Skating on Thin Ice (12 page)

“Watch your step, Mrs. Fletcher,” Jeremy warned. “Don’t you go falling in.” He came up behind me. “We’ve had enough problems tonight.”

I moved out of the way, and he crouched down to get a better view of the thing to which I was referring. “Didn’t see this before,” he said.

“What is it?” Mort asked.

“Looks like it’s just what Mrs. Fletcher said, a scarf. Must be a long one. Someone either dropped it in, or one of the Zambonis picked it up when it came in from the rink. Happens sometimes.” He put both arms in the water, grabbed hold of the scarf, and yanked. It wouldn’t budge. “It’s probably caught in the drain. Would you turn off that switch up there, Sheriff? Lucky it didn’t gum up the Zamboni.”

Mort turned off the motor. “Let me help,” he said, squatting next to Jeremy. He put his hand on another portion of the fabric. “Ouch, that’s cold,” he said. “Okay, we pull on three. One, two, three.”

The fabric gave, and both men fell backward, Jeremy catching himself with his free hand, Mort landing on his bottom on the wet floor.

“Oh, no!” Mort said, scrambling to his feet. “I just had these cleaned.” He swiped at the seat of his pants. “You got any paper towels?”

“Sure. Over here, Sheriff,” Jeremy said, running to pull a fresh roll of paper towels from a shelf.

“Mort?”

“Just a minute, Mrs. F. I’m soaked.”

“Do you want more paper towels?” Jeremy asked.

“Mort, you need to see this.”

“Can it wait, Mrs. F.? I’m freezing my butt off over here. Literally.”

“I think you need to see this
now
.”

I heard a sigh behind me, the shuffling of Mort’s and Jeremy’s feet, and then a low whistle from Mort and a gasp from Jeremy.

The three of us looked into the pit. A shock of blond hair was visible just below the surface of the water. Then the body rose and tipped to its side, and we could see the other end of the long scarf.

It was wrapped around Alexei Olshansky’s neck.

“W
hat do you think, Doc?” Mort asked after we’d found Seth and brought him into the garage. “Looks like he took a misstep and fell in. Obviously a drowning accident, right?”

Alexei lay on the concrete floor next to the pit from which Mort and Jeremy had hauled him.

“Hard to tell,” Seth said, kneeling by the body. “The scarf didn’t leave any marks on the skin that I can see. No petechial hemorrhages in the eyes. That possibly rules out strangulation. More likely it’s primary respiratory impairment from submersion in a liquid medium.”

“Huh?”

“Drowning.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Mort grumbled, running his fingers through his hair.

“Face and lips are blue,” Seth continued. “Course he could have had cardiac arrest from the hypothermia. We’ll have to see if there’s water in his lungs.”

Jeremy stood as far away from the body as he could, his eyes roaming the room to keep from looking at the corpse. At Seth’s pronouncement, Jeremy’s teeth began to chatter, the sound reminding Mort of his presence.

“How many doors come into this room?” he asked Jeremy.

“One,” Jeremy said, pointing toward the door to the rink I’d come through when first visiting the garage.

“Just one?”

“Yes. Uh, no, I mean, no,” he stammered.

“Well, it’s got to be one or the other.”

“S-So sorry. There are ... th-three, if you count the garage doors.”

“Son, can you do something for me?”

“Yuh ... yes, Sheriff.”

“Listen carefully, please.”

A shaken Jeremy pulled himself together as Mort issued instructions. “I want everyone cleared out of the building,” he said, “except for the staff. Understand?”

Jeremy gave a sharp nod; his Adam’s apple jumped in his throat as he worked to swallow.

“Get me a list of the names of everyone who worked here tonight, with their addresses and phone numbers,” Mort continued. “Make me a couple of copies.”

“S-sure, Sheriff. I’ll have Marisa type it up for you.”

“And get a pot of coffee going for us. Can you do that?”

“The concession stand is still open.”

“Good. Wait for me in the office. After the public leaves, do not let anyone in the building without asking me first.”

Relief flooded his face as Jeremy rushed out of the garage.

“He looked like he was about to faint,” Mort commented. “Don’t need any additional complications tonight.”

“Won’t you want to be questioning those people who are here tonight?” I tentatively asked, not wanting to challenge Mort’s decision.

“Not right now,” he said. “I don’t want to set off a panic. Besides, they’re all locals. I can catch up with them later after I know what we’ve got here. Anyway, we don’t have enough officers available for all those people, and I can’t pull the guys on duty away from the traffic accidents.”

I agreed with his reasoning. It was highly doubtful that a casual visitor to the arena would have entered the Zamboni garage that evening; he was right in focusing on staff members, at least initially.

“Maybe Jeremy should use the mayor’s announcement that asked people to stay off the roads as the reason for closing the arena,” I said. “That way there will be fewer questions.”

“Good idea, Mrs. F.,” he said. “Tell him it’s an order from the mayor.”

I found Jeremy at the office arguing with Marisa.

“How did you get so wet?” she asked him.

“Never mind that. I need you to type up a list of everyone working tonight. Everyone. Understand?” Jeremy said.

“They’re all up on the board over there. Look for yourself.”

“Typed, I said.”

“Why do you need it typed?”

“Just do what I’m asking, Marisa.”

“You don’t have to be rude about it.”

“Forget it. I’ll do it myself.” He tore off his wet jacket and flung it across a desk. “And we’ve got to get everyone except the staff out of here. Now.”

“You’re full of demands tonight, aren’t you? What’s going on?”

I pulled Jeremy aside and told him about using the mayor’s announcement as an excuse to instruct people to leave. “I know it’s upsetting. Just take it one step at a time,” I counseled. “We need you to be composed or you’ll make others uneasy.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and gave me a grim smile. Without revealing the real reason, he calmly told Marisa to clear the building. “It’s because—because the mayor wants everyone off the roads during the storm. It’s dangerous. The sheriff wants the mayor’s order to be heeded. But we need the staff to hang around.”

“If everyone’s leaving, why can’t the staff? I’d like to go home, too.”

“Marisa, do I have to make the announcement or will you?”

A disgusted Marisa picked up the public address microphone and turned it on. “Hi, everyone,” her perky voice came through the speakers. “Could I have your attention for a moment, please? We already have a good foot of snow on the ground, folks. The plows are working overtime. The mayor has asked us to close the rink and send everyone home.”

A collective groan rose from a large group of the teenagers.

“If you already bought passes for the late evening session, save your tickets and we’ll honor them when you come back. Please take your time on the roads. They’re very slippery. Drive carefully. Ice arena staff, please help empty the building, then wait for further instructions.”

Marisa turned off the PA mike and eyed Jeremy, who nervously typed on the computer. “What’s going on, Jer?” she asked. “Snow is usually no big deal.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Okay? Help get everyone out. Check the locker room, the restrooms, the upstairs hall, and ask the concession kids to see me.”

“How late are we going to be here?”

“Just round up the staff and tell them to wait for me in the game room.”

“Do you know what’s going on, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“The mayor is worried about the snow,” I said. I didn’t like not being entirely truthful with her, but Mort was right. There was nothing to be gained by creating a panic. He needed time to sort things out.

While Marisa set off to usher any stragglers to the door and to gather the staff in the room containing the arcade games, I returned to the garage. Maureen followed.

“Why wouldn’t you keep everyone here to question them?” she asked her husband upon learning of Alexei’s death and Mort’s order to vacate the arena. His expression said that he didn’t appreciate being asked that question for the second time, but he checked his pique. “I don’t want a lot of gossip about it,” he explained. “It’s better to clear the area and see what we’ve got here. I want to go about this methodically.”

“Okay, hon. What can I do?”

Mort thought for a moment. “I already called for the ambulance,” he said. “You can go help that kid getting me the list of the staff who worked tonight. And see if he put up a pot of coffee.”

Maureen went to find Jeremy, leaving Seth, Mort, and me inside the garage with the body. The two ice resurfacing machines stood on the ramps outside the massive doors, like an enormous pair of guard dogs.

“Can you give us a time of death, Doc?” Mort asked.

“I can give you a guess, but it’s going to be tricky considerin’ the body’s having been in ice water.”

“He has a scratch on his nose,” I said.

“What does that mean, Mrs. F.?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t there the last time I saw him alive. Have you checked his hands, Seth?”

“Not yet. They’re swollen from the water. Might be some bruises and cuts. No rigor mortis yet. From the looks of the skin, I’d say he was in the water no more than three or four hours, Sheriff, but don’t hold me to it. I’ll need to examine the body more carefully to be sure.”

“Any ideas, Mrs. F.? Looks like an accident to me.”

“A good possibility,” I said. “Or a suicide. Or murder. I’m sure you’re not ruling out any of those possibilities.”

“Of course not.”

“I doubt that he would have killed himself, though. He was a very confident young man, even overconfident. I can’t imagine anything throwing him so much that he would take his own life, especially by drowning himself in ice water.”

“Maybe he received some terrible news from home,” Mort suggested, “something that would have made him feel miserable or guilty.”

“Alexei had a very strong ego. He didn’t strike me as a young man who would blame himself for anything—even if he
were
responsible.”

“So we rule out suicide?”

“I’d say so.”

“Accident?”

“Could be.”

“What do you say, Doc? What would’ve happened if he just fell in? Could the cold water kill him?”

“Not immediately. Normal body temperature is around ninety-eight, ninety-nine degrees. People vary. Clinically, hypothermia starts when the core temperature is at ninety-five degrees.”

“That’s not much of a drop, Doc.”

“No, it isn’t. Even so, death from hypothermia usually takes a bit of time, even in ice water. What can happen, however—as the body temperature begins to fall, the victim is not always aware of it. He may become confused, make poor decisions, have difficulty performing tasks, not realize it’s because he’s losing heat.”

“You’d think he would at least call for help,” Mort said.

“I’m not sure anyone outside this room would hear him,” I said. “The walls are concrete and the doors are steel. And you heard how noisy it was out there.”

“Besides, if he swallowed some water when he fell in, he might’ve been straining just to breathe,” Seth said. “Hard to yell under those circumstances.”

“Alexei was very strong,” I said. “If he simply fell in, he should have been able to pull himself out of the water even if he was short of breath.”

“Ayuh,” Seth said. “The body pumps out adrenaline when it recognizes danger. That would’ve helped him.”

“How do you know how strong he was, Mrs. F.?”

“He and his skating partner, Christine, were talking about practicing their lifts. She must weigh around a hundred pounds, yet he was expected to lift her over his head.”

“But his clothes would’ve been heavy from the water and pulling him down. He might not have been able to fight the added weight,” Mort speculated.

We stopped talking for a moment, each of us contemplating the factors that might have contributed to Alexei’s death.

“If he just fell in,” I said, breaking the silence, “why was the grating covering the pit?” I walked to the snow pile and examined the ironwork grille, careful not to touch it. “It looks like it’s pretty heavy, not something that would have tipped back in place easily. That suggests murder to me.”

“I’d like to keep it considered an accident,” Mort said. “If he grabbed at the grate to help pull himself out, it might’ve fallen back on him. If his calls for help couldn’t be heard over the noise in the rink, and if he drowned before anyone missed him, he could have sunk to the bottom. Or someone could’ve just closed the grate the way Jeremy opened it and not noticed the body.”

“That’s possible,” I said.

Mort studied my face. “But you don’t think so?”

I shook my head.

“So, Doc, would you be able to tell if he was pushed into the pit?”

“Probably not,” Seth said. “Any bruises he might have sustained could have occurred whether he fell or was pushed. If someone hit him on the head or another part of his body before he went into the water, we should see evidence of that. But unless the wound can be matched to a weapon, we couldn’t be certain he didn’t just hit his head on the corner of the grating or on the edge of the pool.”

“But if that was the case,” I said, “you’d probably find particles of concrete or shards of metal in the wound, wouldn’t you?”

Seth nodded. “The autopsy will tell us more.”

“I’d better call the medical examiner,” Mort said.