she could be read that easily. “How was your trip to DC?”

“Everything went well,” he reported. “Travis and Daniel say ‘hello’.”

She blushed at the attention from Adam’s psionic colleagues in Maryland and Virginia. A sudden alarm announced the arrival of the luggage.

A cell phone rang and Adam saw the impatient woman dig in her purse, turning away from the entrance of the baggage belt, where she had staked out, to take the call. Her disposition had not improved and seemed to be deteriorating. Although he couldn’t hear her conversation, her body language clearly indicated she was upset with the person at the other end of the call.

As Adam and his mother watched the baggage creep by, Marta whispered something so low that Adam had to bend down and ask her to repeat it.

“I said I don’t understand why you didn’t fly on a regular carrier where you could at least fly first class or why you didn’t just zap yourself back and forth like you usually do.”

Adam appreciated his mother’s discretion about his ability to teleport, since the psionic detectives kept that power a well-kept secret. “I didn’t want to expend that much energy making that jump,” he whispered back. “Besides, I have a vested interest in this start-up commuter airline, so I’d like to see it succeed. It’s good for the state’s economy and – oof!”

The impatient woman had neglected the vigil for her luggage, concentrating on her phone call. Her suitcase traversed a considerable distance from the opening in the carousel, passing close to Adam before she realized it. In heaving it off the belt, she hit Adam with it, nearly knocking him off balance. Adam had to shift his position quickly to keep from bumping into his mother.

Instead of apologizing, the woman glared at him as if the collision was all his fault and hurried away without a word, pulling her rolling bag behind her. Marta opened her mouth to shout a retort but Adam stopped her. Grinning down at his mother, he winked. At the same instant, he hit the suitcase with his telekinesis. The wheels snapped off with loud cracks and the handle pulled loose. She spun around and gaped at her bag as it lay on the floor. She grasped the second handle, but as soon as she tugged on it, it too came off. With an exasperated curse, she picked up the suitcase by wrapping her arms around it and clutched it to her chest. She labored under its weight as she exited the terminal.

Half an hour later after Adam claimed his luggage, he sat in the passenger’s seat of his mother’s car as Marta prattled on as she drove out of the airport, turning onto I-494 toward St. Paul.

“Oh, by the way, that former governor Ventura has been trying to get in touch with you,” she said, taking her eyes off the road to glance at her son. Adam nodded to indicate he noted the message.

Tail lights flared bright red as traffic came to a sudden stop. Adam instinctively pressed against the floorboard as if to step on an imaginary brake pedal.

“Will you relax, Adam?” Marta chastised without humor. “I’ve been driving since before you were born and have been in fewer accidents than your father has.” She held up an index finger to emphasize her point.

“Sorry, Mom,” Adam responded. “Guess I’m just a nervous passenger.”

Marta closed her mouth to curb her irritation with Adam and the traffic jam. They sat in silence as they crept forward, inch by inch for what felt like many miles. The problem turned out to be than the typical morning rush hour gridlock. Ahead of them, Adam could see a number of emergency vehicles with their flashing blue and red lights.

They reached the area of activity, which lay where I-494 met I-35E. From his vantage point in his mother’s car, Adam could see little of the horrific scene. It looked as if a car had slammed through the barriers on the side of the road and plummeted out of control down the side of the embankment until coming to a halt in a drainage ditch. As they moved past the scene, Adam got a better look at the vehicle. A Volkswagen Beetle lay in a crumpled heap, barely recognizable from the force of the impact.

That evening, Adam enjoyed a wonderful welcome-home meal cooked by his wife Sandra.

“I was only gone for three day,” he chuckled.

“That’s how long it took for me to cook it!” she joined him in laughter. The phone interrupted their hilarity.

“Sorry to spoil your first night back,” Bob Peters, the chief of the Minnesota DEA Field Division, apologized. “We gotta problem. We found a meth lab up here in White Bear Lake and it’s booby-trapped. We need you to go in.”

Adam’s abilities as a psionic detective often put him in these situations. His telekinesis, the power to move objects with his mind, gave him an advantage as well as the law enforcement he protected. Meth labs contained explosives set to go off if anyone unwelcome, such as DEA agents, entered. Poisonous snakes and spiders might even be used.

Adam developed a talent for cryokinesis, which allowed him to reduce the temperature of materials, rendering them brittle. He could also freeze liquids or condense gases. He felt Sandra’s eyes watching him closely while Agent Peters described the scene for him. He knew she wasn’t happy but resigned to the fact that her husband was the most powerful weapon in the Minnesota law enforcement arsenal.

“You look puzzled,” she observed as he hung up the phone.

He nodded. “Mom and I passed a wreck today when she was driving me home. A woman was killed in the accident, which they suspect to be murder. When they tracked down her address, it turned out to be a meth lab.”

“And they need you go to in first,” she snapped.

He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, effectively defusing some of her anger, but not her worry. No matter how powerful he was, she still fretted when he went on assignments such as this.

“I’ll be back in one piece before you know it,” he smiled.

“Don’t bet on it.”

“I’ll want dessert when I return.” He turned to leave the kitchen.

“But I didn’t make anything for…” She cut her sentence off when Adam winked at her over his shoulder as he left the room. Her hands flew to her face in realization and laughed out loud.

The DEA squad surrounded the house, an unassuming two-story abode sitting back from the street. The red and blue lights illuminated the dark neighborhood in an eerie strobe effect. The soft glow emanating from a window gave the home a warm, welcoming look, but darkness surrounded the rest of the house, belying any peaceful, serene setting.

Bob Peters, a man with a military haircut, had few lines on his face despite the nature of his job, giving him a look younger than his fifty-something years. He greeted Adam when he approached the scene.

“The lab’s in a basement,” he said pointing back toward the house. “We’ve pulled everybody back.” He waved a hand randomly at the neighborhood as he spoke. “We haven’t entered the premises yet.”

“How do you know its booby-trapped then?”

“There were three suspects and we got two of them, but the third got away. It seems they knew we were coming but not so soon. The two we captured took sadistic glee in telling us that some of might be taken out if we entered the lab.”

“Great.” Adam muttered. “Just great. How were they alerted?”

Bob stopped at the edge of the porch, as if stepping that close to the house may trigger a booby-trap. “I’m sure they knew about the woman killed on the freeway this morning, and since this is her house, they put two and two together and knew it would be just a matter of time.” He handed Adam a flashlight and gave him a brief description of the floor plan.

Adam walked up onto the porch and stepping through the front door, entered a dark room. He took each step with care, searching the place with his percipience. He could not find any immediate threat so he proceeded across the house to the basement door, which stood open. Not a sound was heard from inside. Only the noise of radios squawking from the police vehicles surrounding the house broke the eerie silence. The rotating strobes lit the interior, with alternating red and blue hues, casting strange shadows that changed and flashed every second. Adam closed his eyes in an effort to shut out the confusing sensations of sight and sound. He proceeded further into the house.

Even though he was alone, Adam still felt as if hidden eyes watched his every move. He reached the basement door and aimed the beam of light down the brick-enclosed staircase to another door at the bottom. The flashlight pierced the darkness but illuminated very little.

The door at the lower end of the steps loomed like an evil sentimental, silent and forbidding entry to anyone who dared tried to open it.

Adam pressed his hands to the bricks on either side and pushed with his power. From each hand, tendrils of ice spread out, coating the walls as the cold moisture chilled to freezing. White vapor formed from his breath and in the air as the water vapor condensed and wafted downward, obeying gravity’s command. Within seconds, the walls, the steps and the door at the bottom were covered with a thin layer of ice and the air purified from any of the noxious gases, associated with meth labs.

Adam descended the stairs minding the ice with sure-footedness. He touched the door, placing his fingers lightly against it, exploring it and beyond. His blood chilled but it had nothing to do with the cold.

On the other side of the barrier, he sensed a fishing line from the doorknob to the trigger of a double-barreled shot gun aimed at the door. Anyone who unknowingly opened the door would be killed by the weapon.

The gravity of the situation just grew more serious, Adam realized with this new revelation. He touched the doorknob with the forefinger of his left hand. His power dropped the temperature of the fixture even further and he sent it through the fishing line. The synthetic cord grew rigid and stiff until it became so brittle that it shattered under its own weight and fell on the floor in pieces. He grabbed the doorknob and pushed it down. The steel bar connecting the fixtures on both sides snapped like a pretzel.

The knob on the inside dropped to the floor. Adam sensed something slither away from the other side of the door and further into the room.

He pressed himself back against the ice-coated wall. With a wave his hand, the door jerked and twisted off its hinges, rendered brittle by the cold and flew up the staircase, landing on the kitchen floor above. It hit the linoleum with a loud crash.

He peered cautiously from the edge of the threshold into the void and beyond. He recoiled from the stench, a mixture of fuel, organic solvents and urine that assaulted his nostrils. The shotgun started back at him from the shadows like a deadly specter. Anger rising in him, Adam hit the weapon with his power with the same passion as the door. He wanted to destroy it, but reined in his fury. With a jerk of his head, the barrel snapped open, the ammo popped out and the entire ensemble soared up the stairs to clatter loudly as it hit the kitchen floor next to the ruined basement door.

Adam stepped through the threshold, all senses and percipience alert for more booby-traps. He trained the beam of light to the ceiling. Overhead, bare light bulbs hung from electric fixtures. Adam noticed each one contained a small amount of liquid pooled in the bottom of the bulb.

Gasoline.

Another deadly trap. A flip of the light switch would ignite the flammable liquid creating a small but lethal explosive discharge. Adam concentrated his power on the bulbs. Frost coated the bulbs with a soft crackling sound until they shattered, dumping their flammable loads to the floor. He heard a slithering noise underneath a table inside the door as the broken shards of glass landed.

Snakes. Probably poisonous. I don’t want to kill them so I gotta be careful.

Freezing the basement too fast could destroy valuable evidence, since the glassware used for manufacturing drugs did not usually meet commercial laboratory standards, which required sturdier materials than simple glass.

Just enough to keep our fine fanged friends immobile.

An hour later, several poisonous snakes, who offered little resistance in the sub-zero temperatures, were crated and carted off. Probably happier for the change in climate. Adam had relinquished his cryokinetic grip on the basement and it warmed slowly back to a more comfortable setting.

The DEA agents descended on the clandestine lab, dismantling it and documenting every scrap of evidence. Adam watched as they moved with fluidity among the dangerous array of cookers, glass containers and deadly chemicals. Keeping out of their way, he walked around the basement, which ran the entire length and depth of the house above. The agents discovered an escape corridor in case the druggies needed to get out quickly, as they had earlier in the evening.

Bob broke away from the activity and approached Adam. “We need to go outside,” he said. “This is only part of a big mess.”

Adam grimaced at the agent’s grave tone. Back out on the lawn, Peters called to a detective from the St. Paul Police Department.

Detective Roger Oliphant, a sixtyish man with a pudgy build, got along with everyone he met, including criminals. His easy demeanor managed to disarm even the crankiest and belligerent personalities.

Adam knew him well and liked him very much for his friendliness, but tonight none of the laid back manner exuded from the man.

“This is really fucked up,” he started. Cursing was not a usual feature of Oliphant’s vocabulary, so Adam knew the situation was serious. “A woman died in a fatal one-car crash this morning at I-494 and I-35E.”

“Yes, I saw it when my mom drove me home from the airport. The car was pretty smashed up. It’s a miracle no one else was hurt in the accident.”

“Accident?” Oliphant said with sarcasm. “This t’weren’t no accident. Someone made a very small slit in her brake line, just big enough that every time she pressed or stepped on the pedal, the hydraulic pressure forced brake fluid out through the hole. It wasn’t until she was on the freeway at about seventy miles per hour when there wasn’t enough in her system to stop.”

Bob Peters took up the narrative. “The St. Paul Police called us in when the found luggage in her car loaded with drugs.”

“Luggage?”

Oliphant gave Adam a hopeful look. “She flew in this morning from Washington, DC. The same flight you were on, Adam.”

The psionic detective paused, remembering the woman who had forced her way up the aisle when their plane landed and had hit him with her suitcase.

“What’s worse is that her luggage contained a TSA card saying it had been inspected.”

“Do you think that they may be involved?”

“She was a TSA agent based here in Minneapolis,” Oliphant answered.

“The FAA has been investigating her for weeks now, for ferrying drugs back and forth between here and DC,” Peters continued. “They were building up enough evidence but were hoping she would lead them to bigger fish here in Minnesota.”

“But someone got to her before the Feds did?” Adam asked.

“Looks that way,” Peters responded with bitterness.

“Can I see the evidence?”

Adam called Sandra while he drove to the St. Paul Police Department headquarters to let her know it would be very late before he returned home. He entered the evidence room behind Bob Peters and Roger Oliphant, where a suitcase and its entire contents lay on a long table, bagged and numbered, waiting to be catalogued. The dead woman’s purse and its items sat on a separate table against the wall. Adam peered at a driver’s license lying among the clutter. The name read “Heather Parrish”.

“That’s her, all right.” He told them of the woman’s impatient and rude behavior that morning. He turned back to the luggage. “But that’s not the suitcase she left with.” Both men stared at him. “After she hit me with it, I sorta kinda,” he tapped his temple with a knowing wink, “knocked the wheels and ripped the handles off.” The other law men were not fully aware of Adam’s powers and he wasn’t about to enlighten them. “This one is in tact.”

“Maybe she got a new one on the way home from the airport?” Roger queried.

“And moved all her stuff into this one? It doesn’t look brand new,” Adam scrutinized the baggage. “That doesn’t sound right, either.”

The twinkle in Roger’s eyes signaled to Adam that the man’s humor was returning. “If she did switch suitcases, where’s the broken one? Maybe it’s clean and someone set her up by giving her this one with all the drugs and shit?”

“Nope,” Bob shook his head. “This is the right woman.”

“But the wrong suitcase?”

Adam faced Bob. “Does the DEA or the FAA have anyone else under suspicion to be involved with the drug running?”

“She had to have accomplices here and in DC. The DEA has several suspects under surveillance and both Dulles International and Washington National Airports but so far nobody here, other than Ms. Parrish.”

“I’ve got a list of co-workers that she’s worked with closely over the past month. They’ve been stationed in the baggage screening area this month. The TSA agents move around, working at different stations and tasks, on a monthly basis,” Peters explained. “I’m going to interview them tomorrow morning.”

“I’d like to be there,” Adam stated.

A supervisor’s office served as the meeting place for Adam, Bob Peters and two men in their twenties, who worked with Heather Parrish: Dante Johnson, a man who reminded Adam of Shaquille O’Neal; and George Hager, a tall thin white man with a gap in his front teeth.

When Bob asked if they had seen Heather the previous day George immediately shook his head, but Dante straightened at the question.

“Yeah, she was here, George. Remember?” He wore a confused expression. “I saw her talking with you in the break room yesterday.”

Adam watched as several thoughts flickered behind George’s eyes. “Oh, that’s right. I remember now. She stopped by the TSA offices on her way home. She had just arrived on the DC flight.”

“Was that unusual for her to come here instead of heading straight home?”

Both men shrugged. “Not necessarily, but she wouldn’t come down here if there was a possibility of our supervisor putting her to work,” Dante said.

“Why did she come here yesterday? This is out of the way from the baggage claim area, and she seemed to be struggling with her suitcase yesterday,” Adam added, interested in what their reaction might be if he said that he had seen her.

But George lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to her much. She just said ‘Hi’ when she walked through here.”

“Did she have her suitcase with her?”

George shrugged again. “Nope. I guess she left it in her car or hadn’t got it off the belt yet.”

This didn’t ring true with Adam and from the glance he received from Peters, the DEA agent wasn’t buying it either. Adam turned to face Dante. “When you saw Heather, did she have her luggage?”

The large black man leveled a fierce gaze at George. “Yes, it was sitting on the floor next to the table where you and her was sitting.”

Adam hid his amusement at the revelation, noting that George became more uncomfortable with each question. Or was Dante making him squirm?

“All right!” George glared back at Dante. “We sat and talked for a couple of minutes but her suitcase was on the floor, but it was already there when I walked into the room. I didn’t see her…move it.”

Peters opened his mouth to ask a question but Adam halted him with a telepathic command.

“Do you know why she went to DC? Business? Vacation?” Adam put in.

“I think it was business but you’d have to talk to our supervisor about that,” George said as he ran a hand through his greasy hair.

“Those are some nasty bruises there.” Adam noticed some brown spots on the inside of George’s thin arms.

George appeared surprised at the bruises when Adam asked about them. “Oh…um…yeah. You get bruised a lot throwing baggage around all the time.”

But Adam could not see any such bruising on Dante’s arms. Neither he nor George Hager could give them any more valuable information, and Heather’s supervisor knew nothing of Heather’s trip to DC.

“Why did you stop me in there?” Bob’s voice rose to a shout as they left the TSA offices and headed back to his car. “Hager’s our man!”

“Of course, he’s the connection,” Adam shot back, “but he knows that we know. He clammed up and we weren’t going to get anything more out of him. We had to back off in order to keep from tipping our hand too soon. And those weren’t bruises on his arm. They were iodine stains.”

“Do you know that for certain?” Bob wasn’t giving Adam any leeway.

“I have a little bit of physiokinesis, or health-sense,” Adam explained, a little defensively. The psychometabolic powers of the psionic detectives gave them the ability to assess a person’s health. Physical contact with a person enhanced that gift just as it did telepathy, but Adam had been standing close enough to Hager to assess him with confidence, without touching him. Clandestine drug labs used iodine as an important reagent in making crystal meth. “You need to put a tail on Hager.”

A call to the DEA regional office and the police departments in St. Paul and the airport got people on the move. Roger Oliphant’s jovial demeanor returned with the anticipation and thrill of the hunt.

“Hager’s shift ends at nine o’ clock at night so it’ll be easier to follow him, since traffic should be lighter,” Oliphant told Adam as the psionic detective sat in the passenger seat of Roger’s squad car. The DEA agents parked in another part of the city, waiting for news from the SPPD.

A flat, emotionless voice came over the radio a few minutes before nine-thirty reporting that Hager had been spotted, leaving the employee shuttle bus and heading for his car. An unmarked police car pulled out of the parking lot, just twenty seconds after George Hager. True to Oliphant’s word, traffic leaving the airport at that time of night was light, due to the low number of travelers traveling during mid-week. The plainclothes officer radioed their progress as Hager left the vicinity of the airport, and headed south on I-35W.

Oliphant and the DEA agents had to scramble to catch up, since Hager did not head toward St. Paul as they expected. He drove south away from the Twin Cities.

A short time later, near Lakeville, Hager exited the highway and headed west. Oliphant had managed to close the gap and caught up with the unmarked car, keeping a respectful distance and still undetected. Peters and the DEA agents were not far behind. Hager, seemingly oblivious to being followed, drove through the suburb with a purpose.

“Do you know where he’s going?” Oliphant asked Adam.

“No,” Adam shook his head. “But I know he’s worried.” His empathy allowed him to feel thoughts and feelings, but there did not appear to be imminent danger to anyone at this point, so telepathy was not allowed.

When Hager at last pulled into a driveway, the pursuit cars parked a distance away but keeping the posh house in clear view. He glanced up and down the street as if feeling he was being watched and then vanished indoors. A silent phalanx of policemen and government agents surrounded the house, while the neighborhood sat in silence. Only the soft sound of rubber-soled shoes padding across the street could just be heard. The streetlights cast a dim glow on the area, but did not betray the shadowy figures moving about, getting into position.

It took mere seconds for Adam to probe the house with his clairvoyance. “Another meth lab,” he said flatly.

“Imagine my surprise,” Oliphant responded just as emotionless.

Adam sent a telepathic thought to all the lawmen, that included a layout of the house with the location of the laboratory and the four people inside, one of whom was George Hager. The officers converged on the house with Adam, leading the assault. His powers made him the most obvious choice to be first in a situation that could escalate to deadly gunfire in an instant. With the contingency behind him, Adam scanned the house once again, determined where the occupants were.

He moved to the sidewalk where it intersected with the paved path from the house. The mailbox stood next to him in a solid brick base, guarding against vandalism while looking stylish. Adam reached down and with a boost from his power, lifted the pile of bricks as if was a football. It protested in hushed sounds as it left the ground where it stood for years, settling and shifting with the soil.

With a tremendous heave, Adam hurled it through the front door, which although sturdy, was no match for hundreds of pounds of bricks. The door splintered into shards of dangerous missiles as the project crashed through. The bricks barely slowed down as if the thick barrier was nothing more than tissue paper. It obliterated a table that sat just inside the door as a work station for the drug manufacturing. It hit one of the occupants in a glancing blow, but hard enough to render him unconscious.

Its trajectory spent, the heavy mailbox structure returned to earth, breaking up as it hit the floor, sending fragments of brick, concrete and mortar in every direction. The cacophony was deafening.

Two more people, a male and a female, whirled around in shock as the missile crashed into the room. They stood out of the path of the huge brick projectile in the kitchen where more drugs were being made.

Adam stepped into the ruined threshold, as the couple pulled out pistols and opened fire. He raised an impenetrable force field with his mind, deflecting the bullets away from him and protecting the officers rushing in from the yard. They burst through every opening and doorway in the house. In seconds, the young Bonnie and Clyde druggies were surrounded and with no other options, surrendered. George Hager was nowhere in sight.

Oliphant and Peters turned to Adam in alarm. Once again, Adam summoned his clairvoyance and directed his powers through the house. The crush of bodies and minds of the peace officers and suspects on his mind threatened to overwhelm him. Even the proximity of the neighbors’ mental presence in nearby houses crowded his percipience. He pressed his hands to his ears in an effort to shut out the din of men shouting orders back and forth, furniture being turned inside out and the cautious but noisy movement of lab equipment and chemicals.

Through all the mental static, he found the mind he sought.

“Roger! He’s getting away!”

Somehow, George slipped through the tight net cast by the law enforcement and reached one of the cars parked in the driveway. As he sped off, Roger and Adam rushed to the squad car and took off in hot pursuit, lights flashing and sirens screaming. George’s route did not appear to be erratic as someone in a panic to escape though.

“Do you think he’s leading us somewhere? A trap, maybe?” Oliphant sounded unworried but cautious.

“I can’t tell but he seems to have a destination in mind,” Adam replied.

The getaway vehicle careened around a corner, sideswiped a parked car and swerved back and forth nearly hitting other automobiles. George regained control of his car and increased his speed. Oliphant punched the accelerator. Adam held on to the door handle with an iron grip to keep from being thrown around the sedan during the wild chase.

Hager took them through neighborhoods where cars parked on both sides of the street narrowed the lanes considerably. He appeared to have no regard for people, property or road laws.

Adam cringed every time Hager turned down another residential street. He sucked in a quick breath as Hager ran a stop sign, almost hitting a pickup truck. The driver of the vehicle skidded to an abrupt halt, with screeching tires and spinning sideways as it came to a stop.

If we weren’t in such a developed area, I could end this chase with a thought, Adam said to himself.

He could snap the drive shaft in tow or break an axle, but either one of those options could send Hager into a ski and crash into something. Or someone.

But there were other things Adam could do with the same result and less dangerous. Sever the fuel line to the engine. Lock a piston or disconnect the battery cables. Before he decided on a plan of action, they burst out of the suburb and into a rural wooded area where the road straightened and crossed a narrow river.

Free from the confines of the town, Hager shot forward with Oliphant close on his tail. As the getaway car gained the bridge, they saw an arm extend from the driver’s window and toss something out over the rail, to the river.

“What the hell?” Oliphant shouted.

“Shit!” Adam yelled. “Keep going!” He pulled himself out of the window and leapt out of the moving car with a tremendous shove, over the railing. He plummeted to the river but caught himself with his telekinesis just above the surface of the water.

There was no indication of where the mysterious package was or even what it was. The dark river looked foreboding as if reluctant to give up its secrets. Whatever the contents of the package, it was important enough that George had to get rid of it. Adam could not risk any evidence disappearing. Even in a river.

Hovering just above the calm water, he took a deep breath and pulled hard with his cryokinesis.

Instantly, ice formed on the surface of the river from the point just beneath him and crackled loudly as the water froze solid. In a repeat of his performance in the meth lab stairwell yesterday, the ice spread farther from the spot where Adam hovered. He pushed harder still, forcing the freezing process to overtake the current. The dark river, which absorbed the ambient light appearing as an abyss, reflected the glow from city lights bouncing off the low overhead clouds. The frozen surface took on a surreal appearance as the ice grew in all directions.

Still Adam pushed. Fortunately, the river was narrow and shallow, but moving. He froze it solid down to the bottom, across to each bank and as far along its channel as he could extend his power, until he knew wherever and whatever George tossed from the car was trapped, locked firmly in the ice.

Exhausted, Adam touched down on the frozen surface, taking care to where he placed his feet. His flip-flops would not have much traction on the ice.

In the distance, Oliphant’s siren cut off, signaling the end of the chase.

Several days later, the forensic lab in Minneapolis completed the break-up, melting and distillation of hundreds of cubic feet of ice. Adam didn’t need any of his percipience to know that the chemists grumbled throughout the tedious process. Keeping large sections of the ice block frozen until they could be tested exhausted Adam, driving him to the end of his endurance. When the miniature iceberg could be managed by the forensic team without his power, Adam went home and slept for the first time in seventy-two hours.

After his much needed rest, Adam returned to Detective Oliphant’s office in the St. Paul Police Headquarters. Bob Peters also attended the meeting.

“Forensics managed to isolate a very potent form of crystal meth from the frozen river,” the detective began.

“Fortunately, the water wasn’t moving very fast so the meth didn’t have time to dissolve and disperse completely,” Adam said.

“The amount that they isolated had a street value of over a million dollars,” Peters put in. “There was probably more than that, but couldn’t be recovered. The true amount will never be known, but what we do know is astonishing. I suppose he thought he could escape with it, but when that proved impossible he decided to get rid of it where it couldn’t be recovered?”

“That’s pretty much it,” Oliphant responded, his good nature restored. “Once he threw the drugs out the window, the flight was taken out of him because he felt he was in the clear for lack of evidence.”

Adam snorted in sarcasm. His cryokinesis had preserved the meth so it could be used as evidence in George Hager’s trial.

“We found Heather Parrish’s suitcase that you destroyed in Hager’s employee locker at the airport,” Roger Oliphant continued. It didn’t contain any drugs when we found it, but there were enough traces left inside for several hits.”

“That was the suitcase that Heather pulled from the baggage carousel. She must’ve managed to get it on the plane without it being scanned or searched and being a TSA agent, she could have done it but only with some help.”

“We’re beginning an investigation into the agency at Washington National Airport in DC. This is probably more far-reaching than Minneapolis and DC.”

“So why kill Heather?” Oliphant asked.

“Remember she was under surveillance since we were investigating her involvement in the drug trafficking between here and DC,” Peters went on. “She had to be taken out to keep the operations here going without interruption. George Hager slit her brake line so the fluid would leak out slowly. He got it just right since she was at highway speed when her brakes gave out. He hoped that the wreck would be devastating enough to cover up the sabotage. Heather never had a chance but luckily she didn’t take anybody with her.”

“Hager was the one who escaped from the first meth lab we found after her death,” Detective Oliphant finished. “He’s a slippery one. He almost escaped a second time. Good thing you were there, Adam. By the way,” he said with abrupt cheerfulness. “Bring Sandra to the police department cookout on Saturday evening.”

“What’s the occasion?” Adam asked.

“We gotta do something with all those fish that you froze in the river.”