The Big Thaw

by Donald Harstad

  The first thing that struck me was the bright blue carpet. Wall to wall, it had a fine nap, and was the same shade of blue I remembered seeing in copper sulfate solutions in high school chemistry. It was a nice place. Matching blue and white recliners close together in sort of random positions in the middle of the room, and a large three-piece couch, with really big pillows. Red and green throw rug in front of a modern fireplace, where a dog might lie in front of a fire. Huge TV set and stereo in a nearly ceiling-high oak entertainment center. Photographs of family-type people all over the walls, with many, many children. Grandchildren, I suspected. A large oak gun cabinet with a flying duck etched in the glass door. Every slot was filled; six shotguns, two 9 mm auto pistols, and two .357 revolvers. That was a surprise. I stepped closer. No signs of a break, and there simply wasn’t an empty slot in the cabinet. That struck me as strange, as the guns were very nice, and in the other burglaries, they’d taken guns and cash.

  I was also struck by how warm it was. Well, probably not more than fifty. But quite a contrast with the outside. I slipped off my winter coat, and hung it on a big brass hook just inside the door. Much better. Off with the gloves, sticking them into the pockets of my down vest.

  I reached over and turned on an another, adjustable light switch. Track lights came on, flooding the room with light and making my job very much easier. I stepped toward an arched doorway, which obviously led to the older portion of the house. The carpet gave way to yellowish tile at the archway, which continued into a large modern kitchen in the remodeled older part of the house. There was a blond wood island running the length of the room, with hanging cabinets, hanging pots and pans, and hanging glasses with long stems. The stove was counter-top, and the oven was a stack of three running up the wall. My. But nothing appeared at all disturbed.

  I turned, and headed back toward the living room arch, intending to head for the basement. As I approached the carpet, I was seeing it from that direction for the first time, and I saw two things that made me stop in the archway.

  One: I could plainly see dents in the carpet, which looked to have been made by the bases of the recliners. The dents were in a very reasonable location facing the entertainment center, unlike the rather pointless current arrangement of the chairs. Strange. Most of the time, if you’re going to change the position of a chair like that, you’d vacuum underneath, and restore the nap at the same time.

  Two: There were two parallel tracks, connecting the closest recliner and the steel separating band between the carpet and the tile, in the archway. They were faint, but they were there. My first thought was that they’d stolen a third recliner. Right, Carl. Embarrassing, but not the sort of thought I’d have to share with anybody else. It did conjure up a quick image of two burglars struggling over hill and dale in ankle-deep snow, lugging a recliner. I grinned to myself. Best not put that in the report.

  I crossed the carpet again, and looked at the end of the tracks, where they disappeared under a recliner. No reason at all for them to be there. None. I squatted down, reached into my shirt pocket again, and took out my reading glasses. I peered very closely at the carpet. There appeared to be a faint discoloration at the edge of the chair base. I pulled my little mini-mag light from my utility belt, and shined it on the carpet. Sure enough. Rusty color, faint and deep into the nap. I stood, and lifted the arm of the chair, tilting it sideways on its base. Underneath was a very large spot, only about two shades darker than the surrounding carpet, that looked like somebody had spilled about half a gallon of water and then dried it the best they could with towels. Still damp-looking, but not too bad a job. I moved the chair aside, and knelt back down, shining the mini-mag and running my fingers against the nap of the carpet. Rusty-looking, penetrating, stains very deep, almost to the base of the carpet. It looked for the world like somebody had tried to clean up a bloodstain, and had done a pretty damned good job of it. I stood, and took the room in again.

  Bloodstains are strange. If your imagination gets ahead of you, you can look at a spot of spilled spaghetti sauce and see a bloodstain. With the small reddish stains I was seeing, it was going to take a lab to tell. Great. How was the Borglan family going to feel when a deputy sheriff, having discovered a burglary with nothing missing, cut out a sample of their carpet from the middle of the room…

  My eye settled on the red and green throw rug near the fireplace. It was at a bit of an angle, and the red didn’t go with anything in the room, and the green was jarring against the blue carpet. I walked over and lifted it. Smaller stains, two of them. Just like under the chair. Well, maybe the dog wasn’t housebroken.

  I stepped to the second chair, tilted it, and sure enough, a bigger stain under there, too. I walked to the middle of the room, and turned slowly through 360 degrees, looking at the pale blue walls. Sure as hell, there was a paler portion, over near the throw rug. I went over and peered closely. A small dot, like a nail hole, near the top of the lighter area. Well, a largish nail, for sure. I couldn’t see any stain on the wall, but it looked like somebody had wiped something off, and thoroughly. The “nail hole” was about five and a half feet off the floor, and not quite round. Oblong. Well, it could have been distorted when somebody pulled a nail out of the wall. Swell.

  A creepy feeling came over me, like I was being watched. I stopped, and just stood still, listening. The faint sound of Mike’s and my cars running outside. The refrigerator way out in the kitchen was humming. Nothing else. No creaks, no bumps. But I felt eyes on me. Not terribly strong, but it was there. I turned and looked out the sliding glass doors. Just the cars, Mike half turned away, talking to Fred, neither of whom was looking my way. After a few seconds, the feeling began to subside.

  “Grow up, Carl,” I said to myself. But I casually reached down and unsnapped my holster, anyway. Feeling more confident, I tried to pick up where I’d left off.

  “So,” I said, “let’s tell the court…” I do talk to myself occasionally, hopefully when I’m alone. Just to organize my thoughts. Somebody told me once that it was a trait of only children. At least it fit.

  When I go through a possible crime scene, I try to imagine describing the evidence to the court. It helps me concentrate, and to evaluate what I’ve got. In this particular instance, I said to myself, “Your Honor, there was what could have been a tomato sauce stain on the carpet, and there was a lighter mark on the wall, so I assumed it was where blood spatters had been washed off around a nail hole …” “And how did you come to discover this evidence, Deputy?” “Uh, well, I was checking on the welfare of two burglars…” I smiled to myself. Sounded a little weak.

  So, I needed more. Well, for the court, anyway.

  The residue of the feeling of being watched lingered, just at the edge of my mind. My first instinct was to call for backup. I didn’t, though, for several reasons. First, the only backup available was Mike, and he had to be with Fred. Second, what I had wasn’t anything solid, and even if it had been, the evidence indicated the scene had been created a couple of days ago. Third, if we did have a scene of something more than a burglary, then the more people tromping about, the worse it would for a lab team.

  I squatted down near the chairs, and looked back toward the kitchen, trying to get a better indication from a lower angle. I could just barely discern the parallel tracks from here, and they didn’t head toward the kitchen so much as off to the right side of the archway. They looked suspiciously like drag marks, to me. There was a sliver of a door frame, just visible, through the arch. I got up, my left knee complaining, and crossed to the door. Descending stairs to the basement. Great. I hate going down stairs into basements, especially when you aren’t sure who might be there. You expose 90 percent of your body on the way down the stairs before you can defend yourself.

  I turned on the lights at the top of the stairs, rechecked my holster strap, and went down slowly. It was one of those basements that’s about three-quarters finished, with the area around the furnace and water heater left in concrete floor
, studded walls, and unfinished ceiling. The first thing that caught my eye as I descended the stairs was the top of the water heater. White. Clean. Except for a puddle of what looked like a rusty water stain near the middle. The center of the puddle was reddish, and the outer edges were yellowish to almost clear. The problem was, all the pipes seemed to come out the side of the heater, not the top. So much for a rust stain. I peered over the edge of the railing. It looked like the water had dripped from somewhere up under the stairs. I continued down to the basement floor, and walked back to the heater. The puddled stain was dry but thickish, looking like you could flake off chips from the edges. And there was a similar colored stain on the underside of the basement stairs, right over the heater. I looked a little closer, and saw that this stain, too, was more solid than water stains would be. It had a bit of a convexity at the center, like it had been trying to form into a droplet when it congealed. Stalactite or stalagmite? flickered through my head. I could never remember which was which.

  I was virtually certain it was blood. I couldn’t “prove” it, not yet. But that’s what it was. The lighter edges were a dead giveaway. Large stains tend to congeal, leaving the plasma in a ring around the outside, the red cells clumped together in the middle. They begin to clot, while the plasma seems to stay liquid longer, so it spreads a little farther.

  Well, so I was sure it was blood. So what?

  I was getting really creeped, mostly because the house was so completely quiet. I moved through the partition door and into the finished part of the basement. Nothing remarkable, it was plainly a playroom for the grandkids, with those big plastic tricycles and riding tractors and things parked next to the far wall. Plastic ball, Hula Hoop, and an old couch and a Nintendo on a caterer’s cart. Nice room.

  The throw rug at the door was bunched up, right where it would’ve been if the door had been opened and it had been pushed aside. But I’d tested that door from the outside, and it was locked. I snorted to myself. Sure, Carl. But it could be opened from the inside, and shut again. Concentrate.

  I opened the basement door, and looked out into the blackness of the backyard. I played my flashlight around at the gazebo ice palace. With the light angle, I saw something I hadn’t seen when I was out there. There was a gentle depression, kind of like a filled in furrow, in the snow, leading right from the back door to the gazebo, past it, and on toward the largest of the machine sheds. A virtually straight line, in the old snow. Made before Monday noon, when the new snow was laid down deep.

  I glanced down, and the pink drops on the concrete took on a more sinister meaning. Frozen blood on concrete looks for the world like drops of Pepto-Bismol. Pink. I’d thought it was paint. Now I was pretty sure it was blood. If you’d dragged a body down the stairs, and then opened the door, and paused to get your breath, and let the body sit just long enough for blood to drip …

  Well.

  I was going to have to go to the machine shed, to see what was at the end of the furrow. Had to do that. I was now just about certain that the cousins had argued, and that one had killed the other. Just about. Either that, or somebody had been staying at the house after all, and they had been killed by the cousins. Or, that Fred had killed somebody and was trying to place the blame on two noninvolved cousins. That brought me up short.

  As soon as I got out the basement door, I pulled my walkie-talkie from my belt, and contacted the office.

  “Comm, Three?”

  “Three?”

  “Could you get somebody else here? We’d like some ten-seventy-eight out here. We’ll be ten-six for a while. Not ten-thirty-three, but send him.” That meant that I was going to be busy, and it wasn’t an emergency. I sure didn’t want my favorite sheriff sliding into the ditch, running lights and siren, coming to help me look into a shed. Even though he was a good boss, that sort of thing could adversely affect my career.

  “What you got, Three?” asked Mike, from his car in the yard.

  “Maybe something on the order of a seventy-nine. Not sure. Wait a couple. I’m gonna be walkin’ over to that big machine shed, from the basement back door.” 10-79 was the code for coroner notification. A “79” told Mike I might have a body in here someplace.

  “Ten-four,” he said, crisply. Bodies, even if just suspected, tend to get your attention.

  I put my walkie-talkie back on my belt, turned up the collar on my quilted down vest, pulled my stocking cap down over my ears, pulled on my gloves, and headed the fifty yards over to the steel machine shed. God, it was cold. I’d left my coat upstairs in the house. Of course. Well, I wasn’t about to go back. I squeaked and crunched through the snow, being very careful to swing widely away from the drag marks. It was remarkable, but looking back toward the house, the different light angle prevented me from seeing the marks at all.

  When I got to the machine shed, I found the “walk-in” door stuck with ice. Great. I stepped to the big sliding steel doors, kicked at them a couple of times to break the frost adhesion, and slid it open about five feet. “Never trap a burglar, unless you want a fight.” Training turned to habit.

  I went into the gloom of the big building, which was designed to hold a couple of tractors, and a combine. There was hay on the concrete floor, as insulation. One tractor off to the other side. A workbench. Those I could see in the light provided by my flashlight. I needed more light. This was a very large building. I reached over to my right side, feeling for a switch. Not likely I’d find one at the machinery entrance, but there should be one over by the walk-in door. I shined my flashlight to my right, and saw the switch at the end of a length of steel conduit, on the other side of the “people” entrance. I moved toward it, stepping over what I thought was some lumber, covered by a tarp. I glanced down to avoid tripping, and in the shadowed gap between the tarp and the wall, I saw a human hand.

  Four

  Tuesday, January 13, 1998, 0057

  I recoiled, moving back so fast I nearly lost my footing. I caught my breath, and let the effects of the adrenaline rush subside a bit. Okay, Carl. Get it together. This is what you were looking for. Just not quite where you’d expected to find it. Yeah.

  Standing there in the large opening at the sliding door, I felt those eyes on me again. Stronger. I turned and looked back toward the house. Nothing. “Just what I need,” I said to myself. “You’re turning into an old lady, Houseman.” But it bothered me.

  I fumbled with the microphone for my walkie-talkie with my gloved hand.

  “Mike, why don’t you get Nine here, and hand your passenger over to him?”

  “Ten-four … I think he’s comin’ over here anyway. So what’s up?”

  “I think we’re into a real seventy-nine situation. And … uh … you might want to get alert here.”

  “We got company?” He sounded almost happy.

  “Not sure, just don’t take a chance. You … uh … might want to hand your passenger over to Nine back up the lane. Out of sight of the residence.” I just couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

  “Ten-four.” More serious now. It was sinking in with him, too.

  I forced myself back into the shed. I hated to do it, but I stepped over the tarp again, and switched on the big fluorescent overhead lights. They flickered a few times, and then came on, casting a bluish light throughout the shed.

  “There,” I said to myself. “Better …”

  Cautiously, I shined my flashlight down into the recesses of the mustard-colored tarp. Sure as hell, there was a hand. Pinkish, with the flesh flattened in a way that only the lifeless can manage. And frosted.

  I had to know. Hell, I was required to know. Gingerly, I reached down, and pulled at the stiff, frozen tarp. It didn’t want to move. I pulled harder. It resisted, and then, suddenly, came away from the wall.

  I stepped back, again. I was looking at what appeared to be a human, with the head in a white garbage bag. There was a tear in the bag, and part of the head was exposed, including the right eye. Lying on the floor of the shed,
whoever it was was very, very dead.

  The tarp was still clinging to the floor. A light edging of ice. In the back of my mind, that told me that the tarp had been placed there before the cold snap. I reached down, to pull it free. As I did so, I noticed booted feet protruding from underneath the tarp, at the other end.

  Three of them.

  Two bodies? Two? I walked over, and lifted the stiff edge of the canvas sheet. It was really dark under there, but I could see, side by side, frost-covered and stiff, the lower half of two frozen bodies.

  Brothers, I was willing to bet. Both of them, as Fred would say.

  They were nearly identically “packaged.” White plastic bags on the heads. I could barely make out some features, like noses and mouths. The bags didn’t appear to have been fastened around the neck. Just placed over the head.

  I could see no obvious marks, holes, or bloodstains on the clothes. But, before the medical examiner and the lab got here, it would be most unwise to touch them.

  I glanced back around the shed. One tractor. Otherwise, empty. Just a lot of straw-covered concrete floor, and two bodies under a tarp.

  “Well, son of a bitch.” I took a deep breath, and dropped the stiff canvas. “Son of a bitch. What’d you get me into, Fred?”

  I heard the crunch of footsteps behind me. “Who you talkin’ to?”

  It was Mike.

  “These two, here …”

  He was still just outside the doorway, about eighteen inches behind me. I stepped aside, pointing to my discovery as he stepped over the threshold.

  “These dudes,” I said, holding up the same corner of the tarp.

  “Holy shit,” he said, quietly.

  “Yeah.” I released the corner of the tarp. Being frozen, it very slowly fell back toward its original position. “We better get out of here, before I disturb any more than I have. We’re gonna need the crime lab up here on this one.”