Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

“You didn’t really think the killer would hide her near city hall, did you?” asked Solly.

“If he was a maniac,” she said, “who knows what he might have done?”

A killer would have been likely to throw the body into the lake, which had been much smaller then; or into the river. Or he might have buried her north of town, in ground that was now at the bottom of Remorse. In either case, she’d still be in the water. So Kim flew systematically over the lake surface, marking off squares until, after an hour and a half, they’d covered it all.

That eliminated, Kim thought, the most likely places.

She took them east along the southern shoreline. Almost immediately the screen began to blink. “Got something,” said Solly. The rate varied back and forth as she jockeyed through the sky.

Down there.

Just woods. “I see an iron fence,” said Kim.

“And some headstones.” They were overgrown by thick brush, hidden by trees.

And a pair of wrought iron gates.

“Cemetery,” said Solly. He got a fix on the hit so they wouldn’t lose it when they moved out of the scanner’s range.

Kim set down in a glade about a hundred meters away. There was a short argument about who would go and who stay. “It’s my party,” she insisted.

Solly shrugged. “Keep talking to me.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

She sealed her jacket, climbed down from the flyer, and plunged into the woods. The day was cold and hard and very still. Snow crackled underfoot.

She wasted no time getting lost and had to double back. Solly’s line of sight provided shortest distance to the target, but did not allow for fences, thick shrubbery, creeks, or other obstacles. On her second try she found the gates. An arch was inscribed with the words JOURNEY’S END.

“These people weren’t much for subtlety,” she told Solly.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“Okay. Are you inside?”

“Yes. Give me a bearing.”

Solly checked the map he’d made and compared it with her position. “To your right, about sixty degrees.”

There were a lot of headstones, and the cemetery was overgrown. She headed off in the indicated direction.

“Good,” said Solly. “Keep straight.”

She glanced at the markers as she went by. Some were two centuries old.

“You got it,” said Solly. “You should be right on top of it.”

She was looking up at a stone angel. “Nothing here except a grave,” she said. “ Old one. Husband and wife. Both buried at the beginning of the last century.”

“That’s got to be it. It’s down there.”

She looked at it. Looked at some elms and a couple of mausoleums and more headstones half hidden in the underbrush. “Can’t be,” she said.

“Sure it is. It’s ideal. Nobody’d want to dig it up.”

“But the killer would have had to disturb the original grave. Somebody would have noticed.” Maybe the couple had been buried with their wedding rings. “This is not where you hide a body, Solly. You put it in the woods, or weight it and drop it in the lake.”

She walked back to the flyer and they took off again and resumed the hunt along the southern shore, and then off to the east. They broke out pork slices and apples while the AI executed the search pattern. The afternoon wore on.

By twilight, Solly had given up. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” he said.

“Where haven’t we looked?”

“Tripley had a flyer.”

“Yes.”

“If I had a flyer and I wanted to get rid of a body, I don’t think I’d dig any holes. It’s too much work, and you’re too likely to get caught.”

“We’ve looked in the lake.”

“To hell with the lake. I’d fly it out to sea and dump it.”

“If he did that,” she said, “we’re out of luck.” She tapped her index finger on the instrument console. “The explosion occurred three days after they arrived. We have to assume things were happening fast and he had to get rid of it locally.” The sun was touching the crest of Mount Hope.

“Top of the mountain?” he suggested.

“It’s all granite up there. No way to bury it.”

“The river,” said Solly. “But upstream. The other side of the dam.”

“Why would you put it there?”

“The water was deeper up there. Look at your map.”

Large sections of the dam were still intact. Sluices had been left open. The river rushed through them, and through gaps in the concrete, and roared out the south side, crashing down fifty meters into the lower canyon.

They flew low over the structure and were rocked by the wind. Kim yowped and the flyer warned them belatedly that turbulent conditions were common in the area. “ We should exercise caution, ” it added.

The wreckage reminded Kim of the remnants of a monolithic altar, or perhaps a vast jawbone left in the river.

The onboard AI apologized for the rough ride, assured them it would strive to be more careful, but complained that they had imposed a ceiling which prevented it from rising to a more comfortable altitude.

They looked down at the dam. On its upstream side, the river was a patchwork of water alternately rough and tranquil, of wakes and eddies, of sandbanks and splintered trees. It rushed at the shattered dam, crashed through it, and fell about forty meters into a canyon, which carried it into Remorse.

Solly instructed the AI to take them lower, but it complained that the action wouldn’t be prudent. “ High winds, ” it said. “ Best to stay where we are. ”

Solly sighed. “Kim,” he said, “change seats with me.”

She shook her head. “Going to manual won’t do any good. If it doesn’t like what you’re doing, it’ll override.”

“Change seats,” he said.

She complied and they climbed over each other while the flyer asked for instructions. When he was seated again, Solly looked to his left, found a panel marked A-DATA and opened it.

“What are we doing?” asked Kim.

“Taking out the AI.” He showed her a yellow-coated cable and disconnected it from a black box. The flyer momentarily lost headway and started to sink. Solly threw a couple of switches, and a yoke snicked out of the deck and locked in place. He tested it, pulled back on the stick, and leveled off.

“I never knew you could do that,” said Kim.

He grinned. “Learn something new every day. You ready?”

“For what? You weren’t planning on dropping us into the river, were you?”

“Have no fear,” he said.

“Right. Into the hands of God—”

He picked out one of the larger dam fragments and took them down the north face until they were just over the water. The descent was smoother than she’d expected.

“Good,” she said.

He nodded. “Nothing like having a professional—”

The screen began to blink.

“Bingo,” said Kim.

“Right at the foot of the dam, looks like.” That made sense, of course. Throw an object in anywhere along this stretch of water, weigh it down, and if it moved at all, it would end up wedged in here.

Solly looked at the darkening sky. “It’s late to push this any further tonight,” he said. “Why don’t we come back tomorrow? Work in full daylight?”

“When we’re this close? It’ll only take a few minutes. Let’s get it done. Find out what we have.”

Solly frowned. “Wouldn’t take much for the river and the concrete to beat up a diver pretty good.”

“It just means we have to be careful,” she said. “Anyhow, it’s not as dangerous as it looks.”

“It looks pretty dangerous.”

They surveyed the area for a place to set down.

“There,” said Solly. He was looking at a slab, a piece of the dam that had been hewn off and dumped. It was lying almost flat in the water, one end submerged, the other angled up at about ten degrees. Just enough room for the flyer.