The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [16]
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 …
“Comm, you might want to try to get hold of the owner here, wherever they said they could be reached. Not too many details, okay, but I think we might need one of them up here.”
“Ten-four.”
“And, let me know if you reach them …”
“Ten-four,” she said, being a bit short. Of course she’d let me know. Telling her something that basic was just a bit of an insult. I was sure I’d hear about that one later. I was wrong. I heard about it right away.
“Comm, One?” That was Lamar.
“One?”
“You want to let him know when you tie his shoes, too?”
“If it makes him feel better,” said Sally. She sounded happy.
I could hear Lamar chuckle as he said, “Three, we’re already on that.”
I grinned, and got back to my notes. Back to Fred. Back to the Borglans’ vacation. They were in Florida. Great. Should probably be a day or more before they could get a plane … Oh, well. We’d need their permission to search the place, just as a courtesy, and to possibly extend that search over their entire farm. Not only that, but they were the only people who could tell us a lot of things, including whether or not anything was missing. Whether or not Fred knew them. Who would have had access to the place. What was disturbed. All the stuff that I needed to know.
We’d just have to do what we needed to do without them. It occurred to me that I’d be a little irked if I had to come back from Florida into this deep freeze, for something like this. Hell, for any reason, really.
“Three, Comm” jarred me back to reality.
“Comm?”
“Have contacted the subject you requested. They will be ten-seventy-six ASAP.”
“The property owner?”
“Ten-four.”
Cool. Almost like magic. “They give an ETA, Comm?” I still thought it would be at least forty-eight hours.
“The male subject is already on his way, was coming up for some business things, for a couple of days.”
“Well, ten-four, Comm. Excellent!” I just love it when things happen to go smoothly for a change.
“Should be arriving at the Cedar Rapids Airport in an hour or so, according to his wife.”
“Ten-four!” Perfect timing. How about that.
“Three, the other subject is ten-six, but will be able to head up in about an hour or so, from the Manchester area.”
I thought rapidly. Who was the other subject? Oh.
“Last name end in a nine?” As in 10-79, which would be the M.E.
“That’s the one.” She was quick, as usual.
“Ten-four.” The one I really wanted was based near Cedar Rapids. Manchester threw me. “Comm, did they say which one it was?”
“Negative, Three.”
I hung the mike back up. All right. I wasn’t sure just how much of a rush we should be in for the M.E., with the bodies in a deep freeze. If they’d gone out to the shed on Sunday, and it was way up in the twenties, would they be frozen through by now? Would it make an appreciable difference? How in hell was the M.E. going to come even close to a time of death? They did have frost on them. Warm when they got out there? I thought for a second. If they’d been covered as soon as they were deposited, would the frost have formed? Or did it mean they were covered afterward? Damn. If they’d been pretty warm, I thought we might just get frost as they froze. And just what did