The Big Thaw Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
     
Four
     
Tuesday, January 13, 1998, 0057
     
    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 lab got here, it would be most unwise to touch them.
    I glanced back around the shed. One tractor. Otherwise, empty. Just a lot of straw-covered concrete floor, and two bodies under a tarp.
    “Well, son of a bitch.” I took a deep breath, and dropped the stiff canvas. “Son of a bitch. What’d you get me into, Fred?”
    I heard the