The Big Thaw (6 page)

Lamar squinted at me. “We’ll have a cup after you answer the last question.”

“Okay,” I said. “Got any doughnuts? Get a better answer for doughnuts.”

He reached down behind my seat, and produced a white paper sack with MAITLAND BAKERY in red letters. He sort of waved it in front of me.

“Well,” I said, “I think he’s pretty much the only suspect we got.” I waited a beat. “But I’d be real surprised if he turns out to be the killer. Mike came up on him as he was sittin’ out at the pickup point, honking his horn. That worth a doughnut?”

“Sure,” said Lamar. “Yours is pretty much the only opinion we got.” He grinned. “So far.”

They were chocolate, with chocolate frosting sprinkled with those little multicolored things. I took one bite, and said, “You got another one of those, I’ll try to think of another suspect for ya…”

Less than thirty minutes later, the assigned DCI agent drove up. Our ex-chief deputy, Art Meyerman. Art was kind of anal retentive; so much so, he’d been stuck with the nickname of “Anus.” I wasn’t sure if he’d ever found that out.

I gave him a very brief description of what Fred had told me, and a short walk across the front of the house, pointing out the highlights.

“And they’re over in that shed?” asked Art.

“Yep.”

“And the M.E. isn’t here yet?”

True to form, I thought. He had to ask. There were just four of us standing in the middle of the desolate, frozen yard: Mike, Lamar, Art, and me. With a prisoner in the back of Mike’s car. Nobody else, no other car, nada. I felt like looking behind me before answering. “Nope, but he should be here in half an hour or so.”

“I’m glad to see you left a couple of uniforms at the end of the lane,” said Art. He was trying to be nice, but I found it very irritating that he referred to uniformed officers as “uniforms.” The way he said it, it meant “second-class cop,” and I thought it was very unfair. Partly since he had been mostly uniformed until a couple of years ago. And mostly since I was in my uniform.

We walked over toward Mike’s patrol car. Art wanted to get a look at Fred, to see if he remembered him.

“Mike,” he said, “would you contact State Radio and get the mobile lab up here?”

I resented his talking to Mike like that, particularly since he’d left the department to get away from the rest of us, but Mike didn’t seem to mind a bit. “Sure thing, Art.” Well, the “Art” did seem to have a thin glaze of sarcasm.

I stepped back with Art. “You recognize Fred, there in the back?”

Art sighed. “Can’t tell. I want him out of here, though. Get him back to the office, or something. I don’t want him around when we start doing serious stuff.”

Fine with me. I told Mike to get him back to the S.O., and to hold him on a burglary charge. I didn’t think we had anywhere near enough to do even a Suspicion of Murder on him.

“Let’s go do the bodies with the M.E., at least a preliminary,” I said, to both Art and Lamar. “As soon as one gets here. I haven’t been back to the shed, so I don’t have any photos except what I can see with the tarp pretty much in place. We can at least do that.”

There was always the question as to who got to do the bodies first … the lab folks, who would gather evidence, or the M.E., who would tell everybody what evidence to look for. Since I had absolutely no idea what had caused the death of the two brothers in the shed, I was going for the M.E.

Art didn’t look too sure, but Lamar jumped at the chance to have something to do. “Good.”

That ended that discussion.

It was understood among us that, while Art and the DCI were the “detectives” on the case, it was our case all the way. They were assisting the Sheriff’s Department. Not the other way around. Lamar was going to call the shots. But he was also smart enough to let Art work. Art had always had a nose for certain kinds of crimes, and knew a lot of people in Nation County.

Our job at this point was to protect and preserve the evidence for the M.E. and the lab team. Not that a frozen body was going to decompose or anything. But we did want photos for the M.E.’s later reference as well as ours. I thought I’d better get my camera. I knew that DCI probably had at least one, but I wanted my own shots, too.

On the way I noticed that the light had changed quite a bit with the headlights of the other cars. Some tracks were more noticeable, others had virtually disappeared. Sunlight was going to wash them out completely.

We all got into Lamar’s extended cab, and cozied down.

Lamar lifted the air pot. He glanced at Art, who held his hand over his cup. I held my cup out. As he filled it, he said, “Ain’t it something. The way that cold air makes your bladder act up?”

Lamar passed the time sweeping the area with his electronically controlled, state-of-the-art spotlight, mounted well forward on the right fender of the “Awesome Machine.” The whole farmstead was in a wide valley, with a small stream running along the far side. I had to really look, but then I saw the track. Or, more precisely, tracks. There must have been a dozen separate tracks, some leading clear down the valley, some rising up a hill and disappearing.

“They look like old snowmobile tracks,” I said. “I didn’t see ’em before. Must have been the lighting.”

“Must have,” said Lamar, sarcastically, sipping his coffee. “We know how you never miss a thing.” He grinned.

He was referring to an incident where I had left my raincoat at a crime scene, and it had later been found and taken in as evidence by the FBI. Art snickered.

My first thought was that the suspect or suspects had gotten away on snowmobiles. Fred had brought his cousins to the farm in a car. Couldn’t have been Fred. Unless, of course, Fred had lied about their coming in a car. But the snowmobile track from the rear of the house sure looked like a possibility for a fleeing suspect.

“That could be our suspect,” I said. I’d assumed everybody had been thinking along those lines.

“Then,” asked Art, “how do we explain the others?”

“Hired man,” said Lamar. “He checks the place once in a while, while they’re gone. He lives next place down the valley. I know he has a snowmobile.”

“I see,” said Art, lowering the binoculars. “We may want to talk with him.”

“Already had ’em contact his wife,” said Lamar. “Before I left the office. She said he’s gone, picking the owner, Cletus Borglan, up at the Cedar Rapids Airport. Left about three hours ago. He’ll call the office as soon as he gets back.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I told the office to let us know when he calls. Didn’t know if we wanted him here, or if you would want to talk to him at his place.”

Lamar has been around the block.

The M.E. came driving up. Very nice black four-wheel-drive Bronco. Driven by Dr. Steven Peters, my favorite pathologist, and the one I’d hoped we were going to get. He had a forensic ticket, one of very few in the state, and he had a tremendous knowledge of his subject. He was also delightful to work with, and tended to bring his own supply of snack food. I can’t begin to tell you how comforting it is to know that your autopsies have been done by a solid M.E., and that regardless what else happens, you always have the firm foundation of the M.E. report to fall back on.

We all got out of Lamar’s pickup, as Dr. Peters pulled up. As he got out, he said, “I hope this is in the house! My God, it’s cold!”

He knew us all from past cases. Lamar broke the bad news about the bodies being in the machine shed. After a brief consultation, we decided to drive Lamar’s pickup and Dr. Peters’s Bronco down the slope, and park them right at the edge of the shed. We could use them to warm up in, and to avoid having to walk back and forth for various items of equipment. And, as Dr. Peters said, to keep the doughnuts soft.

We chose a course that would avoid all the visible tracks, and down we went.

Just as we stopped, Lamar picked up his mike and said, “Comm, log the time. 0207.”

“Ten-four, One.”

“Nine, One?” as Lamar called Deputy Willis.

“One, go…”

“Nine, you want to stay put. Nobody gets in without a badge.”

Once we got to the shed, all the lightness left us, and the somber business of investigating two dead bodies began. Everybody had their heaviest coats on by then, and mufflers or scarves wrapped over their mouth and nose. I couldn’t help noticing that Art was rather underdressed for the occasion, with a topcoat instead of a parka.

Lamar and I were able to open the door another couple of feet, letting a bit of light in, and making access easier. We cast about, and finally located a light switch on the wall about ten feet from the walk-in door that was padlocked. Large fluorescent overheads flickered, struggled a bit, and then came on, flooding the entire space with light. Perfect.

I took three photos of the inside of the shed, which looked to be about 60 x 30 feet. The inside wall was a galvanized steel. Then three shots of the bodies as I had left them, with the tarp covering everything but the feet. That tarp was an olive-green-colored canvas, with aluminum eyelets, and stiff as a board. Lamar, Art, and I pulled sharply to unstick the frozen edges from the floor, and then slowly lifted it off the victims, and carried it off to one side, still frozen in the shape it had been when it covered them. I turned, and got my first good look at the two dead men.

The nearest one was on his back with his arms at his side, the other about three-quarters onto his face with his arms folded underneath. Both had white plastic trash bags on their heads. They didn’t look to be cinched with cord or anything, just sort of twisted. Yellow pull tabs, integral to the bags, had been tied under the chins. Stains on the outside of the bags showed they hadn’t been terribly effective. I figured the blood puddle on the water heater, under the basement stairs, was also indicative of that, but we’d have to check. The white bags were stiff, too, but not as bad as the tarp.

Three shots with each head in the center of the focus, for a total of six. I changed from the 50 mm lens to the 70-210 mm zoom. I fumbled a bit, as my fingers were getting cold. They were dressed in what at first seemed a light fashion. Jackets, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. Not dressed for today, that was certain.

“What was the temperature when they were supposedly dropped off?” asked Dr. Peters.

“Would have been in the middle to upper twenties,” said Lamar.

“Hmm. Snow cover at that time?” Dr. Peters was pulling out the shirt from the waistband of the first victim, and sliding his gloved hand up onto the abdomen. Checking for indications of core temperature.

“Not a lot. Maybe, oh, two or three inches?” Lamar glanced at me. “Carl?”

“Yeah, about that.” As soon as I spoke, the moisture from my breath froze on my glasses.

“Like ice,” said Dr. Peters, mostly to himself, as he pulled his hand away and pulled the sweatshirt of the second victim up, reaching again toward the abdomen. This shirt, too, was stiff, but movable. “Quite a bit of moisture in the clothes, to freeze like this. Not wet…” He struggled for another few seconds with the sweatshirt. “Maybe damp, though.” He tried to turn the body over to get his hand underneath in the abdominal area, but failed. “Somebody got a hand?”

I reached down, with my own latex-gloved hand, and grabbed the jacket near the right shoulder of the victim. I pulled, hard, and the body rolled about a half turn. They were as stiff as steel. No movement of any joints, whatsoever. Much worse than rigor mortis, where there was at least some possibility of some movement. “Corpse sickles.”

Dr. Peters felt the abdomen of the second victim. “Just like a frozen supermarket turkey,” he said. He stood. “Was there any reason they might have, oh, maybe sweat a bit before they were killed? That we’d know of at this point…”

“They were supposed to have walked in from over the hill,” I said, letting go of the body, and watching it roll stiffly back to its original position. Just like a log, I thought. With the arms just like stiff, broken branches. “There are what look like may have been tracks in that direction.”

“Good. I think that might do it, especially if they’d stopped in a warm place for a while … like the house, for example.”

“They sure aren’t dressed for snowmobiling, even in the twenties, are they,” said Lamar, making a firm point.

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Dr. Peters. “Not an expert in that, though,” he said with a grin. “But if they were to do it, they’d be needing the services of another kind of doctor by now.”

“We don’t have any injuries yet, do we?” said Lamar.

“Not yet,” said Dr. Peters, kneeling at the heads of the victims. “I suspect we’ll find something inside the bags, though.”

“Asphyxiation,” said Art.

Dr. Peters looked up. “Pardon?”

“Asphyxiation,” said Art, again. “You think?”

“I shouldn’t be betting a large amount,” said Dr. Peters. He began tugging at the bag on the closest victim. “These aren’t at all tight.”

The white bag was stiff, the way that polyethylene gets when it’s really cold. It gave Dr. Peters a rough time for a few seconds, since it also appeared to be stuck to the victim’s head by frozen blood. He finally tugged really hard, and as it came off, it suddenly revealed a black-haired male subject, approximately twenty-five or so, unshaven, teeth exposed in a grimace. It was sort of startling, and took us all a second or two to adjust.

There was a lot of clotted blood on the right side of the head, stiffly clumped in with the longish hair, and with a patch of frozen polyethylene adhering to the clumped strands. The right eyeball protruded a bit, with the left appearing sunken, at least in comparison. The complexion was sallow.

“Hmm,” said Dr. Peters.

“Blunt object?” asked Art.

“Not going to be your day,” said Dr. Peters, gently prodding the matted blood and hair. He tapped the protruding eyeball, producing a clicking sound. “Frozen solid,” he said. He felt around to the other side of the head. “I suspect a gunshot wound, I think I feel an exit here.” He leaned way over, supporting himself with one arm. “Could someone shine a flashlight over here?”

In the yellowish circle of Lamar’s light, he was able to clear the left side of the victim’s head. “Yes. Appears to be our exit, and … temporal.”