Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

“Oh, so you’re going to split hairs. Okay, then, we’re on the ice shelf.”

“But where? I was expecting a cliff, or a climb of some sort.”

“What are you, a glaciologist or something?”

“Well, yes, in fact I am.”

“I heard you’re a grantee. So why you in this bucket?”

Valena did not answer. She was thinking, It’s like McMurdo is one big communal organism, like a sponge or a jellyfish. The odd experience of being sent through the kitchen by the omelet man returned to mind. Somehow, between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., half of McMurdo had heard about her change of plans, not to mention who she was and what she did here. This was not comforting, especially now that the man named Steve was dead. And how exactly had he died? It occurred to her that he might have been murdered.

She chided herself for thinking this thought, but murder had indeed occurred at Emmett’s camp; there was no doubt of that now. Larry’s information of the evening before had changed all that from speculation to certainty. Emmett himself had been taken into custody as a result, and… and who was she to say that he was innocent?

She hardly knew the man. Was Emmett Vanderzee a coldblooded killer? His graduate students from the year before had gone on to other projects. They could have stayed on. Why had they jumped ship? Had they left him because they no longer trusted him? If so, what had changed their minds?

Somebody had prevented the journalist from getting the aid he needed, and that was murder. Had the feds fingered Emmett because he was the only one who had a motive to kill that man or because he was the only one who had had the opportunity? Perhaps one of the graduate students had buried that Gamow unit and had now separated himself from the whole situation by scorning his former professor. Was that why Bob Schwartz ran off without answering my questions?

Thus far, she had spoken to only three of the people who’d been present in the camp—Cal Hart, Bob Schwartz, and Manuel Roig—and they had each seemed reticent to talk about the situation. No, wait, Cal Hart was interrupted by Jim Skehan , she reminded herself. But what was Bob’s problem? And was Manuel Roig in fact too exhausted after searching for Steve? Or was the memory of watching a man die in Antarctica too painful to visit? But what if this was a foil, an easy explanation behind which to hide? Did he have a reason to want the journalist dead? Valena’s brain buzzed with the questions she had not thought to ask these men, such as, Did you know Sweeny before you went to Emmett’s camp?

She ran down her mental list of possible killers. William the dogsbody was there by accident and was supposedly lazy or incompetent. She had no way of knowing whether he had a motive. David/Dave—the other muscle sent to the high camp—was a blank.

She looked out the window of the Delta, wondering if the David and William who had been present at Emmett’s camp could possibly be the Dave and Wee Willy who were at that moment cutting lazy figure eights in through the drifts beyond the groomed trail. No, too much of a coincidence , she decided. A thousand people work at McMurdo during the season, and David and William are common names.

The cook she was about to meet. What was she like? A bit cranky, having been alone with a tribe of men at high elevation? Would that make her a killer? And Calvin Hart: what was his story? What did he do for the project?

Cracking into Valena’s silence, Hilario repeated his question in a different form. “So really, what you doing driving out to Black Island?”

Valena blinked. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a little tired. Still jet-lagged, I guess.”

“It takes a while to adjust,” said Hilario. “First time on the ice, it takes at least a week. Dehydration, the endless daylight, all the weird people, eating food that comes out of a can…”

“I like it fine.”

“And you are going to Black Island because…?”

She tried to decide what of substance, if anything, she wanted to tell him. Clearly her story was getting around, but how much of it? “I wanted to see the Ross Ice Shelf,” she said at last. “I’d read so many accounts by the early explorers of how vast it was, and…” Her grip on her mind slipped again. And what? Deep in her guts she did want to see it, if only a glimpse. Had always wanted to see it. Had longed for it, and for all of Antarctica. She shook her head and closed her eyes. Fatigue was definitely beginning to get the better of her. Fatigue and stress. She needed more sleep.

“Well, what do you think? Seen enough yet?” He fell into his low chuckle again.

It is beautiful , she wanted to say. Painfully, astonishingly, joyously, severely beautiful , but instead she guarded her heart and, from her intellect, said, “I had expected something more dramatic, not that this isn’t pretty awe-inspiring. But I thought there would be a cliff, or at least a steep rise.” She had wanted an edge to cross, past which she could say, Now I have been to that place that summoned me.

She felt Hilario’s eyes on her. “Any time this month you want to learn to drive this thing,” he said, letting it roll to a stop. “Come on, it won’t bite you. Climb over here.”

They switched places and Valena settled herself behind the wheel, which was about eighteen inches in diameter and mounted almost flat, like that on a bus. Hilario showed her which gear to start out in—second for most purposes, first for soft snow or other questionable conditions. She gave it some gas and the big beast began to move. A smile spread across her face.

Hilario said, “You’re a natural. Time for me to take a few minutes to myself.” He climbed out of the shotgun seat, shoved everything that had been on the backseat onto the floor, and stretched out on it. “Wake me anything happens. Oh, and if I fall asleep or anything, wake me before we stop at KOA so Edith don’t see me snoozing.”

“Right. KOA. So what am I looking for? A campground?”

Hilario’s sardonic laugh filled the cab. “Yeah, that’s right. Only there’s only one campsite. Just keep going until you see something that isn’t ice or rock or flag.”

The faster snow machines flew ahead of them going south along the route. The wind had grown brisk, driving spumes of snow from the crest of every drift, wrapping the snow machine drivers up in a blanket of gauze. Valena would wave to them as they barreled toward her or zinged by going the other direction, running circles around the Delta and the Challenger to stay with the bigger, slower machines. Sometimes it looked like they were chasing each other, and sometimes it appeared that Dave was herding Wee Willy, keeping him from getting lost. The big man seemed bent on finding a snowdrift that would buck his machine into the sky. He would find a big one, take aim, and hit it as hard as he could. Just for shits and grins, as her mother used to say.

A vision of her mother came to mind as she had looked in a photograph Valena had once found in the back of a book at her grandfather’s house: sitting on her Harley, a can of beer resting on one knee, a skimpy tank top, and her huge Hollywood grin. It was the grin that always got people. Brought men to their knees. It was the Harley that had gotten her, late one night in the Snake River Canyon.

Valena drove onward across the ice, giving herself to its mass and dimensions. I made it, Ma , she wanted to tell her, but there was no email or conversation where she had gone.

The KOA turned out to be a survival hut, little more than a wooden box on wheels, a way station where a traveler could get in out of the wind. Edith called for a halt for lunch. “Come with me, Valena,” she called as she disappeared behind the structure.