“Do we know that for sure?” she asked. “If Bruce is dead, how do we know Denny is okay?”
They just stared at her.
“There’s no reason for him not to be okay,” Jonesy said, with the same condescending attitude.
“Then what logical reason is there,” she asked, “for Bruce to be dead?”
“I imagine he was digging into things he shouldn’t have,” Jonesy said. “Did you not know he has a history as a hacker?”
“Jesus,” she said, reaching up and rubbing her temples.
“And, of course, you didn’t even notice, and you’re supposed to be the IT guru,” Jonesy said.
“Wow,” she said, noting a very drunk Idiot was hanging on to Jonesy. “Have you guys been drinking all this time?”
“Why not?” Jonesy said. “Nothing else to do here.”
“I thought this was mostly a dry camp.”
“Under normal circumstances, it probably is,” Jonesy said, “but who cares?”
“A lot of people care,” she said. “What if we need your help?”
“Cry me a river,” he snarled.
Berkley glared at Jonesy. “That’s not helpful at all.”
“Who gives a shit?” Idiot said, and, with that, he started to laugh like a loon.
She stepped forward. “Did you hurt Bruce?”
Idiot looked at her, and all pretense of being drunk fell away. “Why would I hurt Bruce?”
“Maybe he got into things you didn’t want him to,” she said, getting into his face.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” he said, “so don’t even bother trying to make it look like I do.”
“Good,” she said, “but somebody hurt Bruce, and nobody else is on board but us.”
“I wonder about that,” Troy said, from behind them all. “Just because nobody new has shown up here today in this room doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t on the rig still.”
She turned to look back at him. She knew they’d been doing nothing but searching, but, of course, the rig was a huge place, and it was pretty easy for somebody who knew the layout to hide or to stay one step ahead. She looked back at Jonesy. “Have you seen anybody else?”
He immediately shook his head. “Hell no. Just these new guys.”
“Well then, you might as well say the same thing about the company men,” she said quietly. “Do you suspect them too?” She waited for an answer but didn’t get one. “But we need to check and make sure Bruce’s actually dead,” she said, out of the blue.
The crewmen looked at her, and Idiot snorted. “What? Now we can’t tell if a man’s dead or not?”
She stared at them. “I’d like to know for sure that nothing could be done for him.”
“I’ll take you,” Troy said suddenly.
She knew that he understood what she meant, and she nodded. “Where is he?”
“He’s in the medical room,” Chucky said, suddenly breaking his silence. “I’ll come with you.”
She looked at him in surprise.
He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him either. Bruce was a good person, and he didn’t deserve this.”
“Any chance it was an accident, Chucky?”
“I don’t think having your head smacked makes it an accident,” he said. “But, if he managed to fall down the stairs and then stumbled toward his room or something, I guess that’s a potential as well.”
“I never thought of that,” she said, “but you’re right. It is a possibility.”
He nodded, and the three of them looked at the others.
“Anybody else coming?” Troy asked.
“No,” Axel said, “I’ll stay here.”
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
And the three of them headed toward the medical office.
As they stepped outside, she looked at Chucky. “Sure would be nice if the generator would give us the lights back.”
“We had to shut down a lot of it,” he said. “We’ve got the one for essential services, but that’s it. You got flashlights, use them.”
“Got it,” she said with a smile.
He looked at her and said, “You’re awfully calm, considering the situation.”
“No,” she said, “I’m not calm at all. I’m just screaming on the inside instead, and I can’t wait to get away from here.”
He laughed at that. “I’d be screaming too, if I could get away with it,” he said. “This whole thing is just such a bizarre situation, and it makes no sense.”
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Troy asked him.
“Somebody dead? Absolutely. Somebody murdered? Yes, that too.” He shook his head. “But not in a really long time. But not on top of all this other nonsense.”
“Interesting,” Troy said. “Who was it and when?”
“About ten years ago,” he said, “we were in a camp up in the north fields,” he said. “A couple guys got at it after getting murderously drunk. They had a big dust-up bash out. Both of them lived through it, but, the next day, the one guy died. We found out that, while he’d been passed out, sleeping it off, his drunk buddy, the other guy, had come up and stabbed him. He’d been just drunk enough to think it was a good idea and just sober enough to pull it off.”
“Wow,” she said. “You’ve lived an exciting life.”
“I’d like to go back to being bored,” he said. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that one of this group is a murderer?”
She stopped and looked at him, then nodded. “Yes, Chucky, it has. You got any clue which one?”
“Hell no,” he said. “I can tell you that it’s not me, and it’s not Winslow. But everybody else is fair game.”
On that dark note they headed downstairs. There were no lights once again in the medical center. With all their flashlights on, they found Bruce laid out on an exam table. Troy walked up and immediately checked for a pulse, but there wasn’t one to be found, and the body was still cooling.
“Interesting,” he said, as he held up the flashlight to look at his head. “That’s a decent head wound,” he said. He shifted the man’s neck just slightly and then nodded. “He wasn’t going anywhere.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“His neck is broken.”
“So, even if he did fall down the stairs,” she said, “he couldn’t have dragged himself or gotten up and walked to his room, correct?”
“Correct,” he said. “So it’s very unlikely that he had an accident. This is murder.”
Chucky looked at the two of them. “So who the hell are you?” he asked. “And what the hell is going on with this place?”
She looked at Troy, who looked at her, and they both turned to look at Chucky. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I’m not a fool,” he said, “and you sure as hell aren’t any deckhand. You might have been up on one somewhere in the last thirty-odd years of your life,” he said, “but it’s not what you do. So speak up. Who are you?”