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SAN FRANCISCO, OCTOBER 2006
The lock clicked sharply and the door to the apartment swung open. Alexander Aneiren Mckenzie, Senior Lieutenant, of the San Francisco Police Department Major Crimes Division eased wearily into the entry way. “The Iceman Cometh.” The overused and trite jibe, coined by a department wit who had probably never seen the play, and employed by those other officers who resented his probing intellect and coldly aloof demeanor seemed appropriate. Another man returning home late on a Friday evening after a week of grindingly exhausting work might breathe a sigh of contentment. Another man might exhibit some semblance of relief, as the burdens of the profession eased away. Mckenzie did neither. He might live in this apartment, but he found no refuge there.
.....
Another teenaged boy might have shouted at his father, raging against his heartless insensitivity. He did not. Alexander Mckenzie was already the Iceman in training. He slowly rose to his feet and folded the newspaper under his arm. He looked at his father with the dispassionate expression of a scientist examining a failed experiment. Without another word he turned and left the room. Neither Marcus or Brittaney grasped the fatal escalation of the conflict between father and son that had just occurred.
Another sip of the cognac warmed his throat as he watched the television screen intently. Mireille steeped out of a gondola and walked briskly across the wide expanse of St. Marks Square. The vast center of the city was filled with tourists and pigeons, but the throng could not hide her. She was wearing a deceptively simple white dress cut just above her knee and high heeled shoes that clicked on the pavement while accentuating her long beautiful legs. As she neared the Doge’s palace, a male voice called out her character’s name “Marie!” She turned to face the actor playing her lover and her already animated expression came alight with an ecstatic joy almost beyond the capacity of the screen to contain. There were times, many times, when the adult Alexander Mckenzie had concluded that he truly was demented. Boys had hopeless crushes, even grown men could entertain romantic fantasies, but eventually you put such things away. You grew up, you matured, you forgot about those imaginary loves. He had not. He could not. Every time he heard her voice, he felt his heart shake with a pain that would not heal.
.....
