The Winter Over(32)

Voices rose in the hall outside the office and they both froze, but the voices passed on and faded quickly. Cass licked her lips. “Did you examine Sheryl after Taylor brought her back to base?”

Ayres crossed his arms over his chest. “No.”

“Did you get a chance to examine her later, before she . . . before her body was loaded onto the plane?”

“No.”

“Did you try to examine her?”

He shifted his weight. “Yes.”

“And you couldn’t,” Cass said. When Ayres didn’t answer: “You weren’t allowed?”

“No.”

“No, you weren’t allowed or no, I’m asking the wrong question?”

“No, I wasn’t permitted to look at her.”

Cass paused. Hanratty had made a point of saying he’d be talking to Ayres about examining Sheryl . “Can you elaborate?”

Ayres leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. “I was told that what was done was done. Shackleton personnel were upset already, and since McMurdo had better facilities, the autopsy would be done there, so there was no need for me to do an examination. Taylor made some kind of joke that it’s not hard to keep a body cold, so what was the harm in waiting?”

“Do you find that strange?”

Ayres hesitated for the first time. “Yes. And no. From one perspective, it makes sense. A quick examination wouldn’t tell us much, certainly not as much as a full autopsy. And there’s no doubt that morale would have taken a beating if I’d done the autopsy or an exam, even if nothing extraordinary was found. People don’t actually want to know causes of death when it hits so close to home. Hell, I didn’t want to do it, not really. I . . . I had lunch with the woman, I played poker with her in B1, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t want to take a knife to her.”

“But?”

“But what if she’d wandered out on the ice because she was hypoxic from a bad air circulator? Or had gotten a bad dose of meds or recreational drugs and was hallucinating? Or was simply weak and dizzy from food poisoning? Any one of those scenarios could decimate the population of Shackleton. Half of them could be revealed with a visual exam. The rest would come out with a simple blood panel or toxicology test.”

“So, the negative consequences of doing an exam don’t even compare with the upside.”

“It’s not even close.”

“Who told you not to do the exam?”

Ayres huffed a laugh and pushed himself away from the sink. “You don’t make it twenty years as a corpsman by shitting where you eat, Cass. I’m sure you can figure out how many people at Shackleton can tell me not to do something and I’ve got to pay attention.”

“But—”

He held up a hand. “Sorry. I’ve already said too much. It’s water under the bridge. Whatever happened to Sheryl was terrible, but we’re not going to let it happen again. Right? So, wrap that ankle, take your pills, and you’ll be better in no time.”

Cass could see the subject was closed. “Take two Percocet and call you in the morning?”

“Yes, except don’t bother calling. There’s nothing more I can do for you.”

“With advice like that, I’m glad I didn’t gash my leg open.” She slipped off the table, hissing a little as her bad foot took some of the weight.

“Well, as they said in med school, the bleeding stops eventually.” Ayres stepped forward and helped her to the door. As she reached out to open the latch, he put a hand firmly on the door, holding it shut. She looked up at him.

“Cass,” he said. The smile was gone. Pleasant wrinkles around the eyes and laugh lines around the mouth were now trenches of experience. The kind mask of the healer—the sympathetic ear of the Bartender—was gone, revealing the warrior beneath. “What we talked about here. Let’s keep it our little secret, okay?” When she didn’t reply, he continued, “I don’t like it any more than you, but I’ve learned over the years that crusades don’t help anyone. We’ll find out soon enough what happened to Sheryl.”

“Thanks,” she said, which wasn’t agreeing. His smile returned and he held the door for her as she left the room and hobbled into the hall.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


For Cass, rebuilding a motor or flushing brake lines had always been the best form of therapy. Methodical, mechanical, hands-on tasks had a way of pushing her anxieties aside, giving her time and space to grapple with the thornier problems in her life. Over the course of her lifetime she’d left a trail of repaired engines, gearboxes, and motors in her wake, a testament to how well the tactic worked . . . and how many troubles she’d faced.

And the trick had worked this time, too. After leaving Ayres and once more navigating the Beer Can steps, she settled into the garage and dove into an inspection of the derelict Alpine, checking off items on a mental list before getting her hands greasy in an attempt to settle her mind. Plumb the engine with a bore scope. Doodle with the combustion chamber and piston skirts. Lube up the grease zerks. Familiar work turned the growl into a happy hum as she started wrenching away on the busted snowmobile.

As machines went, however, the Alpine wasn’t all that complicated and soon her hands were on autopilot, running over the engine with a will of their own, the tasks so routine that her mind returned to the strange still life of Hanratty, Taylor, and Keene staring back at her in surprise and dismay.