The Big Thaw Read Free Page B

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