Iced!: The 2007 Journal of Nick Fitzmorgan (3 page)

Three years after his wife passed away, he adopted me. I was just seven at the time. Now, it is just the pair of us in the
house. We’ve become extremely close and share a stronger bond than most biological sons and fathers.

And I’d be the first one to say: That’s no small thing. Spending time in the orphanage didn’t exactly help me learn to trust
people. But it made me extremely independent. I think that self-reliance helps make me such a strong detective.

“Hello!” I called, dumping my bag in the front hall. Once again, there was no response. “Dad, your welcome is less than overwhelming!”

Sometimes when Dad gets involved in writing, even an earthquake couldn’t bring him out of his imaginary world. And I knew
he was really into his latest project, some script about world explorers.

I made my way to the snug little kitchen, which Dad and I had painted bright red together. There had been plenty of food on
the plane, but I’m always hungry. I had just constructed the world’s most perfect roast-beef sandwich, when — DING-DONG!

“Door!” I shouted. When there was no answer from Dad, I reluctantly left my beautiful sandwich and headed back to the front
door.

UNCLE BENNY

Must be Uncle Benny, I thought. Benny was the producer of Dad’s first movie and they’ve worked together on other films since
then. They became such close friends that my dad made him my godfather. He’s always showing up at the house right around this
time of day, saying that he’s got “business” to discuss. But I think it’s just to see what we’ve got grilling in the backward.

Benny is a good-looking blonde guy, the tall, lanky type who looks like he’d be a great tennis player. His fast-talking style
makes lots of people crazy. It’s like trying to chat with a hyper Chihuahua that’s had way too much coffee. But I know he
means well.

When I opened the door, my godfather wasn’t standing there. Instead, there was a dark-haired man who wore a thick, brown coat
made of scratchy-looking material. He had a fur-lined hat on top of his head and a birthmark under his right eye. Just from
the way he stood, I could tell he wasn’t more than twenty years old. But the golden skin on his face looked like he’d spent
a lot of time outdoors.

“Can I help —? ” I started to say.

“Wonefas nepo!” he shouted in a deep, scratchy voice.

Whoa. I took a step back into the hall. This is why they warn you to look through the peephole before opening the door.

“Wonefas nepo!” the man repeated.

THE MYSTERIOUS DARK-HAIRED MAN

I took Chinese and German in school, but this wasn’t like any language I had heard before.

I looked to see if my neighbors were around, in case I needed help. The street was empty. “What?” I said to the man. “I’m
sorry, I don’t know what—”

“Wonefas nepo!” he shouted again. This time he emphasized his strange words by tossing something white with a rounded top
at me.

Instinctively my hands flew up and caught it before it could smash on the tile of the hall. My mouth opened in shock as I
looked down at the smooth object I now held.

It was a human skull!

Before I could utter another sound, the strange man suddenly turned and rushed off the porch.

I heard a tearing sound as his jacket snagged a large splinter on one of the wooden pillars. He raced across the lawn and
disappeared down the sidewalk.

HE THREW A SKULL AT ME AND RAN!

Finally my shock had subsided enough for my mouth to work again. Holding up the skull like he had just dropped off a housewarming
present, I called after him, “Thanks!”

I figured he must be one of Dad’s kooky Hollywood friends pulling some kind of prank. But then again …

Automatically, I went to the kitchen and pulled out a clean plastic bag from the drawer. Returning to the porch, I carefully
removed the fabric, put it in the baggie, and sealed it tight. Once back inside with the door dosed, I put the bag safely
into my jacket pocket.

As I did this, I caught sight of myself in the foyer mirror. I realized this was probably a strange reaction to someone ripping
his coat. But I guess it’s what happens when you grow up in a family of detectives.

Lugging a skull around the house might also sound strange to most people. But for me, it wasn’t all that weird. Last year,
Aunt Tonia pulled some strings. She’s a medical examiner and got UCLA to let me sit in on several courses on facial reconstruction.
Even if I hadn’t aced the classes, I’d have known this wasn’t a real skull anyway. It was just a very good plaster replica.

I walked down the hallway that leads away from the kitchen and stopped outside the office I share with my dad. I held the
skull through the door. “Hello? I’m looking for any BODY,” I called in a creepy voice, like it was the skull talking.

But when I didn’t hear Dad’s usual chuckle, I walked in and found the room empty.

I put the replica of the skull carefully on my work stand, a 2-foot-long pole with a sturdy base and a clamp at the top. I
gently turned the screw to tighten the clamp around the back of the cranium — exactly the way I do every time I’m working
on a skull.

I looked around the office to see if Dad had left me a note. The room was the largest one in the house. It used to be a two-car
garage before my dad and I put down some green carpet and turned it into our office. He writes and works on his cases on one
side, and I have my desk on the other. We’d blown up pictures of us from our trips around the world — like to Rome and Easter
Island — and they hung on the walls between the bookshelves.

My dad hadn’t written me a note, but he’d sure left a huge mess behind. Papers, books, a stapler, his goldfish bowl full of
quarters — things were scattered everywhere.

Grabbing my digital camera, I stood on a chair and snapped a shot of the chaos. I could use this “evidence” if he ever accused
me of being the only slob in the family.

I was climbing down when I spotted something unsettling. We had left the three long, rectangular-shaped windows in the garage
door that served as one wall of the office. The light streaming through these windows was creating a dull glimmer on the small
MP3 placer on Dad’s desk.

This glimmer of light didn’t look quite right …

THERE WAS BLOOD ON THE MP3 PLAYER!

I walked closer and leaned in toward the MP3 player. On one corner was a large drop of blood, about the size of penny.

My own blood ran cold.

WHAT WAS GOING ON?

I picked up a pen from Dad’s desk and pressed the MP3 play button with it — not wanting to disturb any fingerprints. (Another
detective’s habit!)

The room filled with singing. Well, some people might consider it singing — but I’d put it right up there with the sound of
fingernails scratching down a chalkboard.

It was my dad. And he was belting out strange words in his out-of-tune voice. The refrain of the song went like this:

I shutter to think when life envelops

All that my clicking bug could develop.

Even with all this really weird stuff happening, I felt my face flush. It’s embarrassing, but Dad calls me “Bug” sometimes
as a nickname.

He sang the same lines over and over, and then the song ended.

What the heck was going on? If the lyrics were some kind of clue, they weren’t making any sense to me.

I turned my attention back to the drop of blood. Maybe this would give me more answers than that strange song. The first thing
I needed to do was figure out who the blood belonged to.

My dad’s detective work meant that we had lots of cool gizmos and high-tech investigation equipment around. One of those pieces
of equipment was a minilab for DNA matching.

We had practiced using the minilab in one of my college classes a few months ago. Each of us plucked a hair from our head
— making sure to get as much of the root as possible. Then we’d used the minilab to create a DNA readout.

Returning to the office, I found Dad’s evidence-collecting kit in a dark briefcase in the corner. I took out a pair of plastic
gloves and put them on. Then, after removing a clean slide from the kit, I walked over to the MP3 player. By pressing the
top of the slide against the drop of blood, I was able to get a small sample to stick to the glass surface.