The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [25]
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…
Six
Tuesday, January 13, 1998, 0758
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