had a bit of a convexity at the center, like it had been trying to form into a droplet when it congealed. Stalactite or stalagmite? flickered through my head. I could never remember which was which.
I was virtually certain it was blood. I couldn't 'prove' it, not yet. But that's what it was. The lighter edges were a dead giveaway. Large stains tend to congeal, leaving the plasma in a ring around the outside, the red cells clumped together in the middle. They begin to clot, while the plasma seems to stay liquid longer, so it spreads a little farther.
Well, so I was sure it was blood. So what?
I was getting really creeped, mostly because the house was so completely quiet. I moved through the partition door and into the finished part of the basement. Nothing remarkable, it was plainly a playroom for the grandkids, with those big plastic tricycles and riding tractors and things parked next to the far wall. Plastic ball, Hula Hoop, and an old couch and a Nintendo on a caterer's cart. Nice room.
The throw rug at the door was bunched up, right where it would've been if the door had been opened and it had been pushed aside. But I'd tested that door from the outside, and it was locked. I snorted to myself. Sure, Carl. But it could be opened from the
I opened the basement door, and looked out into the blackness of the backyard. I played my flashlight around at the gazebo ice palace. With the light angle, I saw something I hadn't seen when I was out there. There was a gentle depression, kind of like a filled in furrow, in the snow, leading right from the back door to the gazebo, past it, and on toward the largest of the machine sheds. A virtually straight line, in the old snow. Made before Monday noon, when the new snow was laid down deep.
I glanced down, and the pink drops on the concrete took on a more sinister meaning. Frozen blood on concrete looks for the world like drops of Pepto-Bismol. Pink. I'd thought it was paint. Now I was pretty sure it was blood. If you'd dragged a body down the stairs, and then opened the door, and paused to get your breath, and let the body sit just long enough for blood to drip…
Well.
I was going to have to go to the machine shed, to see what was at the end of the furrow. Had to do that. I was now just about certain that the cousins had argued, and that one had killed the other. Just about. Either that, or somebody had been staying at the house after all, and they had been killed by the cousins. Or, that Fred had killed somebody and was trying to place the blame on two noninvolved cousins. That brought me up short.
As soon as I got out the basement door, I pulled my walkie-talkie from my belt, and contacted the office.
'Comm, Three?'
'Three?'
'Could you get somebody else here? We'd like some ten-seventy-eight out here. We'll be ten-six for a while. Not ten-thirty-three, but send him.' That meant that I was going to be busy, and it wasn't an emergency. I sure didn't want my favorite sheriff sliding into the ditch, running lights and siren, coming to help me look into a shed. Even though he was a good boss, that sort of thing could adversely affect my career.
'What you got, Three?' asked Mike, from his car in the yard.
'Maybe something on the order of a seventy-nine. Not sure. Wait a couple. I'm gonna be walkin' over to that big machine shed, from the basement back door.' 10-79 was the code for coroner notification. A '79' told Mike I might have a body in here someplace.
'Ten-four,' he said, crisply. Bodies, even if just suspected, tend to get your attention.
I put my walkie-talkie back on my belt, turned up the collar on my quilted down vest, pulled my stocking cap down over my ears, pulled on my gloves, and headed the fifty yards over to the steel machine shed. God, it was cold. I'd left my coat upstairs in the house. Of course. Well, I wasn't about to go back. I squeaked and crunched through the snow, being very careful to swing widely away from the drag marks. It was remarkable, but looking back toward the house, the different light angle prevented me from seeing the marks at all.
When I got to the machine shed, I found the 'walk-in' door stuck with ice. Great. I stepped to the big sliding steel doors, kicked at them a couple of times to break the frost adhesion, and slid it open about five feet. 'Never trap a burglar, unless you want a fight.' Training turned to habit.
I went into the gloom of the big building, which was designed to hold a couple of tractors, and a combine. There was hay on the concrete floor, as insulation. One tractor off to the other side. A workbench. Those I could see in the light provided by my flashlight. I needed more light. This was a very large building. I reached over to my right side, feeling for a switch. Not likely I'd find one at the machinery entrance, but there should be one over by the walk-in door. I shined my flashlight to my right, and saw the switch at the end of a length of steel conduit, on the other side of the 'people' entrance. I moved toward it, stepping over what I thought was some lumber, covered by a tarp. I glanced down to avoid tripping, and in the shadowed gap between the tarp and the wall, I saw a human hand.
4
I recoiled, moving back so fast I nearly lost my footing. I caught my breath, and let the effects of the adrenaline rush subside a bit. Okay, Carl. Get it together. This is what you were looking for. Just not quite where you'd expected to find it. Yeah.
Standing there in the large opening at the sliding door, I felt those eyes on me again. Stronger. I turned and looked back toward the house. Nothing. 'Just what I need,' I said to myself. 'You're turning into an old lady, Houseman.' But it bothered me.
I fumbled with the microphone for my walkie-talkie with my gloved hand.
'Mike, why don't you get Nine here, and hand your passenger over to him?'
'Ten-four… I think he's comin' over here anyway. So what's up?'
'I think we're into a real seventy-nine situation. And… uh… you might want to get alert here.'
'We got company?' He sounded almost happy.
'Not sure, just don't take a chance. You… uh… might want to hand your passenger over to Nine back up the lane. Out of sight of the residence.' I just couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.
'Ten-four.' More serious now. It was sinking in with him, too.
I forced myself back into the shed. I hated to do it, but I stepped over the tarp again, and switched on the big fluorescent overhead lights. They flickered a few times, and then came on, casting a bluish light throughout the shed.
'There,' I said to myself. 'Better…'
Cautiously, I shined my flashlight down into the recesses of the mustard-colored tarp. Sure as hell, there was a hand. Pinkish, with the flesh flattened in a way that only the lifeless can manage. And frosted.
I had to know. Hell, I was required to know. Gingerly, I reached down, and pulled at the stiff, frozen tarp. It didn't want to move. I pulled harder. It resisted, and then, suddenly, came away from the wall.
I stepped back, again. I was looking at what appeared to be a human, with the head in a white garbage bag. There was a tear in the bag, and part of the head was exposed, including the right eye. Lying on the floor of the shed, whoever it was was very, very dead.
The tarp was still clinging to the floor. A light edging of ice. In the back of my mind, that told me that the tarp had been placed there before the cold snap. I reached down, to pull it free. As I did so, I noticed booted feet protruding from underneath the tarp, at the other end.
Three of them.
Two bodies? Two? I walked over, and lifted the stiff edge of the canvas sheet. It was really dark under there, but I could see, side by side, frost-covered and stiff, the lower half of two frozen bodies.
Brothers, I was willing to bet. Both of them, as Fred would say.
They were nearly identically 'packaged.' White plastic bags on the heads. I could barely make out some features, like noses and mouths. The bags didn't appear to have been fastened around the neck. Just placed over the head.
I could see no obvious marks, holes, or bloodstains on the clothes. But, before the medical examiner and the
