The Big Thaw (8 page)

“My hired man is up here all the time. How come he didn’t find no burglary? Care to explain that?”

“Don’t know him, Cletus. Maybe that’s something you should ask him about.” I was unhappy about not being offered coffee. “You got an alarm system or anything?”

“Didn’t think I’d need one. What with all you on the county payroll.”

Because of Cletus and his attitude, the agent in charge of the lab crew decided that they better stay at the house until everything was done, rather than try to get past Cletus in the morning. The rest of us stayed right along with them.

That was all right. I was there when the bodies were removed, and saw a complete nonreaction from Cletus Borglan. In the dark, with the stark lights, the black hearses, the frost and snow, and all the officers and agents present, it was quite a scene. As I said to Lamar, it was too bad we didn’t get a picture. It would have looked great on the Office Christmas Card next year.

I ended up back in the office, sitting alone at my desk about 0445, typing my preliminary report. It helps to do that. Organizes your thoughts. Sure. Well, in this case, there was damned little to organize. Fred let ’em off. They didn’t come back. Who but Fred even knew they were there? Nobody.

Before I left the office, I left a note: ANYBODY WITH 43 ON FRED GROTHLER, A.K.A. GOOBER, LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE. 10-43 is cop talk for information.

I got home at 0547. It was amazingly cold. Minus forty-four degrees in still air. That’s about thirty degrees colder than the temperature in your home freezer. The air was so still the smoke from the chimneys was just standing in straight lines. All the moisture had been frozen and precipitated out of the atmosphere, and the little frozen crystals were all over everything. I stuck my head in the door, and called out to my wife, softly, “Sue?” No answer. She was upstairs, sleeping. She was going to have to miss this.

I couldn’t resist. I went to the sink, filled a large plastic cup with hot water, and rushed back outside. I heaved the contents of the glass up into the air … It dissipated in a puff, and was gone. Nothing came back down. I love to do that. I made four more trips, all with the same result. Just cold enough. It made my day. I was almost tempted to wake Sue … almost. She’s pretty tolerant, but there are limits…

Art and Lamar had decided to have a meeting of the investigative crew before the lab unit left for Des Moines. Swell. I hadn’t even gotten to bed when they called. According to Lamar, both he and Art thought I’d better attend. 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 had been seized, bagged, labeled, and would be relayed to the lab in Des Moines.

Next, the lab team had made several interesting confirmations at the house. The small hole in the wall appeared to be made by a .22 caliber bullet. They hadn’t found any shell casing yet. But it was a fairly good bet that it had been deflected by one of the Colsons’ heads, and was not traveling point-first when it hit the plaster.

The marks in the carpet were originally bloodstains, somewhat smaller than the dark area indicated, and had been cleaned up. Placing the chairs over them had kept them damp longer than they would have been, and made them more noticeable to me. The stain under the throw rug was not blood. It appeared to have been grease, and was old. They could have taken up the entire sections of carpet, and bagged them. Cut them right out of the floor. They didn’t, but had taken small inch-square samples in several places. Easier to replace for the owner. Not that Cletus had been appreciative.

The dried puddle on the top of the water heater had been confirmed as blood, too, and had dripped down through a crack in the floor above, near the top of the basement stair. There was a large bloodstain extending between the edge of the stairs and the wall. As one of them said, just like you’d spilled some liquid, and cleaned it up in a hurry. As you moved the rag, you’d push the liquid toward the wall…

They had found no rags, by the way. Bloody or otherwise.

Traces of bloodstains had been found in a kitchen drawer, and on a box of white trash bags contained therein. All blood samples were going to the lab. Comparisons to the blood of the victims would be made.

There were numerous fingerprints on the sliding doors, but they were old. (You can tell older ones if you use print powder, because they don’t jump out the way really fresh ones do.) They’d fumed several items with cyanoacrylate, and had raised many prints. Most of them appeared female, and if the lab team had to bet, they’d say they belonged to Mrs. Borglan. They’d know when they got a set of prints from her for comparison. (Female prints are often finer, and smaller, than male ones.)

They’d fumed the chairs, and gotten some smudges. Nothing legible. Played hell with the chairs, though.

All trash receptacles had been checked, and nothing of evidentiary value was present. Same with clothes hampers. Attic in the old half was checked, and nothing was there. Crawl space above the ceiling of the new addition was checked. Nothing.

They were preparing scale diagrams of the scene, and would have them for us in a couple of days. They gave us a copy of the measurements taken, so we would be able to do our own rough sketches with accurate distances.

That was it. No murder weapon. No spent shell casings. No foot tracks, except the one on the back door that seemed to match the shoe on one of the bodies.

Oh. The marks that I had followed to the chair from the archway? The ones I thought were drag marks? They were fresh vacuum cleaner tracks.

“We’re taking the vacuum cleaner and bag back to the lab with us.” They did that, because sometimes the critical part of some evidence wouldn’t make it all the way into the bag. They disassembled the cleaners completely, down to slitting and opening the hoses.

Well. You just never know.

Art spoke up. “It looks pretty much like that’s all the physical evidence, then. Except the bag, and the bodies.”

We agreed.

“Anything anybody needs before we let these people go back to Des Moines?”

Làmar spoke up. “When can we expect your photos?”

Four days, max, as it turned out.

But that reminded me. I excused myself, and hurried out to my car, and got the film I’d used yesterday, and hustled it back to our new secretary, Judy. “Could you get these developed, today or tomorrow, rush job?”

“Sure, I think, I’ll check…”

“If you could take ’em down? I’m not going to have a chance for a while, and I don’t want ’em to be delayed.”

“What do you want, like, double prints?”

“Sure,” I said. “One for us, one for the DCI people. Maybe a third for the official file, so we have something to work with. Just keep it cheap, or Lamar will have a fit.” I hurried back into the kitchen, to catch the lab team.

I met the county attorney as I passed the dispatch center.

“I’m here to see what we can make of this.” He sounded burdened, as usual. Being county attorney in our county, as in most of the state, was a part-time job. A large case could really hurt his private practice, which is where most of his income came from.

“Oh, it’s a murder, all right,” I said.

“Damn,” he muttered, as we entered the kitchen.

“Our photos will be back in a couple of days, too,” I announced. The lab people said, “Fine,” but Art had a better idea.

“Why don’t you give your film to the lab, they can develop it for you?”

I’d experienced that before. The state then kept the negatives. We always wanted to keep our own negatives. “That’s okay,” I said. “They’ve already gone.”

“Where do you take them?” asked Art. “Dubuque?”

“No, right downtown here, to the local drugstore. They’ll be back in a couple of days.”

After the lab team left, Lamar, the county attorney, Art, and I conferred. Actually, we argued perspectives, as they say. Art, who had a reputation for preferring the quick and dirty approach, insisted that Fred had done the deed.

“No doubt,” he said. “Opportunity? You bet. I’m sure we can find a motive.”

I disagreed. “Nope. Look at the scene. This is about the tidiest crime scene I’ve ever seen. Fred’s not that careful. Not that patient.”

“I’m not ruling out his having help, here,” said Art. “An accomplice.”

“Who,” I asked, “Martha Stewart? Whoever cleaned up had lots of ‘Helpful Household Hints’ for the carpet.”

“But, Carl,” interjected the county’s finest, “didn’t you say that Fred had asked you if you’d charge him with murder if they were dead?”

“Yeah.” Hard to argue that one.

“Speaking as an attorney,” he said, grinning, “it certainly sounds to me like he had prior knowledge.”

“I really don’t think so,” I said, leaning forward. “I think Fred was really worried that they might be dead, but I got the impression he thought they might have frozen to death. Not been shot. Don’t forget, he was also worried that they were going to crap on him for missing his pickup assignment.” I leaned back in my chair. “He just didn’t want to be held responsible, that’s all.”

“Look,” said Art. “Give me another suspect … anybody else. Then I might be able to cut Fred some slack. But, Carl,” he said, leaning forward, “he was the only one who knew they’d fucking be at the Bergerman residence!”

“That’s Borglan,” I said. “The Borglan residence.” He just blinked. I shook my head. He’d just had to use “fucking,” to show he was one of the guys.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I hate the ‘gut feeling’ bullshit as much as you do, but I just don’t think that Fred did ’em. It doesn’t make any sense to do all the covering up, and then sit outside the farm and honk your horn. Whoever killed them cleaned up the evidence really well, and did it so that the hired man, or anybody else watching the place, wouldn’t pick up on the crime. Right?”

“Possibly,” said Art.

“Possibly” my ass. “So, why then sit on the road and draw attention to yourself, on the off chance that a cop might come along? I just don’t think so.”

“Well, with the bodies salted away in the shed, the only person who might stumble on them was the hired man, right?” Lamar was off on his own track.

We all agreed.

“Let’s not rule him out,” said Lamar. “He might have been at the place when the two guys showed up. He might have done it.”