The Big Thaw Read online

  “Fred … you really expect me to believe that?”

  There was a long pause. Then he said the most honest thing he’d said all night. “Well, it’d bu, bu, bu, be nice if you di, di, di, did …”

  We had nothing, we couldn’t hold him much longer than the time it would take to do an accident report and get his car out of the ditch, and I was very, very tired. “Tell you what, Fred … You think about it, and we’ll talk again in a minute or two.” I looked at him for a long moment. “Just don’t lie to me, Fred. You know how I hate that.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  I picked up my mike. “Comm, Three. I’ll be bringing the driver into the department as soon as the wrecker gets here. Any idea on an ETA for that?”

  “Just a few minutes,” she replied. “I called him about fifteen minutes ago, and he said he’d go right out.”

  “Ten-four,” I said. I felt sorry for the wrecker driver. Bundling up, going out to an ice cold garage and getting into an ice cold wrecker, just to come out here and pull out some idiot’s car that shouldn’t have been here in the first place …

  “No!”

  I looked at Goober. “What?”

  “No, no, don’t take me in there. We can’t go in to Maitland.”

  “We can’t?” I looked at him over the top of my reading glasses. “And just why would that be?”

  Suddenly, he looked as if he were about to cry. “They, they, they need me there …”

  “‘They’ Fred? Who are ‘they’?”

  I’d known Fred for about five years, since the time I’d busted him for DWI when he was sixteen. We’d always gotten along fairly well, really, and had met officially three or four times since his DWI. Minor stuff, a small theft, a couple of vandalism charges. Fred wasn’t exactly what you’d call a career criminal. Just a bored kid in a very small Iowa town, who honked his horn at deer.

  He opened his mouth, and made a tiny choking sound. He didn’t look directly at me.

  “You know, Mr. Houseman, those break-ins you beh, beh, been having around the county, in the farmhouses?”

  “Yeah,” I said, being noncommittal. I knew them, all right. Eleven burglaries at rural residences in the last sixteen days. That was just as far as we knew. One of the problems was that the burglaries were at a select number of farmhouses that were empty for the winter, the owners being elsewhere. Elsewhere as in warmer. Most of the burglaries were reported by whoever was looking after the place, when they showed up to check the furnace and the water pipes. Usually once a week or so. The main problem was, we had no idea if, or how many, more would be discovered. Neither did we have much of an idea of when they’d been done, except after the date the owners had left. We only knew the date when they’d been found.

  “Well, uh, do you have a, a, a list, like, of the places that have been robbed?”

  “Yeah.” We had two lists, actually. The first was a simple listing of the known burglaries, in chronological order. The other was a list of residence check requests, filed with the department by the owners before they left, and giving information like the dates they’d be gone, who was going to check on their property for them, and asking us to have a car drive by every night. We were beginning to regard the second list as an indicator of the next burglaries. It was also very painful for Lamar, our sheriff. Many of the people who were on the list were his supporters. He’d gotten their support, at least in part, by having the residence check program in the first place. Simply being able to be the first to tell them they’d been burglarized, however, wasn’t his idea of a positive result coming from the RC program. As a direct consequence of Lamar’s pain, it was becoming a particularly painful experience for the officers on the night shift, who were supposed to do the actual checking.

  “Uh, well, do you have anything about that Bohr, Bohr, Borglan place, out on W4G, down by the Church crossroads?” asked Fred.

  “Cletus Borglan’s, you mean?” A perfect target. Borglan and his family wintered in Florida, usually leaving right after Christmas. And about a half mile from where Mike had come upon Fred about an hour ago. I began to feel a glimmer of hope.

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Goober began to rock back and forth, just a little twitchy movement, but noticeable.

  “No.” Not unless somebody had forgotten to tell me, I thought.

  “Oh, boy. Oh, boy.” He sat holding on to the front edge of the seat with both hands, looking down. “I wish you had, Mr. Houseman. Oh, boy.” He sounded like he was going to cry. He began to rock a bit harder.

  I figured that he was about to snitch somebody off, and that he was hoping that we had a report of the burglary already, so that he wouldn’t be telling me something that only he and the burglar would know. A hazardous practice, without a doubt.

  “If you’re worried about us ‘finding it,’ Fred, we can always come up with something that’ll keep you out of that part.” I tried to be helpful.

  “No, it’s not that. Thanks, though.”

  “Sure.” I waited a second. “Come on, Goober. Spit it out.”

  “It’s just that, well, meh, meh, me and my cousins from Oelwein … we been the ones doing those break-ins, you know?”

  “Just a second, Fred. Are you saying that you’ve been directly involved with some of them?” A confession? Could I be that lucky?

  “Mostly all, I suspect,” he answered, in a soft voice. The rocking increased, perceptibly.

  Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you. Up to now, we hadn’t had a single clue as to who had been doing the burglaries. I took a breath, to slow myself down, and to try to appear matter-of-fact. “I’m going to have to advise you of your rights, Fred.”

  “Sure, but that ain’t what it’s about. Not why I was out here … not directly, Mr. Houseman.”

  I told him to hang on a second, and very quickly recited his Miranda rights to him. To be safe. “There, Fred. Now, do you understand those rights?”

  “Yeah. But, Mr. Houseman, you gotta understand. Dirk and Royce, my cousins, they had me driving the car, you know?”

  “While they did the burglaries, you mean?”

  “I just drive ’em out to the place, you know, and they get out and sneak in, and then I go away for a while, and I come back and pick ’em up.”

  “You pick ’em up? They go in on foot?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked up beseechingly. “Am I gonna get charged with manslaughter, or something, if they’re dead?”

  I must have given him my dumb look.

  “If they’re dead, are you gonna send me away? I just gotta know.”

  Fred leaned forward, terribly earnest. “You gotta understand, Mr. Houseman. That’s what I been trying to tell you. I dropped ’em off Sunday night. Two nights ago. On the other side of the hill back of the place. I saw ’em go over the hill, to go into the place.” He stared at me with wide eyes. “They never came back out.”

  Three

  Tuesday, January 13, 1998, 0018

  Fred kept talking. “I came back two hours later, like I was supposed to, and they wasn’t there. I came back again after an hour, and they wasn’t there. I honked the horn, even if I wasn’t supposed to do that. I waited right there. I wasn’t supposed to do that, neither. I waited fifteen minutes or so. Nobody. I drove all the way to Vickerton, and came back. Nothin’. Nobody there. Then it got light, and I had to go.” He was speaking in a rush. “This morning, I got scared they’d really be wantin’ to get back at me for missin’ ’em like that, and them havin’ to walk and all, and I called Aunt Nora, and she said they wasn’t home. I called again at suppertime. They still ain’t home!” He looked at me, worried he wouldn’t find them, and sort of afraid that he would. “I went back tonight, and they wasn’t there then, either. That’s why I was honkin’ the horn. It wasn’t no deer. And I was afraid to go in, ’cause I figured you’d be there by then, and waitin’ for me.” He drew a deep breath. “And they ain’t come home.” He looked up at me, his face all screwed up. “They still ain�
�t come home, and I think maybe they froze to death!”

  I hate to admit it, but my thinking was running quickly along these lines: I had a confession, albeit a tentative one regarding details, to a string of very irritating burglaries. I was virtually certain that the two cousins who had been dropped off were lying low somewhere else, having, for reasons of their own, ditched Fred. I was in a position of having good reason to check the Borglan place, based on Fred’s statements. I certainly didn’t need a warrant. But, to make the case as good as possible, I wanted to have Fred with me when I went to Borglan’s, so he could show me where he’d let them off, and where he would pick them up. So far so good. But to take Fred with me, and to talk with him any more, I really should have him talk with his attorney first. Except … The lateness of the hour helped. But the biggest boon of all was Fred’s genuine concern for the safety and welfare of his two dumb cousins. Exigent circumstances, as they say.

  I picked up a pen. “What are your cousins’ names, again?”

  “Dirk Colson and Royce Colson. They would be brothers. Both of ’em.”

  “Okay, Fred.” I wrote the names down. “And how old?”

  “My age or so,” he said. “Are you gonna help ’em, Mr. Houseman?”

  “Of course.”

  Mike followed Goober and me as we drove back along the track of the chase toward the Borglan farm. We left John at the accident scene, to help the wrecker with any possible traffic control as they pulled Goober’s car out of the ditch.

  About a quarter mile from Borglan’s farm drive, just around a curve screened from the farm by a low, tree-covered hill, Goober told me to stop.

  “Here’s where I let ’em off,” he said.

  “Look here on the right,” I said to Mike, over the radio.

  Mike turned on his right alley light, and I squinted through the window on Goober’s side. Although the ditch was filled, you could just make out faint depressions in the snow, from inside the barbed-wire fence line, up and over the hillside. Filled in almost completely by the new snow, the tracks would have escaped all notice if they hadn’t been pointed out to us. There could have been two sets. It was hard to tell.

  “Right there?” I asked Fred.

  “Yeah … ooh, shit, I wish they’d of come back…”

  “And you were to pick ’em up here, too?”

  He began to rock again. “I didn’t, I didn’t screw it up. I was here!”

  I picked up my mike. “Delivery and pickup point,” I said. I began to move down the road, toward Borglan’s lane. “Let’s just go on in, Five,” I said.

  It took us about three minutes to negotiate the lane at the Borglan place. It wound to the right, then back to the left, among the stark and leafless trees. The branches were outlined with fresh white snow, which proved to be a distraction in my headlights. I nearly slipped off the lane and into a small ditch on the right. As I concentrated on the lane, though, I noticed that there were absolutely no indications of any tracks. None. Given the faint tracks where Fred had told me he let them off, I thought there surely would have been some indication if his cousins had left by this, the easiest route.

  Fred was becoming more and more frightened and nervous the closer we got to the Borglan house. He was tapping the heel of his left foot on the floorboard so vigorously his left knee was jumping in and out of my peripheral vision.

  “Fred! Knock off that foot-stompin’ shit! It’s bothering me.”

  He stopped abruptly. “I don’t like this. I sh, sh, shouldn’t be here …”

  “Why not?” I asked, distractedly.

  “I don’t know. I just sh, sh, shouldn’t be …”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, as we pulled into the Borglan farmyard. I stopped, and rolled down my window to obtain a totally unfogged view. No tracks here, either. Not even faint.

  It was a nice place. Nice house and large garage. Fresh paint on the outbuildings. Bright orangish light provided by a sodium vapor streetlamp on a high pole. Really looked homey.

  There were no lights on inside, except the faint glow of what I assumed was a night-light in the kitchen.

  I walked back to Mike, who was rolling his window down at my approach.

  “You want to get Fred back here to your car? I’ll have a look around, but I don’t want to leave him alone in my car too long.”

  “In the cage?” asked Mike.

  “Naw He isn’t in custody. If we need to secure him, though, I’ll let you know.”

  “How we gonna know that?” asked Mike.

  “If I have signs here of forcible entry, we just pop him for suspicion of burglary. He drove ’em in, according to him.”

  “Suits me,” said Mike, with a wide grin. “From those tracks, you mean?”

  I grinned back. “Yep. It’s beginning to sound like he and his cousins have done the whole series over the last month or so. Cool.”

  I went back to my car, instructed Fred to get in with Mike, and grabbed my winter coat and flashlight. It was terribly cold.

  I crunched and squeaked my way around to the left of the house, where the ground sloped away to reveal a limestone basement wall. I swept my flashlight back and forth on the slope. No signs of any tracks down there, so I stayed up top, not sure I’d be able to keep upright if I tried to walk the slope. I retraced my steps toward the right side, and newer section, of the house, looking for a point of entry. As I passed close to the sliding glass door, I flicked the beam of my flashlight toward the lock and handle. I noticed it seemed to be open just a crack. There was also a very obvious silver metallic mark on the flat black frame, near the lock. I stopped, and squinted in the bright beam of my flashlight. I clumsily took off my glove by holding a finger in my teeth, unzipped my vest, and reached in under my sweater to my shirt pocket, and took out my reading glasses. I looked more closely. Yep. A very small pry mark at the latch, probably from a quarter- or half-inch screwdriver. Not all that big, but in the beam of my light it was like a little mirror. I reached out, and put side pressure on the handle. Sure enough, the door slid to the right. Point of entry, no doubt. I put my glasses back, zipped my coat, and put on my glove, and closed the door again, most of the way. I left a small crack, because, with my luck, although pried, it was still functional, and I didn’t want to lock myself out.

  I walked back to Mike’s car. He unrolled his window again.

  “Looks like a forcible entry,” I said. “You want to do the honors?”

  As I squeaked and crunched back to the Borglan residence, I heard Mike begin to recite a Miranda warning to Fred again, having just placed him under arrest for burglary.

  “Not gonna be your day, Fred,” I said to myself.

  Having been burned a couple of times by assuming one obvious entry point and later finding the real one, I continued around to the right, checking toward the rear of the house. The slope was gentler here, partly illuminated by the headlights of our cars, and I ventured carefully down. I played the beam of my flashlight around, and saw lumps and bumps all over the backyard, probably small bushes, and lawn stuff covered with snow. There was a gazebo sort of structure, all snow and ice. It reminded me of some sort of a Russian village church. A snow and ice gas grille stood on its silver pedestal in what had to be a patio area. There were very slightly depressed tracks, visible only as I looked back up the slope, fairly close to mine. I’d missed them in the glare of the headlights, but now that I was in the shadow, they were easier to see. More were around the rear, and some at the back door, which was recessed and in even deeper shadow than the rest of the place. I checked it. It was protected here, though, and there was almost no snow near the walls. I stood on a narrow concrete walkway, and looked at the door. There appeared to be a fresh dent in the white steel storm door casing, and fresh pry marks on the wooden main door. I tested it with a gentle push, and it stayed firm. I pushed a bit harder. No result. Out with the glasses again, which I dropped in the snow. Made them wet, and very cold, but at least they hadn’t broken. I peered at th
e marks on the door. Looked to be about quarter- or half-inch screwdriver marks. There was also a pretty good footprint near the lock. I grinned. Burglars almost never noticed the print they left when they tried to kick a door in. At night, when it was fresh, it probably just looked wet. But everything outside has a coat of dust, and with snowy boots making wet dust, and with wet dust making very fine mud, you’d frequently get a very fine shoe print. At least after it froze or dried. I angled my flashlight more, and could even make out a possible section of lettering from the label on the sole. Cool.

  I pushed the door once more, very hard. Nothing. Tough door. Most good modern doors were. I noticed the rubber doormat had been pushed away from the door. A couple of drops of white paint on the concrete, and three or four pink ones. Sloppy painters, I thought. I removed my glasses, which were beginning to freeze to my face, and put them back in my pocket. I stepped back, out into the reflected light from the headlights.

  Perfect. They’d tried the back door, found it difficult to pry, and had come up to the front, where the sliding door offered much less resistance. Happened often at burglaries. The suspect would go for the obvious entry point, and find it blocked. Proceed to another, hoping it would be easier. It also fit, since it was reasonably likely that the cousins hadn’t closely scouted the Borglan place before going in. That brought up another question, which was how they’d know Borglan’s was empty in the first place. The answer was, of course, that they probably wouldn’t know. Ah, but living within five miles, good old Fred sure would. Grumbling slightly to myself, I struggled back up the slope, breathing hard in the cold air. I was puffing by the time I reached the top. “Better lose some weight,” I puffed to myself.

  I went to the sliding door, and opened it. I shouted, “Anybody home?” It never hurts to ask. Especially as I was looking for the two lost cousins. Well, ostensibly, anyway. “Police officer, anybody home?” I waved at Mike, stepped inside, and closed the door behind me.

  It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust, coming from the brightly lighted snow to the dark room. I fumbled for a moment, located a light switch, and turned on the lights.