Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

“So let me get this straight: You two were able to find the exact place again in all that ice and went at it like a couple of archaeologists, or something.”

Skehan shrugged. “Actually, the helicopter helped us. When it landed and took off to pick up Steve, it blew the newest layers of snow away. The spot wasn’t that hard to find. Dorothy here isn’t exactly a new hand, either.”

Cupcake said, “The point is, we were able to examine the tracks around where Steve was lying.”

Hunger to know what had happened to Steve won out over ego. “All right, what did you see?” he asked.

Cupcake said, “He was near the flagged route that leads out to Cape Evans, but not on it, so the footprints that led up to him had been cut into fresh, uncompacted snow.” She turned to Skehan. “Tell him the rest.”

Skehan said, “We went to the hospital afterward, and they still had Steve’s boots. He had been wearing his own boots, not USAP issue. They had a different tread pattern from the ones we found out there. The pattern we found was exactly the same as FDX—you know, the blue boots.”

“Beaker boots,” said Ted. “Were the tracks bigger, smaller, or the same size as Steve’s?”

“We didn’t get perfect recovery on any of the tracks. What we saw were fragmental. When you walk in stiff-soled boots, you either walk flat-footed or you kind of mash the snow around, rolling off the toe and crushing the rest of your print. And whoever dropped him there took certain pains to step back toward the flag route using the same footsteps, which further disrupted them, and then there were the footprints of the rescuers. But we were still able to find three good prints that tell the story. What we could see seemed bigger than Steve’s boots.”

“And there were marks where Steve’s feet were dragged across the snow,” Cupcake added.

Skehan nodded. “Whoever did it was in a hurry. It was a hasty job. You can just see the little wheels in his head going, ‘I’ve just hit this guy across the head, so what am I going to do with him? I don’t want him waking up, and if I hit him again it sure won’t look like an accident anymore, so what should I do? Let’s see… I’d better let him freeze to death. To make sure that happens, I’ll put him somewhere they won’t find him in time. Now, where’s a good place? It has to look like something he could have done on his own, so dumping him in a blowhole for some Weddell seal isn’t quite the ticket. How about just dumping him near the flag route a couple miles out past the point? No one’s going out there anytime soon, not in this weather, and when they find him, they’ll just think he headed the wrong way in the storm.’”

Ted shook his head. “One little problem: the storm. If nobody else could get out there and back in that weather without getting lost, then how could our killer do it?”

Skehan said, “I’d use GPS. I’ve done it myself in Greenland. You need to have mapped the route beforehand, set your waypoints, but you can do it.”

“We’re pretty far south here, lad. The satellite coverage can be a little sketchy.”

“Maybe I get lucky.”

“Nasty,” said Ted. “I suppose it could work, on a long shot. Then let me ask another question: Why are you two telling me this? Why aren’t you going straight to the Chalet with this?”

“We’ll get around to telling Bellamy,” said Skehan. “But you know the party line over there. They don’t want the publicity. The muzzle he put on Emmett’s arrest was appalling.”

“But once again, why me?”

“Because you were there last year,” said Cupcake. “Or almost. You know the players. We’ve done some figuring, and almost all the other people who were at Emmett’s camp when the man died were in or around McMurdo yesterday when this happened. Calvin, Dave, and William were here. Sheila had come in by helicopter the day before to do her laundry and pick up supplies and was held up by the storm until evening. Bob Schwartz’s flight to WAIS Divide was canceled, so he was here. Manny Roig led the SAR team. Dan Lindemann was supposed to be in the Dry Valleys, but I’m checking on him. The only person who was up at that camp when the man died last year who has a bomb-proof alibi for yesterday is Emmett himself, because he’s locked up in Hawaii.”

Ted said, “And what’s your agenda?”

Skehan said, “Simple: I want Emmett’s name cleared. He’s more than a colleague, he’s a friend, but even putting that aside… okay, I’ll be entirely candid. When Frink attacked Emmett in the Financial News , he attacked all of us. He attacked the whole planet. He distorted the facts. He distorted how science is done. He was just plain wrong. He was selling a story designed to woo readers into believing that scientists who study climate don’t know what they’re doing. He was telling everyone to just sit back and keep comfy and keep burning all the oil and coal they want.”

“It’s that simple?”

Skehan stared him down. “He was supporting the guys who say, ‘I don’t care if greenhouse gasses heat up the atmosphere, because when we build our 120 new coal-fired plants in the United States, and more in China, yet more in India, we make money, so to hell with our grandkids! Let them make money selling ice to cool us back down!’ Of course, there will be no ice left for them to sell, but that’s progress!”

Ted said, “I’m not arguing with you, Skehan, but I was one of the last people to see that man alive. I didn’t see any horns coming out of his head, and he isn’t the one who wrote that article.”

Skehan said, “Do you want any more deaths out here? No. And if we can connect the two deaths, then Emmett’s in the clear, because he wasn’t here for the second one.”

Ted said, “But that doesn’t clear him of the first one. Not really. And what if they aren’t connected? Sounds like you have no concern for who killed Steve. After all, he wasn’t a scientist. He was only support staff. A tradesman. A Carhartt.”

Skehan closed his eyes. “Ted, I don’t know who bit your ass,” he said, keeping his voice soft and slow, “but I’ve worked on this ice five seasons, and two more in Greenland. When one is on the ice, death is always right there waiting for us. “He opened his eyes again.” If we die by mischance, or through sickness, that’s a tragedy that affects us all. But we don’t often die out here, simply because we are a community. We work together, and live almost inside each other’s pockets. It’s a time-honored tradition, a necessity, that dates clear back to Scott and before. I do this work in part for that fellowship and that sense of shared honor, heartless intellectual though I may appear.” He pulled off his right glove and reached out between them, palm up. “And if someone’s out here purposefully causing people to die—out of cowardice, malice, greed, his motive matters not—I want him stopped. Is that good enough for you?”

Ted stared into Skehan’s eyes for a long moment, then removed his own right glove and met him flesh to flesh. “I’m in.”

MAJOR MARILYN WOOD PERCHED ON A STRAIGHT-BACKED chair in the conference room at the Airlift Wing offices, nursing her fifth mug of coffee for the day. “The Hummingbird,” the others called her, when they weren’t calling her “Wrong Way Wood,” which inversely referred to her prowess as a navigator. It also made a joke about the strange business of flying “north” to the south, following the grid navigational system.

She blinked wearily, having just made the transit from New Zealand to the ice for the umpteenth time, returning with Major Hugh Muller from Christchurch after their depressing flight north with the dying tractor driver. Major Waylon Bentley finished pouring his own cup of coffee and joined them.