The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [20]
Three shots with each head in the center of the focus, for a total of six. I changed from the 50 mm lens to the 70-210 mm zoom. I fumbled a bit, as my fingers were getting cold. They were dressed in what at first seemed a light fashion. Jackets, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. Not dressed for today, that was certain.
“What was the temperature when they were supposedly dropped off?” asked Dr. Peters.
“Would have been in the middle to upper twenties,” said Lamar.
“Hmm. Snow cover at that time?” Dr. Peters was pulling out the shirt from the waistband of the first victim, and sliding his gloved hand up onto the abdomen. Checking for indications of core temperature.
“Not a lot. Maybe, oh, two or three inches?” Lamar glanced at me. “Carl?”
“Yeah, about that.” As soon as I spoke, the moisture from my breath froze on my glasses.
“Like ice,” said Dr. Peters, mostly to himself, as he pulled his hand away and pulled the sweatshirt of the second victim up, reaching again toward the abdomen. This shirt, too, was stiff, but movable. “Quite a bit of moisture in the clothes, to freeze like this. Not wet…” He struggled for another few seconds with the sweatshirt. “Maybe damp, though.” He tried to turn the body over to get his hand underneath in the abdominal area, but failed. “Somebody got a hand?”
I reached down, with my own latex-gloved hand, and grabbed the jacket near the right shoulder of the victim. I pulled, hard, and the body rolled about a half turn. They were as stiff as steel. No movement of any joints, whatsoever. Much worse than rigor mortis, where there was at least some possibility of some movement. “Corpse sickles.”
Dr. Peters felt the abdomen of the second victim. “Just like a frozen supermarket turkey,” he said. He stood. “Was there any reason they might have, oh, maybe sweat a bit before they were killed? That we’d know of at this point…”
“They were supposed to have walked in from over the hill,” I said, letting go of the body, and watching it roll stiffly back to its original position. Just like a log, I thought. With the arms just like stiff, broken branches. “There are what look like may have been tracks in that direction.”
“Good. I think that might do it, especially if they’d stopped in a warm place for a while … like the house, for example.”
“They sure aren’t dressed for snowmobiling, even in the twenties, are they,” said Lamar, making a firm point.
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Dr. Peters. “Not an expert in that, though,” he said with a grin. “But if they were to do it, they’d be needing the services of another kind of doctor by now.”
“We don’t have any injuries yet, do we?” said Lamar.
“Not yet,” said Dr. Peters, kneeling at the heads of the victims. “I suspect we’ll find something inside the bags, though.”
“Asphyxiation,” said Art.
Dr. Peters looked up. “Pardon?”
“Asphyxiation,” said Art, again. “You think?”
“I shouldn’t be betting a large amount,” said Dr. Peters. He began tugging at the bag on the closest victim. “These aren’t at all tight.”
The white bag was stiff, the way that polyethylene gets when it’s really cold. It gave Dr. Peters a rough time for a few seconds, since it also appeared to be stuck to the victim’s head by frozen blood. He finally tugged really hard, and as it came off, it suddenly revealed a black-haired male subject, approximately twenty-five or so, unshaven, teeth exposed in a grimace. It was sort of startling, and took us all a second or two to adjust.
There was a lot of clotted blood on the right side of the head, stiffly clumped in with the longish hair, and with a patch of frozen polyethylene adhering to the clumped strands. The right eyeball protruded a bit, with the left appearing sunken, at least in comparison. The complexion was sallow.
“Hmm,” said Dr. Peters.
“Blunt object?” asked Art.
“Not going to be your day,” said Dr. Peters,