Page 10 of Her Frozen Heart

“Can you walk me through what happened once you started fishing? And how long would it normally take?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve only ice fished a few times, and like I said, my drill’s pretty old. If the ice hadn’t already been cut and was around seven inches, it would still only take around a minute.”

“Sounds right,” Reynolds said. “A newer drill can pull that off in under thirty seconds, but I checked his out. It’s definitely got some age to it.”

Nikki jotted that down in her notes.

Stanton nodded. He reached into the front pocket of his coat and pulled out a lighter. He laughed awkwardly. “Sorry, forgot where I was.” He put the lighter back in his pocket, his heels bouncing against the tile floor. “I’m impatient, so I probably dropped the line down a couple of times, and the hook got stuck on something. I figured weeds or maybe a log, you know? I wrestled the line for a few minutes, but I finally just cut it and put on a new jig. I changed my depth a little, so I didn’t lose another hook and jig.” Stanton shifted in the leather chair. “A little while went by, and I sort of drifted off. It was so peaceful out there.”

He hesitated for a moment. “I have a medical marijuana card, so I decided to smoke a little. I was going to be there for a while, so I’d be fine to drive home.”

Nikki picked up on his defensiveness. “We’re not worried about the pot, although I disagree about the driving. Go on.”

“I’m sitting there, relaxing and barely paying attention to my pole, but then something hit the line. I tried to bring it in, but I realized the line was wrapped around it. So I knelt down next to the hole.” He stopped, staring past Nikki, his mouth quivering. “I reached down into the water, thinking I might be able to grab whatever it was, but it was way bigger than the ice hole.”

“How did you end up seeing her face?” Nikki asked.

“I didn’t know what I had, so there I am, gloves soaked and my hands numb, trying to shimmy this thing around enough to at least figure out what it was.” He stopped talking and looked down at his hands. “For a second, I thought I’d smoked some bad shit, but nope. It was human hair, stuck on black skin. I knew it was a body then. Whatever she’d been put in had torn enough that I was able to see her face.” Stanton had turned a sickly shade of green. “I was so shocked, I don’t think I moved for several seconds. Then I went back to the truck and called the police.”

“Your phone was in the truck?” Nikki asked. “That’s kind of risky considering the location and weather.”

“Not really,” he said. “If I fell through, the phone isn’t going to help. And I didn’t want it buzzing every five minutes with a text from my wife. I just wanted peace and quiet, you know?”

“Did the bag sink when you left?” Nikki asked.

“My line was wrapped around her,” Stanton answered. “I realized that I hadn’t done anything to secure her when I was on the phone with 9-1-1 and came back out to see if she was gone. The line had her pretty good, but I used some twine I had in the truck to help secure her so she didn’t float off. Then I sat down to wait for the police, with that poor girl floating like a dead fish.”

Nikki felt queasy, trying not to think of what it felt like to sink into the freezing water. “I’m glad you had the twine in your truck,” Nikki said.

Stanton snorted. “My wife says I never throw anything away. For once it paid off.”

Nikki debated asking him about the reward money, but decided to wait. “Speaking of your truck, Sheriff Miller and I noticed there was something that looked like blood in the bed. I have to ask you about that.”

Stanton stopped fidgeting. “Why were you looking in the back of my truck? I didn’t give anyone permission.”

“The tarp was loose in the wind,” Reynolds said. “You’ve got a lot of Drano too.”

“My shop’s sink was constantly clogging,” he said.

“Your auto repair shop had to close?” Nikki asked.

Stanton nodded. “This economy sucks.”

Nikki checked her notes to make sure she had the date right. “Were you working the weekend after Thanksgiving?”

“What does that matter?”

Nikki smiled, trying to set him at ease. She didn’t want Stanton to clam up and stop talking. “It’s just procedure. With homicides, we always have to clear the person who found the body.”

“You think I did it?”

“I’m not saying that.” She kept her tone pleasant. “But I have to follow procedure.”

“I wasn’t working because I had to close the shop down a couple of weeks before that,” he said. “I couldn’t compete with the bigger shops. They can get away with charging less.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was stuck home taking care of the kids.”

“Your wife was working at the time, then?”

“She’s a nurse, so yeah. Picking up extra hours with the shop going under and all of that,” he said. “Look, what do I need to do to get out of here?”

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