The Big Thaw

by Donald Harstad

  “Yeah.” He stared at the slowly descending tarp. “Any idea what killed ’em?”

  “Not the faintest.” I pulled my muffler up about my face. “Nobody’s in the house, far as I know, but there’s some evidence in there. These two might have been done in the house. No idea how. Just remember we don’t let anybody in …”

  “Okay.” He looked up toward the house, then back at the shed. “Are these Fred’s two cousins?”

  “I dunno,” I sighed. “Don’t let anybody say anything to Fred, yet.”

  “Sure,” said Mike.

  “I suppose he’s now a murder suspect … but don’t say that.” I doubted that he really was, but we had to be safe.

  “Right. Yeah. So, what? Just leave him with John when he gets here?”

  “Yeah. For right now. Just don’t talk to him.” Fred was officially in custody, and Mirandized, but I didn’t want anybody talking to him without him having access to an attorney. I wasn’t a raging liberal, it was just that there was absolutely no reason to blow a case at this point. Time to start dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s in earnest. I looked around the shed. “I sure as hell hope there aren’t any more in here.”

  “Shit, don’t say that…”

  Mike and I trudged back up the slope together. I told him I was going to get my camera and do some quick preliminary shots through the door of the shed, and try to get some photos of the tracks in the headlights of our cars. If it was to snow again, or to warm up, all the remaining exterior evidence would be lost.

  When I got to my car, I called the office. Radio being so closely listened to on scanners, particularly when everybody was in their homes to escape the terrible cold, I had to be pretty circumspect with my requests, and hope that the dispatcher got the oblique references. I felt secure that my transmissions on the 5 watt walkie-talkie had gone unnoticed, but the 100 watt car radio and the 1,000 watt main base transmitter were a different story. I didn’t want anybody to know we had found bodies. Not yet.

  “Comm, Three?”

  “Go ahead …”

  “Yeah, look, we have a seventy-nine here, and we’re going to need the whole shebang. Ten-four?”

  There was a pause. “I, uh, copy the seventy-nine. Could you ten-nine the rest?”

  Well, I could repeat it, but I chose instead to try to clarify. “We will need the usual ten-seventy-eight here.”

  Silence. 10-78 was the code for assistance. There was no code for crime lab, none for requesting a DCI agent. But, at a homicide, we always needed both. But, cagey soul that I am, 10-78 tends to vary depending upon the situation. Of course. All I had told her was that we needed a coroner, and the usual assistance.

  She was new. “Copy you need ten-seventy-eight?” The edge to her voice told me right away that she thought we needed more cops, and fast.

  “Negative. Negative, Comm. Look, I’ll ten-twenty-one in a minute.” That meant that I would call her on a phone. That would be best, naturally, and I could explain everything in detail. I hated to do it, though, because it meant that I had to reenter the Borglan residence. Each time you do that, a defense attorney will try to make it sound like you strolled through the scene, scattering bogus evidence like they used to scatter garlands in front of Roman emperors.

  Never try to clarify with more obscurity, though. Especially on a radio.

  Back in the Borglan household, I found a phone in the kitchen, and called the office. I explained that we would need her to contact a medical examiner, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation for an assisting agent and the mobil crime lab, and that she would have to call our boss, Nation County Sheriff Lamar Ridgeway, and tell him what was happening.

  “Uh, Carl, could I call in another dispatcher to help?”

  “Sure. Good idea. Just remember to tell me, ‘Ten-sixty-nine’ as you get the items done.” 10-69 stood for “message received,” and would mean that she had completed a call. “Message one will be for the medical examiner, message two will be for DCI, and message three will be Lamar. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, I want you to try to get a DL on two subjects… a Dirk and a Royce Colson. Should be about twenty or so. Maybe twenty-five. Not from Nation County, but I think maybe from around Oelwein.”

  “Okay…”

  “Eventually, I’m going to need height and weight, eye color, and that sort of thing. The physical descriptors.”

  “Got it.”

  “Cool. Okay, now I’m gonna be a long way from a phone for a time, taking some photos. Just give me the ten-sixty-nines over the radio. I’ll be on portable. If I don’t acknowledge, Mike will. He’s in his car.”

  “Okay…” She didn’t sound quite sure, but I knew she’d do fine. Especially when the other dispatcher arrived.

  “And don’t give anything, and I mean anything, regarding the Colsons over the radio unless I specifically ask you to do so.”

  I let myself back out, grabbing my coat this time, and went to Mike’s car and told him what had been said. I got my camera out of my car, and crunched my way back down to the shed. I figured I’d better take the photos there first, since the subzero temperature might deplete my camera battery and leave me with no way to take photos.

  As I stood in the doorway of the big steel shed, fumbling with the flash attachment in the cold, the feeling of being watched came rushing back with a vengeance.

  At the Academy, years ago, one of our instructors told us that, if you ever got a spooky feeling, pay close attention to it. You might be reacting to something you’ve picked up subconsciously, that just hasn’t made it all the way up to awareness. I’d always considered it good advice, although it had only worked for me one out of about ten times, when there was a man hiding in the rafters of an implement store we were searching. I thought that once was pretty good, though. He’d had a gun, and we later found he was just waiting for me to pass before he shot me in the back. I’d stopped, and backed up a step, which had put me out of his line of fire. We all figured I’d glimpsed him in my peripheral vision, but that it hadn’t registered. Anyway, it was a distinctive feeling, and that time before it had been very strong. It was back, and this time it was even stronger.

  I stopped after I attached the flash, and paused for a moment. Then I looked around, very slowly. Nothing unusual. But I had the solid feeling that I was being watched. I switched the flash off, and did a slow pirouette, snapping a shot about every ten degrees or so. It was just possible that I might catch something with the camera I was overlooking.

  The feeling persisted.

  I tried to shake it off. “Probably Mike,” I said to myself. Could have been. Could have been the residual effect of that frozen eye. Most likely, I thought, it was the result of being alone with the two bodies. Most people seem to get really self-conscious when they’re alone with the dead. I was no different.

  “Three,” crackled my walkie-talkie, “Ten-sixty-nine on message one!”

  That startled me out of my thoughts about being watched. Just as well.

  “Ten-four” was all I said. All that was necessary. The medical examiner had been notified.

  I went back to the residence and took a few shots of the marks on the sliding door. I tried for a wider angle shot of the faint tracks in the snow, leading toward the shed, but didn’t really have much hope. As I turned toward my car to get a fresh roll of film, I saw Fred’s face in the back of Mike’s car. He was just watching, but looked pretty rough. I guess he really began to catch on when he saw my camera flash down by the shed. Mike said later that Fred started to cry about then.

  Five

  Tuesday, January 13, 1998, 0123

  Three …” came the familiar voice of my favorite dispatcher, Sally Wells. She was obviously the second dispatcher called in. That made me feel a lot better, as Sally had been with us for years, and was a certified departmental asset.

  “Go ahead,” I said, turning my head toward the mike mounted on my left shoulder.

  “Ten-sixty
-nine on items two and three.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Regarding item two, the mobile unit will be ten-seventy-six within ten minutes or so, with the other assistance to be ten-seventy-six shortly.” Translated, that meant that the mobil crime lab would be on its way to us within ten minutes, and a DCI agent or two would be coming in shortly. The bad part was that the mobil crime lab was in Des Moines, about three to four hours away. The good part was that the agents were based much closer.

  “And … uh … Three, could you get back to a phone?”

  That was unusual, and I really didn’t want to do it, because it meant that I’d have to traipse back through part of the house again. But Sally knew what she was about, and she wouldn’t ask if it weren’t really necessary.

  I let myself back in the Borglan house, and called the office.

  “Sheriff’s Department…”

  “Better be good,” I said, grinning.

  “You’re not gonna like this one bit,” said Sally.

  “So …?”

  “The assigned agent is Art Meyerman.”

  Oh, great. Just great. Art Meyerman had been the chief deputy in our department for several years, was a thoroughly unpleasant man, and had left under a bit of a cloud. He’d gotten a job with state, with what I suspected was a bit of political assistance, and had become an agent for the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. It was rare, but it happened.

  I suspected that state wouldn’t send Art back into his old county lightly. He’d been with them in Waterloo for almost two years, and as far as I knew, had never set foot in Nation County during that time. There had to be a shortage of available agents, for some reason.

  I took a deep breath, and exhaled. “Hokay, Sally. Why don’t you get Lamar to stop off in the office on his way through town, and give him the news. Maybe he can make something else happen …”

  I truly didn’t want to be working with Art again. Although he and I could get along if necessary, he hated Mike, Sally, and just about half the rest of the department. With a double homicide, I wanted a really smooth investigation.

  “Maybe Hester Gorse is available?” Hester was just about the best General Crim. agent in the state.

  “Already checked, she’s still on her temporary gambling boat rotation. They won’t pull her out. I tried.” The General Beauregard, a Mississippi River gaming boat was home-ported in our county.

  “Right.” Well, we’d just have to make the best of it. If there was a best. “Right,” I said, again. “Well, as long as I’ve got you on the phone, get an ETA for the medical examiner, will you? And find out who it is.”

  “You bet. Sorry about Art.”

  “Not your fault. Just remember that you secretly love him …”

  “Yeah,” said Sally. “Right.” If she could have spit over the phone, she would have.

  I got that spooky feeling again, just as I hung up the phone.

  I talked to Mike on my way to my own car. “You might want to move your car around over there,” I said, pointing in the general direction of the steeper of the slopes leading to the backyard, where his lights would do the most good and he could observe the back door. “I’d feel better, just in case there’s still somebody in the house.”

  He gave me a startled look, and I kind of grinned to myself. Had him spooked, now, too. Misery loves company.

  Then I sat in my warm car, and waited for everybody else to arrive.

  I could hear the radio traffic begin to pick up as people came to work, or got closer. First, as John Willis, Deputy Number Nine, hit the road, and then as Lamar started out from the office. Shortly afterward, I heard a terse, one-line announcement from State Radio that an agent was en route to our county.

  It was just warm enough in the car to destroy any adaptation I might have made to the cold. I reloaded my camera, and then began to scratch out a series of notes to myself. And I started to think about Fred.

  Could he have done this? Sure. In this business, you learn early on that anybody can do just about anything. The real question was, did he? I didn’t think so. If he’d done it, I thought it would be more likely that he simply would have run away, and sure as hell wouldn’t have been discovered sitting out on the road, honking his horn. After all, running requires the least, immediate effort. We probably wouldn’t even have discovered the bodies until the Borglans came back. Which reminded me …

  “Comm, you might want to try to get hold of the owner here, wherever they said they could be reached. Not too many details, okay, but I think we might need one of them up here.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “And, let me know if you reach them …”

  “Ten-four,” she said, being a bit short. Of course she’d let me know. Telling her something that basic was just a bit of an insult. I was sure I’d hear about that one later. I was wrong. I heard about it right away.

  “Comm, One?” That was Lamar.

  “One?”

  “You want to let him know when you tie his shoes, too?”

  “If it makes him feel better,” said Sally. She sounded happy.

  I could hear Lamar chuckle as he said, “Three, we’re already on that.”

  I grinned, and got back to my notes. Back to Fred. Back to the Borglans’ vacation. They were in Florida. Great. Should probably be a day or more before they could get a plane … Oh, well. We’d need their permission to search the place, just as a courtesy, and to possibly extend that search over their entire farm. Not only that, but they were the only people who could tell us a lot of things, including whether or not anything was missing. Whether or not Fred knew them. Who would have had access to the place. What was disturbed. All the stuff that I needed to know.

  We’d just have to do what we needed to do without them. It occurred to me that I’d be a little irked if I had to come back from Florida into this deep freeze, for something like this. Hell, for any reason, really.

  “Three, Comm” jarred me back to reality.

  “Comm?”

  “Have contacted the subject you requested. They will be ten-seventy-six ASAP.”

  “The property owner?”

  “Ten-four.”

  Cool. Almost like magic. “They give an ETA, Comm?” I still thought it would be at least forty-eight hours.

  “The male subject is already on his way, was coming up for some business things, for a couple of days.”

  “Well, ten-four, Comm. Excellent!” I just love it when things happen to go smoothly for a change.

  “Should be arriving at the Cedar Rapids Airport in an hour or so, according to his wife.”

  “Ten-four!” Perfect timing. How about that.

  “Three, the other subject is ten-six, but will be able to head up in about an hour or so, from the Manchester area.”

  I thought rapidly. Who was the other subject? Oh.

  “Last name end in a nine?” As in 10-79, which would be the M.E.

  “That’s the one.” She was quick, as usual.

  “Ten-four.” The one I really wanted was based near Cedar Rapids. Manchester threw me. “Comm, did they say which one it was?”

  “Negative, Three.”

  I hung the mike back up. All right. I wasn’t sure just how much of a rush we should be in for the M.E., with the bodies in a deep freeze. If they’d gone out to the shed on Sunday, and it was way up in the twenties, would they be frozen through by now? Would it make an appreciable difference? How in hell was the M.E. going to come even close to a time of death? They did have frost on them. Warm when they got out there? I thought for a second. If they’d been covered as soon as they were deposited, would the frost have formed? Or did it mean they were covered afterward? Damn. If they’d been pretty warm, I thought we might just get frost as they froze. And just what did that tell me? Nothing, yet.

  We’d need to try for a core temperature, but what would that tell us? With the ambient temperature varying from what … room temperature to minus thirty-five degrees, with pauses at the mid-t
wenties, how would temperature determine time of death? Or, rather, how close could it get us? I didn’t have much hope for that approach.

  Stomach contents. There was a chance for you. Frozen food, so to speak. We’d have to find out when they’d last eaten.

  What other evidence would there be in the house? I was really anxious to do the whole place. There had to be something in there. Then Fred’s question about whether or not I’d charge him with manslaughter popped back into my head. Why had he asked that? Just dumb luck? I thought so, but I was far from sure.

  I was beginning to be afraid his was going to be an interesting case.

  I jotted down the questions, and was just going to pick up my mike when I saw Lamar coming down the lane in his four-wheel-drive pickup, completely marked in the white with blue-outlined gold striping of a normal patrol car. It had the newest set of top lights in the department, as well. “Lamar’s Awesome Machine,” as Mike called it. I waved, and he pulled up on the left side of my car, motioning me to join him. I did so, gratefully. My car was a standard-sized Chevy, and bearable; but Lamar’s truck was larger, and almost luxurious inside. I’m six feet three, and about 260 or so. I like to be able to stretch out a bit in a vehicle.

  I clamored in, and shut the door. Lamar gave me a long look. “I posted Nine at the end of the lane, so the DCI can find this place. You know it’s Art who’s comin’?”

  I nodded. “Can’t figure that one out.”

  “I called his supervisor from the office. They’ve got a major case down in Washington County, and everybody else is out with the flu.” He looked at me for a second. “Art ain’t gonna know I called his boss.”

  “Right.”

  He sighed, the way only a stressed sheriff can. “So, just what the hell you got here?”

  I told him. When I was finished, he only had a couple of questions.

  “How were they killed?”

  “Dunno, Lamar. Didn’t look that close. I didn’t move anything, and I just raised the tarp enough to see that it was two males. Very, very dead.” I grinned. “And no, I didn’t recognize either one of ’em.”