Entropy Read Online Free Page A

been in the water for a period of time. It was more chilling than how an author could described it in the pages of a book, and more gruesome than what even a skilled artist could make it out to be.
    The three children that were still there were being interviewed by the detectives. Two were boys and one was a girl. I passed by at the moment when their respective parents arrived, who after embracing their children, placed their hands tightly on the sides of their faces, and looked anxiously into their eyes. That was what genuine fear looked like if you had to describe it as a concrete image: the colorless uncertainty in those few moments between a parent and a child, when something like that happened. I opened the trunk of my car and started to put on the dry suit that I had removed from a long canvas bag. I wore the dry suit when the water was dangerously cold, like it was that afternoon. A large sheet of ice covered the surface of the water. I noticed the nose clip that I used to wear when I swam competitively in a small plastic bag underneath some clothing in the canvas bag. It probably still smelled like chlorine.
    â€œSome kids who were fishing with long sticks and twine spotted the heel of a black sneaker propped up against the side of the drainage pipe, over there on the other side. One of the kids reached in and tried to pull it out. That’s when he saw the tips of fingers. All I can think is, when the ice cracked or shifted as the temperatures changed, the body must have started creeping towards the surface,” Mull remarked, as he tapped his pen against the broken facing of a wristwatch, then used it to point towards the pond. “It wasn’t completely frozen over until roughly a week ago, so we’re assuming the body was placed there then. One of the kids we interviewed said he was out here with some friends last weekend, and the pond didn’t have any ice on it.”
    He offered me a cigarette, and I declined. “The department wanted someone who knew the forensic procedures,” he said, as he flipped to a blank page in his notebook. I guess they also wanted someone who knew the routine of swimming alone with the dead. In the beginning, I had hated being needed like that. But I had no way of knowing at the time, when I first shivered at the edge of a backyard pool trying to remember what the forensics experts had coached me on. I never expected to be in that situation again. I had never expected that there would be so many … not here.
    During the winter, the pond was fairly isolated, and the only people that went up there were kids, occupying their time with ice skating, hockey, or the occasional snowball battle. It was hard to get to when the only road was so often buried by snow. The body would undoubtedly be covered in soil and ice, and be difficult to move. But, depending upon how long the victim had been in the water, the decomposition rate could be extremely advanced. I had learned that cold inhibited the acceleration unless the victim had been killed and dumped for some time before the pond had frozen over. The body might then be gaunt and insubstantial, spread out lightly across the breadth of my forearms, like a costume or a dress. However, there was no way that I could tell until I got into the frigid water. I glanced around at the gathering crowd of people who had been pushed behind the caution tape, as I rummaged around the trunk of the car.
    Everything was changing. I could see it in the distraught and desperate faces of the people in the community, and in the empty playground behind them with swings that rocked back and forth gently in the minimal push of the wind, with no one enjoying their innocent rapture.
    I looked out at the crime scene, which was much larger than that of the first victim. Someone had cut a large access hole into the ice, about fifty feet away from the body. That was where I would go under the water. I was told that the depth of the pond floor was