Frozen Stiff (4 page)

I don’t know enough, Amy thought. I think I’ve learned so much and then something like this happens and I realize I know so very little. Daniel Walker would have died if it had been left up to me.

12:00 pm

S
herri watched as the doctor and the two EMTs slid Dan’s stiff, contorted body onto a plastic mattress in the ICU. They had explained that it was filled with warm water that re-circulated. As they started to attach electrodes to his body the doctor asked her to leave the room.

“But he’s my husband.”

An older nurse took her by the shoulders and walked her to the door. “We need to work on him and we don’t need any extra people in the room. We’ll come and talk to you in a few minutes.”

The two women deputies were sitting right outside the door. They both looked up as Sherri walked out into the hallway.

“They’re trying to warm him up,” Sherri told them. “They said they have to start from the inside, then go out. They can’t go too fast or he might die. What’s going to happen?”

“We wait and see.” Deputy Watkins told her. “It’s a slow process.”

Sherri sat down, but found it hard to stay sitting. She needed to call Danielle, but she wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. As much as she had tried to like Danielle, to get the young woman to like her, they had never hit it off. She always
had the feeling that Danielle was jealous of her. For the short time they had lived together, Sherri felt like the two of them were always vying for Dan’s attention and affection. The situation had been quite unnerving.

“I’m going to step out and make a phone call,” Sherri said. “I have to call Dan’s daughter.”

Amy stood up and said, “I’ll go with you.”

This comment startled Sherri, then she realized they didn’t trust her. They felt they had to keep an eye on her. How could this get any worse?

“Fine.” She didn’t really care. She hadn’t done anything wrong. When Dan revived, when he came back from the frozen depths, he would tell them that she hadn’t even been at the house over New Year’s. She didn’t need to worry. If he came back from the dead.

She dug through her purse and pulled out her telephone book. It was a sign of how distant she and Danielle were that she hadn’t even taken the time to program it into her cell phone.

The phone rang five times. Sherri was almost ready to hang up, not wanting to leave a message—what could she say—when it picked up.

“Hey,” Danielle’s sleepy voice said.

“Danielle, it’s Sherri.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Listen, I’m sorry to be calling you like this but it’s your dad.”

“What about my dad?” Danielle’s voice sounded more awake. Then Sherri heard another voice, a male voice asking a question.

“There’s been an accident,” she might as well call it that until they knew more. It didn’t sound as dire.

“With my dad? A car accident? What happened?” Danielle’s voice was lifting up, growing thinner.

“I’m here at the hospital. It seems he got locked outside last night.”

“What?”

“Yes, well, he was taking a sauna and he went outside to cool off I guess and the door locked and he couldn’t get back in. He got hypothermia.”

“What does that mean?”

Sherri tried to think of how best to put it. “His body temperature dropped and he got so cold that he went into a coma.”

“You mean like he froze?”

“Yes. They’re trying to warm him up right now.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Yes, but I think it would be good if you came to the hospital.”

“Where? Where is he?”

“Durand. He’s in good hands.”

The phone clicked off and then the empty line buzzed in her ear.

Sherri leaned against the wall and cried. So like Danielle, she gets what she wants and then she hangs up. Even in this, her father in such a dreadful situation, Sherri would find no comfort from his daughter. If anything, the young woman would blame her somehow. Like Sherri should have been there, taking care of him. Then this wouldn’t have happened.

Which was true.

New Year’s Day: 1 pm

A soft voice whispered in his ear, “The baby’s breathing on his own.”

Clyde woke to find his wife Sara shaking him. He had fallen asleep sitting up in the hospital chair next to his daughter’s bed. He hadn’t heard his wife’s voice in a couple days. What a relief.

“What?”

“They’ve taken him off the ventilator. He’s breathing.”

Being in the hospital always made him feel like he was swimming through water, everything moved at a different tempo, voices were muffled, the walls gave off an odd light. Clyde sat up and tried to come into the world. “That’s great.”

“I think he’s going to make it. This little boy. Now if only Bonnie...”

“She will,” he said, giving his wife the reassurance she needed, but he wasn’t sure he really felt.

A few feet away, his daughter was lying still as a statue, white as a ghost. His lively daughter, who never stopped moving.

“I have to go home and then go to work for a few hours. You’ll stay here?” It wasn’t really a question.

“Are you sure you want to go to work? I don’t think you need to. Anyone would understand.”

She sighed. “I think I better.” She looked over at her daughter. “We’re going to need the money more than ever.”

“Yes,” he said. He knew he had to stay with his daughter even though it was the last place he wanted to be. Seeing Bonnie so absolutely still ripped him up.

“Call me. I’ll have the cell. Call me if anything happens.”

“Of course.”

Sara leaned next to him and he could feel her shoulders shaking. She whispered, “Poor baby doesn’t even have a name.”

1:30 pm

Sitting on the hard chairs in the waiting room, Claire went over what she knew about what had happened to Daniel Walker. She thought back to what she had seen when she first got to the Walker’s house—a naked man curled up in a ball out about five yards away from the house, his face uncovered and the side of his body blue in the cold air. The snow had been cleared away all around him, as if an animal had gone after him.

She turned to Amy, who was slumped into the chair next to her, and asked quietly, “Did you clear the snow away from him?”

Amy nodded toward Sherri who was sitting across from them in the waiting room, holding a magazine, but staring off into space. “By the time I got there, she had tried to dig him out.”

“Why didn’t she know he was locked out earlier?”

“From what I can gather, Sherri wasn’t there last night. She claims she got to the house this morning and found him out in the snow, just like that, then she tried to get him out. She called the office, but somehow Tanya didn’t realize what was going on, how serious this was.”

“It looks like it was probably an accident,” Claire said. “Poor guy wandered out into the snow after drinking too much?”

“Well, that’s what’s really weird. Sherri told me that the dead bolt was locked, which can only be done from the inside.”

“Really?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Do you believe her?”

Amy glanced over at Sherri, then shrugged. “Why would she lie about that? Why not make us think it was an accident?”

“I don’t know.”

Claire looked over at Sherri, studying her. She guessed her to be in her late thirties, but very well kept up, all the latest products. Sherri was very dressed up for so early in the day. Claire could see smudges under her eyes, but other than that her makeup was perfect. A light blue cashmere sweater fit her to a T and white wool pants had a perfect crease down the front of each leg.

Claire walked over and sat down next to Sherri. “How’re you doing?”

“I can’t believe this is happening to me. It’s just impossible. How could Dan let this happen?”

“What an awful thing to find. What do you think happened?”

Sherri shook her head. “I can’t think. It’s so unreal. When I got there I didn’t know where he was.”

“Why weren’t you at the house last night? Where were you?”

“At our house in town. Dan and I, well, we’re separated. I called him yesterday and said I wanted to come out to get a few things from the house. He knew I was coming. I hoped we would talk.”

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary when you first got there?”

“Not really. The house was so quiet, I wasn’t even sure he was there. The bed hadn’t been slept in. When I went downstairs, the sauna was still on. That scared me. Why would he have left it on? That wasn’t like Dan. He was careful. Then I looked outside.
At first he was completely covered with snow. Then the wind blew and...” Sherri’s eyes grew larger, then filled with tears. “What if I wouldn’t have seen him? What if he was still there?”

“You did see him. They’re doing all they can for him.” Claire decided to keep asking her questions. “So you think the back door was locked?”

“It was. The dead bolt. You can’t lock it from the outside, only the inside. That’s what I can’t figure out. How could that have happened?”

“Do you think anyone was there last night with Dan?”

Sherri shrugged her shoulders, her hand dropped from her face. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Where were you last night?”

Sherri lifted her head up, her eyes wide. “At home. Alone. I went to bed early.”

“Can anyone confirm that?”

“No. But that’s where I was. I promise.”

“Okay.” Claire decided to let it go for the moment.

“Dan would have hated this.” Sherri hung her head, her long golden hair falling over her face. Little rasping sounds jerked out of her mouth, and Claire realized Sherri was crying.

“Hated what?”

Sherri lifted her head, tossed her hair out of her face and swallowed, then said, “That someone could hate him enough to do this to him—lock him out in the cold. Daniel always wanted to believe that everybody loved him.”

“Did they?”

Sherri finally looked at Claire, shook her head. “I don’t think so.

“When you got to the house was it all locked up?”

“Yes. The front door was locked too. Dan always did that. He was a creature of habit, before this he had lived in the city all his life. He locked the door as soon as he was in the house, even when we were just hanging around.”

“So all the doors were locked?”

“Yes, I already told you.”

“Who has a key to your house?”

Sherri shut her eyes for a moment. “Let’s see. We didn’t have that many made. Dan, me and Danielle, his daughter. Then, our cleaning lady had a key. We were hardly ever there when she came. That’s about it. I can’t think of anyone else offhand. Dan or Danielle might have given one out to someone else. I don’t know. I’ll ask her when she gets here.”

“Okay, let me know.”

“Do you really think someone tried to kill Dan?” Sherri asked.

“I have no idea.” Claire watched the woman. “What do you think?”

Sherri slid her eyes away from Claire’s stare. “There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation.”

New Year’s day: 1:45 pm

H
is core temp was 80.5. Lowest I’ve ever seen.” Dr. Elise Cornwall was standing over Claire in the waiting room.

Claire closed the
People
magazine she was reading. The news on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie could wait. “I didn’t know it could go that low.”

The doctor nodded. She looked like she was still a teenager, but Claire figured she must be at least in her mid-twenties. Dr. Cornwall had long blond hair, tied up high in a loose ponytail. She was wearing a lab coat with a cell phone sticking out the top pocket. Or maybe it was an iPod. She looked more like a soccer player than a doctor.

“But he’s still alive?” Claire asked, looking around. Sherri and Amy had gone to the bathroom.

“Yes, remarkably. His temp actually dropped below 80 for a few minutes. Not unusual. It’s called afterdrop, the residual cold pushes in on the core while the exterior of the body starts to warm. But his temp is on the rise now. We’ve been heating him up with intravenous fluid, but it’s not enough.” Dr. Cornwall looked around the room. “We’re prepping him for surgery.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We need to get more heat to his core. We’re going to have to make a couple incisions in his abdominal cavity so we can set up a lavage of his internal organs with warm fluid. It’s the only way we can get him warm enough, quickly enough.”

Again, Claire checked to see if Daniel Walker’s wife was anywhere close by, then asked, “What do you think? Is he going to make it?”

Dr. Cornwall flipped her ponytail, looking distressed that she would be asked such a blunt question. “I’ve never done this before. But I have to try something or we’re going to lose him for sure.”

Claire was also surprised by how forthcoming the doctor was with how dire the situation was. But Claire was often surprised at what people would tell a uniformed cop—they must feel comfortable speaking openly with such an authority figure, plus she was old enough to be the young doctor’s mother.

“How long will it take?”

“Hours.” With that comment, Dr. Cornwall turned and left.

A few minutes later, Amy and Sherri appeared. Claire filled them in on what the doctor had said, then watched Sherri sink into the chair next to her, her hand rising to her eyes. “It’s going to be some time here, Amy. I’ll stay here with Sherri. Why don’t you go back over to the house and start checking around to see what you can see?”

“Do you want me to get anyone else over there to take photos?”

“Not yet. As long as we’ve got it secured. I’ll stay with Sherri. I’d rather have just one person in the house at the moment. There’ll be time soon enough to bring in the boys.”

After Amy left, Claire turned to Sherri, “How’re you doing?”

Sherri shook her head. “That sounds awful. Cutting him open. Do they have to do that? What does this mean? Did she tell you if he was going to make it?”

“Dr. Cornwall seemed to feel this was the best chance of bringing him back safely.”

Claire didn’t add, if anything could. It was not her job to squelch hope in the victim’s family. But she couldn’t help remembering the line she had once heard about persons suffering from hypothermia: “They’re not dead until they’re warm and dead.”