Donald Harstad: The Big Thaw

"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.

"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.

"Sheriffs 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…