Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

Betty said, “Twelve hundred pairs.”

Valena said, “They do? Right now?”

“Ask the penguin guy. He’s sitting right over there.” Betty gestured toward a very fit, middle-aged beaker who sat at a nearby table, munching a brownie while he read one of the summaries of world news from the New York Times that could be found lying about on some of the tables.

Valena sighed. “Penguins. But no vermin.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Hugh, his smile vanishing. “Just no mice or other rodents. But we do have the sort of vermin that run around on two legs.” He gave her a very penetrating look, his smile gone. With that, he stood up from the table, grabbed his tray, and left.

Valena waited, watching Betty to see if she was going to drop another conversational bombshell, but the firefighter only yawned, stretched, said, “See you later,” and got up and left the dining room.

Valena’s eyes shifted immediately to the penguin scientist who was reading the paper. He was halfway through his brownie, chewing slowly. He turned the page on his New York Times summary. He began reading the last page.

Springing into action, she hurried with her tray into the scraping room and dumped things into the appropriate recycling bins—food scraps here, burnables such as paper napkins there—and stacked her plates and glasses where the dishwashers could reach them, dropping her tray onto a third stack and her silverware into a bin filled with antibacterial solution. Rock music pounded from the far reaches of the adjoining dishwashing room, where two men in rubber gloves and aprons stood aiming a big spray nozzle at the encrusted plates.

She hurried back to the food lines, poured herself a fresh glass of milk, and grabbed a brownie, one of the butterscotch kind with chocolate chips. Then she drew a bead on the penguin guy and headed to where he was sitting. “Um, hi, can I join you?” she inquired.

He said, “Please do.”

She lowered herself into a seat across from him. “The fire-fighter lady says you work with penguins,” she said.

He nodded. “Betty.”

“Can I ask you some questions about them?”

“Sure.” He laid down his news summary and laced his fingers together on the tabletop. “They’ve just finished mating. The males are on the nests. The females have taken off to feed. They’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

“So they’re not emperors? Because they walk around with the eggs on their feet, right?” She was digging into her paltry storehouse of penguin facts, trying to sound knowledgeable.

“They’re Adélies.”

“Littler.”

“Yes. All other species of penguins are smaller than the emperors.” He waited, watching her politely.

“Can I… is there any way I could see them?”

The penguin guy nodded. “I’ll be going out there again tomorrow. Perhaps you’d like to come then.”

“That would be wonderful! But um, how do I get there?”

“I’m flying. Helicopter.”

“Is there a spare seat?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Most likely. The only problem would be getting back.”

“Can’t I ride back in the helicopter?”

“No. They’ll drop me and take off to the next location. They usually head off to Marble Point next, on their way to the Dry Valleys. They have a very full schedule.”

The Dry Valleys , she thought, I could go for that! But she said, “Is there another way to get back? How far is it?”

“Oh, about twenty miles. You could come up around the edge of the island on the sea ice on a snow machine, or check out a Pisten Bully or a Haaglund, if you’ve got one in your event budget. And you’d have to find someone to ride with you.”

“I know. You can’t go anywhere alone around here.”

He nodded. “It would be better if you waited until you can put together a plan, then come out with someone else. Tomorrow isn’t such a good day for me anyway.”

Valena closed her eyes. Penguins. Real, live penguins living where penguins really lived, doing what penguins really did. But tomorrow was her last day. “I’ll stay in touch,” she whispered.

WHEN CUPCAKE TIRED OF THE VICTORY CELEBRATION in the galley, she doused her dishes at the dishwashing window, grabbed her parka, and headed over to the hospital to see how Steve was doing. No one was seated at the desk near the entrance door to tell her to go away, so she walked through the catacombs of rooms until she found the action. The sight of Steve all trussed up to keep his neck from moving, oxygen mask covering half his face, and IV drips going in and out of him made her suck in her breath.

A short, round nurse turned around and saw her. “Hey, Cakes,” she said. “Who let you in here?”

“I did. How is he?”

“Still out,” said another nurse. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Let her stay,” said the doctor. “I’ve got some questions for her.”

Cupcake asked, “Is he sleeping?”

“You wish. This is a level 3 trauma with subdural hematoma. So tell me, do you believe this crap about he slipped on a step?”

“Not for a minute.”

“Then what happened out there?”

“Wouldn’t I like to know.”

“Hazard a guess.”

“Someone hit him with a board.”

“Are there boards out there?”

“No. Shovels, maybe. Is there an edge to that bruise? I never got a good look since you got him cleaned up.”

“Here, put on a mask first. He’s had fluid leaking out of his ear, which means the lining around his brain’s ruptured. It happens a lot in closed head injuries. They can get septic really easily, and then you’ve got a head injury and encephalitis.”

Cupcake put on the mask the nurse offered and bent over her fallen comrade, examining as much of his face as she could see. “Aw, shit,” she said. “If he’d slipped on the tractor, he couldn’t have done that.”

“Because…?”

“Is his skull fractured?”

“Yes.” The nurse pointed at the X-rays.

“To do all that on the bottom step of a Challenger, his legs would have had to fly out sideways, like someone grabbed them and yanked them out from under him bringing him down like a hammer. And I don’t see any tread marks from the step or anything.” She shook her head. “But even that isn’t what tells me it wasn’t any falling off any steps. Tell you the truth, I suspected as much before I came in here.”

“Give,” said the doctor.

Cupcake pointed. “Whatever hit him, or whatever he was hit with , made him bleed. There was coagulated blood all down the side of his head when we found him.”

“And?”

“He never wore a hat. And his hood was pulled up onto his head.”

“Which means?”

Cupcake walked over to where Steve’s ECWs were laid out on another bed. She turned the hood inside out. “There’s no blood on it, see? That means that when the injury occurred, and the blood dried, his hood was down. How long does it take for blood to clot, even in the cold? Several minutes, I’d bet. So it was down. In that blizzard would you take your hood off, even for a minute? No, you wouldn’t, which means that he wasn’t outside when it happened, or he’d just stepped out and hadn’t pulled it up yet.”

“Point well taken.”

“Right, and even if any of that made sense, I can’t buy the idea that he hit his head and walked off into the storm. Someone would have seen him, and when you’re that screwed up, you don’t get into your Cat, drive it a ways, then get out and take a stroll.”

“Right.”

Cupcake shook her head. “You know what I think? I think some son of a bitch sapped him and dumped him out on the ice, thinking that we’d never find him in time.”