Hatch stood up from his desk and went to the Quonset hut window, moving carefully through the darkened office. He stared past the unlit huts of Base Camp, looking for lights that would indicate the coroner was finally on his way. Lines of spindrift lay in ghostly threads across the dark water. The rough weather seemed to have temporarily blown the fog from the island, and the mainland was visible on the horizon, an uncertain strand of phosphorescence under the star-strewn sky. He sighed and turned from the window, unconsciously massaging a bandaged hand. He’d sat alone in his office as the evening turned to night, unwilling to move, unwilling even to turn on the lights. Somehow, the darkness made it easier to avoid the irregular shape that lay on the gurney, under a white sheet. It made it easier for him to push back all the thoughts and quiet whispers that kept intruding onto the edges of his consciousness. There came a soft knock and the turn of a door handle.
