Days of Night

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Days of Night Page 22

by Jonathan Stone


  He tilts his head, slightly bemused. “Simple contact with the skin. But we never looked merely at the skin. Why would we? We cut in. We go inside. We look below the surface. We’re scientists. We’re doctors. We look deep.” He holds out a last photo—Trish’s torso, pale, bloodless—before putting it back in the manila envelope. “Plus, in this climate, the super cold skin quickly disguises any epidermal evidence. The cold body temperature hides the visual evidence, sends the whole body pale. A rash we’d easily see on a recently deceased person in the Amazon, let’s say, or even in a temperate climate, disappears here in the body’s uniform paleness.”

  He lifts the manila folder. Taps it on his desk. “People have their odd private hobbies during the winter-over. A reading plan. A weird science project. In this close community, we try to give people their privacy. I can definitely see someone pulling this off. Their own little hobby.”

  Calloway leans back. “I don’t know who, Joe. But I know how.”

  Venomous snakes? So unpredictably primitive, so bizarrely tropical in this environment. And just a theory, at this point. An old-fashioned poison, in contrast to but in synergy, somehow, with the unknown pathogen that may have doomed the planet to the north of them.

  Heller feels the rage surge in him. Angry, hot, his fists clenching, looking for a place, any place, to land. Stunned rage. Rage at being duped. At feeling like a fool, as he had felt with Paul. Left in the dark.

  “Venomous snakes here at McMurdo?! And no one says anything until now?!”

  Calloway looks at him. “Like I said, Tallent and Blevins are actually competing with each other. Funded by competing pharma companies. So they don’t like to reveal anything they don’t have to, least of all to each other. I promise you, those guys are immersed in their chemicals and their compounds. Trying to treat diseases, preoccupied with the glory of new patents. And like I said, the specimens are destroyed almost immediately. I’m telling you they’ve half forgotten that there are even snakes involved in the process at all.”

  He had interviewed Tallent and Blevins, of course. Perfectly pleasant. Seemingly forthright. But he did not ask them about their research, which they implied was fairly technical, and they might or might not have volunteered much in any case. As Calloway says, they might not even think of it in terms of poison anymore.

  The locked-room mystery. A primitive poison. The tropical united with the polar, as if to bring Earth’s extremes together, as harbingers of its end. And the snake, Heller can’t help but notice, that slithering slippery symbol of evil in the Garden, working its destruction in their cold private Garden too. He pushes away the biblical. But sees how easily he can be sucked into Manafort’s view of the universe. How anyone can be.

  64.

  “We need the guns to guard the food supply.”

  The guns again. Not letting it go. Focused. Determined. Part of a plan, Heller can’t help but feel.

  Manafort makes the demand—wrapping it in concern, reasonableness, prudence—then stares at Hobbes, defying Hobbes to challenge him.

  “Now there’s hard evidence that the supply is under threat,” Manafort continues, citing the cabinet break-ins, the hoarding, problems he himself created. “There’s distrust, there’s about to be insurgency, we have to make everyone feel the food is protected for all of us, that it’s fair.”

  He is there in Hobbes’s office with Holson and Pike again, both arrayed behind him, and others behind them, an instinct toward phalanx that Heller has observed a few times now.

  Hobbes stares back. Silent for a moment. Then says, cautiously, “Who appoints the guards? Who decides who protects the supplies?”

  Legitimizing Manafort, Heller notices. Preparing to meet Manafort halfway. Demonstrating his own fairness, his willingness to listen. A mistake. Heller is alarmed.

  “We appoint two guards for each locked food area. So they’ll also watch each other. You choose one, and I choose one.”

  Making it sound fair to the assembled. But Heller notices how Manafort is quick, adept in playing a role in his own legitimization. He isn’t letting it look like Hobbes is merely granting him the power. He is granting himself the power.

  Making himself into a de facto leader, by his appointing half the guards.

  Taking a half step, on his way to getting all the way there. Half control, as the first big step toward full control.

  Leaving Hobbes little choice.

  Because if Hobbes says no now, it’s a rallying cry for Manafort. It’s enough justification—potentially enough motivation—for Manafort and his soldiers of God to seize everything, in the perception that Hobbes is trying to control them.

  Or does Hobbes say yes to this seemingly “fair” system of two-guard teams, one guard appointed by each of them?

  Which reinforces the sense of “sides.”

  Which legitimizes the view of “us” versus “them.”

  All steps in the wrong direction. Steps down a slippery, wintery slope.

  But saying yes—acquiescing—also staves off ugly confrontation. Staves off a holy war. Provides peace for another day. Another few days. While Hobbes tries to figure out something else.

  “Look, Bobby, why don’t you select your people, I’ll select my people, and we’ll have them guard the pantry and stockpile points, as you suggest, but without guns, okay? They keep an eye on each other, but without guns.”

  A clever way to cede Manafort a little control. A first step, but too much of one.

  Manafort shakes his head. “The food supply is more important than that. It could be compromised by anyone. Our guards need guns.” As if Hobbes and Manafort are now a team. The leadership team. A further clever way to legitimize himself. Manafort is a clear danger, thinks Heller. Ingenious. Treacherous. A slithering, sibilant, hissing, poisonous snake.

  “Guards need guns,” says Manafort. “You pick your people, I pick my people, and we get them the guns. Not just to keep an eye on each other but on the whole base. On all of us.”

  Hobbes pauses a moment, before answering. “Let me think about it,” he says.

  Heller can tell by Hobbes’s tone that it’s no longer just a stalling tactic. That he is thinking about it. That he may give in. Don’t do it.

  “Think fast,” says Manafort. “We don’t want anything bad happening in the meantime.”

  Heller can’t tell if that’s a threat. He notices how Manafort says “We don’t want.” Making it a shared goal. Including himself in leadership. Manafort is so naturally skillful at this.

  A sudden police force, thinks Heller. For just 156 of them.

  Manafort will have the food, and he’ll have guns, thinks Heller.

  Food. Guns. It’s gone primitive and elemental already. Science is far away, far out of the picture already.

  65.

  “What is it?

  “It’s Dr. Calloway.”

  “What about Dr. Calloway?” demands Heller. Already angry. Already upset.

  Because Heller already knows. Bramlett’s stricken look, her eyes even wider than usual behind her black glasses, her pale skin flushed, as she stands at Heller’s door—it is already telling Heller. Already causing his fury and frustration to rise at the messenger.

  Heller looks at her, pulls on his boots, and follows Bramlett wordlessly.

  Sorenson does the autopsy. Such as it is. No one at McMurdo has the skills or knowledge for a full one. Calloway didn’t, and couldn’t even bone up online, but called upon his medical school cadaver training, which came back to him at least in part. The cool, beautiful nurse does her best, but her hands are shaking. She merely assisted at Trish Wong’s, and at Sandy Lazo-Wasum’s botched procedure. And this is her boss on the table. Who taught her. She did not expect to be practicing on him. She’s barely able to. She is an RN. Dispenses prescriptions, dresses wounds, treats coughs, colds. She can barely bring herself to make the incisions, much less probe what’s beneath them.

  Heller stands with her. He knows she needs him there. Needs
someone.

  It is above and beyond Sorenson’s training, but it’s not really going to take much.

  An RN will be more than adequate for this medical investigation.

  The back of Calloway’s skull has been cracked wide open. Right here in the medical exam suite. Found slumped next to the exam table. So the amateurish, abbreviated autopsy and crime scene investigation are one and the same. Body doesn’t even have to be moved. How convenient. How wretchedly convenient. Heller wonders vaguely if this is a first. A murder precisely where the autopsy will occur.

  “Blunt-force trauma,” says Sorenson. “Obviously. Death had to be instantaneous, or pretty close to it. By the way, this is the exact perfect spot to strike. Like, to the inch. Right between occipital lobe and parietal lobe, with a little upstroke to hit both at the get-go. So this isn’t necessarily spur of the moment or just sudden fury. Could be very calculated. But more than that, calculated by someone who knew what he or she was doing.” She pauses. “Although, obviously, there’s plenty of rage involved.”

  “Can you say how many blows?”

  Because Hobbes, Simmons, and Heller can’t tell at all, the skull damage is so extensive.

  “Four blows. Quick succession. I can tell that by the blood-drying pattern. Four blows. Just to be sure, I guess.”

  “What kind of object?”

  She shrugs. “Large and heavy. Could be a lot of things. One of our metal braces we use for twisted ankles. Edge of a jack, edge of a construction hammer. And where that object is now, that’s your department, Mr. Heller.” She looks at him. “But I’ve already looked around here, and on first glance, nothing seems to be missing.”

  “Well, as you say, if it was premeditated, they probably would have brought the perfect weapon with them. One that wouldn’t be missed. One that could probably be disposed of without being missed.”

  They are speaking formally. Trying to keep it clinical. Trying not to vomit.

  “Can you examine the wound further? See if there’s any metallic residual of the weapon. Anything to give us a clue?”

  She nods. “Sure. I can do that. I know how to do that.”

  Blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull. As common a method as snake poison was not.

  She has a medical light on. Shines it on the back of Calloway’s neck, leans close.

  “Well, no red needle mark this time,” she says.

  No time for it, thinks Heller.

  No need for it, thinks Heller.

  The world has changed. In your favor, thinks Heller, addressing the killer directly in his head. Now you don’t think it matters. You don’t need to be so secretive, so cautious.

  Blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull. A murder that sends one of two messages.

  This is someone else. Not me, the serial killer is saying back to him. You’ve got a compounding problem here, Heller. It’s someone who has some independent beef with you, some other issue, a newly expanding problem for you, Heller, but it’s not me.

  Or:

  It’s me. It’s still me. And as you can see, I don’t really care anymore.

  What did Calloway find that earned his death? Something beyond what he already speculated to Heller? Something he hadn’t yet shared with Heller? Because it was just a hunch? Because he wanted to be a hero and bring Heller a solution? I don’t know who, Joe, but I know how. Because he didn’t recognize the danger of investigating it himself? Snooping around himself?

  Or was it just the discovery of the snake venom? Had someone somehow realized that Calloway cracked the methodology?

  Is there something in Calloway’s desk drawers or in his notes that could be a clue to what he thought he discovered?

  But if there is, isn’t it highly likely that the killer has already looked and taken it?

  Heller senses already that the crime scene will yield him nothing. This is a careful killer.

  Who is figuring that he doesn’t need to be as careful anymore.

  Or who got rattled or pissed that Calloway was getting close.

  So maybe there’s a chance. In the abandonment of his previous stealth, maybe there’s a chance.

  That is, if they all survive long enough for Heller to find out.

  66.

  The hydroponic experiment is compromised.

  Someone was in pilfering vegetables and potatoes and left the door ajar on the way out—rushing, ashamed—and the whole crop has been destroyed by the cold. Theo Cohen, the botanist in charge, discovers it the next morning. He’s in tears. Word spreads quickly.

  It was going so well, the potential yield was so substantial that they had shared the food calculations with the whole base. Cohen had known, for a shining moment, the feeling of a scientist who might actually save humanity.

  It also occurs to Heller: this is the one food source that Manafort doesn’t control. This is an option that science has provided. Cohen’s—and Hobbes’s—pride and joy, and a symbol too of ingenuity making survival possible. Tying ingenuity to survival. A formula for hope.

  Could it have been a Manafort acolyte behind the break-in? Behind the foolish mistake of leaving the door ajar? Maybe no mistake at all.

  In light of the pilfering causing an accident that now has truly jeopardized McMurdo’s food security—Hobbes feels little choice. He unlocks the guns.

  Heller sees the guns on the hips of the guards appointed to watch the pantries and the food lockers. In each pair, one assigned by Hobbes, the other from Manafort’s camp of believers. A loaded Glock for each. Their mute black barrels, their weight and presence a new tenor to Antarctica. Heller knows it will not be long until the guns make their presence fully known. Fully felt. Literally. He hopes he’s wrong. He knows he’s not.

  He hears secondhand, but very quickly, about the conversation that precipitated the incident.

  You believe in God?

  Hey, I can’t afford to believe in God.

  But that’s what we need right now, don’t you see? To believe in something beyond ourselves.

  See, I think now more than ever we need to believe in ourselves.

  You really think mankind is smart enough to make the judgments we need to make right now? Look what just happened to our planet . . .

  We have to try. Do our best. And falling back on some medieval belief in God is not how we’ll survive.

  Medieval? God has been part of who we are since Creation, and you dismiss him as medieval?

  The two pantry guards had talked, argued, discussed into the night.

  And the talk—the argument—had apparently escalated.

  Escalating tensions. Between nations. Between pantry guards.

  And one of them is dead.

  Who knows exactly how it elevated into insult or fury or belittlement—but however those interacted and combined, all were heightened by the terrors of survival.

  In the morning, they have only one version of events. The survivor’s version. The Manafort version.

  Pike is the surviving guard. One of Manafort’s lieutenants.

  And Cohen—Theo Cohen, the botanist—has been killed.

  Theo Cohen—who volunteered to serve as a guard after his experiment was ruined. To still be useful somehow? Or out of anger, rage, and self-destruction, wanting to get his hands on a Glock?

  Theo Cohen—Lazo-Wasum’s lab friend—who felt depressed, felt ruined himself? Angry? Antagonistic? Who didn’t care what he said anymore, didn’t care what happened to him anymore? Would he lash out at anyone?

  No one will ever know exactly what occurred. What was said.

  No autopsy necessary.

  No mystery.

  No investigation necessary.

  And no punishment? No justice? No criminal proceeding? Pike is instructed to stay in his room. Meals are brought to him. Normally his detention would be a nonissue, his actions would be dealt with on the mainland, but right now there is no mainland. And everyone is too distracted and preoccupied with survival to worry about justice.

&
nbsp; Cohen the botanist is dead.

  And now there are—more and more defined—two camps. Believers and nonbelievers? Theosophists and scientists? However you define the two camps, Manafort’s and Hobbes’s.

  And each camp must realize, thinks Heller, that its chances of survival double if it has half the mouths to feed. If the other camp is not here to feed. To consume resources.

  Heller tries to stay outside any camp. Tries to stay neutral. Keep to himself.

  Tries to figure out what Calloway may have learned. What Calloway knew. Or was about to know.

  A blow to the back of Calloway’s head.

  Heller thinks inevitably of his own misadventure in the cold.

  That was a blow to the back of the head too, wasn’t it? Accidental. Self-inflicted.

  But he’s asked himself repeatedly. Did he slip? Slip on nothing and whack his head on the metal of the scaffolding just above him, as they said, a part of the scaffolding that he didn’t remember on his way up the metal stairs? He doesn’t remember seeing it. He’d like to go out there again and see it. But he can’t in this weather.

  Or was he pushed? With low visibility, compromised mobility, fogged goggles, bundled up out there in the cold?

  Both Pritchard and Dolan standing above and behind him, as they descended the metal stairs in the dark.

  He’d pretty much dismissed the idea. Too crazy. Too attributable to his confusion in the moment. But here is a murder with a new MO—blows to the back of the head. Did he escape, fall away from such blows, when Calloway couldn’t? When you consider breeding exotic snakes to create a deadly toxin, or needle marks as a diversionary tactic, or research scientists listening to a cook and backwoods minister—is that idea so crazy?

 

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