He lapsed into silence after that, sweeping the room with more of those glowers.
Tean squeezed his leg.
“It was all right fucking there,” Jem said.“The drawer was sticking out, for fuck’s sake.”
“Jem, we both missed it.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t miss stuff like that.”
“Why not?”
Jem just glared out at the room.
“Why is it your responsibility?”Tean asked.“Why aren’t you angry at me for not noticing?”
“Because,” Jem snapped.And then something closed in his face.The fire crackled, and then, in a voice that almost sounded like normal, Jem said, “That’s it.I’m punishing myself.No McDonald’s for two months.”
“For two months?”Tean asked.
“Fine, three.”
“Jem—”
“Do you want me to make it four?Keep it up, buster.”
Tean fought the urge to adjust his glasses—they didn’t need it, but he still caught himself reaching for them sometimes.“I don’t understand what’s happening.Are you punishing yourself?Or are you punishing me?Because Iwantyou to eat less McDonald’s.Jem, they wave when we drive into the parking lot, and I know you were joking about opening a McDonald’s-branded credit card, but at the same time, even with the value menu, the cost—”
“I guess all we can do is wait and see,” Jem said over him.
“And your cholesterol—”
“I didn’t get a good look at her, so if you see her again, point her out.”Jem glanced down at him.“How are you feeling?Do you want to stay here while I check out where they found Gerald?”
“I’m fine,” Tean said.He tried to think of a better way to ask the question, but all he could come up with was “Jem, I know what I said when we examined the body.But do you really think he was murdered?”
The light from the flames shifted on Jem’s face, raising gold and silver in his beard.“Do you?”
“I don’t know.Yes.But—” A smile tightened his face.“—I’m having a hard time trusting my own judgment right now.Why would someone kill him?”
Jem held out a hand to help him up.“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
11
Dressed in their coats, with hats and gloves that Larsen provided, Jem and Tean followed the head of security out into the storm again.The heavy layers helped, but the cold still cut at Jem’s cheeks and left his lips and eyelids like sandpaper.
He kept an eye on Tean.In a lot of ways, the doc was as much of a survivor as Jem, and when it came to anything outdoors, Tean was certainly the expert.But Tean also had a tendency to—well,nottake care of himself.The cold was one example, yes.But also, until Jem had made it a personal mission to change things, the way Tean ate, the way he dressed.The way he had lived.Like his body was a used car that got fuel and all the scheduled maintenance, but that was it.So, if Tean got cold—even if he gotreallycold—he wouldn’t say anything until he had to.
But even with the thicker drifts clogging the walkways, and even with the wind ripping at their coats, Tean was steady and surefooted, so Jem just chugged along in his wake.
Larsen stopped when they were about halfway, by Jem’s estimate, to the chalet where Brigitte and Gerald were staying.There was nothing noticeable about this particular stretch of snowy walkway, but then Jem noticed the high-vis orange poking out of the snow—a traffic cone, he guessed, that Larsen had used to mark the spot and that was now already buried in snow.
“I don’t know what you’re going to find,” Larsen shouted over the wind.
Tean crouched and began running his gloved hands through the snow.He worked slowly, drawing his hands through the snow in straight lines.It only took Jem a moment to see what the doc was doing, and then he moved to the other side of the walkway and copied him.He didn’t know the technical name for it, but he knew Tean was making a grid, doing his best to sift through the snow in the most effective way possible.Larsen spotted it a moment later and joined in, and together, they worked their way through a section of the walkway that was bounded at each end by supports for the cover.When they’d finished working through the snow in one direction, they rotated ninety degrees and did it all again, digging lines at right angles to the first set.
By the time they’d finished, Jem’s hands were numb even through the gloves, and his knees were soaked.Larsen’s cheeks were red, his face grim.Snowmelt speckled Tean’s glasses.
They’d found nothing except some clumps of bloody snow.
