Free The Big Thaw by Donald Harstad Page A

Right. I’m sure Art did.
    I’d just finished explaining to Sue that I’d been up all night, that we had a murder, and that she’d missed the experiment with the water in the air.
    “Well, now you can get some sleep,” she said, pulling her sweater over her head, and continuing to dress for school.
    “Don’t think so. That was the office, and they want me to be back in about an hour or so.”
    She stopped fastening her earrings, and turned to face me. “I don’t want to sound mean, but you’re getting too old to stay up twenty-four hours a day.”
    “Eh?” I cupped my ear.
    “I said…” She stopped. “It’s not funny.”
    As I came through the office door, I smelled fresh pastries. Great. I’m on a fairly strict low-fat diet. I stomped my feet to shake off the snow. I had on the same lace-up boots as yesterday, but was dressed in blue jeans, sweatshirt, and my own parka. Fortified with long Johns, of course. It had warmed up, but was still minus fifteen or so. And, I admit it, I wanted to be in plain clothes just to prove to Art that I wasn’t a “uniform.” Ego. Always seems to be there when you don’t need it.
    Everybody was in the jail kitchen, seated around a long, industrial-sized folding table that had been in the kitchen since the 1950s. The initials of many prisoners were scratched into its top, along with a reasonably good checkerboard on one of the corners. Sort of a department heirloom. I grabbed a doughnut and some coffee, and sat down.
    Lamar told us that the phones had been ringing like crazy since about midnight, with the media getting all worked up. So far, they hadn’t put in a physical appearance, but he was pretty sure they’d be here by ten or so. Lamar hated media people, primarily because he was self-conscious. He also hated them because they seemed incapable of getting a story straight. He tended to leave terse, handwritten statements for the duty dispatcher to read to whoever called. He handed us all copies of his most recent effort.
     
    THE BODIES OF TWO MALE SUBJECTS WERE DISCOVERED ON THE CLETUS BORGLAN FARM YESTERDAY. BOTH WERE FROZEN, THE CASE BEING TREATED AS A MURDER.
     
    Great. I started to laugh, and drew a heavy stare from the boss.
    “Jesus, Lamar,” I finally got out. “You want to reword this?”
    “What?” Gruffly, at best.
    “Well, maybe you could put in something about the cause of death being undetermined at this time?” I grinned. “Otherwise, it sounds like they were killed by Jack Frost.”
    He looked at the note, and his eyes twinkled a little. “Write in the change,” he said.
    Lamar then announced that he’d talked to the two officers who had the responsibility to do the residence checks at the Borglan place. They had not had any tire tracks or foot tracks in the lane for the last eight to ten days.
    The first case item of importance was Art’s announcement that he had “ordered up” an Iowa National Guard helicopter for sometime today, hopefully to arrive before noon. He wanted to “scope out” the snowmobile tracks from the air. I just loved it when he used cop talk like that. He was the sort of guy who wouldn’t say to his wife, “I always miss you, dear.” Instead, he’d say, “I miss you, twenty-four-seven.” But it was a good idea. I dearly wished we had resources like that in our department.
    “I don’t know what they have available,” he said, “so I’m not sure how many of you will get to go up.” Leaving absolutely no doubt that he would be in the chopper, regardless.
    Over the years, I’ve flown a few times in Iowa Guard choppers, and knew we had a choice of two types: the OH-58, which held four; and the UH-1H, which held ten or more, and was called a Huey. I really hoped for a Huey
    Art said Dr. Peters was going to X-ray the two heads in Manchester in about an hour. The bodies were still thawing, or “defrosting,” as he had put it. He said they were apparently able to remove the clothing by now, so the clothes