Ice Melt
The whole thing stinks, I was thinking. First cold snap in the year, and it freezes a lake surface up near Spruce Knob in eastern West Virginia, just in time for someone to dump a decomposed corpse in the middle of the ice. Some anonymous trapper called it in, giving the location but refusing to identify himself-- so no witnesses to interview, just a body on the ice in the middle of nowhere, a two hour drive ending with a never-ending series of switchbacks. And then she insists on going out on the ice before the tech team arrives, just because it's snowing.
"Bones, the guy's dead! He can get snowed on a little!"
"Booth, the remains were not frozen, the longer they stay on the ice, the more they alter from their original state! The sooner I get this done, the better the level of evidence we have to work with!" I hate when she's stubborn and right, especially because the snow was really coming down. I also hate that I'm standing on the shore here, to minimize the weight on the ice, but she's right, it's better not to push it, and she is a hell of a lot lighter than me.
"Hey, toss me that tarp?" she called, looking up from her dictaphone, the camera set to the side. "I'm going to drag him back in."
"Bones, come on, just wrap it and leave it, we'll wait in the truck for the van." She shot me a dirty look, and waited. Fine. I went over to the kit and pulled out the tarp, then tossed it as far as I could. She walked over to get it, then returned to the corpse, shaking it out over the body, then crouching to roll it, efficiently, bundling it up and tying it off at the head in a matter of seconds. A sick part of me wondered how much of that was on-the-job experience, and how much of it was genes from her father. That's disgusting, I told myself, it's just efficient experience, you asshole. She bent over to pick up the camera, and slung the bag over her shoulder, then bent at the knees to grab the edge of the tarp, and began backing back toward the shore.
My inner sergeant approved Bones' use of the 'legs, goddamnit, not the back!" as I'd often bellowed at my harebrained and groin-herniated recruits, but the rest of me approved the view, not the efficient use of her strength. Damn.
She was only a third of the way back when I heard a cracking noise. "Bones, stop!" She must have heard it too, because she actually stopped, rather than ignoring me as she usually does. She let go of the tarp, lowering the end she'd lifted up toward her slowly, so the weight came back to the ice gradually. When she let go, she turned and looked around.
"I don't see it," she called.
"Me neither," I replied. "But hold on a sec. Do you have any rope?"
She nodded, and I ran over to the kit, tossing the contents on the ground as I sorted through them. There it was, and carabiners already attached, thank God. I ran back over to the edge, and tossed her the rope. It landed pretty close to her, and she knelt slowly, then crept forward on all fours until she reached it. Of course Bones would know dropping to all fours reduces the weight distribution at any one point. She clipped it to her belt and I did the same. Thank God she's always calm in a crisis-- she waits until afterward to fall apart, just like me, except she cries or compartmentalizes, and I shoot or punch things.
"Okay," I said, "slowly now."
She made it about three paces forward when there was another crack, this one now visible, radiating out from where the body had been, and headed right toward her. She froze when she heard it, waiting. "Bones, it's right behind you, can you change your angle a little? Head off to four o'clock, okay?"
She nodded, and crept forward a few more feet, at an angle to the crack, slowing again to keep most of her weight off of the ice. I was coiling the slack in the rope as she came toward me. "Good, you're halfway Bones, keep it up," I called, as she kept moving forward-- too slowly for my taste, my heart was pounding in my throat, and I wanted nothing more than to yank her in on the rope as fast as possible. It wouldn't be smart, though-- better for her to come in at a slow and controlled speed.
And then, there was a hellacious crack, and the ice split so suddenly under and around her that I didn't even see her go under—I just felt the jerk of the rope, pulling me forward into the water.