She turned and looked at the cook, who was now opening a rasher of precooked bacon that she had left thawing on the kitchen counter the evening before. Feeling Valena’s eyes on her, she looked up. She was not smiling. She lifted a long, sharp knife, the type used to chop large amounts of vegetables, and brought it down with authority.
Valena returned her gaze to the computer, which was finally ready. Hoping that no one would look over her shoulder at what was on the screen, she opened her e-mail to write to Cal but found other messages waiting for her that interested her much more. The first was from Em Hansen:
Valena, I thought I told you to quit. Oh well, if you insist on being as stupid as I am, here’s my next best recommendation: stick with evidence that only you can understand, and gather it in a way that looks like you’re only doing the job you were actually sent there to do. You have your undergraduate degree in geology, right? Well, think Sherlock Holmes. Was there any dirt in the dead man’s shoes? Where did it come from? Where else did he get to? But watch your back. It’s so easy to get all het up with crime being wrong that one forgets that, while the tragedy has already occurred, it’s a gift that can keep on giving. Stay safe (hah), Em
Valena tucked that bit of wisdom into her brain and opened the next message. It was from James Skehan, dated Wednesday evening:
Valena
Thought you might like an update regarding Emmett. He has been formally charged with murdering Sweeny which we both know is a crock. I need to talk with you as soon as you get back here Thursday. I’m going to check out a beeper, so call me on it the moment you get in. I’ll leave the number on your desk in Crary. Meanwhile, watch your back and don’t ask questions while on the trail. You are traveling with two possible suspects.
Jim
Valena closed this message immediately. She sat back and tried to think. Should she reply? In her haze of fatigue, she could not sort out what to think about any of the messages or what to write in a return. As she sat still, listening to her heartbeat pounding in her ears, all possibilities jammed on one logistical particular: she did not know when she would be arriving back in McMurdo. She was not in charge of that schedule. No one is in charge of anything in Antarctica. The continent itself is in charge!
“How’d you sleep?” Edith asked as she sat down at the table. She looked fresh as the proverbial daisy.
Valena squeezed her eyes shut. “Fine.”
“Nothing like a day of good physical work to tucker you out.”
“Right.”
“Go get your gear together out of the bunkhouse and then come and have breakfast. We’ll be loading up the empties to take back to Mac Town and be getting on the road ASAP. There’s another storm coming, and I want to be in Gallagher’s with a pool cue in my hands when it hits.”
“Check.” Valena logged off the computer and headed for the bunkhouse. Outside, she could see what Edith was talking about. The southern horizon was studded with clouds, and the wind was again rising.
The other two satellite technicians strode toward her across the yard from the bunkhouse, heads lowered against the blow. She hurried past them to the bunkhouse and pushed open the door, nearly colliding with Wee Willy, who was on his way out, duffel over his shoulder and fake-fur hand warmer dangling in front of the expansive front of his Carhartts. For the briefest of moments, he made eye contact with her. “Thanks again for picking this up,” he said, patting the wad of fuzz.
Valena blinked in surprise. His eyes and voice had been filled with surprise, confusion, shy affection, and…she struggled to evaluate the last ingredient… longing.
Inside the bunkhouse, Hilario and Dave were just stuffing the last bits of personal gear into their duffels. “Hola, chica!” said Hilario. “Ready for another day of stoop labor?”
“Uh, sure.”
“See you at breakfast, then. Last one gets no bacon.” He brushed by her and left the building.
Suddenly she was alone with Dave. He looked up at her, smiling a sleepy good-morning smile. The low light in the room made his features softer, more intimate, and the fact that he was rolling up a sleeping bag with his large, thick-fingered hands added an entirely tactile aspect to their meeting.
She moved to her bunk and began doing the same. Turned her back to him. Pushed the silky fabric of the sleeping bag into the big duffel in which it had come.
Dave spoke. “Edith says you’d like to learn to drive the Challenger.”
“Um, well…yes.”
“Then it’s a date.”
For the space of several heartbeats, the only sounds in the room were the slithering of fabric being shoved into duffels and zippers being zipped. She heard his footsteps as he crossed the floor. The door opened, flooding the room with light.
The door closed again. She was alone.
She realized that she was perspiring.
VALENA MANAGED TO CORNER SHEILA IN THE STORE-room while everyone else was outside lashing down the return load. “I need more information,” she said.
“I don’t know what I can add,” Sheila replied, appearing to focus her attention on which can of tomatoes to remove from the shelves.
“Anything. Any arguments you overheard. Anything that suggests that anyone other than Emmett had a gripe with the man who died.”
Sheila rubbed a corner of her apron around the top of the can she had selected to remove a nonexistent coating of dust. “Well, I heard one …” she said, concentrating on a number 10 can of applesauce.
“Come on! Any moment, Edith’s going to step through the doorway and tell me it’s time to go.”
“I only heard one side of the discussion. Though it appeared to have but the one side.”
“Who’s side? What was said?”
“It was the journalist. He kept his voice low, but I could tell that he was very, very angry.”
“At who?”
“It was outside the tent the first day he was there. I was inside, cooking. So I don’t know which of the men he was talking to, but he said, ‘We meet at last,’ and then, ‘Yeah, you,’ or words to that effect, and then, ‘I’ve come a long way to find you, asshole,’ and then I couldn’t hear any more, because there were footsteps—you know how they squeak in that cold, dry snow—and Mr. Sweeny was following the other bloke away, nattering at him. At the time I didn’t think much of it.”
“Wow. Did you tell the feds about this?”
“Nay. They didn’t ask, now, did they?”
The airlock door opened, and Edith stepped inside. “Valena!” she called. “Come on! We’re waiting on you!”
BY LATE MORNING, THEY HAD SET ANOTHER SEVEN MILES of flags along the route, picking up where they had started setting them the day before and progressing back toward McMurdo. Valena fell again into the rhythm of the work, engrossing herself this time in the art of pitching flags off the top of the load while Hilario drove the Delta. The task required that she closely monitor the bundles of poles. There was an abstract pleasure to pitching the poles just right so that they stabbed into the snow but hung at a slightly drunken angle, so that Dave and Willy, who were again riding the snow machines, would know which ones had been rammed into the snow at the proper depth and which ones still awaited their attentions.
As she watched the two men work, she noticed that Willy kept to odd numbered holes and left the evens to Dave, regardless of whether or not Dave was delayed drilling with the augur. In places where the wind had eroded the snow down to the ice, it was necessary to use the auger to get a hole deep enough to hold up the flag. This was harder work and took two to three times as long per flag as using the pike on soft snow, but while Dave moved from an even to an odd when Willy was delayed rather than moving ahead of him, Willy did not return the favor. At one point, Dave hit a long cluster of icy positions and fell far behind. Seeing this, Hilario stopped the Delta and waited for him to catch up. Wee Willy pulled his snow machine up beside the Delta and waited for his next flag.
Hilario leaned out of the cab. “Hey, W
illy! Where you get off letting Dave do more than half the work?”
Willy stared at him, letting the blankness of his goggles speak for his mood.
Hilario growled, “I’ll bet you were the pendejo that turned off the dish last night! Yeah, I saw the little wheels turning in your brain when the techs showed us which buttons to push on that computer!”
Wee Willy fussed with his neck gaiter, clumsily letting it slip low enough to reveal his smirk.
I’ll be damned, thought Valena. He’s smarter than he looks. Either that, or a whole lot stupider.
Half an hour later, they stopped for lunch. As they stood around in the lee of the Delta, they discussed the weather, the ice, and their position on the trail. Willy stood with them this time, closer to Valena than she liked.
“This is my point farthest south,” said Edith. “We’re at the southernmost point of this traverse. Seventy-eight degrees, eighteen minutes south. Not as good as Shackleton, but I ride in relative comfort.”
“Yeah,” said Hilario. “They didn’t have ChapStick in his day.”
Edith said, “So, Valena, how do you like driving the equipment?”
“I love it.”
Willy stopped chewing and stared at her. “But you don’t have to do this stuff,” he said. “You’re not even getting paid for it.”
Valena realized that he had just given her an opening from which to ask questions while in the protection of the group. Starting with pleasant chitchat, she said, “You love it, don’t you?” knowing that he didn’t. Love and Willy were two things that didn’t seem to connect.
Willy drew his eyebrows together in confusion. “It’s work.”
“Well then, let’s put it this way: what brought you here?”
“I was looking for a job.”
“Where?” she asked.
“On the computer.”
“I mean, where were you when you logged onto the computer? In Kansas, New York …”
“Oh. Massachusetts. I was looking on the Internet for a job, and they said they had this job.”
Dave said, “You didn’t like it much last year, as I recall. So why did you come back?”
Willy shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno. It’s a job.”
Edith rolled her eyes.
Hilario said, “Well, let’s get it moving, muchachos. We got miles to cover. Valena, you want another turn at the wheel?”
They continued setting flags through the first part of the afternoon. Finally, they saw the KOA ahead of them, a tiny box of cover in a wilderness of ice. Edith made her check-in call to Mac Ops and then announced over the intercom, “We’ll pull up at the KOA and make a final shuffling of the vehicles, then head for the barn.”
Hilario climbed down off the back of the Delta. “Edith says you’re gonna ride with Dave this last pitch,” he said. “He’ll teach you good. That’s the Cadillac of all Antarctic treads, and Dave’s got a hand like velvet on those controls.” He gave her a wink. “He don’t bite.”
Valena tried to force a casual smile but failed miserably.
Hilario threw back his head and laughed. “O cariño!” He chortled. “Dave is as gentle as a dove!”
So that was it, she was going to ride for two hours or more in that tiny cab with this man who made her that nervous. This man who might be a killer. And somehow, the nervousness and the possibility that he was a killer were two separate things. She pulled the Delta up next to the Challenger and climbed out. She walked across the open snow that separated the two vehicles. She climbed the steps up the fender.
Dave was waiting for her with the door open.
Edith roared past on a snow machine, gunning it for a fast return to town. Willy followed in hot pursuit. Hilario had moved into the driver’s seat of the Delta. He lifted one hand from the steering wheel and made a little scoot-scoot-scoot gesture, urging her into the cab.
Infor a penny, in for a pound, Valena told herself, and she stepped inside.
Dave moved to the jump seat and showed Valena how to adjust the driver’s seat to her size. He reached in front of her to put his hand on the first of two levers to the right of the wheel. “Now, here’s the transmission,” he said. “You’ve got ten forward gears and two in reverse.” He moved his hand to the second lever. “This one’s the throttle.” He pointed next to the floor. “The pedal on the left is the clutch. You can take off and shift through the gears without using it, but you’d need it for things like hooking up the goose, where you have to ease it back slowly and stop when the hole in the tongue is in line with the hole in the drawbar so you can drop in the pull pin. The next pedal is the brake, no different than a car. The third pedal is the decelerator, not the accelerator. It works just the opposite of the accelerator on a car. Pushing down on that pedal slows the engine.”
“That’s going to be a little hard to remember.”
He laughed. “Then this is going to be an interesting ride. Now these levers are the hydraulics to lift and lower the blade. Keep it gentle. Okay, put it in gear, set it in eighth, and give it 2100 rpm’s.”
Valena set the throttle to a more conservative 1400 rpm. The Challenger eased forward. The big steering wheel moved like silk after the awkward swing of the Delta’s. “Power steering,” she said.
“Oh, you’d best believe it. Okay now, give it some gas; we don’t want to miss dinner.”
She ran the throttle up to 2100 and they began to accelerate.
“Keep an eye on this rearview mirror,” said Dave. “You can watch how the goose is doing. If it gets too much snow building up, pull it up a little. No snow at all, let it down. Go ahead, try it.”
Valena immediately dropped the blade too far into the snow, kicking up a spray that flew right over the top of the blade.
Dave laughed. “That’s a little more than you need. Little movements. Try it again.”
They kept on going, now moving a little faster, and, bit by bit, mile by mile, Valena gained confidence in both the tractor and in the instructor that came with it. By the time they came around the bend that opened up their view toward the sea ice, Valena was getting cocky and cut the curve a little too tightly.
“You want to try that third pedal on the floor when you feel it getting out of control like that,” said Dave.
“I wasn’t out of control,” Valena answered tartly.
Dave grinned. “Oh, yeah? Ask that flag you clipped. It’s spinning out across the back forty.”
“I clipped a flag? You’re kidding.”
“Your secret is safe with me. But I got to tell you, you hit too many and Edith will give you a ticket.”
“What for? Flag endangerment? Destroying government property?”
“No. Maybe for the same thing I got ticketed for once.”
“And what was that?”
“Oh, I got pulled over in a little town for doing about double the speed limit. The old guy who wrote me up said it was for being ‘careless and imprudent.’” The grin flashed again.
“Careless and imprudent,” said Valena, trying on the words.
They rode in amiable silence for a while, then Dave asked, “I hear you’re here to study the ice.”
“That’s right.” She let it hang.
“I like to talk to the scientists, learn what they’re learning.”
“That’s smart. Quicker than taking a degree, and cheaper, too.” She immediately wished that she hadn’t said that.
Dave’s smile seemed a touch more abstract than it had been a moment earlier.
“I meant that as a compliment,” she said.
He gave her a friendly smile. She received it like a flower.
He said, “So there’s all that stuff about global warming. Are we going to be able to keep this place from melting?”
Now Valena’s smile faded. “I don’t know if we’ll figure out what we need to know fast enough, or get people to change the way they do things at all.” She shook her head. “And you know what? I love studying these glaciers, but if I was to do somethi
ng more essentially to the point, I’d be working to help people have fewer babies. Thirty years ago, zero population growth was the clarion call, but now we seem to have forgotten all that and are just trying to figure out how to live high without fouling our nest. The bottom line is that there are just too many humans on this planet.”
Dave’s eyes softened. “I don’t think you could have persuaded your parents that you shouldn’t have been born.”
She turned and looked him in the eye. “I have no idea how either of them felt about that, or if my biological father even knew I’d been conceived. I never met my birth mother. But the mother who raised me liked me well enough.”
He was quiet a while, thinking through what she’d said. “Then I can’t ask the question that’s right here on my tongue. You must have been asked a thousand times, anyway. Where your folks come from.”
“I have no idea of my ethnic background.”
He smiled softly, looking at her with the eyes of a lover. “I think you’re part everything. The first time I saw you, I thought, ‘Dave, here’s what we all will come to look like when we get over this foolish idea of race and just marry the people we love. And what a glorious result it is.’”
Valena felt her heart crash outward through her ribcage. She forced her gaze back toward the trail ahead of them and gripped the wheel more tightly. They continued in silence for many more miles.
“YOU TURN LEFT UP HERE,” ÖAVE SAID, AS THE ROUTE
widened from one lane to two and then met an intersection. “Make sure to swing wide, out into the far lane, otherwise your treads will chew up the hardpack where the rubber tire vehicles need to run.”
“Big ten-four on that.” They careened around the bend, the goose slewing wildly to one side.
Dave laughed. “I said slow down a little when you make a turn!”
Valena grinned. “Careless and imprudent!” she sang. “My new motto!”
“Okay, we’re on the interstate now. Lift the goose, push her on up into tenth, and take us on home.”
In Cold Pursuit Page 25
