The Big Thaw Read Online Free PDF Page A

left off.
    “So,” I said, “let’s tell the court…” I do talk to myself occasionally, hopefully when I’m alone. Just to organize my thoughts. Somebody told me once that it was a trait of only children. At least it fit.
    When I go through a possible crime scene, I try to imagine describing the evidence to the court. It helps me concentrate, and to evaluate what I’ve got. In this particular instance, I said to myself, “Your Honor, there was what could have been a tomato sauce stain on the carpet, and there was a lighter mark on the wall, so I assumed it was where blood spatters had been washed off around a nail hole…” “And how did you come to discover this evidence, Deputy?” “Uh, well, I was checking on the welfare of two burglars…” I smiled to myself. Sounded a little weak.
    So, I needed more. Well, for the court, anyway.
    The residue of the feeling of being watched lingered, just at the edge of my mind. My first instinct was to call for backup. I didn’t, though, for several reasons. First, the only backup available was Mike, and he had to be with Fred. Second, what I had wasn’t anything solid, and even if it had been, the evidence indicated the scene had been created a couple of days ago. Third, if we did have a scene of something more than a burglary, then the more people tromping about, the worse it would for a lab team.
    I squatted down near the chairs, and looked back toward the kitchen, trying to get a better indication from a lower angle. I could just barely discern the parallel tracks from here, and they didn’t head toward the kitchen so much as off to the right side of the archway. They looked suspiciously like drag marks, to me. There was a sliver of a door frame, just visible, through the arch. I got up, my left knee complaining, and crossed to the door. Descending stairs to the basement. Great. I hate going down stairs into basements, especially when you aren’t sure who might be there. You expose 90 percent of your body on the way down the stairs before you can defend yourself.
    I turned on the lights at the top of the stairs, rechecked my holster strap, and went down slowly. It was one of those basements that’s about three-quarters finished, with the area around the furnace and water heater left in concrete floor, studded walls, and unfinished ceiling. The first thing that caught my eye as I descended the stairs was the top of the water heater. White. Clean. Except for a puddle of what looked like a rusty water stain near the middle. The center of the puddle was reddish, and the outer edges were yellowish to almost clear. The problem was, all the pipes seemed to come out the side of the heater, not the top. So much for a rust stain. I peered over the edge of the railing. It looked like the water had dripped from somewhere up under the stairs. I continued down to the basement floor, and walked back to the heater. The puddled stain was dry but thickish, looking like you could flake off chips from the edges. And there was a similar colored stain on the underside of the basement stairs, right over the heater. I looked a little closer, and saw that this stain, too, was more solid than water stains would be. It 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