Frozen Solid A Novel

38




THE ONLY BENEFIT FROM A POLARRHEA ATTACK WAS THE AMPLE time for contemplation it afforded while working itself out. She was still carrying around a secret that, she felt even more sure now, could get her killed. With Fida gone, she was back where she had started, unable to trust anybody, not one person.

Certainly not Blaine. He had lied to her about Emily, and that was the first strange thing about a visit that had kept getting stranger from that moment on. Why would he do that? Only one reason that Hallie could think of: he had some connection to Emily’s death. Stranger things had happened. She knew about John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy and all the charming psychopaths who seemed like perfect neighbors while they were torturing and butchering and eating their victims. But Maynard Blaine? He struck her more as a clumsy Lothario than a sadistic murderer.

What about Graeter? Earlier, she would have put him close to the top of a suspect list. But then he had agreed to look through the personnel roster. Still, he might have known that no men at the station had names beginning with “Am.” She hadn’t been able to see the computer screen, so he might have lied about it, too. But she really didn’t think so. She had seen flashes of humanity there. He was hiding from something, which Hallie thought was probably guilt over the sailors’ deaths. And though he despised the philandering ex, he might feel guilty for that as well—a husband who’d left his wife stranded and increasingly desperate.

What about Brank? A definite possibility. And so many other men that she did not even know. In the end, she found herself asking this question: Who do you trust when you can’t trust anybody? The answer came quickly: Not who. What. And the what was science. You could always trust the science.

She was about to finish up when the door swung open and two women entered. They settled into adjoining stalls.

“So what do you think?” one said. Her voice was so rough it could have been a man’s. Pole throat.

“I think it’s her.” That voice was more normal.

“Me, too.”

“Question is what to do about it.”

“That is the question. But you know what?” man voice asked.

“What?”

“There’s a lot of answers to that question in a place like this.”

“Y’all talkin’ ’bout that new Beaker?” Hallie roughened her own voice, exaggerated the southern accent. Probably not necessary, since she hadn’t spoken with these women before. Better safe than screwed, though.

“Who’s that? I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

“No worries—it’s me, Braden. F*ckin’ Polarrhea. Y’all think she’s carryin’ some kinda germ?”

“Facts is facts. She comes in, women start dying.” Man voice sounded angry and afraid.

“She’ll be flyin’ out Saturday though, right?”

“If planes fly. Tell you this: no f*cking way I’m winterin’ over with a killer germbag. Not just me, neither. She’ll go out, one way or another.”

“Who’d you say that is over there?” the other woman asked.

But Hallie had already finished and slipped through the door. She was still technically under house arrest, or whatever they called it here. She hoped that Graeter had not made any general announcement about her confinement. If he hadn’t, the only people who would know she wasn’t supposed to be wandering around were Graeter, Grenier, Lowry, and Merritt. She would risk running into them. What could they do, anyway, other than put her back in her room? It did not feel good to break her word, but she rationalized that another, much bigger emergency requiring her attention trumped that. Graeter might be in denial, but something very bad was happening in this sealed-off, isolated pressure cooker they called the station.

Back in her room she pulled on a heavy fleece sweater and a parka. She stuffed a wool cap, gloves, spare dive knife, and headlamp into various pockets. She went down to the lab to gather certain items and moved on, still getting used to walking in a bubble of light. She passed a woman who didn’t even look up, then a man who was texting. He gave her only a quick glance. She could not keep from looking back at them after they passed, and doing the same thing more often as she walked.

At the air-lock doors to the Underground, she made one last check, saw no other light pods coming behind, and pushed through, sure that she was alone and had made the trip unobserved.