Cold Flood (Kea Wright Mysteries Book 1)

by RJ Corgan

  Tony slid the drive into his computer and, sensing her mood, wisely said nothing. She pointed to the folder labeled Remus. He launched the .mp4 file and maximized the viewer window. They sat back on their haunches, watching as the screen filled with a sooty white expanse of crystals. After a few moments, the drone lifted into the air and Kea could see Zoë and the rest of her team members standing around the launch site. The camera tilted as the drone banked, before zipping across the front of the glacier to begin mapping its pre-programmed transects.

  “I’ve seen this bit already,” Kea said impatiently. “Go forward.”

  The screen flickered with stuttering images of the outwash plain and the glacier margin. Lakes, icebergs, stream channels, and deformed ice-melt topography flitted on the screen. The grid flight pattern meant this scene was repeated several times as the drone mapped the area. Recognizing the portion of the video where she had discovered the section that had been newly excavated by the flood, she said, “Slow it down, just a bit. I haven’t seen past this bit.”

  Tony nudged the controls and they waited as the drone painstakingly continued its flight path. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

  Kea folded her arms across her knees and rested her chin in her hands. “I honestly have no idea.”

  Tony looked sideways at her. “I’m still a bit weirded out you thought I killed Bruce.”

  “I’m still not sure you didn’t,” she muttered quietly.

  “I’ve got two eyewitnesses,” he continued. “And my dad is a great lawyer.”

  “Two?” Kea asked.

  “Marcus was with me the whole time with that friggin’ drill,” Tony said, his facial expressions communicating how much he had enjoyed that experience. “And Jon.”

  “Jon?” She closed her eyes.

  “Yeah,” Tony said. “He was trying to help us fix it the whole time. Nice guy.”

  Kea shook her head. “I really am an ass.”

  “Eh?” Tony asked.

  “Nothing.” Kea shook her head. “I just have an apology to make.”

  “Yeah,” Tony grunted. “Still waiting for mine.”

  The video showed nothing other than muddy streams and slumping melt out terrain. The same scene played out over and over as the drone completed its grid across the field site. While the geomorphology was gorgeous, and certainly the best imagery they had ever had of the region, it was not, she considered, worth killing for.

  She had Tony play until the viewer window faded to black and the file reached its end. The Replay icon pulsed questioningly on the center of the screen.

  “Do you want to see it again?” he asked, obviously hoping that she wouldn’t. His body language suggested that he would be much happier if she got out of his tent and left him alone. “Should I try Romulus?”

  Kea shrugged. “Didn’t that one crash right away? I’m not even sure Zoë added the file to the drive.”

  Tony clicked through the folder. “It’s here, but it’s only two megs. There’s probably not more than a couple minutes of footage.” He pressed Play, and another grit-filled expanse filled the screen as the camera zoomed upward from the launch pad. Then it rotated, flying northward up the glacier. It didn’t get very far before it wobbled like a drunk seagull and plummeted down onto the ice and the video cut out.

  “That was...” Tony trailed off.

  “Anticlimactic,” Kea finished for him.

  “What did Zoë say happened to it?” he asked.

  “Lost signal, or a sudden updraft from off the glacier knocked it out of whack.” She had promised to retrieve the drone from the ice today, but that depended on being able to locate it. She reached out and played the scene again slowly, frame by frame, hoping to get a better idea of where it had crashed.

  She advanced through the frames once more, pausing as Zoë’s face appeared on the screen during launch. There was nothing abnormal around her or the rest of the team and no one appeared to be missing a safety vest. She used the few moments of video to examine the slope of the ice as the drone headed northward, noting the patterns of drainage as they flowed across the ice in twisting rivulets.

  She played the video again, then paused just before it began to wobble. The camera was pointed up-glacier. If she squinted, she could make out the blurred red dots of her ‘Apple’ team in the wildlands, but nothing else. Depending on how high the drone was flying, and how strong the wind was, she would have to search a half a kilometer area to find it.

  Tony shook his head. “Not gonna lie. I was kinda hoping for a video of Gary shoving Bruce down a moulin.”

  She shot him a stern glare.

  “What?” Tony protested. “The guy gives me the creeps.”

  “If every creepy guy was a murderer, our entire Physics Department would be behind bars,” Kea said despite herself. “Gary wasn’t anywhere near them. He was busy nearly dying with me. Besides, I know Gary was wearing a vest.”

  “Vest?” Tony asked.

  “Whoever knocked Bruce into that moulin, I think either Bruce took their vest with them or at least damaged it to the point they had to get rid of it as evidence.” She ignored his bewildered expression and turned back to the screen, searching for something, anything. If she couldn’t find anything on this drive, then she had no idea what her attacker was after. She counted the red blobs. “Six in the valley,” she muttered, “and on the rise... seven. That’s not right. Or maybe it is, I can’t see everyone, the topography is crazy here.”

  “What is it?” Tony peered closer at the screen.

  “There weren’t...” She couldn’t discern faces on the images, only the blobs of the yellow high-visibility vests and red jackets they all wore. She counted again. The numbers didn’t add up.

  Two blobs too many.

  “Give me that,” She pointed at Tony’s backpack, which was tucked neatly against the wall. Waving aside his protests, she dug out the clipboard all the team leads carried. She flipped through the maps, trying to find the field plan. “Where did you put the ablation stakes?”

  Tony lifted the back page and pulled out a photocopy of a topographic map. Coordinates were marked with little plus marks in red pencil. “Here, there, and here.”

  Kea estimated the position of her apple team.

  Too far away. Couldn’t be them.

  She felt deflated, frustrated again. “That’s it? Your certain you didn’t go any further west?”

  “Err...” Tony frowned at the map. “We did, but the rig blew out on the last hole, remember. We never put down a stake.”

  Kea froze. “Where was that?”

  Tony waved a finger uncertainly over an area half a kilometer away from the last position. “Somewhere over there. We didn’t take a marker, it seemed pointless. Anyway, we lost signal.”

  She examined the relative position on the map. “That means that your team was only a few minutes’ walk away from the northern end of my team’s field area!”

  “Yeah, but we never went down there,” Tony protested.

  “You didn’t,” she pointed at the blobs, “but maybe someone did. How long were you guys fiddling around trying to get the rig to work?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Close to an hour.”

  Kea needed him to be certain. “All of the volunteers were right next to you the whole time?”

  “Like I said before,” Tony reminded her, “some went exploring and taking pictures. Some went to go to the bathroom. I was more focused on getting the rig working again. You know how Marcus gets. I only remember where Jon was because he was helping with the cable.”

  Kea could see that Tony was flustered. He didn’t like talking about how he and Marcus should have been paying more attention to the volunteers, to Bruce. He obviously didn’t want to have that conversation again. Instead, he pointed to the collection of blobs on the screen. “That could be anyone.”

  “Yeah,” Kea agreed. It might even, she thought, have been someone from my team, potentially doubling the list of suspect
s. She only had Nadia’s word on the whole Derek-Reynard canoodling bit as well. “We don’t know who they are, but at least now we know where they were going.”

  “We?” Tony asked. “Gone a bit royal all of a sudden.”

  “You’re coming with me.” Kea glared at him, her nostrils flaring as if daring him to question her. “I want you where I can see you.” She scooted out of the tent on her knees, painfully aware that he was staring at her backside. She felt her anger rising, which did nothing to help prepare her for what she had to do next.

  ***

  “Could I have a word?” Kea watched as the tent’s flap unzipped in irregular, jerky motions. Jon stuck out his head, blinking in the light. His hair was tousled up into spikes, and tattoos snaked down across his bare torso, disappearing out of sight into the depths of his sleeping bag.

  Kea did her best to keep her eyes firmly on his and not contemplate the unseen part of the tattoos. She hadn’t expected him to still be asleep. “Sorry about this…” Having never been in this position before, she wasn’t quite sure of the appropriate phrasing. “I just wanted to apologize for, you know, the whole ‘accusing you of murder’ thing.”

  Jon blinked a bit more then peered around sleepily. “Um. Yeah. Okay.” He inhaled a deep breath, flexing as he did so.

  Kea found her gaze straying southward again. “That aside,” she continued, “I need to ask a favor...”

  ***

  Kea stood on the cliff, looking out across the depression to the dark edge of Skeiðarárjökull, which rested across the horizon like a storm cloud. As the wind blew against her face, its breath was flecked with minute specks of grit that peppered her eyes, causing her to blink and weep. In her mind, she could picture the depression filled with the raging floodwaters of the 1996 event. She could imagine the shifting forms of tumbling ice blocks as they crashed into each other like billiard balls. She could even hear the bellowing cracks that would have rocked the valley as the flood ripped through the ice margin.

  She knew the facts, having typed them repeatedly into every paper. She could recite from memory that the torrential flood had covered 750 square kilometers, with a flow that had a peak discharge of fifty thousand cubic meters per second, transporting an estimated 180,000,000 tons of sediment.

  She could picture all those events, here in this wonderful valley.

  What she could not imagine, however, was what Bruce had been thinking when he died. Or worse, what could have driven someone to kill him. That level of despair, or that amount of hatred, was simply beyond her conception.

  “Are we really doing this?” Tony stood beside her at the edge of the embankment.

  “I promised Zoë I’d get her drone back.” Kea glanced at her watch. It was two in the afternoon. Plenty of time. “Plus, my equipment’s out there as well.”

  She scanned the outwash plain with a pair of binoculars. The sandur and the glacier were both devoid of any signs of life. The sun was still bright, but clouds scudded across the ice, hugging low to the surface. Judging by the weather, this may be their last chance on the glacier for at least another year.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, forcing herself to sound optimistic. “We’ll be back in time for tea.”

  “I meant, are you sure about him?” Tony nodded at Jon, who was beside the jeep, lacing up his hiking boots.

  “We can’t carry the MRS and the other gear off the ice by ourselves. He’s the only other person left in camp that we can place at the time Bruce died,” Kea reasoned. “You vouched for him, remember?”

  “But he’s with T3,” Tony grumbled.

  “That’s exactly why I asked him to come.” She hefted the puffin staff and took a few sample strides. It was difficult to set up a good pace, but in a pinch, she could at least thwack someone with it. She folded it back up and clipped it to her belt. “I want answers.”

  “Do you trust him?” Tony continued in a low voice.

  “Nope,” she replied breezily. “I don’t trust you either, but I’d rather have you where I can see you.” She moved to the trailer, unlocked the toolkit, and extracted the compressor. She pulled out some flares and tucked them into her pack as well. “I left our route with Ísadóra and Marcus, well, his voice mail. They should be back in a few hours.” If Cole really is okay, she reminded herself.

  “You sure you didn’t see anyone out there?” Tony hefted his pack and strapped the waistband tight, keeping a watchful eye on Jon as he did so.

  “Not unless they parachuted in.” She waved her hands around the empty dirt parking area beside the Háöldukvísl dam. “Come on, let’s get this over with.” She started down the hill, kicking up little clouds of dust with her boots. “Otherwise, I’m going to have to find a creative way to come up with six thousand dollars to replace Zoë’s drone.”

  “The MRS is worth at least fifty grand,” Tony’s voice drifted down to her.

  The enthusiasm in his tone made Kea wish she had throttled him. “Yes, Tony, thanks for that.” She watched as he bounded ahead of her, his leaps gouging out huge explosions of the soft sands.

  “Why on earth did you ever pick him?” Jon asked. He was taking small, measured steps down from the parking area behind her.

  “In theory, for his knowledge of igneous petrology.” Kea watched as Tony made a final giant leap off the slope, struck his foot against a small boulder, and landed in a heap. Upside down, he flailed about like an upended turtle as he tried to right himself. “And comic relief, apparently.”

  Jon snorted. “This is gonna’ be a long day.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed. “And I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?” he asked.

  “Pick Tony. He’s Marcus’ prodigy,” she replied, moving farther downslope. “Julie’s my grad student.”

  “So, you do have good taste.” Jon sounded flirtatious for the first time since she had accused him of murder.

  “From time to time,” she said with a tight grin. Below them, Tony was slowly pulling himself up off the ground, unharmed. “Looks like he’s vertical again.”

  The rest of the hike across the rocky floodplain was spent in silence as they focused on navigating the terrain down the terraces and around the vast kettle holes. The lake crossing was uneventful, the silence of the glacier punctuated only by grunts of exertion as they took turns with the oars. Beaching the craft, they secured it to a boulder before continuing their hike up the esker and out onto the snout of Skeiðarárjökull.

  During their march across the plain, Kea had kept both men in front of her. Now that they were on the glacier, she led at an angle, keeping them both in view whenever possible. She didn’t think either of them would try anything, not now that everyone knew they were out on the ice. She did not, however, want to put temptation in anyone’s way by going near any convenient crevasses. She made sure to walk on the other side of Tony, so if Jon did try anything, he would have to go through Tony first.

  Kea kept her gaze on the ice around her, searching for anything that might be out of the norm. As she walked, each step crunched loudly under her boots, the harsh sounds muffled by the winds that burned her cheeks. She followed the route they had taken on their first day on the ice until they arrived at the point where the team had split into groups.

  “Which way?” Tony asked.

  She pulled out her topographic map. Heading further west would eventually bring them to the wildlands, home of the twisting canyons and apples. Team Kea. Heading north would allow them to follow the team that installed the ablation stakes. Team Marcus. Or, as Kea had christened it, Team Bruce. Somewhere in the middle lay poor Romulus.

  Hoping that following in Bruce’s path might provide insight into his final moments, she pointed north and waved for Tony to take point. “Lay on, MacDuff.”

  Another hour passed before they reached the third stake and stopped for a snack. She squatted on the heels of her boots, sitting as close to Jon as she dared. The sky spat unenthusiastically on them while they ate. Tony, leery
of them both, sat at a distance, noisily chomping an apple.

  “Thanks for coming with us.” Kea cradled her flask between her knees.

  “I’d feel safer if Erik were here,” Jon said around a mouthful of a protein bar.

  “Sorry.” Kea hoped her apology sounded sincere. “I wasn’t comfortable risking one volunteer, let alone two.” Plus, she thought, I can vouch for you at the time of Bruce’s death; I have no idea what Erik was up to. “But thanks again. With no Marcus, we wouldn’t have any hope of getting the kit back.”

  “Look,” Jon pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his tangled mass of hair. “About your friend. I’ve been there…” He looked up at her, his ruffled locks and wide eyes making him look like a lost child caught in the rain. “But don’t use it to push everyone else away. It won’t help.”

  Kea nodded. She wanted to tell him about the ticket receipt, about what happened to her at the river, about Cole and the oil, but she found she still didn’t really trust him. Not yet.

  Once they finished their snack and packed up, they headed out toward the last location on Tony’s map, the site where the ablation drill had failed.

  Kea quickly grew weary of the sight of Tony’s behind as he trudged across the glacier ahead of her, but there was little else to see. The surface of the ice was far from flat but was folded together into an undulating expanse of rumpled black and white hills that obscured everything else. Jon caught her staring at his rear too often, so she focused on her feet, taking care not to slip on the wet ice.

  After a good twenty minutes of walking, she noticed Tony pausing repeatedly. She increased her pace to match his. “Are we lost?”

  “I’m looking for a three-inch hole drilled into the ice with no marker, no lat-long, and no GPS signal.” Tony smacked the GPS device in his hand. “It was somewhere in this area, I swear.” He waved up at the western edge of the valley walls that loomed above them. “We were between those two ridges, I remember that. We’re very close.”

  Jon nodded but offered nothing in the way of guidance.