The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [22]
“These two gentlemen,” said Dr. Peters, “are very thoroughly frozen. I suggest we leave them here until the lab team can see them, too. There’s certainly no harm in that, as long as they get here fairly soon.”
“They should be here in a couple of hours,” said Art.
“That long,” said Dr. Peters, pulling off his gloves. “Well, we have to defrost them before we can do much else … no matter. That’ll take twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
“Damn,” I said, pretty much to myself. “That long?”
“Just about the same formula you’d use to thaw a frozen turkey before Thanksgiving.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, Carl,” he said. “I’ll X-ray the heads as soon as we get them to a machine. Most of the information you’ll need right away should be available then.
“The heads should thaw a little quicker than the rest of them, as well,” he said.
“Freezing going to affect the tissues … the tests?” asked Lamar.
“Oh, sure. But not in an appreciable fashion. Burst cell walls won’t prevent toxicology testing, for instance.” Dr. Peters smiled. He looked around. “It’s fairly obvious they weren’t killed here. Any ideas?”
I told him what I’d seen in the house.
“Very good news,” said Dr. Peters. “I’ll need to take a look inside, then.” He glanced at me. “The heat was on in there?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, excellent,” said Dr. Peters.
“Let’s hurry up,” said Art, “I’m freezing to death.”
“Next time,” said Lamar, dryly, “maybe you could wear a real coat…”
We went into the house via the kitchen door, and were very careful not to disturb any evidence. If it had just been a burglary scene, nobody would have gone in again until the lab team got there. But it was important for the homicide investigators to see the scene in the least disturbed state possible. That outweighed the lab requirements.
I walked Dr. Peters through the path I’d taken in the house. He agreed that the carpet stain could well be a bloodstain that had been cleaned up. The hole in the wall he didn’t want to speculate on, but the diameter looked about right for a .22 caliber round. The small dried puddle on top of the water cooler was, to the best of his knowledge, blood.
Dr. Peters had to leave, as he had to autopsy a questioned death victim in Manchester. He said that he’d do ours as soon as the bodies were warmed sufficiently.
“X rays first,” he said. “And I’ll be in touch with the lab team.”
We waited in the house for the mobile lab, who arrived about half an hour after Dr. Peters left. They’d made remarkable time.
We showed the lab team the area we were most interested in, and then did an initial inspection of the rest of the house, as a preliminary, and to make sure we weren’t overlooking anything that could be of primary importance. We didn’t find anything useful.
What we did find was a normal home, with two possible exceptions. First, there were two PCs in the back bedroom. Both were on and running. Many farms were equipped with computers, so their mere presence wasn’t unusual. The monitors, of course, were in the “rest mode,” and I couldn’t see what was on the screens. But, as I looked, the hard drive light on one of them flickered, and the faint buzz told me that the hard drive was being accessed for some reason. Running, all right. My first thought was of an elaborate security system. I didn’t touch them, being a little reluctant to activate an alarm. I also thought that an alarm system might explain one of them being on. But two? Maybe one as a backup? Legally, I couldn’t even turn the screens on, as materials contained within the machines had the same constitutional protections as to privacy as anything else. I did make a mental note to ask Lamar why these were so much newer than our department machines. Curious.
The second possible exception was an extensive library, in the upper floor of the older portion of the house. Long shelves of computer books, weapons books, explosives manuals, an escape and evasion manual, and books on subjects such as the inner workings of the IRS, and countersurveillance