In Cold Pursuit (30 page)

“Who was with you the most?”

Sheila continued in a tone that told Valena she had answered these questions too many times. “We had the patient in there, to keep him warm. Had the stove running constantly. We had put it down on the floor and laid him out on the preparation table above it to keep him up off the cold, though that only raised him to something right around freezing. I wasn’t paying much attention to who was there and who was not. Emmett was there with him continually, except when he went out.”

“Did you hear the plane go overhead?”

“Aye.”

“And Emmett went out to try to find the bundle.”

“Yes. Maybe forty-five minutes or an hour after we heard it, he saw a break in the storm. He tied up with a rope and off he went. Never found it. He came back almost crying, he did.

And he was right there caring for that man until the end. I’ve known Emmett maybe three seasons, and I’ve never seen him so distraught. Ye’ve got to understand—”

“I am quickly coming to understand. It’s like everyone down here is part of one very tightly knit family.”

“Yes. People here may be quirky, or eccentric even, or some of them downright antisocial, but when push comes to shove, they’re there for ye.”

“What about the others?” Valena asked. “Cal Hart, the grad students, and so forth. How did they take it?”

“Ye want to take a look at Schwartz and Lindemann, especially the latter. They haven’t the loyalty I would hope for in that situation, and ye should have heard the way they spoke to the man. There was trouble between them and Emmett—and Lindemann, he got in terrible arguments with that reporter.”

“What about?”

“Everything. About the work they were doing. About the state of journalism. About the weather. About the food. About the nose on his face.”

“Can you recall anything in particular?”

“Nay. I tried to tune them out, y’know? I had work to do.”

“What about the others?” Valena asked. “The men who were along to handle the equipment and the heavy lifting.”

“Well, Willy there, he didn’t show any emotion, but that’s typical of him, and Dave, well he’s a gent. And Cal—”

“Wait. You said Willy. The man’s name was William.”

“Nay, on his birth certificate it says that, maybe, but most everyone calls him Wee Willy. I can tell ye, I wasn’t any too happy to see him at my door this evening.”

Valena pointed toward the main room of the station. “That man out there. In the living room. Watching TV. He was at Emmett’s camp?”

“Yes. And Dave, who’s out there drinking with the man.”

“That Dave?”
I was afraid of this
, thought Valena.
It’s what’s been bugging me right along.

“Well, it’s a common enough name, I suppose, but… if ye ask me, I’d stay away from chatting about this with just anyone, my dear. In fact, I’d stop about where ye are.”

224

“Why?”

“Because if ye’re right about it being foul play, and it wasn’t Emmett, and I know it wasn’t me, then it could be either of those louts. Hell, Willy could kill ye without even meaning to! All he’d have to do is fall on ye! But I do know this: it’s a long way back to McMurdo through the dead zone, with too many bits of heavy equipment that could fly loose and hurt ye, know what I mean? And too many miles of ice that can kill ye either quick or slow as ye please. D’ye hear me?”

Valena stared into the cook’s icy blue eyes. Her mind seemed suddenly to be running very, very slowly, like molasses exposed to the outside air. “Yes,” she said. “Loud and clear.”

V
ALENA FOUND DINNER HARD TO EAT AND EVEN MORE
difficult to digest. She barely tasted Sheila’s cooking, being more focused on her words. Valena had torn off across the loneliest part of the planet looking for a killer—what had she been thinking of?

The others sat around the table wolfing down the savory meat and vegetables and pie, and called for more. Valena stared at the tabletop, pretending to read the map that had been placed there underneath a sheet of Plexiglas, trying to cope with the realization that she was in a tiny station house in an increasing gale on a tiny island of naked rock at the bottom of the earth.

She had known that the man named Dave could be the David who had been at Emmett’s camp but had let the idea drift. Why? Because he was nice-looking and moved like
…
well, like someone with whom she’d enjoy dancing? Because he didn’t take any guff from Willy? Because she wanted him to like her so that she’d know she was acceptable? She hazarded a glance at him, only to find that his eyes were already on her. He smiled at her. It seemed a calm and friendly smile. Was this the smile of a man who would kill another?

Valena looked quickly back at her plate. And Sheila, what of her? She was forceful, decisive, brash.
Can I trust everything
—
or, for that matter, anything
—
that she told me?

Valena said a silent prayer, hoping that nothing she was thinking showed on her face. The whole maze of interactions among these people spun in her head in a dizzy array. She felt like she had stumbled through an imaginary door
into a barroom fight in some Wild West movie just after a shot has been fired, with the gun smoke still hanging in the air. Who had pulled the trigger? And would he pull that trigger again?

What had she gotten herself into?

Edith cracked into her musing. “You’re mighty quiet tonight,” she said.

Valena managed a faint smile. “Just tired, I guess.”

“You did great out there,” said Hilario.

“I enjoyed it,” said Valena.

“Can I buy you a drink?” asked Dave, curling his hand around the bottle of New Zealand wine he and the others were currently emptying.

Valena glanced his way, trying to determine whether his overture was in earnest or just good manners. His eyes were dark and soft, the kind that could hide a multitude of secrets. She shook her head. “No. I think I’ll just turn in early.” Having thus spoken, she pushed back her chair, thanked Sheila for the dinner, and headed out of the room. She braved the toilet, then found her parka in the mass of red and tan outer-wear, opened the door into the wind, and headed across the way to the bunkhouse, adjusting her lean as she struggled to remain upright in what was now almost a hurricane-force wind.

The bunkhouse heater appeared to have given up the small ghost of warmth it had previously offered, but once she doffed her parka and slid into the giant sleeping bag, her warmth instantly returned. She pulled off her outer layer of thermal underwear, rolled it up for a pillow, put her head on it, and then rolled over so that the part of the sleeping bag that had been designed to lie underneath her head would instead lie atop it like a hood, covering her face. She did not wish to talk with anyone who came into the bunkhouse that night.

What seemed like hours later, she still lay awake as, one at a time, the others came in, each taking pains to be quiet except Willy, who, as he climbed into the bunk above her, put one huge stockinged foot up against her neck and rocked the bunk bed like he was trying to wrestle it to the ground. Fleetingly
she wondered if the bed would take his weight. At length, the muffled sounds of sleep filled the room, and someone began to snore. Valena lay awake on into the night, wondering what, if anything, she could do to help Emmett Vanderzee—or, for that matter, herself.

D
AVE LAY IN HIS SLEEPING BAG LISTENING TO THE SOFT
sounds of breathing coming from the bunks all around him, trying to decide which inhalations and exhalations might be Valena’s. The knowledge that she lay somewhere quite near him worked on him like an electric current, burning him wide awake.

He had drunk more than made good sense, trying to douse that fire, but instead, it had loosened his inhibitions and addled his thoughts. He had tried being the last one to walk out to the bunkhouse, letting the wind whip at his open jacket, hoping thereby to dispel what he was feeling, but the experience had only excited him further. The wild brilliance of the Antarctic midnight had glistened off the distant mountains, and he had lifted his eyes to see if he could catch a glimpse of the moon. He missed this nearest celestial body while on the ice; somehow, he could never spot it, and by this late into the Antarctic spring, the position of the sun began to lose meaning also. All spring it spiraled upward into the sky, and, making its zenith by late December, it then began its lazy descent back toward the horizon. He was sure that, no matter how many seasons he returned to the ice, he would never get used to this strange fact of the interaction of sun, earth, and latitude.

You’re an incurable romantic
, he told himself. Then, a darker voice within spoke:
you come all the way down here and it doesn’t change a thing. You’re in paradise and you’ll screw it up. And she won’t want you with your past. Give up.

Now, lying in the darkness, he took these thoughts and pressed them like a nail through his consciousness, trying to
keep his mind and heart from wandering, but thoughts of her uncertain smile filled his imagination. He listened, imagining that he could hear her breath flowing in and out of her strong, curvaceous body.

Was she dreaming? What dreams did she dream, lying so close to him? Or was she awake, listening to him breathing, too? Did she feel one tenth the attraction he felt for her? Or did she avoid him because she found him unacceptable, uneducated, rough? He liked to think it was because she was shy, or perhaps distracted with the problems his roommate Matt had told him about. Imagine, coming all the way down here only to find that ol’ Emmett had been jailed.

During the long day driving the snow machines and Challenger along the trail from Mac Town to Black Island, he had caught glimpses of her. How fine and competent she had looked driving that Delta! And when she’d climbed onto that snow machine, she’d taken to it like a rodeo queen. She had a natural grace. He liked her determination, her will, her desire to learn.

But she was not from his place in life. She had a degree from a university and was working to get another. She would come to know a man who worked beside her in some laboratory and smile at him someday, and that would be that.

But it was more than that. Coming to Antarctica with Emmett meant that she had found that one break in a million that would put her on top, and she would know prestige. He had walked across the university campus near his hometown, watching from afar as regally dressed people strolled into gala celebrations overflowing with class and confidence. With his thick workman’s hands and sun-leathered skin, he could never walk that walk, and though he counted himself as reasonably intelligent and read as much and as often as he could, he could never talk that talk. With her grace and intellect, she would climb that ladder with ease.

Or perhaps she had been born to it, and driving the Delta was the exception to the rule. He imagined that her exotic looks spoke of the union of two professors at some foreign institute and a patrician upbringing.

The truth was that he knew almost nothing about her. Matt had had little to report from his evening with her at the Tractor Club, except that she had once driven an antique tractor on her grandfather’s farm. She had probably said little else. It seemed her style.

Willy began to snore. Dave let out a breath, wondering why the man had ever been hired, much less hired back for a second season. Where had he learned such ham-fisted handling of equipment? The army? Another place that Dave had never been. His had been the lot to leave school early. He’d picked up his GED a few years later. It hadn’t been hard to do. Getting along in the world after his drunken father had thrown him out at sixteen had been a whole lot harder.

He’d done well, considering, he knew that, but still, the limitations of his rough beginning had narrowed his options to just about exactly what he was doing. No matter. He loved Antarctica, and that would have to do.

He closed his eyes and turned onto his side, letting his arm curl up around his opposite shoulder, and waited until the comfort of tired muscles drew him into sleep.

V
ALENA AWOKE EARLY IN THE DARKNESS OF THE BUNK
house, uncertain of the time. For a while she lay wrapped in the suddenly cloying warmth of her sleeping bag, trying to regain the escape that night should bring, but the grip of whatever had awakened her only increased. Had she been dreaming? She could not recall, but she felt a gnawing at her gut just like too many times in childhood when she’d awake in the night in a room with all the cousins. She told herself that wasn’t it. Had the heat finally come on in the desperate old heater in the corner of the room? No, it was the wind. It had stopped, lessening the advective draw on the heater’s capacities.

At length the sure knowledge that she would not get back to sleep descended upon her and she looked at her watch. It was 5:36 a.m., far too late to dig into her tiny toilet kit in search of the over-the-counter sleep aid she should have taken the evening before. She wasn’t a chronic insomniac, but she had to admit that over the past year or so—since when? since starting graduate school?—she had risen early and nervous with increasing frequency.

The only thing for it was to get up and start her day. But her day was under the control of others—their schedule, and that of the weather. These thoughts added to her anxieties.

She decided to head over to the station house. There would be water for tea there, or coffee. She wiggled out of her bag so as not to make a noise letting down the zipper, dressed quickly, and headed out the door and across the yard.

Outside, the world was bright and rugged and still. The
cold air wakened her further. She could see a hundred miles or more in all directions. To the south and west, the Transantarctic Mountains danced in glistening splendor, and to the north, across the stretch of sea ice, lay Ross Island, on which McMurdo languished. The island was a meringue of ice sliding in its infinitely slow pace downhill toward the sea. Beyond McMurdo Station, Mount Erebus raised its angry fist in constant eruption, marked this morning by a trail of vapor that slid away to the west. She had not previously seen it completely naked, devoid of its customary veils of clouds, and it was the first time in her life she had seen an actual volcanic eruption. She stared at it, for a moment not breathing, then turned slowly on one heel and absorbed her surroundings in one long panorama. In answer, the scene wrapped its majesty about her heart and kept it for its own.