Donald Harstad: The Big Thaw

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."

"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."