Frozen Stiff Read Online Free

edge. Any developerwould jump at the chance.
    The fact that it was Dan Walker who bought it out from under him burned even more. Stupid schmo that he was, he had thought they were friends. John had spent the tail end of the summer building a sauna in the basement of that house Dan called a “cabin,” and they had shared many a brewski. Dan’s wife Sherri would stir up some dinner while he and Dan would smoke a cigar and look out at Lake Pepin. The view was almost as good as the one from the edge of his farmland.
    Edna had signed away the land with the proviso that she be allowed to stay on in the farm until she died. Wouldn’t be long now.
    John looked up at his mother’s face, weathered from years in the sun, tending the family garden, sometimes even driving the tractor. Her hair had gone completely white and her eyes shone bluer than ever.
    He had been so mad when he came home for Christmas and learned what she had done. He had never yelled at his mother before, but he had not been able to contain himself.
    Edna had been sitting in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. He had taken the cast-iron frying pan and thrown it against the wall, breaking her old blue vase. Looking up at her, he realized he should never have left her alone. Her brain was starting to muddle. He could tell, talking to her on the phone, that she was forgetting things and mixing up others.
    When his mother died, the land that he had been born on and had sweated over for fifty years would be gone. He wasn’t sure there was anything he could do about it, but he was going to try to get it back.
    He held his mother’s hand and whispered, “Sorry, so sorry.”

CHAPTER 3
    New Year’s Day: 10:00
    C laire couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Amy had told her and she still hadn’t been able to take it in. All the way on the drive over, she had wrestled with what she might find. Now she stared down at the frozen man curled into a fetal position—how we came into the world was the way we left it—one hand reaching out, fingers blistered, his skin waxy blue, his hair turned white with frost. The vulnerability of his pose made Claire’s eyes water. Or the cold.
    Only once before had Claire seen a man frozen to death. That had been during the coldest winter she had lived through, 1996. In February, when the temperature had dropped to 30 below with a windchill of minus 50, the governor had closed the state. No one was to go any place, except for cops. She had been on regular patrol and taken the call.
    A neighbor, taking garbage out, had found the old man curled up against a wall in the alley. At least he had been wearing a coat. Somehow that made him seem not quite as vulnerable.
    Remembering her lessons on hypothermia, Claire bent down, took off a glove, and put her fingers on Daniel Walker’s neck. If there was a pulse there, it was too low and slow for her to tell. But it was still possible that there was life in this man.
    She knew that people could survive in a deep freeze for hours, even days. The cold would have shut down his metabolism. The lungs would need less oxygen and the heart would pump less frequently. As the brain cooled off, it needed less oxygen to survive. Cardiologists even used chilling to get a patient ready for heart surgery, her pharmacist sister Bridget had told her.
    So Claire knelt down in the snow and placed her head on his bare chest. She thought she heard something. A tick. A twig snapping. It might just be her own heart beating. She pushed in closer and listened again.
    Yes, a slow, slight thud was coming from deep in the man’s chest. A liquid thump which meant he lived.
    She stood and yelled at Amy, “Get a blanket. We’ve got to get him inside. Call for an ambulance.”
    Claire took off her mittens, put her bare hands on his chest and rubbed in slow circles. Whatever life was left in him, she wanted to keep stoking. Maybe even just the warmth of human touch would keep him hanging on.
    A minute later, Amy slammed out the