'Pillaging the dead?' He'd meant it like a joke, but it came out sounding sour.
The psychologist glanced up from a box he was filling with Moss's files. He looked patient instead of defensive. The man's calm might be his strongest asset but it could also be infuriating. 'I'm shipping things back to the States. Cameron appointed me as the best person to bundle up the astronomer's personal effects and papers, suggesting the family and NSF would like them boxed before they're lost.'
'The best because you're a psychologist.'
'Probably the best because I'm new, like you. A little apart from the others. And used to keeping confidences.'
'Right.' Lewis hesitated. Maybe Norse was really as isolated as Lewis was. Maybe they did have something in common, the fellow fingies. And because of that maybe he'd understand. 'I came out because I'm done playing detective, Doc. Case closed.'
Norse slipped one cardboard flap under another, sealing the box. 'Say again?'
'The meteorite. Looking for it now will cause more trouble than it's worth. With Mickey gone, there's no point. And I'm toast if I keep grilling everybody.'
The psychologist nodded slowly. 'Ah.' He considered this and then pointed to the astronomer's old desk chair. 'Sit down, Jed.' It was the tone of a parent about to lecture, not unkindly.
Reluctantly, Lewis sat.
'You think Mickey's death has ended things.'
'For me it has.'
'I'm afraid just the opposite is true.'
'How so?'
Norse took a breath. 'Rod and I have been in communication with NSF and Mickey's home institution. Nancy doesn't have the training to do an autopsy now, but there's going to be an investigation into Moss's demise. Some of that is standard, and some is unusual because of the peculiar circumstances of his death. There might be people down here in the spring asking questions.'
'I understand.'
'I'm not sure you do.' The psychologist pulled over another box and began dropping in files. 'The most likely scenario is that Doctor Moss suffered an unfortunate accident while trying to retrieve his meteorite. It's possible an autopsy would reveal a heart attack or another contributing factor. Another possibility, however, is suicide.'
'Abby's picture.'
'Yes. I'm not at liberty to fully discuss that, but suffice to say there's some evidence that Moss had an unusual interest in younger women.'
'I don't believe that.'
Norse glanced at the boxes around them, as if they held compelling evidence. 'Nobody is asking you to.'
'Mickey Moss is not the kind of guy who kills himself.'
'I'm talking about possibilities.' The psychologist looked at him speculatively. 'Look, you know what's appealing about the hard sciences? Their rationality. A handful of Greeks more than two thousand years ago said stop, we're not going to explain the world with supernatural miracles anymore, we're going to look for natural causes. It was almost a superhuman thing to do, embracing the scientific method, and for many scientists this rationality is their religion. Yet it's my contention that we're not wired to be rational, that superstition survives in all of us because that's the way people naturally think. Doctor Moss was a supremely rational man. But he was also a man, with all the freight of impulse and emotion and fear that any man carries with him. He might have been spooked. He might have been depressed. Who knows? It's completely unfair at this point to suggest anything untoward, but Abby and I have been discussing the situation. Please don't press her on it, because that could cause some real trauma in what in the best of circumstances is an emotional pressure cooker down here. Still, we all have to admit the possibility of the irrational.'
'One more reason to put it all to rest, I think.'
'Yes. We're really talking about the functioning of this group. Except there's a third possibility besides accident and suicide, you see.'
'What do you mean?'
'Murder.'
'Come on…'
'It's possible that whoever took the meteorite and lured Mickey Moss into the old base pushed him down that pit.'
'That doesn't make sense.'
'Doesn't it? An esteemed scientist finds a meteorite? A thief takes it? As a search closes in, our culprit becomes desperate and decides to eliminate the one man he thinks might figure out who did it?'
'You're suggesting the meteorite could lead to that?'
'I'm suggesting that with five million dollars at stake, any rational person would consider it as a possibility. And if there's anything we can say about the scientists and engineers who run our little kingdom back in Washington, they are supremely rational. Positively anal about it.'
'Well, I'm sure as hell not going to play homicide detective.'
'Ah, but I think you have to.'
'Forget it.'
'Based on what authorities know so far, only one clear suspect has emerged.' Norse looked at him with unusual intensity. 'Which means, in your own defense, you can't stop looking.'
'Now, wait a minute…'
'Because that suspect is obviously you.'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lewis watched the first big storm of the winter season approach on his instruments as if he were tracking an armada of bombers, the barometer falling and the temperature actually rising slightly as the monster swelled up from beneath the horizon. Faxed satellite photos made the tempest look as vast as a pinwheel galaxy. Yet nothing happened at first, the atmosphere at the Pole seeming to hold its breath. He paced from his weather monitors to the windows, and from the windows to the monitors, curious and watchful, anticipating the storm but seeing nothing but gray blandness. He looked out at the other buildings on station and everything seemed still.
His wait was like the solitude of a lighthouse keeper. Lewis made people nervous now, since the discovery of Mickey's body, and people avoided him like they avoided Buck Tyson. No one had accused him of anything. No one had asked any questions. But when he was out at Clean Air no one telephoned, either. No one e-mailed. When he was out with his instruments, Jed Lewis was the last man on earth.
A murder suspect! Absurd. No one but Norse had said a thing and yet in every eye he now read suspicion and in every gesture a distancing. That e-mail! Galley chatter subsided at his approach as if he turned down a dial, and when he sat away it regained its volume. Not so much a snub as formal politeness. 'Hey, Lewis.' And that was it. No questions about anything. His isolation was exactly the opposite of what he'd expected at the Pole. His daily walk to Clean Air was a kind of voluntary exile, his trudge home one of dread at the caution he would encounter.
Every five minutes, Lewis cursed Mickey Moss.
He was reluctant to notify Cameron of his readings. It was difficult to talk to the man. The station manager had become remote since Moss's death, as if Lewis represented potential contamination. Cameron never visited Clean Air. In fact, he rarely left his office, where he was struggling with a report to Washington. His depression was dangerous. It affected the entire station. When Lewis suggested in a rare phone call to the station manager that Cameron stick his nose out of the dome once in a while, the response had been curt.
'I'm a little occupied, Lewis. We're still trying to hash this out.'
'Hash what out?'
'Mickey.'
Were they convicting him behind his back? 'I'm tired of Mickey. I didn't have anything to do with him.'
