Norse smiled slightly, gratified at the help. "Okay. Now, what do we know? Dana found Rod's body with a stab wound. Someone had put toast on Buck's door, and the same kind of toast was in Rod's mouth. And Tyson's disappeared. It looks bad, but that doesn't mean we can be certain he's a murderer."
"Bullshit," said Pulaski. "We're certain he's a slug-eating, shower-hogging, work-shirking sonofabitch who's deliberately tried to scare the crap out of just about everyone in this room! Why not a murderer?"
"The bastard had it in for Rod from the beginning," added Mendoza. "He did nothing but complain and threaten. We all saw them almost get into a fistfight. He had it in for Harrison, too, and he was out the day Adams died. Him and Lewis."
"We all know Buck carried a chip on his shoulder," Norse cautioned. "We don't know he snapped."
"We have Mickey's death as well," Pulaski reminded. "Tyson didn't like him, either."
"Yes," Nancy Hodge chimed in. "Which could mean that Rod learned something about those deaths that the killer didn't want discovered. He panics, they fight…" She shrugged. "It could happen."
"It did happen." Alexi Molotov stood up. "Listen, Doctor Bob, I appreciate your efforts to keep things as, what you say, sensible. We are scientists, that is how it should be. But we have had three deaths. Three deaths! In our tiny group! And now this angry mechanic who makes knives is hiding somewhere and we have no weapons and maybe no chance of help from the outside world." He looked at them expectantly.
"What are you saying, Alexi?" Norse asked quietly.
"That we hunt him down before he hunts us. Like the Russian wolf."
"Hunt him down?"
"String him up," Geller said, only half jokingly. "First tree we find."
"No, we are not executioners," Molotov said. "Let your authorities investigate when they can, but you are right, it will not be until spring. In the meantime, he has to be quarantined, confined, so the rest of us feel safe."
"Like Lewis was."
"Like Lewis still should be," Dana said. Lewis wasn't there, having been ordered to stay out at Clear Air for his own safety. "I don't trust him, either. He's the one who started all this."
"That's unfair," Abby said, coming to his defense. "He's just new."
"You're sweet on him, Ice Cream, but he gives the rest of us the willies. Besides, where was he when Cameron died? I heard he was on the squawk box setting up a meeting with our dead leader."
"Yes," Molotov said. "He radioed. We heard it."
"Right," Abby retorted. "And if he was going to knife him, would he broadcast a rendezvous?" She was angry. "Where were you, Dana? In the arch with the victim, as I understand it. Maybe you killed him, and made it look like Tyson."
"That is so completely out of bounds…"
"Enough!" Norse raised his hands. "Enough, enough, enough. Let's deal with Mr. Lewis later. He stays in Clean Air until we sort this out."
"How can we sort it out when he's never here to defend himself?" Abby protested.
Norse ignored her. "We think we have our killer, so let's not go off the deep end pointing fingers at others. The problem is Buck. The issue is Buck. Where can we keep him when we catch him?"
"That's the problem," Calhoun spoke up. As the other station carpenter, he was one of the most familiar with the construction of the station. "This base has no real locks worthy of the name. You can pry apart most of the walls with a can opener. The habitable parts he could break out of, I'll bet. We could bolt and weld some kind of coop, but how to heat it, plumb it, feed him? Jails are complicated."
"How about sticking him out in Bedrock?" suggested Geller. Bedrock Village was the nickname of the station's emergency shelter Quonset huts, called Hypertats. They were a bright blue cluster several hundred yards from the dome with their own generator. "Put him at a distance, like Lewis."
"And how do we keep him out there?" asked Calhoun.
"Guard him."
"How? He's so big you'd need at least two of us, both men, three shifts a day, seven days a week- come on! We can't lock him and we can't guard him and we can't feed him. Unless we want to spend the rest of the winter just doing that."
"The only practical solution is to ship him out of here, Robert." It was Nancy Hodge, and it was odd to hear her call Norse by his formal first name.
For the first time, Norse looked mildly exasperated. "They can't land a plane, it's too cold. Anything below minus fifty-five and the hydraulics freeze up. You know that."
"We know we're facing the worst emergency this base has ever encountered and we need something done before we all go nuts. Doctor."
Norse looked annoyed. He didn't like criticism from another professional. The others shifted uncomfortably.
"There's one other solution, of course," Pulaski said grimly. "We try him, and do to him what he did to Rod Cameron."
"Fuckin' A," Geller said.
"No way!" Linda Brown protested. "Wade"-her tone was scolding- "we're not executioners. We have no legal authority. We have no moral authority."
"We do when our lives are at stake," the cook said quietly. There was no reply. Pulaski looked dangerous, the old soldier. "Sometimes it's you or him. Kill or be killed."
"Whoa. Come on, people." Norse raised his hands again, wearily. "Let's not go off the deep end. Cueball, I understand your feelings but try to keep them in check."
"Just don't go off by yourself," Pulaski told the others with a growl. "Not until we find the bastard."
Norse nodded. "Okay. Good advice. Stay together. Stay alert. But before we go on a manhunt let me talk to NSF. It's off-hours in D.C. now but I'll call when I can. I'll stress the dire nature of our situation again. Maybe they can find a break in the weather to somehow parachute an agent in here."
There was cautious hope.
"Or maybe I can think of something else."
Tyson jerked awake in the dark and sat up, banging his head. He heard the sound of the grate to the cramped utility tunnel being removed and someone dropping down into his burrow. He brought an arm with a knife out of his sleeping bag and extended it toward the entry to his hideaway, his wrist betraying an irritating tremble. If a mob came for him he was going down fighting, but he felt trapped. Hunted. Outnumbered. Doomed. "That you, Bob?"
"It's me."
The answer came as a relief. He'd left a note for Norse when the commotion started. The shrink was the only one he'd been able to talk to in this zoo. The only one he trusted. Then he'd hid here, fearing for his life. The psychologist had whispered through the grate that he would come back after a station meeting. Now it was two A.M., he saw by the illuminated dial of his watch, and Norse had dropped down into the man-sized conduit for wires and pipes that ran from the garage all the way to the fuel arch. Most station personnel didn't know the utility tube existed, and that was buying him time. Tyson was hoping he could camp there until things cooled down.
"What's the verdict, Doc?"
Norse kept his voice low. "It's not looking good."
No, it wouldn't look good, would it? He'd never exactly been Mr. Popularity with the grab bag of nerds and cretins they'd assembled to endure this insanity. Tyson could just imagine what kind of a fair hearing he'd get from them now. He'd told them all what he truly thought, never a great idea, and now it was payback time. One-on-one he could take any of them, but a group would hamstring him like wolves. Jimmy, you are well and truly fucked, he told himself. Should have practiced that shit-eating grin. "It hasn't looked good since I left North Dakota," he said aloud.
Norse actually chuckled for a second. He switched on a small penlight, providing them with a beam of illumination. "And how good could it have looked there?"