Headcase, p.17
Headcase, page 17
She spoke briskly, keen to demolish my theory and get to Virginia.
Anders had every right to be angry about the intrusion, but he just looked baffled. ‘Rob’s car?’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘What kind is it?’
‘I’m with my daughter.’ He gestured to the girl.
‘Hello there,’ Zara said.
I just waved. I did it quickly, but the girl saw my missing digit anyway.
‘What happened to your thumb?’ she asked, in that blunt way kids do.
‘It fell off,’ I said. ‘I didn’t eat my vegetables.’
She didn’t laugh. ‘I’m only allowed to eat soup. I died on Monday night.’
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. ‘You died?’
‘Yeah. But the doctors made me better.’ She pointed to the book. ‘I’ve read this already. They’re not going to eat the pig at the end.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s famous.’
‘Wouldn’t people be more keen to eat a famous pig? They’d probably pay extra.’ I was good with kids.
Zara pursed her lips. Probably jealous.
‘Why do you need to know what kind of car Rob has?’ Anders said.
Because it was an indirect way of finding out how well they knew each other. I leaned on the windowsill, the glass cold against my back. ‘Mostly we were wondering where it is.’
‘I suppose he used it when he went to visit his sister in hospital—not this hospital,’ Anders added quickly.
‘Are you two astronauts?’ the little girl interrupted.
Zara’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. ‘No, sweetheart.’
‘Oh.’ The girl looked disappointed. ‘I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up.’
Her father’s lip trembled.
‘Maybe we could talk somewhere private,’ Zara suggested.
This seemed unnecessary to me. The kid was already facing death. It seemed unlikely that we’d scare her. But Anders nodded.
‘You want a juice, baby girl?’ he asked.
‘Can I have a Coke?’ She looked hopeful.
‘Anything.’ He patted her hand, stood up and followed us out into the corridor.
‘Whatever you want,’ he said, ‘can’t it wait until I’m back in the office?’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked.
Zara looked exasperated by my lack of tact. I thought I’d done well, waiting until we were out of the kid’s earshot.
‘Lou Gehrig’s disease,’ Anders said shortly. As I’d predicted, there was no need to be gentle with him. Life hadn’t been.
‘Can kids have that?’ I asked.
He glared at me. It was a dumb question.
‘Will she recover?’
‘With treatment, she might last ten years. That might be long enough to find a cure, if we’re lucky.’
I looked around. ‘Nice hospital. Must be expensive.’
‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter,’ he said.
The memory hit me before I could dodge it. My own teenage son, dying in my arms, just days after I first met him. I imagined watching my child die for ten years instead of ten minutes and felt a rush of sympathy for Anders.
Then again, he was kidding himself. If the kid had nearly died on Monday, there was no way she’d last another decade.
I breathed out, expelling the grief. ‘Who told you Cho was visiting his sister?’
‘Dr Laurie. Why?’
‘The fake blood lady?’ I asked.
‘Brenda Laurie, the famous respiratory engineer, yes.’ Anders led us past a hand-sanitiser station and into a waiting area with a vending machine. ‘The supposed genius.’
I caught that. ‘Supposed?’
He winced. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘You don’t think she’s a genius.’
‘That’s not what I—she’s belligerent, that’s all. Always complaining about ethics committees, refusing scrutiny of her work, and acting like the rest of us aren’t as smart as her. Just this morning she tried to explain to me what hypoxia was. I went to Harvard, okay? She made an incredible breakthrough, I’m not disputing that. Every one of her predictions about what would happen in animal studies turned out to be correct. But …’ Anders gestured back towards his daughter’s ward.‘Her invention might someday save the life of a single astronaut, perhaps. If she’d turned her apparently gigantic brain to the task of inventing better drugs to treat ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease …’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, she might have been wrong about Rob. Rumours fly around all the time at the office. Just this morning someone told me that the dead guy on Mars was alive, and recovering from a diabetic coma.’
I was about to tell him that was true, to reinforce the cover story, and then remembered he was the one who’d found the body.
Found it, and apparently not recognised it as his co-worker.
Zara raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you set them straight?’
‘No. I didn’t want to interfere with the police investigation, and nor should you. You’re just consultants, right?’
‘We’re assisting the police,’ Zara lied, ‘and we have some bad news. It’s possible that the body you found was Rob Cho.’
She was willing to say this because she didn’t believe it. The CIA credo: Hear only truths, speak only lies.
Anders’ mouth fell open. ‘Rob? Are you sure?’
‘Pretty sure.’ I asked the million-dollar question: ‘How come you didn’t recognise him?’
He didn’t give me a million-dollar answer. ‘I don’t know. He was all … puffy.’
This was true, but I still found it hard to believe. If it had been a colleague of mine, I would have recognised him instantly. It was deeply suspicious that Anders hadn’t.
But he had an alibi—he’d been sitting at his desk at the time of Cho’s death. I’d seen him on the CCTV feed. Also, the killer had wanted us to believe that Cho was an astronaut, and Anders had been the first person to poke holes in that theory.
Anders was frozen next to the vending machine, holding some quarters. ‘If it was Rob, how … why …?’
‘We think it was an accident in the hypobaric chamber,’ I said. ‘He suffocated.’
‘Oh God.’ Anders looked like he might be sick.
I shuffled sideways, out of the line of fire. ‘Can you think how something like that might happen?’
‘No. It doesn’t make sense—there are safety features. Sam was supposed to do an inspection earlier this week. But he wouldn’t know much about the chamber—he just drew the short straw because the regular safety officer is in Maui. Uh …’ He looked down at the change in his hand as though it held the answer. ‘You should talk to Hazel Cuthbert. She works in the museum, so she might know more about the hypobaric chamber than me.’
‘You’re the atmosphere scientist.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve never used that chamber. It’s a museum exhibit.’
‘Can it be switched on from inside?’ Zara asked.
‘No.’ Anders swallowed. ‘The controls are on the outside. You have to turn the key to switch it on, lift the lid and then push a big red button. There’s a warning siren. Then, thirty seconds later, the chamber decompresses. Plenty of time for someone inside to hit the emergency shutdown button—that’s on the inside.’
It was hard to imagine how Cho might have been trapped in there by accident.
‘The door opens outwards.’ I remembered the scratches on the floor outside the chamber. ‘While the air’s getting sucked out, wouldn’t the reverse pressure—’
‘Negative pressure,’ Anders corrected.
‘Right. Wouldn’t that hold the door closed?’
‘It does. That’s a safety feature. If the door opened inwards, and the magnetic lock failed, it would burst open fast enough to damage equipment. Fast enough to kill a person, if they were standing in the way.’
For a guy who’d never used the chamber, he seemed to know a lot about it. ‘But it also means that you can’t open the door while it’s decompressed,’ I said.
‘Well, not after the first thirty seconds or so. I guess that’s right.’ Anders took a Coke out of the machine. ‘If Rob died in the chamber, how did his body end up in the rock yard?’
‘We’re working on that,’ I replied. ‘But in the meantime, we need to know what kind of car he drove, so we can find it in the parking lot and search it for evidence.’
‘Uh …’ Anders thought for a while. Finally he said, ‘A Ford Explorer. Blue.’
‘You know the licence plate?’
Anders frowned. ‘Why would I know Rob’s licence plate off by heart?’
‘Good point.’ Zara nudged me. ‘What kind of weirdo memorises licence plates?’
I ignored this. ‘What about his address?’
‘I’ve never been to Rob’s place. Somewhere in Friendswood, I think?’
‘It’s all good. We can get that information. Who has access to the hypobaric chamber?’
Anders looked from me to Zara and back to me. ‘Well, everyone. There’s a security guard posted nearby, but only from ten to four, when the museum is open to the public. Outside of those hours, anyone who can get into the building could get to the chamber.’
‘What about the key to switch it on?’
‘The key is left in it.’
I’d been afraid he would say that. ‘Is it soundproof?’
‘Yup. Even when there’s atmosphere inside it, there’s still a vacuum within the walls. Like a thermos, or double-glazed windows. Sound can’t travel through it.’
‘And the warning siren …’
Anders got the implication. ‘It’s on the inside. No one would hear it from outside.’
‘In space, no one can hear you scream,’ Zara said.
The pathologist had told us the victim held his breath until his lungs exploded. I imagined Cho standing at the window, screaming silently, pushing on a door that wouldn’t budge, as his skin inflated and his blood boiled.
By the look on Anders’ face, I could tell that he was picturing the same thing.
‘If you find any clues about who’s responsible for this,’ Anders said, ‘call me.’
‘We don’t want anyone taking the law into their own hands,’ Zara said.
‘Of course not.’ Anders swallowed. ‘I just meant so I can help you understand the evidence.’
I wondered if Zara believed him. I didn’t.
CHAPTER 22
I have six sisters—two older, four younger. All our names end in Y—but I alone have wed. What am I?
On the inside, the hypobaric chamber was cramped. It was only about ten feet long and six wide. Wall-mounted gauges and pipes crowded in from all sides. The floor was a steel grid, the kind they use to make catwalks. I felt less like I was on a spaceship and more like I was in a submarine. The two mechanical claws I’d seen before were hanging from the centre of the low ceiling, at about eye level for me. One held a long, white feather. The other held a purple bowling ball. I liked bowling. It was one of very few sports you can do with only three fingers.
Zara hadn’t talked at all on the drive back to the museum. She’d been happy earlier today, when she was pulling apart my theory, but now she had a sullenness I couldn’t explain. It was as if being happy had made her angry, like she wasn’t used to it. Maybe she was bored. Or pissed off that my theory was starting to seem plausible—she hated being wrong.
Finally she spoke. ‘What are we looking for, exactly?’
‘Blood,’ I said. The same thing I was always looking for, pretty much.
‘If you’re right, and if Cho suffocated in here, why would there be blood?’
‘His eardrums burst, and he was coughing up bits of his lungs. You’d think there would be something.’
But looking around the chamber, there was no sign or smell of blood. Maybe Cho’s death hadn’t been as grisly as I’d been fantasising. Or maybe …
‘The killer came back,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘They dumped his body on Mars, and then they came back the next day to mop up his juices.’
‘Juices,’ Zara repeated, looking amused. ‘Why the following day?’
‘It just makes more sense. If you’re caught scrubbing the inside of the chamber during the day, you could say you dropped a vial of Laurie’s fake blood or something. If you’re caught cleaning the chamber at night, that’s much harder to explain. Which means we’re looking for someone who left late on Tuesday and came to work early on Wednesday—they wouldn’t have wanted to risk anyone else finding the mess. They’re going to be hard to find, though, since you erased the security videos.’
‘All right, all right,’ Zara said. ‘Let’s not play the blame game.’
There was a red emergency button next to the door, surrounded by yellow and black tape. It was marked CANCEL DECOMPRESSION. I pointed at it.
‘Why didn’t Cho push the button?’ I asked.
Zara frowned. ‘Maybe he didn’t hear the siren. Ear plugs, or something.’
‘It would be deafening, surely?’
Silence fell. The chamber deadened all sound from the rest of the building.
‘Let’s find out,’ Zara said finally, and walked out. Before I could work out what she meant, she was already closing the door.
‘Hey!’ I tried to push the door open, but it was too heavy, with too much momentum. It would have cut off my four remaining fingers if I hadn’t snatched them out of the way in time.
The door slammed shut with a boom that made the whole chamber vibrate.
‘Don’t,’ I told Zara.
She said something back to me, but I couldn’t hear it. The chamber was completely soundproof. All I could hear was my own frantic breaths.
‘Zara!’ I shouted. ‘Let me out!’
She reached sideways, out of view.
A siren screamed inside the chamber. The warning sound Anders had told us about. There was also a low, dark hum, making the metal floor tremble under my feet.
I tried to push the door open, but Zara must have braced her foot against the bottom of it. I was bigger than Zara, but that didn’t seem to matter. The door wouldn’t budge.
I turned to the CANCEL DECOMPRESSION button and pushed it. The siren kept screaming. The door didn’t open. Zara watched me thoughtfully through the thick glass.
I kept stabbing the button, with no result. My heart was pounding. I thought of Rob Cho, with his exploded lungs.
‘The button doesn’t work!’ I shouted. ‘Let me out!’
She just kept watching, like I was a fish in an aquarium. No emotion in her face. She’d flirted with me at the motel, bandaged me up, kissed me in front of Ruciani—I’d started to think she really cared about me, but it had all been a trick. Now she was going to kill me as a test.
The humming got louder. The machinery was warming up.
I curled my fingers around the lip of the cancel button and twisted. It unscrewed easily, exposing the mechanism underneath. But I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at. There was a spring, and a black plastic cylinder, but no obvious trigger. The siren was making it hard to think. Zara was still watching.
I got out my phone. My first thought was to call Zara and try to talk some sense into her. My second thought was to call Reese Thistle, just so I’d get to hear her voice one last time before I suffocated. I didn’t make it to a third thought, because a notification flashed up on my phone screen: No service.
Then the siren stopped. The humming ceased. There was a faint hiss as the door opened.
I ran out so fast that I nearly bowled Zara over.
‘Was that necessary?’ I snapped.
‘It was a test,’ she said.
‘Of what?’
She took a breath. ‘I couldn’t hear any warning siren from out here. Was there one?’
I just glared at her, trembling. She gestured to the phone in my hand. ‘No service in there, I take it. I saw you disassembling the emergency shutdown button—could you tell what was wrong with it?’
I took a deep breath, trying to get the rage under control. Why had she done that to me?
‘I’m not an electrical engineer,’ I said.
Zara walked into the chamber to examine the pieces of the button. She must have known it would be easy for me to close the door and trap her inside. But she didn’t seem concerned.
It was like she was punishing me for something. But what? I imagined myself closing the door, bracing my foot against it, watching her panic. As I looked down at my shoe, I saw again the scratch marks on the concrete. Earlier I had assumed they were from the door, opening outwards. But I hadn’t heard any scraping sounds just now.
‘There are supposed to be two little …’ Zara waved her hands around ‘… I don’t know what they’re called. Small springs with square heads. The button won’t work without them.’
‘Clearly Garcia never did that safety check.’ I was still looking at the scratch marks. ‘Someone took the springs, and they dragged something heavy in front of the door, so it couldn’t be pushed open. See here?’
I remembered what Cuthbert had said: The chamber was out of order a couple of days ago. I don’t think it was. I think the killer hung an out-of-order sign over the window. Anyone walking past would have had no idea Cho was suffocating right next to them.
This wasn’t an accident. Whoever put Rob Cho in this chamber had wanted him to die.
•
I normally hate the sun, but today I was grateful to be outside. Air. I couldn’t get enough of it. I walked slowly through the parking lot, breathing deep, turning my head from right to left and back, like an automated sprinkler. There were hundreds of vehicles to examine. Lots of electric cars, lots of bike racks.
Soon Zara emerged from the museum and jogged over. She held up the USB modem she’d plugged into Cuthbert’s computer yesterday.
‘We were never here,’ she said.
Wilcox had told us to remove the modem before we came back to Virginia. SIGINT had already cloned the Space City database, and the branch chief had decided that any further eavesdropping was too risky. If Cuthbert had found the USB modem she would have immediately realised that someone had been stealing data, and suspected us.
