“Sir, what happened?” Tim asked just as Abrams lost his grip on the bag for a moment and nearly dropped it.
“Spicer, White, give us a hand with this,” Jefferson said.
Jerry got his hands under one side of the body bag, and Tim lifted from the other side. He winced in surprise. Whoever was inside the bag was so cold, Tim’s hands started to ache. He kept his grip, though, and helped the other five men carry it to the main ladder. Maneuvering the load down the ladder to the bottom level without dropping it was difficult, but between the six of them they managed.
There were only two enlisted men inside the long, narrow torpedo room, a skeleton crew that mostly did maintenance while the boat was still in friendly waters. Both looked surprised to see Lieutenant Commander Jefferson’s imposing bulk in the doorway.
“Clear the room,” Jefferson ordered.
The two torpedomen hustled out into the corridor, gawking in shock at the body bag. Jefferson led Tim and the others in, then ordered them to lay the body bag on the floor in back, near the torpedo tubes. When Tim straightened again, he stuck his freezing hands under his armpits to warm them.
Oran Guidry turned to his boss. “Suh, permission to return to the galley? Best not leave Monje alone up there or he start screwin’ thangs up.”
“Yes, that’s fine, Guidry, thank you,” Abrams replied, and Oran hurried out of the torpedo room.
Tim watched him leave and saw the two torpedomen reappear in the doorway. Tim had the same questions they did, but his experience with officers told him this was something they would prefer to handle without him and Jerry getting in the way. He expected Abrams or Jefferson to dismiss them both, but they seemed too focused on the dead man to care about their presence.
“How the hell did he get inside your freezer, Lieutenant?” Jefferson asked.
Gordon wiped one arm across his forehead. “I don’t have an answer for that yet, sir, but I plan to. All I know is, he was dead when I found him.”
“How long was he in there?” Jefferson asked.
“Couldn’t have been more than a few hours, sir.”
“It wouldn’t take long to freeze to death in there,” Matson added. “The freezer is kept at subzero temperatures, and depending on any number of factors, he would have been dead of exposure anywhere between 15 and 45 minutes.”
“Was he trapped inside?”
“Not possible, sir,” Gordon replied. “The freezer opens from the inside, and you can’t lock it. He couldn’t have been trapped.”
Jefferson looked down at the body bag with a grimace. “I hate to ask this, Matson, but is it possible someone killed him first and then put him in the deep freeze?”
“I didn’t see any signs of trauma, sir,” Matson said. “Nothing to indicate he was strangled, stabbed, shot…”
Jefferson shook his head in bewilderment. “When you showed me those cuts on his hands, I almost couldn’t believe it. First he breaks the light fixture in the mess; then he turns up dead?”
Tim glanced at Jerry, but Jerry looked deep in thought.
“We have to bring the body to a medical facility where they can perform a proper autopsy on him and find out what happened,” Jefferson continued. “Right now, the closest base is still Pearl Harbor. It’s a straight shot down the Pacific, and if we turn around now we can be there in a week. I’ll inform Captain Weber, but that’s one hell of a detour. He’s not going to be happy.” He called one of the torpedomen watching from the doorway back into the room. “Your name’s Cameron, isn’t it?”
“Aye, sir,” the sailor replied. He looked to be early 30s—older than most of the enlisted men aboard.
“You and the other torpedomen will be assigned to new stations until we reach the base and the body can be removed,” Jefferson said. “I’ll inform the weapons officer. But until we get to Pearl, this room is now officially the morgue.”
Cameron eyed the body bag nervously. “Aye, sir.”
“Dismissed, Cameron,” Jefferson said.
“Aye-aye, sir,” the torpedoman replied. He turned around and started to leave.
“Cameron, hold on,” Jefferson called after him.
The sailor turned back to him. “Sir?”
“You worked with the deceased, Warren Stubic. What can you tell me about him? Did you notice anything unusual lately? Anything off?”
Stubic? Tim thought back to the strange encounter he’d had with the man on the day of the launch—that wild, almost panicked look in his eye. After that, it almost didn’t come as a surprise to hear that Stubic had smashed the light fixture. But frozen to death in the galley’s freezer? That was a shock.
Cameron glanced at the bag again, a sadness in his eyes. Tim wondered whether they had been close. “Stubic is—was—a good torpedoman, sir. At least, he used to be. He was different this time, sir.”
“What do you mean?” Jefferson asked.
“He wasn’t acting like himself, sir,” Cameron said. “He wasn’t focusing on his duties. Kept complaining about headaches, and the lights hurting his eyes. Last time I saw him, he was sweating something awful. I mean drenched. I worked with him on two previous underways, sir. This definitely wasn’t like him. Something must have happened to him.”
“Sir, if I may?” Tim said.
“You have something to add, Spicer?” Jefferson asked.
“Yes, sir. I noticed the same things about Stubic that Cameron did. I ran into him on the first day of the underway. Something was definitely wrong with him, sir. He said he was fine, but he didn’t look it. He just seemed… out of it.”
Jefferson nodded. “Thank you. You’re dismissed, Cameron. Spicer, White, you too. Get back to your duties.”
“Aye, sir,” Tim said.
The three enlisted men left the room. Cameron joined his colleague from the torpedo room, while Tim and Jerry went back up the main ladder to the middle level. They entered the mess, but Tim wasn’t hungry anymore. Just a week into the underway, and a crewman was already dead. Everyone in the mess was already talking about it. The rumors were flying. Stubic was on drugs. Stubic sneaked alcohol aboard. Stubic was poisoned in Hawaii by a jealous husband using a slow-acting toxin that drove him insane. It all sounded like nonsense to Tim, but how plausible an explanation could you expect for a man putting his fist through a glass light fixture and winding up frozen solid? Nothing sounded right.
“Tim, hold up a second,” Jerry said.
He stopped. “Yeah, what is it?”
“I’m worried,” Jerry said.
Tim nodded. “Me too. It’s nuts what happened to Stubic. I can’t get my mind around it.”
“It’s not just that,” Jerry said. “You heard what Cameron said. Stubic couldn’t focus, and he was sweating like a whore in church. Sound familiar? It’s just like what’s happening to Bodine.”
CHAPTER TEN
Jefferson crouched down beside the body bag on the floor of the torpedo room. He was tempted to unzip it and take another look at the man inside, but that first look had been enough. Face covered in white crystals of frost, eyes open and staring blankly.
“Do you think he was sick?” he asked Senior Chief Matson.
Matson frowned. “It’s possible. From what the crewmen told us—inability to focus, his persistent sweating—it sounds like he might have had a serious fever.”
“Right,” Lieutenant Abrams muttered with a mirthless chuckle. “And maybe he was looking for someplace to cool off.”
“As strange as it may sound, sir, you might not be wrong about that,” Matson said. “If Stubic’s fever was high enough, he could have been delirious, even hallucinating. In that state of mind, he might not have understood what he was doing.”