One woman opened the door, and they pushed her through the entrance. Tolliver followed them in, shutting the door. Hallie jerked her arms free.
“You should have talked to me when you had a chance,” Tolliver said.
“What the hell are you doing?” she snapped.
“Take it easy,” Tolliver said. “We just want to ask you some things.”
“Not like this.” Hallie started toward the door. Ox moved very quickly for a woman of her size, setting herself between Hallie and the exit. Hallie turned to face Tolliver.
“What do you want?”
“When did you get here?” Tolliver asked.
“None of your goddamned business. Get out of my way.”
“Answer her question,” Buffalo said.
“Who the hell are you?” Hallie said.
Hallie’s knees buckled and her vision filled with silver sparks. Buffalo had hit her with the heel of one hand on the side of the head. It had happened so quickly that Hallie felt the effects first, realized what happened only afterward, like a soldier being hit by a bullet, then hearing the sound of its firing. Tolliver and Ox grabbed her, helped her stay upright, waited for her head to clear.
No cut or visible bruising, Hallie thought. Smart. She’s hit people before.
The black woman said, “Women are dying. Answer her when she asks you.”
“You’re in a world of trouble,” Hallie said. Her voice sounded strange, distant, louder on one side than the other.
“Three witnesses against one? Not likely,” Tolliver said.
Hallie always thought in terms of odds and probabilities. She would stand a good chance against one woman. Three, bad gamble. “I got here Monday.”
“The last flight in or out since then,” Tolliver said.
“Yes.”
“How’d you feel coming in?”
“Like hell. I’d been traveling for four days.”
“She means, were you sick?” the black woman said.
“No, I wasn’t sick.”
“How many airports did you come through?”
She thought back. “Five, counting McMurdo.”
Ox turned to Tolliver. “See? She could’ve carried anything in.”
“You seriously think something I brought killed the women?”
“Nobody was dying before you got here,” Buffalo said.
Any reason is better than no reason, Hallie thought. I’m the easiest X factor.
“Tell us why it didn’t happen that way,” Tolliver said.
“That’s easy. Harriet Lanahan died a few minutes after I came into the cafeteria. Something happened to her before I arrived. There’s no way I could have been the vector.”
“I wasn’t there. That true?” Buffalo asked Tolliver.
“Yes.”
“Still …” Ox said. Midwestern accent. Big healthy farm girl. Just Hallie’s luck.
“That’s not all,” Hallie said. “No microbe on earth could transfer, colonize, and kill that quickly. Smallpox takes a week. Ebola symptoms can surface after two days, but it takes a week or more to kill a victim. The only one of those women I had contact with was Rockie, and she died from some kind of allergic reaction.”
“What do you think?” Buffalo said to the other two.
Ox shrugged, watching Tolliver.
“I think she’s full of Beaker bullshit,” the smaller woman said.
“All right then.” Ox pinned Hallie’s arms behind her.
“I don’t know,” Buffalo said. She looked as if she were about to ask Hallie a question. A quick metal-on-metal sound and the door opened. Ox let Hallie go, stepped back. A man came in. Hallie recognized Grenier.
“How’re you doing, Jake?” she asked.
Perhaps sensing something in her voice, or picking up on body language cues, he looked from woman to woman. “Everything all right here?”
For a second no one spoke. Then Hallie said, “We just wanted a little privacy. Some woman-to-woman talk.” She gave him a knowing wink.
“Why are you here?” Tolliver asked him.
“Somebody said snowmo tracks were in this storeroom.” He glanced around, not completely satisfied.
Hallie waved. “Good to see you again.”
“You too, Doc.” He studied the scene one more time, then nodded. “I guess they were wrong about the tracks.”
When he was gone, Hallie said, “I understand how you feel. And I should have stopped and talked to you, Jan, but I thought my lab partner was in serious trouble.” She paused, looked at each woman in turn. “It’s not me. Something is going on here. I don’t know what, but I’m trying to find out.” The air in the room loosened, a sense of threat dissolving.
Buffalo looked at the other two. “I think we’re done.”
“Yeah,” Ox said. She threw Hallie a sheepish look.
Hallie rubbed the side of her head, grinned. “Quick hands,” she said to Buffalo.
“I’m from Philly. Boxed a little.”
“How’d you do?”
“Eight and three before I quit,” she said, pride showing in her eyes. “No money in it, though.” She looked at Tolliver, said again, “I think we’re done,” and headed for the door. To Hallie: “Really am sorry about that.” Ox followed Buffalo out.
“We’re good,” Hallie said. At the door she looked back. Tolliver was still standing, arms crossed over her chest. Hallie waved. Tolliver didn’t wave back.
47
“Are you all right?” Graeter asked.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Your eyes look a little funny.”
“Bumped my head,” she said.
“That’ll do it.” He was sitting behind his desk, six darts aligned perfectly on its top. She had come up after her talk with the women. He looked even bonier than the first time she’d seen him, his eyes sunk more deeply into their sockets, the circles under them darker. When he leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, she saw a slight tremor in his hands. He clasped them together.
“I think he’s gone,” Graeter said.
“I don’t understand this,” Hallie said. “I talked to Fida just yesterday. Or maybe the day before. Not sure, exactly. He was tired — exhausted, really — and looked awful, but not a whole lot worse than others I’ve seen down here.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Emily. He was taking her death hard.”
“Anything else?”
“Sure. We talked about their work. This extremophile they found in the cryopeg.”
“Anything else?” She hesitated, and he saw it. He leaned forward. “Look. I know you think I’m a prick. That’s okay. I am, a lot of the time. But you can trust me.”
She returned his gaze.
“Come on. Do I strike you as the devious type?” he asked.
At first, he had come across as a martinet with a big shoulder chip. And maybe devious. That was then. “No. Since we’re speaking seriously for the first time, you strike me as a man being chased by something. I think it’s probably guilt, but that’s just a guess.”
“You heard that from Merritt, right? Did she say why she’s at Pole?”
“She said she was a scientist who’d moved on to administrative work.”
“True, as far as it goes,” Graeter said.
“I’m not following you.”
“Think about it. The Beakers doing research here have a lot to gain — notoriety at the very least, and maybe even some real money if their work gets noticed by Big Pharma or other deep pockets. But not Merritt.”
“She seems to like her work.”
“Merritt had a good job with WHO,” Graeter said.
“The World Health Organization.”
“Right.”
“You said ‘had.’ What happened?”
“Scuttlebutt said she went off the deep end about birth control. Publicly criticized people high in the Bush administration. And the Catholic Church. Even the U.N. That got her fired.”