Blood and Ice

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

December 13, 9:30 p.m.

“Just hold the bandage,” Charlotte ordered. “Just hold it in place!”

Michael pressed it to Danzig's throat-blood was still seeping through-as she cut off the end of the sutures and dropped her scissors into the pan.

“And keep an eye on his blood pressure!”

Michael watched the monitor-the pressure was low, and dropping all the time.

From the moment she had rushed into the kennel, Charlotte's hands had never stopped moving with rapidity and assurance. She had bent over the gasping Danzig, and with her own fingers, closed the gaping hole in his throat. At the infirmary, she had inserted a breathing tube, anesthetized him, stitched the wound, and was now inserting an IV, to give him a transfusion.

“Is he going to make it?” Michael asked, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.

“I don't know. He's lost a lot of blood-his jugular was severed-and his windpipe's damaged, too.” She hung the plasma bag on the rod and, after making sure it was working, readied a syringe. “I told Murphy to call for assistance. He needs a lot more help than we can give him here.”

“What's the shot for? Rabies?” The bandage he held was damp and stained a deep pink.

“Tetanus,” she said, holding it up to the light and tamping on the plunger. “We don't even have rabies vaccine down here. But then, there aren't supposed to be any dogs, either.”

She administered the shot, but before she had even withdrawn the needle, there was a mad beeping from the BP and EKG monitors.

“Oh, shit,” she said, tossing the used needle into the sink and ripping open a cabinet on the wall behind her. “He's crashing!”

An ominously steady tone filled the room.

She charged the defibrillator pads-something Michael had seen done on a dozen medical shows on TV-then applied them to the barrel of Danzig's hairy chest. His flannel shirt had been cut away, and the skin was orange from a coat of mercurochrome. One of the pads landed on a tattoo-the head of a husky-and Michael wondered if it was supposed to be Kodiak. Charlotte counted to three, yelled, “Clear!” then pressed the pads down while the sudden charge made the body jump. Danzig's head went back, and his body arched upward.

But the monitors kept up their steady drone.

Again she yelled, “Clear!” While Michael hovered a foot away, she hit Danzig with another charge. The body jerked again… but the lines on the blue screens stayed flat. Several of the stitches had popped.

Breathing hard, her braids hanging down beside her face, she tried it one more time-there was the faint smell of barbecued meat in the room-but nothing changed. The body flattened out again, and lay perfectly still. Blood seeped slowly from his torn neck and Michael had nothing to sop it up with.

Charlotte mopped her brow with the back of her sleeve, glanced one more time at the monitors, then fell back onto the stool behind her, her shoulders slumped, her face wet with sweat. Michael waited-what were they supposed to do next? Surely this couldn't be it.

“Should I pump his heart?” he said, rising from his own stool and placing his hands above Danzig's chest.

But Charlotte simply shook her head.

“Shouldn't I at least try?” Michael said, pressing down with the heel of his hands, as he had seen done in CPR classes. “Should I give him artificial respiration?”

“He's gone, honey.”

“Just tell me what I should do!”

“Nothing you can do,” she said, looking up at the clock. “If you want to know, he was gone from the second that damned dog got at him.”

Without looking behind her, she reached for and found a clipboard on the counter. She lifted the pen on its chain and recorded the time of death.

Danzig's eyes were still open, and Michael closed them.

Charlotte flicked off the machines, then picked Danzig's walrus-tooth necklace up off the floor, where she'd hastily thrown it.

“That was his good-luck charm,” Michael said.

“Not good enough,” she said, handing it to Michael.

They sat in silence, the corpse lying between them, until Murphy O'Connor put his head in the door.

“Bad news about the chopper,” he said, then, taking in what had happened, mumbled, “Oh, sweet Mother of God.”

Charlotte removed the transfusion line. “No rush,” she said. “They can come anytime.”

Murphy ran his hand back over his salt-and-pepper hair, and stared at the floor. “The storm,” he said. “It's gonna get a lot worse before dawn. They said they'd have to wait for it to blow over.”

Outside, Michael could hear a raging wind pummeling the walls of the infirmary like a hail of angry fists. He hadn't even noticed it till now.

“Christ almighty,” Murphy muttered. He started to turn away, then said to Charlotte, “I'm sure you did everything possible. You're a good medical officer.”

Charlotte looked unaffected by the praise.

“I'll send Franklin in, to help with the body.” Then he looked at Michael. “Why don't you come down to my office? We need to talk.”

Murphy walked away, and Michael wasn't sure what to do. He did not want to leave Charlotte alone-not with the body-at least not until Franklin, or somebody, got there.

“It's okay,” she said, as if intuiting his problem. “You work the ER in Chi-town, you get used to dead people. Go.”

Michael got up and slipped the walrus-tooth necklace into his pocket. Then he went to the sink, where he scrubbed his hands clean.

Franklin came in and, as Michael went out to the hall, Charlotte called after him, “And thanks, by the way. You make a good nurse.”

In Murphy's office, he found Darryl warming his hands around a cardboard cup of coffee-it was clear that Murphy had just told him about Danzig's death-and the chief himself was sitting back, looking utterly depleted, in his desk chair. Michael leaned up against a dented file cabinet and for a minute or so no one said a word. They didn't have to.

“Any ideas?” the chief finally said, and another silence fell.

“If you're referring to Danzig and the dog,” Darryl finally ventured, “no. But if you're referring to the missing bodies, then there's one thing that I think is pretty clear.”

“What's that?”

“Somebody's gone off his rocker. Maybe it's a case of the Big Eye.”

“I've been doing a check,” Murphy replied, “and so far everybody's accounted for-even Spook. Nobody's in a daze-at least any more than usual-and nobody's gone off the reservation.”

Darryl pondered this, then said, “Okay. Then whoever it is, they hid the bodies somewhere-it's cold enough out there that they'll just freeze solid again-then they hightailed it back to the base.”

“And the dogs?”

Darryl had to think about that, but Michael knew that the dogs, unless they were restrained somehow, would have come back on their own.

“Can they survive in a storm like this?” Darryl asked, and Murphy snorted.

“For them, it's a day at the beach. They'll hunker down and sleep right through it. The bitch of it is, any tracks they left are already gone.”

But Michael had a hunch where they might have gone. “Stromviken,” he said. “That was their routine exercise run.”

“Could be,” Murphy said, mulling it over, “but if somebody drove them there-even if there was time, which looks pretty damn unlikely-how'd he get back to base without them? Nobody, not even I, could have walked back here alone, much less in this weather. Ain't nobody going nowhere in this soup.”

“What if he was using a snowmobile?” Michael said. “Could he have towed it along behind the sled?”

Murphy assumed a quizzical expression. “I guess,” he said. “But then he's got the dogs towing the snowmobile, plus the bodies in the ice block-”

“The ice block was very diminished,” Darryl interjected. “It would have completely collapsed soon.”

Murphy paused, then plowed ahead. “Whatever you say. But then, whoever this is, he's leaving the bodies and the dogs out there somewhere-the whaling station, the rookery, an ice cave that we don't know about-and racing back here on the snowmobile, a snowmobile that nobody noticed was missing-”

“And that nobody heard either coming or going,” Michael threw in.

“Right,” Murphy said, wearily rubbing his graying hair again, “that, too. You see how none of this is adding up?”

Michael saw his point, clearly. That was actually the first chance he'd had even to try putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but it was no surprise that Murphy already looked exhausted and utterly stumped.

On Darryl's face, Michael noted a look of just plain anger. His lab had been desecrated and his most prized specimen stolen. “I don't think anyone could have done it alone,” he declared. “Getting those bodies out of the tank and into the sled, and in the very limited amount of time between the last time I'd been in the lab and when I found them missing?” He shook his head and said, “It had to be two people, at least, to carry this whole thing off.”

“So,” Murphy replied, “what are you saying? You got any candidates in mind?”

Darryl sipped the coffee, then said, “Betty and Tina? You sure you've accounted for them?”

“Why on earth would Betty and Tina do this?” Murphy asked.

“I don't know,” Darryl said, in exasperation. “But maybe they wanted to do the work themselves. Maybe they thought I took it away from them. Maybe they have some other agenda altogether.” He sounded not only as if he was grasping at straws, but as if he knew it himself. He threw up his hands in disgust, then let them flop back onto his lap.

“I'll follow up with them,” Murphy said, in an unconvincing tone.

“In the meantime, I want a lock for my lab,” Darryl insisted. “I've got my fish to look out for.”

“You honestly think somebody's gonna come back for your fish, too?” Murphy replied. “Don't sweat it-I'll find you a lock.”