“Shoot!” Ackerley cried, a bubble of blood popping from his open throat. “Shoot me!” and with his hands extended he deliberately lunged at Murphy’s arm.
The gun went off with a blast, echoing for several seconds in the cold confines of the locker. Ackerley’s head snapped back, his glasses flying off, and he dropped to the concrete floor.
But his eyes were still open, and he was mouthing the word “shoot” one more time before he suddenly grew still, and the last bloody bubble rose, then burst, on his throat.
Murphy’s arm was shaking, and he lowered it to his side.
Darryl started to kneel by the body, but Michael said, “Hold on.”
Darryl held back.
“Yeah,” Murphy said, his voice quavering, “give him some room.”
“I think,” Michael said, solemnly, “we just need to wait a while.”
And so they sat, on the wooden crates, their heads down but their eyes on the corpse, huddled around it in a ragged circle. How long they waited, Darryl wasn’t sure. But it was Michael who eventually knelt down to feel for a pulse and listen for a heartbeat. He shook his head to indicate there were none.
“But I’m still not going to take any chances,” Murphy said, and Darryl knew enough to leave it at that. Murphy would do what Murphy wanted to do, and it was best not to inquire too deeply.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
December 20, 11 p.m.
MICHAEL HAD BEEN PREPARING for the call for months, but when it came, it was still a shock. “It was a blessing,” Karen was saying, for at least the third time. “We both know Krissy, and she wouldn’t have wanted to go on like that.”
The vigil was over. He sat hunched over, as if protecting himself from a punch in the stomach—because that was still how it felt—in the cramped communications bay. The last occupant of the chair had left a partially completed crossword puzzle on the SAT-phone desk.
“When exactly did it happen?”
“Around midnight, on Thursday. I waited till now to call because, as you can imagine, it’s been kind of crazy around here.”
He tried to cast his mind back to Thursday night, but even such a short time was hard to fix. Everything was so fluid in the Antarctic, it was tricky to remember the day of the week, much less anything from the days before. Where was he, what had he been doing, at precisely that time? Practical and hardheaded as he was, he still felt that he should have known, that he should have had some weird psychic inkling that Kristin was leaving. That she was gone for good.
“Of course, now my mother secretly blames my father; she thinks if he’d left Krissy in the hospital, she’d still be alive, if you want to call it that.”
“I would never have called it that.”
Karen sighed. “And neither would Krissy.”
“What about the funeral?”
“Tomorrow. Very small. I, uh, took the liberty of ordering some sunflowers in your name.”
That was a good choice. Sunflowers—with their bold, bright yellow faces—were Kristin’s favorite. “They’re not namby-pamby flowers,” she’d once told him, as they’d hiked through a field of them in Idaho. “They say, hey, look at me, I’m big, I’m yellow, get used to it!”
“Thanks,” Michael said. “I owe you.”
“They were $9.95. We can let it go.”
“You know I meant for everything else…including this call.”
“Yes, well, when you get back to Tacoma, you can buy me the Blue Plate special at that Greek diner you like.”
“The Olympic.”
There was a pause, filled with the low crackle of static on the line.
“So,” Karen said, “when are you coming back?”
“I’ve got till the end of the month on my NSF pass.”
“Then what? They just chuck you out at the South Pole?”
“Then they stick me on the next supply plane flying out.”
“Are you getting what you need? A good story?”
If Michael had been in the mood to laugh, he’d have laughed then. How could he even begin to explain what had been happening?
“Yeah,” he said, “let’s just say I don’t think I’m going to be short of material.”
When they hung up, he simply sat there, staring down at the open crossword puzzle. His eye happened to fall on a clue that read “Kinky female photog.” Five letters. He picked up the blue pencil the previous guy had left and filled in “Arbus.” Then he just continued to sit there, twirling the pencil, lost in thought. Letting the news sink in.
“Say, you done with the phone?” one of the grunts asked, leaning in the doorway.