Cold Burn

by Max Allan Collins

  After a quick scan of the page, he said, “If you’ve got your heart set on it, I guess I’ll get my coat.”

  To Grissom’s credit, the coat he withdrew like a rabbit out of a hat from his canvas carry-on—a black, leather-sleeved varsity-type jacket, sans letter or any other embellishment—was heavier than the windbreaker, though still not really sufficient for this weather. He slipped some specimen bottles into the pockets, zipped up the coat, yanked on black fur-lined leather gloves and they were off.

  The first hour or so they spent hiking through the snow-covered woods, Grissom stopping every now and then to look for insects on the ground and on trees. Sara—who found Grissom’s behavior endearingly Boy Scout-ish—snapped off about a dozen nature shots, barely putting a dent in her Toshiba’s 64-mg memory card; but after a while the snowfall made that impossible. It was getting heavier, and Sara knew they should head back.

  But she was having too good a time. The wintry woods were delightful, idyllic. A charmingly gleeful Grissom actually found several specimens that he had carefully bottled for transport back to the hotel. He was close to her, their cold-steam breath mingling, showing her one of his prizes, when they heard it.

  A pop!

  They swung as one toward the forest.

  Frowning, Sara asked, “Hunters?”

  Grissom shook his head, but before he could speak, four more pops interrupted.

  Shots—no doubt now in her mind, and clearly none in Grissom’s, either.

  Even though the shots were in the distance, they both found trees to duck behind.

  “If it’s hunters,” he said, looking over at her, “they’re using handguns.”

  “Where?”

  “Can’t tell…. Over there, maybe,” he said, pointing to their left. Without another word, he took off walking in that direction, and Sara fell in behind him.

  “Should we really be moving toward the gunfire?” she asked.

  He threw her a sharp sideways glance. “It’s our job, Sara.”

  “I know that, but we’re not in our jurisdiction and we’re not armed. What are you going to do if we meet the shooter?”

  They were moving through the trees, twigs and leaves snapping underfoot; and the snow was coming down now, really coming down.

  “What if it’s a hunter?” she asked. “We aren’t in bright clothing—Grissom! Stop and think.”

  He stopped. He thought.

  Then he made a little shrugging motion with his eyebrows. “Maybe we ought to turn around,” Grissom admitted. “Could be someone just doing a little target practice.”

  “Good. Yes. Let’s do that.”

  But he made no move to go back. Snow now covered their boot tops and threatened their knees. They were deep in the woods, deep in snow, somewhere on the slope behind the hotel—they could still make out its towers through the skeletal branches and haze of snow. Soon it would be dark, and they’d have to navigate by the lights of the hotel.

  Looking at Grissom, Sara realized that his varsity jacket wasn’t doing him much more good than his windbreaker would have. The CSI supervisor was working to hide it, but he obviously was shivering. His cheeks were rosy, the snow in his hair making it appear more white than gray.

  Still, she knew him well enough to know the cold wasn’t what was on his mind.

  Just ahead, a round wooden pole peeked above the drifting snow, bearing two signs: one, pointing left, read Partridgeberry Trail to Lakeshore Path (whatever that was); the other, pointing to the right, said Forest Drive.

  “Either of these paths get us back faster?” Grissom asked.

  Sara shrugged. “As long as we can see the hotel, we’re okay.”

  “But we can go back the way we came, right? You do know the way.”

  She twitched a sheepish smile. “Well, to be honest…when we were looking for those snowflies, and we cut through the woods…"

  “Sara, if we’re lost, say we’re lost.”

  “We’re not lost,” Sara insisted. “If you look through there, you can see the hotel.”

  He turned to look at the path they’d carved coming up the trail. Already the snow filled in their tracks and, if they tried retracing their steps, the guesswork would soon begin….

  “Look, I’ve got my cell phone,” she said. “Why don’t we just call the hotel and tell them where we are?”

  Without answering, Grissom looked down where the Partridgeberry Trail ought to be, then back in the direction they’d been going, then sharply back toward the Partridgeberry Trail, his nose in the air, sniffing the wind.

  “Grissom,” Sara said. “This is no time to be a guy. Asking for directions is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  He kept sniffing.

  She continued: “Let’s just phone the hotel and tell them we’re…” Something about the look on his face stopped her. “What?”

  His nose still high, the snow turning his eyebrows white, he asked, “You smell that?”

  Now Sara sniffed the air. “Grilling, maybe?”

  “In this weather? No…I recognize that smell!”

  And Grissom took off running, kicking up snow as he struggled to sprint through the deepening white stuff. Without thinking, Sara plunged after him; it was like trudging through sand.

  “Grissom! Wait up!”

  But he did not slow for her.

  She didn’t know why they were running, where they were going or what had set Grissom off; but she suspected what it was and knew she wasn’t going to like it.

  Grissom just kept running, his head swiveling, and when he finally stopped it was so sudden she almost barreled into him.

  She let out a squeak, and lurched to the right to avoid colliding with Grissom, who turned and sprinted left into the woods.

  Sara slipped, gathered herself, then tore off after him again. “Grissom!”

  He fell to his knees, maybe ten yards in front of her, as if seized by the urge to pray. When she caught up and bent to help him, she realized he was scooping up handfuls of snow, and throwing them at a burning human body.

  The snow hissed and steamed when it struck the flames. Swallowing quickly to avoid being sick, Sara dropped to her knees and joined him in flinging handfuls of snow at the burning body.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was probably only a couple of minutes, of heaping snow on the body, the fire was extinguished. For the most part, the flames seemed to have been centered on the chest and face of a male who lay on his back, his arms at his sides, his legs slightly splayed.

  Reaching carefully, avoiding the still steaming torso, Grissom felt the man’s wrist for a pulse.

  “Damnit,” Grissom said bitterly, as if this were his fault. “Dead.”

  “What happened here? Not spontaneous combustion, certainly.”

  Grissom took a quick look around. “No. There are other sets of tracks here.” He pointed further down the hill toward the hotel. “Give me your cell phone; I’ll call 911. You start taking pictures of everything—fast. The way this snow’s coming down, this crime scene will be history in fifteen minutes.”

  “It’s a digital camera….”

  They both knew that in some states, photographs taken on a digital camera were inadmissible in court—digital doctoring was simply too easy.

  “It’s what we have,” Grissom said. “We can both testify to that. Get started.”

  A comforting sense of detachment settling down on her, Sara tossed Grissom the phone and got to work.

  She’d start with the body, then work her way outward from there. She logged the facts in her head as she took her photos. He was a white man between nineteen and twenty-five, judging from his young-looking hands—tall, maybe six feet, six feet one, 175 to 185, dark hair, most of it burned off, wearing a navy blue parka, mostly melted now, over a tee shirt (black possibly, but that might have been the charring), jeans, boots and, surprisingly, no gloves.

  Sara devoted a couple dozen shots to the body—already planning to erase the nature photos, if n
eed be—and was careful to capture as much detail as she could. Then she moved to the tracks in the snow. They were already filling in; she took close-ups and distance shots, wishing she had the tripod after all, using one of her gloves to show scale.

  Five sets of tracks: three sets coming from the hotel, two sets going back. With the way the snow was coming down, Sara couldn’t even tell if the other sets were the same approximate size, let alone whether they had been made by one set of boots or two. And her hand was freezing.

  Grissom walked up to her. “How’s it going?”

  “Lost cause,” she said, glumly. “Boot holes are filling up—no way to get a decent picture.”

  “That’s the least of our problems,” Grissom said. His voice was tight; he was either irritated or frustrated—maybe both. “I just got off the phone with the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “On their way?”

  “Not exactly. Deputy says they might have a car out here…tomorrow.”

  She brushed snow off her face. “That’s not funny.”

  “Am I laughing? It’s snowing so hard they’ve closed the roads.”

  “Well…I guess that’s no surprise.”

  “Add to that, they’ve had a major chain reaction accident up on Interstate 87…. All the available deputies and state troopers are working that scene.”

  “Shit.” She was hopping now, trying to stay warm.

  “So we’re on our own.”

  “On our own….”

  Grissom gestured toward the smoldering human chunk of firewood. “Our victim was already dead when the fire started, or he would have been face down.”

  “I’m too cold to think that one through. Help me.”

  “Sara, nobody alive stays on his back in the snow with his face on fire.”

  “I see your point.”

  Grissom headed back to the corpse. “We need to try to determine cause of death.”

  She fell in with him, slipping her camera in her parka pocket. “Okay. But with this snow coming down, we can’t treat the body with the respect it deserves.”

  “That’s a given.”

  They bent down over him, one on either side, and began carefully wiping away the snow, which already threatened to bury him.

  “No visible wounds other than the burns,” Sara said. “Were you thinking those gunshots we heard—”

  “I’m not thinking anything yet. Just observing.” Slowly, Grissom rolled the body onto its right side. He pointed to a spot in the middle of the victim’s back. “Entrance wound.”

  “Looks like a .38.”

  “Or a little smaller.”

  Sara, teeth chattering, let out a nervous laugh and Grissom looked up sharply at her.

  “Sorry,” she said, and held up her gloved hands in surrender. “My bad…I was just thinking of something you taught me when I first joined CSI.”

  “What?”

  She sighed a little cloud and said, “First on the scene, first suspect…. And this time it’s us.”

  He reacted with an eyebrow shrug. “Other prime suspects include people the victim knew, relatives, friends…and we’re strangers.”

  “Lots of people are killed by strangers.”

  He nodded, looking toward the tracks in the snow. “How do you see this?”

  Sara squinted, thinking it quickly through. “Well…. He’s being followed by two people…with a gun, or guns. They’ve brought him out here to kill him.”

  “Then why all the shots? I only find one wound.”

  “All right,” Sara said, processing that. “Two people chasing him, missing him, finally one of them got him, then they set him on fire.”

  A branch cracked behind them and Sara reflexively reached for the pistol that wasn’t on her hip as she spun toward the sound.

  “Whoa, Nellie!” Herm Cormier said, holding up his hands in front of him. “It’s just me and Constable Maher.”

  Sara noted that Cormier had a .30-06 Remington rifle slung over a shoulder, the barrel pointed down. He’d traded in the Mackinaw for a heavy fur-lined coat; a stocking cap came down over his ears, and he wore leather gloves.

  Maher was encased in a parka and wore a backpack. He too wore gloves and a stocking cap. “What the hell happened here?” he asked.

  “Gunshot wound to the back,” Grissom said. “At some point the victim was set on fire…"

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Cormier said, his voice hollow. He had stepped around them, and now stood looking down at the charred body in the snow.

  Sara asked, “You know him, Mr. Cormier?”

  Shaking his head and turning away, an ashen Cormier said, “Hell’s bells, he’s burned so damn bad, I…"

  “But do you know him?” Sara pressed.

  Cormier choked like he might heave, then swallowed and said, “I can’t rightly tell.”

  “How about the clothes?” Grissom asked.

  Glancing at the body, then turning away again, Cormier said, “That don’t help…. We better call the sheriff.”

  Grissom filled them in on that score.

  “Did you check for a wallet?” Maher asked.

  “Just getting ready to,” Sara said. “You want to give me a hand?”

  Maher propped the body on its side while Sara patted the pockets; nothing.

  Looking from one man to the other, Grissom asked, “What are you two doing out here?”

  Swiveling toward Grissom, Cormier said, “Jenny—that’s the little gal at the desk Ms. Sidle spoke to about the weather—she told me you two were out walking…and that she’d told Ms. Sidle the snow wouldn’t be too bad. Turns out this could be one of them hundred-year storms.”

  “Really,” Grissom said.

  Cormier nodded. “Weather Bureau’s predicting as much as twenty-four inches in the next twenty-four hours.”

  Maher piped in, “Mr. Cormier decided he better come find you two. I overheard his conversation with the desk clerk and, since I track in the snow for a living, I offered to come along.”

  “We better start gettin’ back,” Cormier said.

  Sara dusted snow off herself. “How are we going to get this body back to the hotel?”

  Cormier said, “For now, we got to leave it here.”

  “We can’t do that,” Sara said. “That body is evidence, and this crime scene is disappearing as we speak.”

  Cormier shrugged. “Ms. Sidle, we try to carry him with us, he could end up being the death of us all. These storms get worse ‘fore they get better.”

  “But…"

  “This is a murder,” Grissom said, gesturing about them. “What about the evidence?”

  Maher stepped forward now. “Dr. Grissom, excuse me, but I’ve been working winter crime scenes my whole career. The evidence is going to be fine.”

  “In a blizzard.”

  Maher nodded, once. “The snow will help preserve it, not destroy it. But you and Ms. Sidle are right—we can’t just leave the scene unguarded. For one thing, predators could come along and make a meal of our victim.”

  Sara asked, “What do you suggest?”

  “I suggest,” Maher said, “we take turns guarding the scene—the three of us. I can help you work the crime scene after the storm breaks.”

  Sara had no better idea, and when she looked Grissom’s way, she could almost see the wheels turning in the man’s head. The only two people she figured for sure weren’t suspects were Grissom and herself.

  Everybody else was a candidate.

  But her gut said to trust Maher. He’d come to the conference alone and, like them, didn’t seem to know anyone here.

  “Any other options?” Grissom asked.

  Maher shook his head. “We stay out here now and Mr. Cormier’s right. There’ll be five deaths to investigate.”

  Grissom said, “All right—how do we get back?”

  Sara said, “Grissom…are you sure about—”

  “Constable Maher is the expert here, not us. We’ll have to take his word for it.”
r />   Maher turned to the hotel manager. “Mr. Cormier, I’m going to need your rifle.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can take the first shift.”

  “I’m not as keen on this idea,” Cormier said, “as you and Mr. Grissom.”

  Maher pointed toward the hotel. “In two hours, I want you to lead one of these two back up here to relieve me. You can find this spot, in the dark, right?”

  “Course I can, no problem…but that ain’t the issue. This weather, it’s beautiful from a distance…up close, it can get goddamned ugly.”

  “Can’t leave the crime scene unsecured,” Maher insisted.

  Grissom said, “Mr. Cormier, please.”

  Reluctantly, Cormier held out the rifle.

  Maher said, “Hold that just another minute, eh?”

  The Canadian withdrew something shiny from his backpack. He unfolded what looked to be a large silver tablecloth.

  “Space blanket,” he explained with a smile. “Good for holding in the heat. Thought one of you might need it. Dr. Grissom, if you could give me a hand….”

  Grissom took one side, Maher the other, and the pair covered the corpse.

  “This will help preserve the site,” Maher said. “Once the snow stops we can investigate the scene.”

  “But it’ll be under two feet of snow by then,” Sara pointed out.

  Maher gave her a lopsided grin. “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “Of course!”

  His smile straightened out and widened. “Ms. Sidle, I know a few tricks—if we were in the desert, wouldn’t you?” Then a gust of snowy wind blew through, and seemed to carry off Maher’s smile. “I don’t want this man’s killer to get away any more than you do.”

  Grissom surprised her by putting a hand on her shoulder. Sara stared at the fingertips touching her coat. She tried to analyze her feelings, but suddenly felt paralyzed. Then, with the wind picking up to a near howl, she heard Grissom’s voice from what sounded like far away. “Whoever did this won’t get away from us.”

  “Now,” Maher said, “I need you to take the long way out of here—back the way you two must have come, judging from the tracks.”

  Finally, Cormier handed over the rifle to the constable. “Sure I can’t talk you out of this lunacy?”

  “Positive. Just remember, I need you to bring one of them back here to relieve me.”