Cold Flood (Kea Wright Mysteries Book 1)

by RJ Corgan

  “But you do have a witness,” Julie reminded her.

  “Yes,” Kea agreed, remembering her conversation with Tiko. “And that’s odd as well. Tiko seems more out of sorts than the rest.”

  “Well,” Julie said, “you would be too if you had seen it happen.”

  “But why wait so long before telling anyone?” Kea asked. “Even if she thought he was just clowning around?”

  “Amirah said something else,” Julie said, checking to make sure there was no one around to overhear. “Apparently Tiko didn’t want to tell the police anything. She was too afraid to speak to them. Amirah had to convince her.”

  “When I brought up Bruce with her,” Kea considered, “she really didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Maybe,” Julie said with a shrug. “From what I’ve heard, police in many countries don’t always… behave how we’d expect them to. When you see something, it’s sometimes safer not to get involved.”

  “I suppose. Since Tiko’s with T3 and Amirah’s with Corvis,” Kea reasoned out loud. “It’s just weird to see them…”

  “Working together?” Julie finished. “Why don’t you try asking Tiko?”

  “Me?” Kea asked, puzzled. “I tried already. Sort of. I didn’t get anywhere. Why does it have to be me, anyway? Why not you?”

  “We’re about the same age,” Julie reminded her. “You’ve got the whole motherly thing going on.”

  “Piss off,” Kea snapped.

  “Seriously, you should talk to her,” Julie replied in a kinder tone. “You shouldn’t be so afraid to talk to people about something other than science.”

  Kea nodded. “I’ll talk to Tiko again in the morning.”

  “I didn’t mean just Tiko,” Julie said with a knowing glance at Zoë’s tent.

  “For goodness sake, am I that obvious?” Not waiting for a reply, Kea opened her laptop. “Leave me alone with my aliens.”

  “Don’t turn your back on them,” Julie said as she walked away. “You know what they say about aliens with probes…”

  “I can assure you,” Kea called after her, “that if I do find an alien, I’ll blow it out of the nearest airlock, cause I’m not in the mood.” She reviewed the MRS data again for a few more minutes before shunting it off screen. The thought of Tiko watching Bruce fall to his death still haunted her. Once again, the position of the teams on the ice, the terrain, and the distances that separated them, filled her head, creating a mental map. Everything seemed off somehow.

  If only…

  She dove into her tent to find Zoë’s USB drive. Nestled within one of the folders was the terrain file automatically generated during every flight, derived from the aerial photographs that were mosaicked over the top.

  As she loaded the file into a geospatial software package, Kea shook her head in amazement. Even five years ago, this amount of data would have seemed like a geologist’s pipe dream. Within seconds, the sandur, the lakes, and the front edge of the glacier margin materialized on her screen, beautifully rendered in three dimensions.

  It was merely a partial transect of the vast region, but the image was detailed enough for her to drop pinpoints on the approximate locations of the three teams from the first field day – her own team near the wildlands, Marcus and Tony’s team at the sample site, and Zoë team at the drone’s launch site.

  Tiko had been on Zoë’s team, so what could she have seen?

  Kea entered in a two-meter eye height to approximate a person standing on the ice. Running the line of sight query, she waited impatiently as the software rendered the results.

  When the process completed, the screen filled with red, mostly due to the ‘No Data’ portions of the region. However, bubbles of green appeared around each team, demarcating what the people on the ice would be able to see.

  Since her own team was located near a depression in the ice, visibility was mostly limited by the walls of the canyons. Marcus’ team had a much wider swath of green. Kea frowned. Both Marcus and Tiko’s teams did intersect, although the region was pockmarked by areas of red where crevasses and moulins curved down into the glacier.

  Could Tiko have seen someone jumping around up there?

  Kea double-clicked on the icon for Tiko’s team, and the worldview lurched from the bird’s eye view to the perspective of the drone team on the ice. She panned across the screen, shifting the view this way and that. While it was possible from Zoë’s location to view the area where Marcus’ team had been, it was awfully far away.

  Could she really know for sure it was Bruce? What had he been wearing? They all had the same red EO jackets under the hi-vis vests, hadn’t they?

  Realizing she was none the wiser, she stowed away her papers and secured the computer in her tent, tossing the USB after it. She needed someone to talk to and could only think of one person. The one person she’d swore she’d never talk to again.

  Chapter 10

  Kea pulled nervously at her bangs as she listened to the laptop dial the number. She had driven a jeep over to the visitor center and parked as close as she was able to use their Wi-Fi. As it was, the signal was only strong enough to carry her voice and not her image, for which she was grateful.

  Don’t pick up. Don’t pick up. Don’t pick up.

  Click.

  Damn.

  “Hiya!” she said, trying to sound cheerful. She sat scrunched up in the passenger seat, her computer tucked against the dashboard. She stared at an avatar of her ex-boyfriend’s face, fair hair, blue eyes, light brown scruff, and big jug-handle ears. Adorable.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  “Everything okay?” Jason asked.

  “Yeah,” Kea said automatically. “It’s just been a long couple of days.”

  “I heard about the guy topping himself.” He sounded concerned.

  “Really?” Kea didn’t think Bruce’s death had made international news.

  “Old friend from UC Burlingame sent me an email,” Jason explained. “Mentioned... the drama. You okay?”

  Kea tried to formulate a response that encompassed the rollercoaster of emotions she had experienced over the last few days. In the end, she was so tired that all she could manage was, “yeah.”

  “We haven’t talked...” Jason paused, “in a while.”

  Since you walked out on me.

  “I can’t really talk to anyone here about it,” she explained. “I think I just wanted to talk to someone who was... not here.”

  “What happened?” Any awkwardness about receiving a call from her appeared to be overridden by his interest in Bruce’s death.

  “I’m not sure,” Kea considered. “As far as we can tell, a depressed volunteer decided that Iceland was a great place to commit suicide. Jumped into a moulin – a great big hole, waterfall thing in the ice.”

  “Well... at least no one else was hurt,” Jason said. “Did you know the guy?”

  “Once, a long time ago, but I’m beginning to think I don’t know anything about him at all. Not now.” Kea remembered Bruce’s first day on the ice, his face lighting up with wonder. “He was nice. I mean, he was okay I guess.” If she were brutally honest, had he not just died, she would have added ‘he was a bit boring really,’ which seemed too terrible to say now. “He didn’t seem that depressed.”

  “You can never tell what’s going on inside someone else’s head,” Jason offered.

  Indeed.

  A hundred different arguments from their break-up leaped to mind. She decided to let the remark pass. “It’s just, I just can’t shake the feeling that it might not... Well, a woman here said she saw him die…”

  “She saw it happen?” Jason’s voice noticeably perked up.

  “She said that she saw someone jumping around on the ice at least,” Kea amended. “They found the body in one of the lakes.”

  “I’m sorry. Sounds awful.” Judging by his tone, Jason seemed saddened that she didn’t have any further gruesome details.

  “It’s just these people, these volunteers,
” Kea floundered, trying to pin down her emotions. “Some were his co-workers, and they don’t seem the least bit bothered by it all.”

  Jason made a tut-tut-tut sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the noise that had driven Kea crazy when they lived together. “What’s the name of the company?”

  “T3. Thauma... something... an IT company.” Kea wished she could remember. “Another company, Corvis Engineering, is out here with us as well. I don’t think any of them knew him.”

  “Well, depending on the coworker,” Jason said not unkindly, “I wouldn’t exactly be gutted if one of mine died. Particularly if it was my boss.”

  There was a long pause as Kea tried to think of what to say next.

  “You think someone offed him, don’t you?” Jason said at last.

  Kea shook her head, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “No, not really. I mean, it’s possible, but it would be very stupid. Too easy to be seen, for one thing, not to mention his ex-wife had the note he left her. I certainly believe he was suffering from depression about his marriage being over. I just, I dunno, I wish they felt upset about it or at least felt something. I’m glad they stayed to carry on the work, I really am, but it’s almost as if nothing’s happened.”

  “How’s everyone else handling it?” Jason’s voice stuttered, as if the connection were interrupted.

  “Well, Tony’s been acting pretty weird, even for Tony,” Kea reflected. “He was up on the ice, as was Marcus when the guy... jumped.”

  “They just let him jump?” Jason asked, incredulous.

  “No,” Kea said, exasperated. “The ablation drill got mucked. They were busy repairing it and the guy just wandered off. You know how boring it can be out here sometimes. They thought he just went off to relieve himself. They spent an hour trying to repair the drill when...” she broke off, remembering how much of a crisis Gary’s incident seemed at the time. It felt so long ago now. “Things got confusing, very fast.”

  “Did you talk to the woman who saw the guy jump?” Jason pressed.

  “I’m a geologist,” Kea protested, “not Perry Mason.”

  “Miss Marble then,” Jason offered.

  “Marple,” Kea corrected him.

  “Not as punny,” Jason said, no doubt wearing an evil grin.

  They both laughed, a bit too hard for what the joke merited, then lapsed into a long silence.

  Sitting in the jeep alone, thousands of miles apart, she felt a pang of regret.

  “If you want my advice,” Jason said eventually, “follow the money.”

  “You’re an accountant,” Kea replied. “That’s all you ever say.”

  “True,” he acknowledged. “I’m not a forensic one, although I do know a couple. If you’d like, I can ask them to do some research on the companies. But if memory serves, you never wanted my advice,” he paused. “So, why are you really calling?”

  Ouch. Kea sighed. When they were just talking about Bruce, she had been surprised how easily it was for her to slip back into conversation with Jason. Now, confronted by his question, her throat seemed to swell shut as she groped for words.

  “I... I just wanted to,” Kea found she didn’t really know why she’d called. That he’d sound happy to hear from her? That he wanted to get back together when she returned home? “Just wanted a voice of sanity. I feel like I’m losing mind.”

  “Gotcha,” Jason said in a tone that conveyed his disinterest all too well. “You mind if I get back to dinner now? It’s only six here. I’ve got a date with Laura tonight.”

  Kea must have suffered a minor stroke because she found herself apologizing automatically. Laura? The blond anthropology graduate student with the Heidi-pony tails?

  Completely numb, all she could find to say was, “Thanks for listening.”

  “No worries. Kea…” Jason hesitated.

  “I know,” she said wearily. “Be careful out there. I think it’s too late for that.”

  Too late for Bruce anyway. Judging by Jason’s tone, too late for them as well. As politely as she could, she said goodnight and signed off.

  Desperate to turn her mind to something other than thoughts of Laura, Kea surfed the web looking for information on T3. ‘Connecting the Internet of Things to the Real World of Things,’ was all she gleaned from the ‘About’ page. The company appeared to specialize in anything and everything, from hand-held devices to enabling refrigerators and dishwashers to talk to each other, to helping heat a house more efficiently.

  In fact, from what little she could discover, the company seemed to provide services for any industry, from environmental and commercial, to military. However, despite the wealth of information, she couldn’t figure out what they produced. The website was calorie-free when it came to content. Searching for Corvis Engineering returned even less information.

  It was as if the companies didn’t want anyone to find them.

  She sent the website addresses to Jason via email, along with all the names she had for the teams, including a mention of Andrea, last name unknown, hoping his forensic accountant friend might be able to dig up something more interesting.

  Kea tucked the tablet away and started the jeep. It was midnight and the evening light possessed a dusky quality that she didn’t want to spoil, so she kept her headlights off as she drove through the campground. Parking as quietly as possible, she returned to her tent and picked up her kit bag.

  The campground bathrooms were mercifully empty of people. As she brushed her teeth, she began to wonder again what really had transpired up on the ice. Marcus and Tony were working on the drill, or so they said. Bruce was there, of course. Plus, Derek, Reynard, and Jon. Reynard was the only Corvis member up there with all those T3 guys, and she couldn’t really picture someone as friendly as Reynard playing any part in Bruce’s death.

  Or was that wishful thinking?

  Assuming not, that left Derek and Jon. Both were capable in size and mass to take on Bruce if they had too. She really hoped it wasn’t Jon. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about him, but those big puppy eyes kept drawing her in. As well as those shoulders...

  Kea contemplated her reflection in the mirror. Both Zoë and Jon were beginning to take up too much space in her head these last few days. While Jon was a volunteer and therefore off limits, Zoë was just assisting the project, not technically a volunteer. The trouble was, Kea had no idea what was going on in Zoë’s head.

  What, she asked herself silently, is it that you want?

  Jason. Still the same old answer. She still wanted Jason, and he clearly wanted nothing to do with her. Zoë and Jon offered the potential opportunity to break the cycle, as both were fair game after next week, but that wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

  She gave herself a disapproving frown before heading back to her tent. Walking through the grass, she noticed the light of Zoë’s laptop in the dome of her tent, glowing like a tempting beacon.

  Tomorrow, she thought. I keep saying that, but when will that tomorrow ever come?

  She was so intent on her thoughts that she nearly collided head-on with Bonnie. The woman tried to step out of her way, but the contents of her large cardboard box spilled out onto the grass.

  After a very undignified yelp, Kea apologized. “Sorry, I was miles away. Let me give you a hand.”

  “No worries.” Bonnie bent to pick up the cardboard box. “I seem to always be dropping things around you!”

  Kea stared at the gray, banana-sized objects in her hands. “Um, I don’t mean to pry, but may I ask why you’re carrying a box full of plastic sharks?”

  “Oh, these?” Bonnie waved one in the air. The toy’s jaws contained a ferocious set of rubbery teeth that jiggled threateningly. “Just got them in the mail today at the visitor center.”

  “You had the sharks shipped here?” Kea asked, dazed by Bonnie’s priorities. “On a camping trip?”

  “Of course, dear,” Bonnie shook her head. “Couldn’t fit them in my luggage. Can’t have a horr
or-palooza without them! Where would the fun be?”

  “Horror-palooza?” Kea asked, wondering where Bonnie was headed with this.

  “Horror film fest. Showing movies in my tent all week. Tonight’s Shark Night.” Bonnie beamed. “You’re welcome to join if you like. Max, Derek, and Erik are coming. Jon as well,” she added with a tacky wink.

  “Thanks, but I’ll have to pass.” Kea handed her the last of the fallen toys. “But I admire your energy, I mean, after, well you know.”

  “What do you mean? Oh,” Bonnie hefted the box. “Look, I had these pre-ordered and scheduled to arrive before I left. It takes ages to get stuff shipped out here. I mean, I’m not like heartless or anything like that.”

  “Never mind,” Kea apologized. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. I know not everyone knew Bruce very well.”

  “Phwah!” Bonnie scoffed. “Know him, of course I knew him. Wish I hadn’t. Couldn’t stand the man. Pain in my ass, he was.”

  “Really?” Kea paused, a shark in hand.

  “I’m in HR,” Bonnie said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I got all the Bruce-time because he kept filing complaints.”

  “Against who?”

  “Everyone,” Bonnie said. “Even me at one point. He was always complaining, grousing about everyone’s projects, about the budget. Was all right for a while, but after his last project was a failure, he seemed intent on taking everyone down with him.”

  Although Bonnie echoed what the others had said, Kea fished for more details. “What kind of project? Government?”

  “Hah!” Bonnie snorted. “There’s no money in government these days. Their tech is years out of date. All the innovative stuff is in the commercial sector these days. I don’t know what he was working on, not my area. I’m not usually pulled onto projects unless there’s trouble. People only come to me when they get hired, when they want to complain, or when they quit. But,” she gave the box of sharks a jiggle, “I’m also in charge of recruiting and team building, and there’s always time for a bit of fun! You sure you’re not up for it?”

  “Thanks,” Kea tried to smile politely. “But I think I’m good.”