Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

The firefighter sat quietly across the table from Valena. “Yeah, well, speaking for myself, I like putting fires out. I prefer it cold.” She gave Valena a wink, the biggest change in facial expression she had displayed since arriving at the table. “I’m due on shift. See ya,” she said, and she hopped up and left.

Valena regarded her pork chops. They seemed to have aged in the ten minutes since she had forked them onto her plate.

A young man in olive drab fatigues sat down next to her in the seat Hugh had vacated. He arranged his tray in front of himself, took a sip of his apple juice, turned to Valena, smiled, and said, “So, where are you from, and what do you do here?”

THE NEXT MORNING, VALENA AGAIN ROSE EARLY. SHE had only a few hours to make something happen, and she didn’t have to worry that it might not yet be light out.

She had packed a duffel containing her ECWs, her little yellow Rite-in-the-Rain notebook, camera, and a toothbrush the night before and had laid out the clothes she would wear until it was time to go to Happy Camp. That way, she could slip into a layer of long underwear, jeans, sneakers, a fleece sweatshirt, and her big red, grab her duffel, and get out the door without waking any of her roommates.

Breakfast was not yet being served. She headed instead first over to Crary Lab and checked her e-mail, in expectation of a reply from Taha Hesan. No luck there, but there was a reply from Em Hansen. Valena tapped on the message to open it. For several long moments, nothing happened. The slowness of the computer made her writhe.

Greetings Valena,

That sounds like a nasty shock, and there’s nothing I can say that will make it any better, but my very best advice as regards investigating this crime is as follows: LOCKYOUR-SELF IN THE CLOSET UNTIL THE URGE PASSES. If it is murder, and your professor did not do it and whomever did do it is there to be discovered, he will probably discover you before you discover him. This is not a healthy scenario. I am sure that having your professor jailed feels like a personal violation, but if you came home to find your house broken into, you’d be stupid to charge right in there, precisely because whoever broke the door down may still be inside. The police have dogs trained to go into houses where security has been breached. Don’t confuse yourself with a dog. There are just too many ways to die in Antarctica.

Valena read the message three times. Finally, she wrote back,

I am certain you are right, but I only have one shot down here. Surely if I just gather background information that the authorities might have missed, I’ll be all right. By the way, do you have any good connections there, in case I find something they should know? And is there anyone at the New York Financial News who knows something about why Morris Sweeny came south? Sweeny reports politics, not science, so why was he here?

Valena pressed send, then logged off the computer and descended the stairs into the lower levels of Crary Lab. By the time she was halfway down the ramp that led from phase 1 to phase 2, she had let Em’s advice slip from her consciousness and had focused instead on her feelings toward Taha. Frustrated to the point of thinking vile thoughts about the other student on the project, she let herself into the office she was supposed to be sharing with him and Emmett Vanderzee.

Her professor’s personal gear was still there, right next to the big packing boxes of equipment that he had shipped from Reno. She got to digging through the duffel bags and found that he had already checked out some field equipment. Inside she found an enormously thick sleeping bag labeled “Arctic Storm”—a confidence builder, certainly—and a neoprene sleep mat. In the hope that Emmett might have hidden any kind of clue deep inside his duffels, she emptied them out and restuffed them. She finished none the wiser.

Just then, Doris walked into the room carrying a laptop computer. “Hey, Valena, how’s it going?”

“Oh, fine. I guess. Trying to figure out what all Emmett left behind. Looks like he left his gear but took his computer with him.”

“No, he didn’t.” She placed the one she was carrying on the desk. “Emmett was having trouble getting this hooked up to the Internet here. Sorry it took so long to fix.”

“No, don’t apologize! Otherwise it might have been taken as evidence or something.”

Doris put a hand on the laptop and, in a tone dripping with irony, said, “Wow, I didn’t think of that. You think I should report it or something?”

“No, no, no, no, no. You just leave it right there.”

Doris raised one eyebrow coquettishly. “You can get it to him, right?”

“Absolutely. You just put it out of your mind, okay?”

“Whatever you say, champ.” Doris left the room. A few steps out into the common area, she turned and said, “What’s weird is that there wasn’t anything wrong with it, but he made a point of entrusting it to my care the morning before he headed out into the field with the feds.” She gave Valena one last quirky smile and disappeared around the corner.

Valena considered kissing the computer. She quickly turned it on and dug into the communications software to find Taha’s home phone number, then pulled out the prepaid telephone card she had brought from the US and picked up the telephone.

She thought it somewhat miraculous that she could even hope to place a telephone call that would cross the ten thousand miles that separated them, but possibility and likelihood proved two different things. She opened up the guidebook that had been issued her at the in-brief and began to dial. The first number asked for an outside line. Next, she punched in her prepaid calling card number, her PIN number, and finally the number she wished to call, for a total of over twenty-five digits.

A rapid beeping indicated that the small handful of outside lines were all currently busy. Following further instructions, she hung up and sat down to wait, as the phone would ring when a line became available.

She waited.

And waited.

It was excruciating. This was not how her first days in Antarctica were supposed to go. She was supposed to be helping her professor with the final preparations for going into the field, far away from things like offices—as far as she could get.

Her gaze wandered back to Emmett’s laptop. It appeared that he had left the computer for her to find; shouldn’t she therefore look through it?

She put the computer on her lap and turned it on. Its filing system was easy to navigate. E-mail here, spreadsheets there, visual images another place, and extensive files for all his correspondence and the papers he had written and talks he had given. Everything was arranged chronologically. She paused a moment, wondering what to do if she found something personal and embarrassing, or worse yet, something incriminating.

“I understand you want to talk to me,” said a baritone voice behind her.

A jolt of adrenaline slammed into Valena’s muscles. She had to fight the urge to slap the laptop closed, instead simply swinging around in the chair so that whoever was at the door could not see the screen.

A man not much older than Valena was leaning into the doorway from one side, just a head and one hand peering around the door jamb.

You sly devil , she wanted to say. Sneaking up on me like that! He looked familiar, like someone whose face she had seen in photographs, but whom she had not met. “Hi there,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure who—”

“Bob Schwartz,” he said. “I used to… ah, work with Emmett.”

Now Valena did close the laptop, and, as casually as she could, set it on the floor, slipping it behind her day pack. “Well, hey, this is lucky. I didn’t know you were in McMurdo.”