The Freezer Read online

  “Any other signs like this on the others?”

  “No,” he said. “Just this one.”

  I crouched and looked at the scars for a long moment.

  * * *

  “These animals all seem drugged,” I said to the doctors after we’d emerged and sealed the hatch.

  “They’re just calm because they’re used to the pen,” Marius said.

  “Primates don’t like captivity,” I muttered. They wouldn’t just...give up. They’d do anything in their power to resist and escape.

  I considered the situation. Each time I scraped the surface here at The Freezer, more puzzles emerged. So I kept scratching, digging away at it. Kept thinning the mystery. Kept working at it until finally a break would appear and—

  I savagely shoved away those thoughts. No time to think about that now. Had to decipher the riddle...find out what was going on...

  “Sato,” I murmured. “Come with me.” I led him from the clinic and out into the travel tube. The hatch closed behind us.

  He looked at me, quizzical.

  “What else do you have for me about the jumpship in the ice?”

  He blinked. “Right. I got a bit more from the telemetry, but not much.”

  “You said that it received a signal and the pilot diverted here.”

  “A comm signal, yes.”

  “Who sent the message?”

  A frown. “The log doesn’t have that kind of detail. I can just see that a call came in from this location. They changed course immediately following it.”

  I considered that. It must have been a distress code of some sort, because the jumpship had been heading for Neptune. “What happened? Why’d it crash?”

  He winced. “I can only say that the ship’s course changed dramatically on descent. It could have been from a mechanical failure. It might also have been pilot error.”

  I snorted. “No voice recorders on jumpships, I take it.”

  “Not that size, no. It’s just a small craft, probably privately owned. Not a CCF vessel.”

  I mulled that over.

  And then Sato snapped his fingers. “But I did notice something at the crater. Remember? The hull seemed charred. Blackened.”

  “From a fire?”

  “Probably.”

  Which is why the ship had sunk into the ice. The ice would have melted quickly—or sublimated to steam, rather. The ship had crashed hard, forming the crater. If the artificial gravity on board had failed, everyone would have died at that point. But the fire was key. It could have been the maneuvering thrusters, which used liquid propellant. I’d considered that earlier. Or—

  I said, “It could have been from a weapon. Fired from the surface.”

  The travel tubes had long viewports on their bulkheads. Outside, the white, barren landscape stretched away to the horizon, everything lit by Jupiter in full phase.

  “A weapon,” he muttered.

  It was an interesting theory, but still the motives eluded me. “Any way we can check it from this end?”

  He shrugged. “Comm logs of course, recorded here. If they called for help. But smart people can erase or change them.”

  “And the comm system in Module A was fried yesterday in a fire. Convenient.”

  Part of me wanted to go back out to the surface to investigate the jumpship.

  Another part of me wanted nothing to do with it. No more going outside. Solve this thing from inside, a voice within yelled.

  But I did know that if a weapon fired from the surface had disabled the jumpship, the likely person here to have done it was the only person who went outside.

  I escorted Sato back into the clinic.

  The hatch slid open and I heard Marius and Dinova once again yelling about my dilemma.

  “HSAN Type IV is the reason!” Dinova practically snarled.

  “No, it isn’t!” Marius was giving it right back to her. “Type four can’t have stimulated the adrenal—”

  They turned to us. Marius sighed and threw up his arms. “It’s difficult working on your problem, Tanner, because of the constant arguing here.”

  Dinova swore. “I am just trying to eliminate the things that will have no use. We need to focus on the strategies that show promise!”

  I studied the two for a heartbeat. “You have to get yourselves under control. I appreciate you trying to help me, but still...”

  Dinova nodded. “I know it seems unprofessional, but we are working to save your life.”

  “I appreciate it.” I watched them for a few seconds more before I said, “Tell me about myelin sheathing.”

  It had a dramatic effect on them. Their faces registered surprise and Marius’s jaw even dropped. He glanced at Dinova.

  She said, “It’s a fatty coating on nerves in the brain. On the axons of the neurons. It insulates them. The more sheathing there is, the faster the signals travel in the nervous system.” Then she tilted her head, as if finally realizing the question had nothing to do with the murders. “Why do you ask?”

  “It was the title of a book I saw here at The Freezer,” I muttered.

  “Oh. Well, babies don’t have much myelin. As a result sometimes the signals—which are electrical—jump from one nerve to another. In essence, their signals short-circuit and go haywire. They have difficulty moving their limbs because of this. It takes time for the myelin to form. Once it does, in a year or so after birth, the signals reach the right part of the body uninterrupted.”

  “Really.”

  “Some diseases break down the myelin, and those afflicted can lose control of their bodies as a result. Multiple sclerosis is the most common example.”

  My mind wandered while she was speaking. Not that I wasn’t listening, but something Cray had said suddenly jolted me. He’d mentioned wanting to watch a video of Bojdl’s death on Ceres. “Traitors deserve death!” he’d ranted only an hour earlier.

  I happened to have that video on my reader.

  I had ordered Captain Lawrence, my contact at Fort Iridium, to upload it to me before I left for Europa, and I had only watched it once.

  Muttering something to the doctors about continuing with their research, I marched from the clinic toward Module B and my cabin. I needed to be in private to view this.

  Once inside, I dimmed the lights and activated the holovideo. The bulkheads of the cabin disappeared, and in their place the bustling mess hall at the administrative center of Fort Iridium sprang into view. A cacophony of noise erupted: multiple conversations, people eating and crew working in the galley. Everything was pixilated for a moment as the image resolved, and then it was all there. I could see immense detail, listen to conversations, zoom in on individual tables...it was an excellent tool and I remembered thinking how lucky it was that such a video existed.

  I watched Bojdl’s death again. It wasn’t so much watching it as it was experiencing it. There he was now, walking through the mess. I slowed it down and examined it intently, soaking in every little detail. The expression on his face, the people around him. The bandage on his arm from the acid spill. I knew there was a matching one on his right foot. Then the look suddenly appeared on his face and he stopped and stumbled.

  The look. Like he had known something had happened, that he was about to die.

  The reactions from the people around him, how they noticed that he was in trouble and then stood in shock.

  Then the hand reaching out for support and the fall to the deck.

  A few people moved toward him, hovered over him, asked him what was wrong.

  And then his mouth trembled and he spoke.

  I instructed the reader to amplify the voice.

  “He did it...killed me...finally got to me...”

  I replayed the tape at normal speed and watched i
t again, this time from the opposite angle.

  Then from a different angle, then again from another.

  Then I zoomed right in on Bojdl from those four vantage points, then zoomed way out from each.

  I had watched it now so many times that I knew the reactions of every single person around him.

  The CCF officer to his left, and how he had leapt to Bojdl’s aid as he hit the deck.

  The civilian in the white T-shirt to his right, and how she backed away and screamed as he fell.

  The engineer in the vacsuit, helmet thrown back on the hinge at his shoulders, standing to the side talking to a pretty woman. They had turned, startled, when the yelling began.

  I switched the view and studied people at the periphery. Watched their reactions to something that was happening some ten or twenty meters away. Most turned their heads to see what the commotion was.

  The cooks in the galley—which was visible through a large pass-through—continued to work and clang their pots during the whole incident. They didn’t even know something had happened.

  I studied everyone in that mess to gauge reactions and check their timing. Was anyone not surprised by what happened? Did any expressions give away ulterior motives?

  And then I saw something that made my breath burst out in a rush.

  Along the far bulkhead, a line of viewports and open hatches ran the length of the mess. On the other side was a corridor. People were walking there; I could see them passing the viewports as the holovideo played. I muted the sound and watched those people passing each other in that corridor...

  Watched as a person stopped and turned toward the mess.

  Now waiting at the port, head framed perfectly in the glass, staring into where crew and officers and civilians ate their lunches.

  Then the death. Bojdl fell and people reacted.

  Except the person at the port.

  No reaction at all. Simply a blank look. Then perhaps a slight sign of...was it regret, maybe? Loss?

  Some people didn’t react because they couldn’t hear it and weren’t looking. This person could do both and was not surprised or shocked by the death.

  And the kicker was, I knew the person. It was someone who should not have been there.

  I slumped back in my chair and exhaled forcefully.

  Pieces to the mystery were beginning to fall together, but I still had no idea what the final image was supposed to be. Try solving a puzzle when you don’t have the complete picture to work from! Guesswork had turned to hunches had turned to knowledge, and still I struggled for the ultimate solution.

  But a massive piece of it had just revealed itself before my eyes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I spent another fifteen minutes researching with my reader and before I knew it, it was nearly midnight. Answers to the puzzle were quickly falling into place along with a few motivations. I still didn’t have the answer to the larger mystery at this place, but I knew some of the smaller ones. Once I started to push the guilty party harder and unveil how much I really knew, it would cascade into a flood of important information.

  That image was resolving itself nicely now...

  Soon I would have it.

  I keyed the communit. “Everyone meet me in the lowest level of Module A. Right now.”

  It was time to expose some secrets.

  * * *

  They clustered around Lefave’s workspace, which was essentially a counter across the bulkhead littered with microscopes and test tubes. Computers and viewscreens, apparatuses bolted to the deck and cabinets full of beakers and samples also surrounded us. Snow and Cray occupied two rolling stools. Lefave stood to the side glowering at me. Dyson leaned against the bulkhead, angry and sullen at having to deal with “more officer bullshit,” as he snarled at Sato. He looked guilty when he realized that I’d heard it. There was also Marius and Dinova, who were sitting on a long table near the ladder that led upward in the center of the dome.

  I studied everybody. They stared back, some morose like Dyson, some angry—like Lefave—and some ambivalent. Sato seemed intrigued. Cray was hostile, and Dinova was glaring at Lefave for some reason.

  I cleared my throat. “I thought I ordered you to meet me on the lowest level?”

  They looked confused by that, and I ignored it.

  I continued, “I’d like to review the investigation a little bit, ask a few questions.” Pin a few people down.

  Cray sneered at that. “Why don’t you just continue on your own, finish what you’re here for, and get out?”

  “I’m trying to catch whoever killed your lover, Cray. Don’t you care about that?”

  Janice Snow looked startled for an instant. Then she turned to Cray, and her eyes were lasers. She had understood instantly. “How the fuck could you—”

  Cray shrugged and his body language indicated that he clearly did not care. “She wanted me and I had no problems being with her. It was fun.”

  “But she and I—”

  “She needed more than just you! What’s the problem? It’s not an issue with me.”

  Snow looked hurt and angry at the same time. “It is for me! She never mentioned it!”

  “Small wonder. She must have known how upset it would make you.”

  Dyson watched the exchange with interest and something else. He seemed hurt. Yes, that was it. He was wounded. He’d assumed Aoki had rejected him because she was a lesbian. In fact, she had been bisexual, and he just hadn’t been her type.

  The others had watched the exchange with interest. Sexual secrets are the best type.

  I said, “You see how many deceptions there are here? That’s just one of many. And it gives you motive to kill her, Cray.”

  He looked shocked. “Why? That’s ridiculous!”

  “Unless you were tired of sharing her. Maybe you’d had enough. Maybe you hated every second that she spent with Snow.”

  “I could never kill her. She was...” He trailed off and stared at me. “Our times together weren’t something that I wanted to give up. It’s as simple as that.”

  I grunted. “You wouldn’t kill her because you liked to fuck her, is that it?”

  Snow looked outraged. She’d honestly felt that she and Aoki had had something special, had been in love maybe. Meanwhile Aoki had just been using two officers, and getting what she’d wanted out of it, too.

  “What about you, Snow?” I asked. “Maybe you killed her.”

  “That’s outrageous! I loved her!”

  “And people never kill someone they love, is that right?”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “You’re living in a fantasy world then, because quarrels, jealous rages and possessive-destructive relationships frequently result in murder. Are you surprised by that?”

  “Frankly, yes. I could never kill Aoki.” She was flushed and looked at the others for a heartbeat. “I’d like to kill the person who did!”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  The question startled her, and she had difficulty answering for a moment. “Isn’t that your job?”

  I shrugged. “I’m just curious if you have any ideas. What are your thoughts?”

  Her eyes flicked to someone in the room. Interesting. But she said, “No. I haven’t the slightest, although the thought that it was one of these dissidents did occur to me.”

  “I see.” I turned to Dinova and Marius. “Dr. Marius. What do you think?”

  He seemed bewildered. “It’s a crazy situation. I can’t believe it’s all happening. I’m hoping you’ll solve the mystery so we can get out of here.”

  “It would help if you told me everything you know.”

  His eyes widened. “But I have!”

  “Like the animal pen below the clinic? Hidden by boxes
and equipment so I wouldn’t see it? You knew and neglected to mention it.”

  “I told you—”

  “Yes, I know. And I think it’s bullshit, to be honest.”

  He had no response to that.

  “Dr. Dinova, you could have mentioned it too.”

  “Honestly, it seemed like nothing, Lieutenant. I am frankly surprised that you’re making such a big deal of it.”

  “Really.” I paused for a long moment and looked at the group before me. “This whole time I’ve been trying to understand this place, but it’s been difficult. You’ve hidden things from me. People are not forthcoming. No one seems to want to catch the killer, except me. Why is that?” No one said a word. “Maybe it’s because you’re all part of it. You’re all guilty.”

  Expressions of shock everywhere.

  I pressed on. “But I don’t think that’s entirely true. Ed Sato here at least has been very helpful. We called him in to help with the murder on Ceres. He’s assisted with my investigation since. He’s gone out of his way to help, in fact, while the rest of you sat on your hands and waited.” I frowned. “Waited for what? What is going to happen here?”

  Complete and utter silence.

  “Were you just waiting for Saturday?”

  “What happens on Saturday?” Cray sneered. “Why is that important?”

  “I wonder.” I sighed and considered the situation. “This facility has intrigued me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it’s not here for the reasons you claim, Cray. It has a separate, secret purpose, one that you refuse to tell me. All of you refuse to speak about it, which makes me suspect everyone here at The Freezer.”

  Lefave chuckled. “What do you mean? ‘Separate, secret purpose?’ That’s ridiculous.”

  I spun on him. “Is it? You’ve been elusive since the second I arrived! Now tell me, what is really happening at this base?”

  He locked eyes with mine but he said nothing.

  “You see?” I hissed. “There is something else going on here, and no one wants to say it. But the thing is, I already know!”