Frozen by Jay Bonansinga Page A

interoffice phone to call me if you need anything, just dial eight-two-one.”
    The profiler nodded a thank-you and sat down at the conference table.
    His eyes never left the pages of the diary.

    March 19
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    What happened today . . . it started like any other day and it ended like a dream. But I feel like I should get it all down on paper before I start forgetting stuff. So . . . here goes.
    It was about 6:45 in the morning and I was sitting in my ranger shack and I think I was actually reading a newspaper and having my first cup of coffee of the day. I should mention that I heard them before I saw them. That much I remember really well. I heard this intense bickering over the sound of the creek and the birds. I heard this man and woman bickering. I couldn’t tell what they were arguing about, but they were mad. You could hear the anger in their voices. Mostly it was the woman, ranting and raving at her husband.
    I looked out the shack’s window and saw them about a hundred yards away, at the trailhead, where the birch trees clear, a middle-aged couple with this big object between them. At first I thought it was a big cocoon or a wasp nest or something. It was dark and oblong shaped and it had sticks at each end. I grabbed my walkie-talkie and rushed out of the shack.
    And I’m going, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” I remember my heart was beating, because I could tell they were trying to remove something from the park—whatever the hell it was—and all I could think of was the strict guidelines they hammer into our brains in training about not removing any natural flora or fauna from the park, and I’m going, “Sir! Ma’am! EXCUSE ME!”
    And here they come—this wealthy couple in their designer hiking garb—and I start telling them they can’t remove anything from the park, regulations and all that, and this lady starts yelling at me!
    â€œYou don’t understand, you don’t understand,” she kept saying, huffing and puffing as she dragged this thing toward me. She looked exhausted, lugging her end of the thing with veins bulging in her skinny neck.
    I have to pause here for a brief aside: usually this kind of woman would make me want to wretch—up here with her designer hiking gear and straight-off-the-rack hiking boots, scared to death of breaking one of her manicured nails—but this woman looked rattled. She looked like she had just seen a ghost and it was immediately putting me on my guard.
    Another aside: it had been a mild winter in Alaska this year—and was turning out to be a warm, wet spring—so the ground around the trailhead was really soft and moist. And I remember this thing they were carrying made a splat when they dropped it on the parkway in front of my shack. And the lady’s going, “I know we probably shouldn’t have touched anything, but I couldn’t see leaving it up there, you know, so sue me, I’m sorry.”
    Her husband was this big geeky guy in this stupid velour coat who looked like he wanted to scream but didn’t have the guts. And he just stood there in a sort of daze.
    Finally I took a closer look at it and realized what it was.
    It’s hard to explain, but staring down at that leathery thing, that corpse or mummy or whatever it was, I could not speak for the longest time. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but stare. I know I’m supposed to be a professional and all that, I’m supposed to be trained to handle emergencies, but Jesus God, they never said anything about human corpses in the Fisheries and Wildlife Handbook. I don’t even think I took a breath. The look on that thing’s face!
    I had no idea what to do. I tried to think. But all I remember is staring at that shriveled, brown body at our feet and not being able to formulate any thoughts whatsoever. They told me where they found it. Actually it was the husband who found the thing. And when he