Whiteout
Chapter 1
Bottom of the world. Antarctica. The ice. No place to go but up. But when you hit the bottom, you can always start digging.
Everywhere she looked, from horizon to horizon, all U.S. Marshal Kate Beckett could see was ice and snow, with the occasional rocky outcropping, but mainly just white ice. Up above, the sun was shining brightly in a cloudless crystal blue sky, yet she found no warmth. It was always cold here at the bottom of the world. Cold and unforgiving. The sunlight simply bounced off the frozen ground, making everything seem so very bright. At least that was until she reached the body—a horrifically frozen display of death.
Beckett stopped just steps away from the grizzly sight. It had always been her custom, ever since her first day as a homicide detective, to pause and take a moment to reflect and pay her respects, to acknowledge the victim and remind herself of her duty to provide whatever justice she could. It was a solemn and sacred ritual, one that she never broke, no matter the circumstances or situation.
"Hell of a place to die, huh, Marshal?" came a gruff, worn voice behind her.
Beckett shivered, bobbing her head in agreement as she shoved her gloved hands into the pockets of her parka. She was covered in thick layers, keeping herself insulated from the unforgiving cold. Her companion was similarly dressed, though he had his hood pulled up over his head.
Stepping aside, Beckett let him move past her. He let out a grunt as he knelt down next to the body, grumbling to himself as he tugged the ski goggles up and away from his eyes, resting them on his wrinkled forehead. His eyes were a pale blue. Mark Marston, late-fifties, doctor. He was a good man. His friendship made her assignment down here much easier than it could have been.
She watched as he dipped his head down, scanning the body with experienced eyes. He'd been working in Antarctica for longer than her, nearly most of his life dedicated to looking after those that came here to explore and learn what the harsh southern continent would teach. His lips pursed as he grimaced, glancing down at the bashed in face of the dead man, making the poor soul unrecognizable.
"Wow," he hissed. "I mean, that's gotta sting."
"Cause of death, Doc?" Beckett asked, shifting to stand over his shoulder, observing his examination.
"Besides the obvious?" he grunted, smirking slightly. It always helped to have a good sense of humor in this line of work. Beckett smiled to herself, remembering with fondness the banter she'd shared with Dr. Lanie Parish, her best friend and one of the finest medical examiners she'd ever worked with. Dr. Marston was on that list as well. Though not technically a medical examiner, he filled in that capacity when needed. It rarely was. But when it was, he performed his duties with diligence and wit. Like Lanie, Marston helped to make her job a lot easier.
"Yeah," Beckett said, moving around to get a better look at the victim, stopping at times to take photos with a digital camera, noting the unnatural angles of the man's limbs. "Besides the smashed in face."
Marston shrugged his shoulders, the gesture barely visible underneath the copious number of layers he was wearing, but Beckett had worked alongside him for just shy of two years now, and knew him well enough to read his body language despite the hindrance.
"Hmm," he hummed, deep in his throat, stroking his peppery gray beard. "I've seen this once. Happened before your time, kid, a few years back, some guy got pecked to death by an emperor penguin."
Beckett pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. "You're a riot, Doc." She stepped around the body, taking in the scene. The ice, it ate everything up, made it impossible to judge things properly.
Marston let out a sigh as he looked down at the body. "It's always different when they freeze. Some curl up. Some stretch out. Some tear their clothes off. They get delirious. What was that one guy's name?"
"Hawley?"
"Yeah, him," Marston nodded, cocking his head as he recalled the incident. "He got lost in a storm, if my memory serves me correctly." Beckett nodded. "We couldn't find him, but we heard him on the radio going on and on about the Serengeti heat."
"Next day, we found him frozen solid, wearing nothing but his bunny boots," Beckett finished the story with a shake of her head.
Marston nodded solemnly. "The ice is an unforgiving mistress."
"That it is, Doc. That it is," Beckett said. She crouched down and shoveled the snow away from the dead body with her gloved hands. There was no blood pool soaking up the ice and snow surrounding the body. Odd. Frowning, she cocked her head and glanced over her shoulder. Behind them the ice steepened sharply to a vast plateau, scattered with jagged boulders of ice. "Maybe he fell?"
"That's possible, yeah," Marston agreed, glancing up to follow her gaze, before continuing his examination of the body.
The sun glared down on them, blaring off the white sheet of ice. These tall cliffs of ice were everywhere, and during certain conditions—such a whiteout—invisible to the naked eye. This wouldn't be the first time some unfortunate soul made a wrong step and plunged to their death. Antarctica was a murderous bitch. Not to overstate it or anything. Just waiting for a chance to kill you. It was never personal. The ice didn't care. It was just her nature. The ice didn't forgive mistakes.
Beckett stood back up and squinted, wishing she had grabbed her sunglasses when the call came in. She turned back around, staring down at the body. "Still, doesn't explain the damage to the face," she observed. "And if he had been climbing out here, then where's his gear?"
"Maybe down that crevasse over there?" he suggested, gesturing towards a gaping maw in the ice several yards away.
"Yeah, maybe."
Marston grunted in acknowledgement, but then added, "We won't really be able to tell until we get him back to base and thaw him out." The Doc ran his gloved hands over the frozen body's chest and arms, checking for identification tags. "For all we know, he coulda been shot or stabbed. Can't rightly say until I start cutting."
Murder? Now that would be new. It was practically unheard of down here. Sure, people got into fights, and she'd had to step in and separate a handful of drunken brawls, but nothing as bad as murder. If it were true, and this man had been murdered, Beckett didn't know how she felt about conducting a homicide investigation again. It had been so long. Deep down she wasn't sure she was entirely ready to step into those shoes again. She had grown complacent with her easy, uneventful life down here. A murder investigation would complicate things. But, if she had to, then Kate Beckett would not shrink from her duty.
"Who is he?" Beckett questioned, returning to the doctor's side, kneeling down to help him pry the uncovered man's hand off the ground. It was stuck, frozen solid, hard.
"No idea. Soon as I get his clothes off him, I'll check his tags," Marston breathed heavily, a white puff of air billowing out around his bearded face. He brushed at the snow, revealing the jacket underneath. "Red jacket. He's American." He shifted, planting his knees more firmly on the hard ground, hoping to get some more leverage.
Beckett gritted her teeth and winced, ignoring the twinge in the center of her chest from the scar that had never seemed to have completely healed. The cold certainly wasn't helping. Not for the first time, Beckett wondered why she'd requested this assignment.
There was a resounding crack, like bone snapping, and the arm finally came free of the frozen ground. Beckett and Marston tumbled back into the snow, landing on their backsides, neither having anticipated the sudden freeing. Marston grumbled and cursed. Beckett stifled down a moan when the surgical scar along her side pulled, sending a vicious flash of pain through her veins.
"Dammit!" Marston swore, working his way back up to his knees. The dead man's hand was missing a fair amount of skin.
Beckett followed, crawling forward to join him beside the body. "Try to save his other hand, okay, Doc? We might need to run his prints."
The Doc nodded with a sardonic expression, giving her a sidelong glance. "Sure, kid. I'll just ask Mister Popsicle here to cooperate."
She rolled her eyes, but appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood. Marston placed a hand on her shoulder for support as he heaved himself up to his feet. He turned around and waved at the pilot loitering by the plane, puffing on his cigarette.
"Hey, Hobson!" he hollered, and then chuckled to himself before adding, "We could use a hand."
XXX
A large gray cargo plane had just arrived at Williams Field when she got back to McMurdo. The Lockheed LC-130 stood out in the compacted permanent snow runway, the rear ramp extended down as the crew unloaded supplies for the upcoming winter season. There was also a line of parka clad individuals waiting to board. It was always cold down here on the most southern continent, but it was especially cold during winter. And winter was coming. Base operations would then slow until the fierce storms died down. Afterwards the work crews and scientists would come back, and soon life in the polar research settlement would return to normal.
The snow crunched under Beckett's boots as she marched down the rough street. Hobson, the pilot, was checking in with the transport chief, seeing what other runs were needed. She wished Reggie Talbot, the pilot who had spotted the frozen corpse had been available earlier to take her up to ASB, where he'd been stationed, and then out to the body. She could have questioned him then. But with winter-over fast approaching, transport had him busying making a run between McMurdo and Concordia Station to help ferry out those leaving. She would need to speak with the pilot soon, and as she hiked onward she hoped Talbot would be available when that time came.
McMurdo Station. Named after McMurdo Sound, which in turn was named after Lt. Archibald McMurdo, who served aboard the infamous H.M.S. Terror way back in 1841. It was the largest base on the ice, with a summer head-count of over 1200, though during the next three weeks that number would fall to about 200. Even on the coast people didn't like sticking around for the dark months. The personnel down here were split three ways: The beakers, down here for research, spending their grant money. The support staff—custodians, cooks, mechanics, freelance pilots. And the navy, or more precisely, those members of the Naval Support Forces Antarctica—The N.S.F.A.
The base itself was an ugly sprawl of prefab buildings, powerlines, and above ground sewage pipes. It wasn't pretty, but it was the closest one could come to civilization down here in Antarctica, which included a harbor, three airfields, a heliport, and more than one hundred buildings. Sometimes Beckett thought it looked more like a Siberian work camp than the largest research base and logistical hub in the southern pole. Off in the background, she could see smoke rising from Mt. Erebus on Ross Island.
Stuffing her gloved hands in to her pockets, Beckett trudged along, heading for the main complex and the command center. Marston had stayed back at Amundsen-Scott Base to tend to the body, getting it into the medical bay there, where he could start the process of thawing the poor bastard before he performed an autopsy. She would have stayed as well, but she needed to make a report to the McMurdo base commander, and with something like this, she couldn't risk doing it over open radio channels.
A snow buggy rolled by, transporting those who'd arrived on the Lockheed. Beckett could have ridden back with them from the airfields, but she felt like walking. She needed time to think before reporting to the base commander.
Hood up, she ducked her head down and continued on, absently glancing at the row of buildings she passed, most were research, some barracks. The potential of a murder having been committed did not thrill her. Out here on the ice, there was an unspoken trust amongst the inhabitants. Humans were not meant to live in places like this, so you needed to rely on the others around you to survive. If someone had breached that trust, then it was very serious.
Approaching the operations building, Beckett marched passed the parked vehicles and climbed the stairs to the doors, pushing through them. After entering the vestibule—she preferred calling it that rather an airlock—Beckett sealed the doors and waited a moment before tugging her hood down and unfastening the front of her parka. She pulled her gloves off and shoved them into her pockets as she stepped towards the inner doors, shoving them open and stepping across the threshold into the moderate warmth of the building's interior.
The place was buzzing with activity. Everyone was preparing for the winter-over. Beckett sidestepped around two men carrying boxes, and made her way through the network of corridors into the operations center, where the base commander was overseeing the hectic preparations. He wore a headset and was cursing at someone on the other end of the line, clearly exasperated. Spotting Beckett lurking in the doorway, he waved her over.
"I've got a pair of idiots out on Ross Island refusing to come back in," he grumbled. "Apparently, they're too busy collecting 'volcanic information' on Mt. Erebus." He literally did the air quotes, indicating to her that he wasn't buying their explanation.
Beckett bit her lower lip, suppressing a smirk. Out of everyone she knew down here in Antarctica, no one needed a vacation more than Sam Murphy. They had an okay working relationship. It had been rocky at the start when he'd flirted with her, but she nipped that in the bud quickly. Since then, they had developed a somewhat friendly rapport that was just fine with her.
"How was your trip?" he asked after a beat.
"Peachy," she replied with a smirk, earning one from him in return.
"So what was it?"
Her grin dropped. "A body."
"One of ours?" Murphy questioned, turning momentarily to accept a clipboard from an assistant. He scanned over it as Beckett replied.
"Don't know," she said with a shrug. "But he was wearing a red jacket."
"No tags?"
"No face."
He grimaced. "Yikes. That happened a couple of years back…"
"Yeah, I know," Beckett stopped him before he could finish. "Doc told me. Emperor penguin. Though, somehow, I don't think that's the case this time. Look, can we talk about this in private."
"Um, sure," Murphy nodded, handing the clipboard to his deputy, Marsha Holmes, and then leading the way into his office.
She closed the door behind them. Murphy turned at the sound, and eyed Beckett with a confused look. His eyes grew wide and he shook his head.
"Now hold on a second, you suspect… what? Murder?" he asked, almost incredulously.
"Maybe, yes," Beckett admitted, albeit a tad reluctantly.
She did what she believed was a very good job of bottling up the turmoil of emotions inside her that came with the idea of investigating her first homicide case in nearly two years. It was something she never thought she'd have to deal with again once she had left the NYPD's employment.
"Look, I don't like it either," she rushed to assure, noticing the worried and cautious expression on Murphy's face. "But I cannot discount the possibility. He was out in the middle of nowhere. There are no camps or stations nearby, and… well, there's the smashed in face. And if we discount wildlife, it heavily implies someone wanted to hide his identity for us, or at the very least, make it harder for us."
Murphy pursed his lips and cursed. "Damn," he said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. "Couldn't have happen at a worse time. We're gearing up for winter-over."
"I know," Beckett said. "But, trust me, murder hardly ever picks a convenient time."
He inclined his head, agreeing. "I appreciate your discretion." She watched as he scrubbed a hand down his face as he heaved in a deep breath. "You up for this, Beckett?"
"Of course," she insisted, frowning slightly at the implications behind his question. "I was a homicide detective."
"I know," he assured, holding up a hand to placate her, offering a look of apology. "I also know why you came down here."
"I'll be fine," Beckett persisted, firming up her stance.
"Okay," Murphy said, narrowing her eyes. "But let's not call the Feds yet. I want to know for certain before we make that call."
Beckett ground her teeth. She wasn't happy about that, but she inclined her head in reluctant agreement.
"Good," Murphy bobbed his head, looking a little more certain of his decision. "Now, get back to ASB and run your investigation, Marshal."
