CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  “Honestly, Detective, you cannot believe anything these people say about Dr. Hagerty. They—”

  “You deliberately came down here,” Alex spat back, “hoping to—”

  Stern again held up his hand for silence. “I’ve already called in the coroner’s office.”

  Alex froze with shock. “What? You can’t mean that—”

  “I want some technical help. The coroner’s deputy and one of our guys are going over Dr. Hagerty’s clothes and body right now. All without any risk to her, believe me,” Stern added when he saw expressions of alarm from Kathryn and Alex. “It’s a standard procedure when we suspect evidence will be lost in the hospital.”

  “The men outside,” Alex said dumbly.

  “Yeah.”

  Alex sat back, his mind churning fruitlessly. A sickening dread yawned, a black certainty that events were turning against them, against Susan. Abruptly he stood up, so furious that he did not trust himself to say anything. He slammed the door on his way out, except that it had one of those damned self-closing arms and only eased shut, depriving him of even that. He stormed down the corridor outside the big ICU doors, reached the end, and came back, trying to think. Kathryn emerged from the conference room and joined him, walking more rapidly to keep up his pace.

  “Even after Susan’s descriptions, I didn’t think Blevin could be that bad,” he said.

  “A four-star bastard,” Kathryn said.

  “I wonder if Stern will pay attention to him.”

  “He’s probably amused, actually. We were being so careful with him, he must have guessed why.”

  Alex glanced at her sharply. “We were trying to keep him from getting sidetracked.”

  “How do we know his questions about her friends, about her dog, were sidetracks?”

  “Well, of course they were. He’s looking for a murder here, and there isn’t anything. Zero, zip, nada.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “C’mon, who’d kill Susan? The dog is a red herring.”

  “Mixed animal metaphor. To Stern, the dog’s a red light.”

  “He’s overreaching.”

  “And he hasn’t had time to dig.”

  “Dig for what?”

  “Have you forgotten that Susan was assaulted a couple of weeks ago?”

  He snorted with exasperation. “No, but that was a random incident. No connection to this.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “It’s probable as hell.”

  Kathryn blinked, her lips pursed with surprise. “You’re more concerned with the cryonics angle on this than with whether she was attacked.”

  He bit his lip in exasperation. “Listen, the main thing is her care, and that’s out of our hands. But if the doctors fail in there, then everything comes down to us. Got it?”

  “But she’s our friend, and maybe somebody—”

  “Maybe, crap. I’ve got to prepare for my job, if I have to do it. That means keeping Stern off our backs.”

  Kathryn frowned. “As soon as he finds out, he’ll get mad at you for not telling him.”

  “The county sheriff’s office is a paperwork operation, not really computerized yet. I2 has dealt with them before. He can’t just call up a crosscheck right away. That gives us a window, maybe a few hours.”

  “He’ll get mad, and—”

  “Okay, so he’ll get mad. I’ll say I forgot Susan’s bang on the head in the excitement here.”

  “Do you think he would order an autopsy just on that basis?”

  “I don’t know. He’s paid to be suspicious.” Alex paced. He could see that his argument hadn’t really convinced her. She didn’t sort out things into compartments so easily. He consciously put aside his concern for Susan to prepare for the worst, separating out the issue of whether she had been attacked again. That could come later.

  Kathryn stopped his furious pacing and put her hands on his shoulders, peering into his troubled eyes. “Lover, we’re trying to put body English on Stern, sure. That’s your job, I suppose. We have to let Stern do his job, too.”

  Alex said stiffly, not allowing himself to be mollified, “You don’t feel the way I do. You’re not a cryonicist, after all.”

  Kathryn’s eyes flickered, and he knew he had hurt her. After all, he thought, he was simply stating a fact. She wasn’t signed up, so she wasn’t really one of them. A flat, hard fact.

  She blurted, “Damn it, I don’t know all this legal and technical stuff, but I can still feel!”

  Kathryn’s nose twitched in annoyance, but she did not take her hands from his shoulders. Instead, she drew him closer. This unsettled him. He had wanted a quarrel, some sharp words that would take away his anger. Abruptly he remembered his ex-wife saying, Don’t take it out on me! and it was as though years had peeled away. He had made this mistake before: gotten into shouting matches with a woman he loved. Become so involved in that spat, he forgot the ire that had started it off.

  The clarity of it was like a cold splash in the face. He blinked. Stared at Kathryn. Opened his mouth. And closed it, not knowing what to say.

  Okay, face it. It’s a habit, a mode you’ve gotten into. That doesn’t mean you have to keep on doing it. He nodded, confirming it for himself.

  Kathryn looked puzzled. He realized that he looked dopey, or crazy, or both, nodding to himself. He opened his mouth again, and again did not know what to say. So he laughed. A deep, ironic howl that came up from his gut and threw his head back in explosive relief.

  Kathryn looked even more puzzled. He grabbed her firmly and planted a full, wet kiss on her astounded lips.

  When he had made good work of that, he tilted his head back to look at her quizzical half-smile. “Thanks. I needed that. I love you.”

  Uncertainty left her face. “You big dumb brute, I love you, too.”

  “I’ve been meaning to say that.”

  “You sure picked the nonstandard moment.”

  “It’s my way. Creative romance.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s all your own. You are a strange man.”

  “I suppose so,” he said, reflecting.

  4

  KATHRYN

  “Ms. Sheffield? Mr. Cowell?”

  It was Detective Stern, eyes averted slightly, seeming a little embarrassed to approach them while they were standing with their arms around each other. Kathryn caught a closing in his face that told her that he had seen a lot of mayhem in his line of work but not much affection.

  “Yes?” she answered in her best business voice.

  “I’ve got some preliminary results here from the technical people. I thought I’d go over them, see if you could add anything further.”

  She noticed Blevin entering the ICU down the corridor and was thankful that they did not have to endure him again. On the other hand, he was probably going to spread his acutely logical venom in there now.

  Stern held out a clipboard and read from it. “These three-sheets are a mess to read, but—”

  “Three-sheets?” she asked. She had resolved that she was not going to let jargon cascade by her in all this, or else she would never understand what was going on.

  “The third carbon copy of the arriving officers’ reports and the technical team reports. Like reading hieroglyphics.” Stern waved a clipboard of his own notes. “So I talked to the docs before they left to do their workup.”

  “You can get the radiological and CAT-scan data right here,” Alex said.

  “Already have. That lady is really banged up. Multiple contusions, a big one on the lower rear skull, but no evident pattern of blows in them. So those and the bruises probably are from the rocks, all right.”

  “Wasn’t that obvious?” Alex asked.

  Stern paused just long enough for Kathryn to see him resolve to not get irked by Alex. It was a reflex obviously built up by long practice. She had solid respect for Stern.

  “We check everything, Mr. Cowell,” Stern said with a slight ironic precision. “The offi
cers took threads from beneath Dr. Hagerty’s fingernails. Preliminary analysis says they are of the same color and material as her jogging suit.”

  Kathryn said, “So she might have gotten them from her torn clothing?”

  “Quite possible, but the lab will have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on that one.”

  Alex nodded vigorously. “How about the blood workup?”

  “Got a quick one, just preliminary. The part we’re interested in, the drug screen, is a bunch of goose eggs. No drugs, nothing funny. Pretty rare among doctors, by my experience.”

  Alex smiled. “Any chance I could get a copy?”

  Stern pressed the clipboard to his side, face inward, firmly drawing the line. “This was a courtesy, Mr. Cowell, not an invitation.”

  “We thank you,” Kathryn said quickly.

  “Hey, we appreciate it, yeah,” Alex followed along.

  He’s finally catching on, Kathryn thought. Feeling you’re on the moral high ground makes for lousy diplomacy. “Does this influence your conclusions?”

  Stern pursed his lips. “I don’t have to conclude anything just yet. There are certainly no obvious signs of—”

  “Mr. Cowell?” It was one of the ICU nurses. In her flushed face and the web of lines around her narrow mouth, Kathryn saw trouble. “Dr. Anderson said to come right away. All of you.”

  By the time they reached Susan’s partitioned-off space, it became obvious that Anderson was covering himself thoroughly on this one. He was not going to violate the medical director’s order that I2 be present, but at the same time he wanted the detective there. Kathryn herself was swept in on the tide, along with Gary and the other two in the I2 team.

  Kathryn stood behind the team and watched Anderson. He called “Clear!” and fired the electric-paddles on Susan’s chest. The body heaved. On the monitors above a spike appeared, then lapsed into the same yellow flat line as before.

  He did it again. And again.

  “That’s all,” he said at last. “She’s gone.”

  Kathryn felt numb, stark disbelief. All through these hours she had never really thought that Susan would die. It had been a bad fall, but after all, Susan had lived through the impact. And now here it was, a simple few words, and all hope fled.

  For a long, quiet moment the crowd around Susan’s dwindled form said nothing. They looked at each other, pensive and with small expressions of surprise, even on the faces of the nurses. There was a moment, Kathryn thought, when one of us departs and the others left behind know with a deep, sure shock that their time will come, as well.

  Then Alex said in a quavering tone, “You will sign the death certificate?”

  Anderson was peeling off rubber gloves. “Why, yes.”

  “Fine,” Alex said, his voice sounding forced and under strict control. His jaw muscles clenched rhythmically. “May—may we take over now, Dr. Anderson?”

  Anderson stood absolutely still. He returned Alex’s gaze as though confronting a demon that had only this second sprung forth from the earth. “I—I don’t know.”

  “I might remind you, doctor, that we have a legal obligation to comply with the patient’s wishes.”

  “I—I know that, but—”

  “Your job is done here, sir. Now please let us do ours.”

  Anderson’s eyes fidgeted around the room, searching for someone—anyone—to hand off this problem to.

  “If you will simply stand aside, then, we will do for the patient what we can.”

  Anderson hesitated for a long moment. In the tense quiet Kathryn could hear a snick as a nurse slid the shock paddles back into their gloves.

  Kathryn said quietly, “I have here copies of Dr. Hagerty’s authorization of anatomical donation form.” This was a big legal hammer, one the police had to enforce on the spot.

  “Oh, all right.” Anderson turned and led the nurses out of the area.

  Thank God Blevin isn’t here, Kathryn thought.

  She noted the time in her notebook: 11:47 P.M. Susan had not quite survived the day.

  A phrase rang in her memory: At least death tells us when to stop trying. Susan must have said that, in one of their talks. Now that conventional medicine had let go of Susan, a well-drilled team went into action, bringing fresh technology to bear. She stood to the side, took down notes on the Transport Data Collection Form, did odd jobs. She had never seen a suspension before, and despite her reading about it, the reality was far more intense, busy, with critical procedures carefully carried out, than she could have imagined.

  Cooling down a body had seemed such an obviously quiet, serene event. She was unprepared for the chug and wheeze of the “thumper”—a heart-lung resuscitator that sat over Susan’s chest and kept blood flowing to her brain. The energetic way Gary moved in to begin working on Susan startled her. His medical assistant training must have been thorough, for he operated with speedy assurance. The team packed blue plastic bags of ice around the head. Surgery began. They opened arteries to get access to Susan’s circulatory system. Gary mentioned to Dr. Anderson—who stood nearby, asking questions—that they were making the same incisions as surgeons did when setting up artificial circulation for patients undergoing open heart surgery.

  Kathryn didn’t have much time to watch. The paperwork blizzard began. Anderson signed the death certificate. Under “cause of death” he listed “cardiac arrest” and “shock.” Head nurse Dowell wanted copies of the I2 “hold-harmless” form, of Susan’s directives and will, and there were hospital releases to fill in. A clerk brought these and took Kathryn into the ICU nurses’ office to get them done. As the blood pump began its steady work of flooding Susan’s tissues with the protectant she herself had helped develop, Kathryn noted down times, medications, dosages, flow rates. She charted the input of a sophisticated soup of preservation drugs, entering terms like “nasogastric tube” and “Streptokinase” as Gary called them out—all without knowing quite what was going on.

  Ordinarily I2 had a team member for this job, but he was a volunteer, away on a business trip. The company ran on part-time and unpaid labor. Actually, “ran” was an overstatement, she thought. “Limped along” fit better. She had to admit they were crisp and professional, even though spread pretty thin.

  Alex had been right, she saw, to get Susan moved to this far, isolated end of the ICU. The I2 gear took room, especially when they brought in a Siremobil 2U C-arm rig to X-ray Susan. Gary studied the X-ray and said slowly, “Looks like a saddle embolus blocked her pulmonary artery. Agree, Dr. Anderson?”

  Anderson did and made an added note on the death certificate. By this time, the team had begun readying a long box filled with iced water, a Pizer transport vessel.

  So Susan had died of a small glob of clotted blood, fruit of one of her bruises. It had detached from the wall of a vein and glided along with the rushing slosh of lifeblood, bumping into elastic walls, resisting the body’s attempts to dissolve it. Then it had reached the great pump itself, the Times Square of the circulation, and snagged at a crucial turn. Spasm, blockage. The vital thumping coughed, shuddered, stopped. Just a clot.

  For Kathryn, it all brought swarming back the memories of her mother’s death. She had worn out her knees until they were constantly sore, kneeling and praying for the great God to make her mommy well. The days and weeks had waxed on, draining everyone. After a while, her prayers had shifted, until they were pleas to take the dried-up, shrunken husk of someone who had been a big, full mommy—take the husk away so that the pain in the hollow face was gone, the moans and sometimes outright screams would stop. But the battered instrument of God’s will proved strangely strong. White as bleached bones, it had lasted and lasted and lasted. By the time the emaciated vessel died, Kathryn’s religion had, too.

  The memories coiled through her like smoky dreams as she mechanically noted down the slow, measured processes. Gary called out the procedures.

  Prevention of coagulation, to keep the protective drugs circulating through arteries th
at threatened to squeeze shut. Adjusting metabolism. Administering calcium channel blockers. Expanding blood volume. Protecting against molecular free radicals. The intricate play of technology.

  Time wore on. The ICU nurses were purse-mouthed with disapproval. A burly man appeared, bringing a hundred-pound block of ice. This was the morgue attendant, who turned out to be buddy-buddy with Gary after only a few minutes of talk, earlier. He even helped chip chunks from the block for the Pizer tank.

  They were moving Susan into the iced water, wrapped in protectant plastic, when Kathryn saw Blevin and the medical director appear at the far end of the ICU. They conferred with Nurse Dowell, frowned, studied paperwork.

  Look at those bulldog eyes, Kathryn thought, watching Blevin. He’s not the kind who gives up.

  At 2:53 A.M. they carefully rolled Susan from the ICU. She was immersed in water rapidly descending to near-freezing temperatures. Her cells were well permeated with cryoprotectants. The team had done the crucial part of their job, and now there remained the drive back to I2, where Susan would continue her descent into the depths of a cold where all decay arrested.

  Kathryn was weary, but her nerves danced. They didn’t need her now so Alex drove her home with exaggerated care born of fatigue. She peered out into the enfolding night, thinking of the absolute stillness where Susan now dwelled.

  “I can’t believe she’s really gone,” Kathryn said.

  “I know. It always takes a while.”

  “Finished. So fast. Lose your footing, and—”

  “You leave a hole in people’s lives. One that takes a while to fill in.”

  “Sometimes it never does. Wounds heal, but the scar’s still there.”

  Kathryn studied his lined face in the streetlights. The fog had thickened into a light rain, giving the asphalt a shimmering hide in their headlights. “You were close to Susan, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, as close as she let people get.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  Alex glanced at her, heavy-lidded, face drained of color. “We were buddies, I suppose you’d say. She would bring a pizza by my place sometimes, and we’d just talk, maybe take in a flick. That’s all, in case you were wondering.”