“What about Merritt?”
“It’s your call, obviously. But I think she falls into the need-to-know category. She is the chief scientist, after all.”
“Yeah,” Graeter said reluctantly. But he recited, “ ‘In the event discovery is made by any personnel of any condition that might reasonably be construed to constitute a threat to all or part of the station and/or personnel, such discovery shall be communicated to the senior and/or acting senior officials immediately.’ ”
“SORs, right? Memorized?”
“Most of them. Would you explain it to her, though? You speak Beaker.”
“Sure. I’ll set the tests up, then go see her.”
“Do it.” He started out.
She’d made her decision, held up one hand.
“Wait. There are some other things you need to know. I saved the worst for last.”
She told him about Emily’s murder, Blaine’s confession, and Triage.
He reached for one of the bench tops. His other hand clenched into a fist, white-knuckled, new cracks opening, fresh blood seeping. “God damn it to hell,” he said. “If I could find the bastard who did that, I would shoot him myself.”
“Are you sure yours is the only gun here?”
“Reasonably.” Then he shook his head, as though clearing cobwebs after a hard punch. “Let me say this out loud to make sure it’s straight. The man who tortured a woman to death is walking around my station.”
“He might have flown out after he killed her. But I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“He probably killed Fida, too,” she said.
“So he’s still here. Or they are.”
“Yes. It could be a team effort, for all we know,” she said.
“You’re right. Wait a minute. You said you saw that video on Monday?”
“Yes.”
“And now it’s”—he glanced at his watch, shook his head—“two A.M. on Thursday. Why in hell did you wait so long to tell me?”
“Think about it. The killer could have been any man in the station.”
“You thought it might be me?”
“The way you were when I got here?” She shrugged.
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded, rubbed the side of his face. “What changed your mind?”
“You did,” she said.
“Huh. Imagine that.”
“How many men are still here?”
He closed his eyes, remembering. “Thirty-two. Eighteen Beakers, fourteen Draggers.”
“We could question every one of them,” she said, thinking out loud.
“Even at just half an hour per man, that’s seventeen hours. More if you figure in time for breaks, bathroom calls, eating.”
“Did your marshal training include interrogation techniques?”
“We barely got past Handcuffs 101.”
“So neither of us is a trained or experienced interviewer. From what I saw on the video, the killer looked trained and experienced, both.”
“Easy for him to slip past us,” he said.
“Sure.”
“We could try a lineup,” he said. “Put every man in the station through it. See if we recognize anyone.”
“We’d have to figure out some way to do it looking down on them from above,” she pointed out. “The video never showed a straight-on shot. What about McMurdo? Or the New Zealand Police?” she asked.
“SORs say—” He interrupted himself. “For some reason, that sounds ridiculous.”
“Maybe, but it could be important. What do they say?”
“Crime reports go through McMurdo to New Zealand’s national police and our State Department.”
“Not like nine-one-one. So no immediate help.”
“I’ll call as soon as comms are up, of course. But the killer may be loose in the station. Accomplices, too.”
“Infection at every level,” she said.
“What?”
“I was just thinking. A microbe of some kind almost certainly killed the three women. So there’s infection at the microscopic level. And a much bigger infection is killing people at the macro level.”
“Only a microbiologist would see things that way,” he said.
“Maybe. But there is still the question: what do we do?”
“I could make an all-hands announcement or call a meeting,” Graeter said. “Just put it out there for everybody to hear. See what happens.”
“I don’t like that,” she said.
“Why?”
“A lot of them already think there’s a killer supergerm loose. Then they hear that some psycho murderer is running around? Talk about destabilizing.”
“What would you do?” he asked. “If you heard an announcement like that?”
“I’d grab the nearest weapon. It would be very hard to stay rational.”
“So maybe we can’t do anything right away,” he said. “But we should at least tell Merritt.”
“We should, you’re right.”
“Could you, when you talk to her about the other things?”
“I can. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going back to my office and make sure my gun’s in working order.”
48
The sat phone hummed, signaling an incoming call. Merritt glanced at the door to her room one more time, making sure it was locked. She answered, said her name, waited.
“How copy?” Gerrin asked.
There was always garbage noise on the sat phone calls down here, sounds like wind blowing through canyons and gravel crunching. But she could understand him. “Clear.”
“We discussed the situation.”
“And?” Merritt asked. Before Gerrin could continue, there was a knock. “Who is it?” Merritt called.
“Hallie Leland. I need to talk to you. I tried your office, figured you would be here.” Merritt heard her try the locked door.
“Can this wait until the morning. I just got to sleep.”
“I think we should talk now.”
Merritt mouthed a silent curse, then whispered into the phone, “Make it quick. Someone’s at my door.”
Gerrin didn’t need much time for what he had to say.
She let Hallie in. “Are you catching something? You’re starting to look like the rest of us,” Merritt said. She had thrown a robe over her red long johns.
“Maybe the dreaded Pole cold. I’ll be okay.” She explained how she had obtained material from the women in the morgue and was culturing it in her lab.
Merritt flushed. “You didn’t notify me.”
“I didn’t want to put you on the spot.”
“So you’re running standard biochemical screens?”
“Yes.” Hallie explained the tests she’d set up. “Can you think of anything I missed?”
“Microbiology isn’t my field. How soon will we have results?”
“Tomorrow is my best guess. Is the winterover flyout happening?”
“Not unless the temperature goes up by about twenty degrees.”
“Is that likely?”
“It’s a weird time of year here, very unstable atmospheric conditions. So it could happen. I’d say fifty-fifty.”
“But there’s something else. Two things, actually.”
“What?”
“Vishnu’s dead.”
Setting up the biochemical tests had not been complicated. They were the kinds of things she had first done as an undergraduate in the microbio labs. The procedure was exacting and required strict attention, though. It also required biosecurity gear — such as it was here at the South Pole. Hooded Tyvek suit, booties, mask. And, though she would be working in a biosecure “glove box” made of quarter-inch, high-impact acrylic plastic, she put on surgical gloves as well.
It had required almost two hours of delicate and tedious work: inoculating a series of oxidase test slides, Enterotubes, and Oxi/Ferm tubes, securing them in incubators. She had discarded her security gear in biohazard containers, then ventilated and sterilized the lab.