Read Frozen for Free Online Page B

“I hope your visit has given you everything you need. I’m afraid that’s probably the only time you’ll be able to see the artifact up close. There’s been far too many examinations, too many temperature fluctuations. My priority has always been with the find.” She flicked a terse smile at the room. “Michael will show you out. It was a pleasure meeting you, Agent Grove.”
    â€œSame here,” Grove told her.
    The director swished through the door, leaving a slipstream of tension flagging after her like a contrail. The door whispered shut, and the room remained silent for a moment as the latch clicked.
    Michael Okuda put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor.
    â€œI feel like I’ve offended her somehow,” Grove said to no one in particular.
    Okuda shook his head. “Not at all. Look. She’s really not normally this . . . brusk.”
    Grove waved it off. “It’s okay.”
    â€œShe’s actually quite brilliant.”
    â€œI’m sure she is.”
    â€œCertainly she can be difficult,” Okuda tried to explain. “And yes, she’s mistrustful of outsiders. But her work’s impeccable. Believe me.”
    Grove nodded. “I don’t doubt it.”
    â€œShe’s just wary of outsiders coming in right now, with all the arbitration going on.”
    â€œWhere does that stand?”
    â€œI’d put my money on the Native Americans,” Okuda mused as he crossed the room. He sat down on the edge of Mathis’s desk with a depleted sigh. His hands were shaking. “They’ve got the state constitution on their side. We’re trying to learn as much as possible while Keanu’s still here.”
    â€œWho?”
    Okuda smiled. “It’s a bad joke, really. Couple of guys up in Carbon Dating—big Matrix fans—started calling him ‘Neo’ because of the neolithic aspect.”
    Grove was nonplussed, and Maura must have seen the look on his face because she stopped scribbling and said, “Neo was Keanu Reeves’s character in The Matrix movies.”
    Okuda’s grin lingered. “Yeah, and there was this joke going around the lab that the Iceman was just slightly more animated than Keanu Reeves. I guess the name just stuck. It’s pretty sophomoric.”
    Grove asked if pictures of the scene were taken.
    Okuda looked confused. “The scene?”
    â€œThe crime scene, the place where the Iceman died.”
    Okuda thought about it for a moment and said he wasn’t sure but he might have seen some aerial photographs of that part of the glacier.
    â€œBut there were no photographs taken before the body was moved?”
    â€œI think that’s correct. There are sketches though.”
    â€œSketches?”
    â€œYeah, the investigator from the State Police Homicide Unit, a guy named Pinsky—Lieutenant Alan Pinsky, I think his name was—he had the hikers draw sketches of the way the body was positioned when they found it.”
    There was a pause.
    Maura looked at Grove. “What happened in there, Ulysses?”
    â€œIt’s kind of a long story,” he said and rubbed his eyes. His head throbbed. A dagger of a migraine shot through his temples.
    â€œDo you mind if I ask how you knew about the sharp trauma wound? I don’t think I ever mentioned that in the e-mail, and they discovered it after the articles came out . . . so you’d have no way of knowing about that.”
    Grove looked at her and wondered how far he should take this, how much he should reveal. He felt exposed, out of control. These were new emotions for Grove. He was supposed to be merely killing time here in this remote world of rutted roads and weathered boardwalks . . . but now everything had changed. Fate had slithered into Grove’s world.
    The sound of a secretary pecking away at a keypad in an adjacent office drifted through the seams of the door. At last Grove