Frozen Solid A Novel

13




SITTING AT THE TINY DESK, HALLIE WATCHED A FLY HANGING UPSIDE down from one of the white ceiling tiles. She wondered briefly how a fly might come to the South Pole, much less survive there. Then she wondered if she was seeing things. And then—she was learning the Pole’s way of deranging thought—she recalled Charles Lindbergh. He had become legend for flying solo across the Atlantic, but it wasn’t true. Not strictly, anyway. Hallie’s father had known one of Lindbergh’s children, who told him something about the flight few people knew.

After twenty-two hours without sleep, still flying in the dark over the ocean, Lindbergh began to hallucinate. He saw, or thought he did, a fly in the cockpit. He had opened the Spirit’s windows several times during the flight, hoping the cold air would keep him awake, but apparently the fly—or at least his vision of it—hadn’t been blown out. To keep himself awake and help ward off thoughts of death, Lindbergh began talking to the fly. He realized that it was an aviator of sorts itself, and he considered that the hazards his tiny companion had to deal with outnumbered his own many times over. He began to feel something like affection for the fly and conversed with it as he might have with a copilot.

Now Hallie tried to work up some feeling for the fly on her ceiling, just to see what would happen. Lindbergh had his copilot. She could do with a little confidant. Try as she might, the thing remained an insect that vomited before it ate and thought shit was earth’s greatest treasure.

But if Lindbergh had his fly, she had the farm in Virginia. At times like this, she found it helpful to close her eyes and visit. It was called Marley, for her ancestor Constant Marley, who had acquired the land virgin in the 1720s and made it into a farm. Fifty acres were in pasture and hay. The remaining hundred were woodland, home to white-tailed deer, black bears, coons, and coyotes.

And copperheads. In summer, they glittered on gray basking rocks and, for Hallie, inhabited the same mystic realm as mares foaling and springs bubbling from stone. Just beyond striking range, she would sit watching sun glint off their hammered-metal heads. The yellow, black-pupiled eyes and golden, pentagonal scales made her think of jewels and treasure. Still, she understood the danger and always kept a respectful distance.

Except once. Thirteen, drawn by something in the ancient eyes, she’d inched closer, slow and smooth. She could have touched the snake’s head, and almost did, just to see how it felt. Coiled and relaxed, it swelled and shrank its bellows flanks, and the pink tongue licked the Virginia summer-thick air. The back of her neck reddened, and sweat bubbled from her forehead. It was like staring into fire, a trance, and the world arranged itself around them.

Then the snake moved.

It could have been a hawk flashing in the sky, or some threat scent caught by the flicking tongue. In a blink the metallic head rose, its snout stopping a foot from her eyes. Even without being struck, she felt like an electric shock had hit. Adrenaline burned the oxygen in her system, leaving her breathless and weak-muscled. Fear very nearly overwhelmed her. She retained just enough mind to back away, slow as a shadow following sun.

Even safely distant, it was as though she had grabbed an arcing wire. The shock did not fade for a long time.

That was how she felt now. And backing away was not an option.

She awoke from restless drowsing, checked the time. Still an hour before she had to meet Graeter for a station tour. She stood, stretched, rubbed her face. Stared at the door, trying to make sense of everything. The meeting with Merritt was still fresh in her mind. There were only two possibilities about the chief scientist. If Merritt believed that Emily had given herself a fatal overdose, the killer’s ruse was working. If she was lying, she had to be involved in some way. Had Merritt been lying? It was hard for Hallie to imagine the matronly, cookie-baking woman committing or aiding a horrible murder. Merritt’s interest in Hallie as a person made it seem even less likely. Women did kill, of course, but really—one like Merritt?

The normal procedure, she assumed, would be to tell Graeter, with his claim to be a marshal. The man was a martinet, and a nasty one at that. Did that make him a murderer? Definitely not. But Graeter was also angry down to his core and obviously hated women. Did all of that make it easier for Hallie to see him killing a woman? Definitely so.

What about Maynard Blaine? He seemed about as likely to commit murder as Merritt. But that was only an assumption. If she knew nothing else, at least she knew one thing, and Guillotte had said it:

A place where everything you know is not true.

For the time being, she would obey an ironclad rule: Assume nothing.

The secret would have to stay where it was.

“Talk to me, Em,” she said.

Silence.

What did she expect, really? Ghostly voices from the ether? Apparitions floating around the room? She looked at the window, which showed nothing and reflected nothing, and only then realized that the room had not one mirror.

She needed to write to Barnard and Bowman. But how secure would the servers be? Some people always had access. IT techs and managers like Graeter and Merritt certainly would. God knew who else. And the off-and-on comms. Even if they were up, email would have to wait.

She sat back, looking around, wishing there had been something of Emily’s left behind. Then: maybe there was. Think like a cop. What would one of them do? Start with the body. Lacking that, the death scene.

She turned over the mattress, examined its underside, felt it all over for bumps or bulges. The bunk’s plywood platform was bare and clean. She checked under the computer’s CPU, examined its monitor and stand, picked up the keyboard and the mouse. She searched the inside of every cabinet and, standing on the desk chair, looked at their tops. Then she worked her way around the room, moving the chair, lifting and peering above all the other acoustical tiles.

Nothing.

She sat back in front of the computer desk. What the hell. Worth a try. Get some sleep.

She rose, but the space under the desk was so tight that her foot caught between the computer tower and the desk frame. She called the computer a foul name and started to yank her foot loose.

Then she stopped.

She hadn’t searched everywhere.