by Nancy Kress
“I’ll tie her in the bathroom,” Cavanaugh said. Abigail would hate that.
“She lay on them piles, all our work’s wasted.”
“I understand.”
“She so much as poke her nose at even one pile and—”
“Earl, I’ll tie up the dog. Now come on, your family’s going to wonder what’s happened to you.”
At Rivermount, Earl’s sister was outside before the car came to a complete stop. “Eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes. You got the money, Earl?”
“Not yet.”
“Mister, you pay him. We done made a bargain.”
Cavanaugh forked over eighty-four dollars. He offered it to Earl, but the sister’s hand snaked out and slurped it from midair. Earl blinked twice, and Cavanaugh said hastily, “We aren’t finished yet, Earl. Tomorrow at eight in the morning?” The boy nodded, his face relaxing slightly. Cavanaugh was starting to understand nonspoken Lester.
Back at the motel, he sent Melanie home, tied Abigail in the bathroom, and fell into bed, surrounded by a white-sheeted sea of dead insects.
“Something’s weird here,” Melanie said on the fifth day. Three days of trap emptying, bug collecting, and sheet spreading had been followed by two days of counting and graphing. Cavanaugh had helped with this, doing what he was told to do, until Melanie and Earl said he was missing too many anomalies and sentenced him to the sagging armchair they’d moved into the bathroom, which he shared with Abigail. Except for very narrow walking aisles, the entire floor was covered with piles of decaying bugs on white sheets, as were the dresser, table, and, during the day, the bed. Housekeeping had never so much as knocked at the door. This was undoubtedly a good thing.
Cavanaugh put down the book Earl had loaned him: The Astonishing Ant. “What kind of something is weird? About Anopheles?”
“No,” Earl said. “’Bout Toxorhynchites rutilus.”
“Oh,” Cavanaugh said, trying to look intelligent.
Melanie smiled at him, a first.
“Elephant mosquito, Robert. Here, look at this graph. It’s a projection backward of the elephant mosquito breeding patterns. We took how many we counted at the Virginia site. From that, plus their known breeding and survival and area-specific die-back rates, we figured out how many elephant mosquitoes hatched over the last four months at the Virginia site. That’s the blue line.”
Cavanaugh studied her graph. “What’s the green line?”
“The numbers of elephant mosquitoes at the other viable site, at the eastern edge of the epidemic area. See, the blue and green lines start out nearly identical.”
“And the red line?” Cavanaugh said, just to be sure.
“That’s the epicenter site, near Newburg. But it’s useless—the environment is too compromised. Look at the blue and green lines. We know from the mortality rate that the epidemic mostly spread west. The blue-line site is west, the green-line site is east.”
Cavanaugh studied the graph. The two lines stayed nearly identical until June 3—the day before the day he’d interviewed Nurse Pafford about the stroke rate at Dellridge Community Hospital, Cavanaugh remembered. Then the number of elephant mosquitoes at the Virginia site abruptly and dramatically shot upward. It stayed higher than the eastern site for the rest of the graph.
Cavanaugh waited for somebody to tell him the significance of this. Surely it didn’t have anything to do with elephants, which were scarce in southern Maryland.
“This here’s a elephant mosquito,” Earl said, picking a dead bug from one of the hundreds of piles on white sheets and dumping it on Cavanaugh’s palm. Evidently to Earl the concrete fact of the bug’s existence was what mattered, not its significance. Cavanaugh inspected the mosquito. It had shiny metallic blue scales and a long, curved nose. No, not nose—proboscis.
Melanie took pity on him. “Elephant mosquito larvae are predaceous. They feed on aquatic arthropods, especially the larvae of other mosquitoes. The adults feed on plant juices and nectar, never blood. They’re easy to breed and raise in large numbers in supply houses.”
Cavanaugh still didn’t get it. “So? What does it mean?”
“It means that there have been experiments done, some successful, to use elephant mosquitoes to control other, more dangerous species by releasing huge numbers of elephant mosquitoes in epidemic areas. So they will eat the larvae of more dangerous species. The graph means somebody was trying to do that in Virginia to stop the epidemic, before it even went public.”
“Din’t work,” Earl said. “T. rutilus’ll breed this far north, ’specially if it’s real hot, but they don’t like it much. They’re happier in South Carolina and Georgia and Florida.”
Cavanaugh looked at the unhappy dead insect on his palm. “You said they grow them in supply houses?”
“Yes,” Melanie said.
“Which supply house?”
“Undoubtedly more than one. The biggest one in the east—”
“I know. Stanton Supply, in Atlanta.”
“Yes, but they don’t offer T. rutilus. I know that because I know their insect catalogue practically by heart. The CDC has an account with them. They don’t find T. rutilus profitable enough. The biological-control experiments are still very new, and it’s easy to rear T. rutilus for ourselves when we want a few. They thrive in Georgia.”
South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. That’s what Earl had said. But not necessarily Maryland. “So where would somebody who was trying to control malaria reading go to buy elephant mosquitoes?”
“I told you, it could be anywhere,” Melanie said. Her eyes kept straying back to the piles of bugs and graphs, which Earl had already returned to. Clearly she was itching to get back to work. But first she said to Cavanaugh, “Who do you think tried to surreptitiously control the epidemic that early?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. This seemed obvious.
“Well, to find the source for the vector, try Baltimore. Fielding’s offers them.”
Fielding’s. The moment Melanie said the name, Cavanaugh remembered his previous trip to the insect supply house. Catherine Clarke, the dumpy amorous director who was a cop groupie. “We have lots of Toxorhynchites rutilus. Used in biological control of other species, you know, plus using the larvae as fodder. Very versatile. We can produce up to a million a day in our lab. … Or maybe some Aëdes taeniorhynchus?”
He handed the dead mosquito to Earl, and a piece of paper to Melanie. “Write down the scientific name of the elephant mosquito.”
“You going to Baltimore? You don’t look very happy about it.”
Catherine Clarke’s hand on his arm. “I’m not. Just write it down anyway.” After a moment he added, “And a phonetic spelling, too, so I can pronounce it right.”
“Tox-uh-rine-kite-eez roo-till-us,” Earl said from the floor. He turned his bony, washed-out face up to Cavanaugh’s. “Ev’rybody knows that.”
“Somewhat deficient in social skills … which unfortunately evokes a negative reaction from his insecure peers,” the school principal had said of Earl. Cavanaugh bit back the negative reaction on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t want to look any more insecure than he already felt.
Catherine Clarke was icy. Clearly, she too remembered their former meeting, and his romantic rejection. Her flirtatious manner had disappeared. She sat in her cluttered office, dressed in what appeared to be the same rumpled brown suit as before, and said formally, “And what does the FBI need to know now, Agent Cavanaugh?”
“I need to know more about mosquitoes, Catherine.” He smiled, carefully leaving the Bureau out of it. Catherine Clarke reacted to neither the smile nor his use of her first name. Clearly he was going to have to work harder. “Perhaps I could ask you some questions over lunch?”
“Lunch,” she said.
“Yes. Are you hungry? I know I am.” He smiled again, letting his eyes linger on her.
She repeated, “Lunch.”
“Or dinner. Dinner would be even better. Is there some place you especially like, somep
lace nice with good wine and—”
“Agent Cavanaugh,” she said. Her tone could freeze glaciers. “Fielding’s Scientific Supply is always happy to cooperate with law-enforcement agencies. Even when, as in this case, the agent is temporarily suspended but still pursuing the case, and the agent’s tactics are a disgrace to his position. You do not need to pretend to a romantic interest you do not feel. I want to see these terrorists brought to justice as much as you do. Ask me what you wish, but without the insincere and unnecessary personal overtures.”
Cavanaugh shriveled. She had kept her dignity, displayed her intelligence, offered her disinterested cooperation. Her quiet composure made him look like a maggot, like slime, like an indiscriminate predator. Not unlike the larvae of T. rutilus.
Averting his gaze from her, he handed over the slip of paper. “Do you offer these for sale?”
“Toxorhynchites rutilus. Elephant mosquito. Yes, of course. For a while there was a flurry of interest in using T. rutilus to control nuisance mosquitoes, culex and so forth. But the problem, of course, was that you had to keep seeding the area with rutilus larvae over and over, because as soon as rutilus succeeds in controlling the other mosquitoes, they run out of food and die off themselves. The whole process is just too much trouble and expense.”
“Who has bought a supply of rutilus from you in the last four months? Especially buyers who don’t usually order that mosquito?”
“I’ll need to pull the records.” She turned to her computer, brought up several screens, and frowned at them. Next she walked over to a locked file cabinet, unlocked it, and rifled through folders for several minutes. Cavanaugh watched her. In profile, she was much prettier. And her legs were lovely. Or maybe it wasn’t that—maybe it was her calm pride that was lovely, her valuing of herself enough not to chase a man who wasn’t interested, but not to punish him either. In fact, she was a very classy lady. Now that he’d made it impossible, he wished he were having dinner with her.
She came back to her desk and sat behind it. “We’ve had only eight orders for T. rutilus in the last five months. Seven were standing orders from universities; they use them in their graduate lab courses. The eighth order was from a buyer with whom we have a standing account, but who has never ordered T. rutilus before.”
She hesitated. Cavanaugh waited.
“It’s a complex account, with one facility housing a number of different organizations. Thirty-seven, to be exact. Usually the order is billable to a specific tenant organization, but this order was billed to another entity at the same place, identified only as ‘Birthday Project.’”
Again she hesitated. Again he waited.
“The account is for Fort Detrick, Maryland.”
He drove back to Maryland, drove Earl home, forked over another sixty-three dollars, and drove back to The Pines to tell Melanie what he’d learned.
“Well, Robert, that’s good, but it doesn’t really prove anything.”
“I know it doesn’t prove anything,” he said, irritated. “That’s not how it works. It’s just one more piece. Collect enough of them, and you have a case.”
“Sort of like beer bottles,” Melanie said. But her face was thoughtful. “Did you listen to the news on your drive back?”
“No.” He’d been too busy evaluating possibilities, looking for connections, planning next moves.
“The grand jury met. They didn’t find enough evidence to indict Michael Donohue. Now the FBI is standing there with egg on its face.”
“It’s not the first time,” Cavanaugh said. Christ, she could irritate him. “We’re not gods, you know. And don’t say that we think we are, either.”
“Okay, I won’t say it,” Melanie answered. “Aloud. So tell me this instead: What is ‘Bevins v. Six Unknown Agents’? Donohue’s lawyer said in his press conference that America should keep it in mind.”
Cavanaugh drew a deep breath and calculated rapidly. Bevins v. Six Unknown Agents was the legal precedent for a citizen to sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Or, rather, not the FBI as an entity, but individual agents who had violated a suspect’s civil rights. Cavanaugh had been part of the surveillance team on Michael Donohue and had also been along on the warrant search … No, it wasn’t enough. If Donohue actually sued anyone, it would probably be only Dunbar and Pilozzi. Plus, maybe, the FBI medic who’d drawn Donohue’s blood. That would make the strongest case.
“I’ll tell you at dinner,” he said. “I’m famished.”
“Did you eat today?”
“No. Did you?”
“Of course I did, and I fed Earl. We take care of ourselves. Let me just get my purse.”
While she tiptoed through piles of bugs, the phone rang. After a moment Cavanaugh remembered that it was his room, not the insects’, and he picked up the receiver.
“Bob, Marty Felders. Do you have a fax?”
“Yes,” Cavanaugh said, although it was in the car. There hadn’t been either use or room for it amid the piles of graphs and bugs. “Give me three minutes.”
“Okay,” Felders said, and hung up. He never wasted words when he had something.
Did that mean Felders had something?
Cavanaugh dashed out to the car and rummaged in the trunk, flinging books and shoes and boxes onto the parking lot until he found the fax machine. He galloped back inside and got it hooked to the phone line just seconds before it began to beep.
“What is it?” Melanie said on a high, rising note, but Cavanaugh was too busy reading the incoming fax, line by line, to answer.
FROM: SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY,
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS CENTER
TO: MARTIN FELDERS
178 SYCAMORE LANE
HYATTSVILLE, MD.
(301) 555-6745
Marty had had the report sent to his home, not the bureau. Good.
RE: VOICE TAPE ANALYSIS
FOUR TAPES WERE RECEIVED VIA U.S. MAIL ON AUGUST 9. ANALYSIS WAS CONDUCTED USING HIGH-RESOLUTION EQUIPMENT, INCLUDING PHRASING, DICTION, PRONUNCIATION, STRESS, INFLECTION, SPEED, CONTENT, AND BACKGROUND NOISE. ANALYSIS FOLLOWS:
THE SAME SPEAKER TALKS ON ALL FOUR TAPES.
THE SPEAKER IS A CAUCASIAN MALE BETWEEN THE AGES OF THIRTY-FIVE AND FORTY-FIVE. HE HOLDS AT LEAST A B.S. DEGREE (PROBABLY NOT A B.A.), BUT NOT A GRADUATE DEGREE. HE IS FROM GEORGIA ORIGINALLY, BUT HAS SPENT SIGNIFICANT TIME IN NEW ENGLAND WITHIN THE LAST FIVE YEARS. HE IS EXCITED BY WHAT HE IS SAYING, BOTH EMOTIONALLY AND SEXUALLY. HE IS PROBABLY NEITHER MARRIED NOR LIVING WITH A WOMAN. THE SPEAKER IDENTIFIES WITH TRADITION AND STRUCTURE, THE MORE STRUCTURED THE BETTER, AS A DEFENSE AGAINST A VERY CHAOTIC INNER SELF. HE FEARS ANYTHING THAT SEEMS TO HIM TO THREATEN THAT TRADITION AND STRUCTURE. BECAUSE HE FEARS BEING ALONE, HE MOST LIKELY SPENDS TIME AWAY FROM HIS JOB SURROUNDED BY LIKE-MINDED INDIVIDUALS. HE MAY PARTY A LOT.
ANALYSIS OF BACKGROUND NOISE:
TAPE #1: NONE DECIPHERABLE. PROBABLY INDOORS.
TAPE #2: INDOORS. AMPLIFICATION REVEALS A VIDEO GAME, PINBALL MACHINE, CLINKING GLASSES, AND A GREAT MANY INDISTINGUISHABLE CONVERSATIONS. SETTING IS EITHER A BAR OR A LARGE PRIVATE PARTY.
TAPE #3: PROBABLY SAME SETTING AS TAPE #2, BUT WITH FEWER PEOPLE PRESENT.
TAPE #4: INDOORS. ONE DISTINGUISHABLE BACKGROUND NOISE: MUSIC IN THE DISTANT BACKGROUND, MUFFLED IN A WAY CONSISTENT WITH FILTERING THROUGH CLOSED WINDOW GLASS. INSTRUMENT IS A SINGLE BUGLE, PROBABLY RECORDED. MELODY IMPOSSIBLE TO DISCERN WITH COMPLETE ACCURACY, BUT NOTES THAT CAN BE IDENTIFIED ARE CONSISTENT WITH “RETREAT.”
CONCLUSION: THERE IS HIGH PROBABILITY THAT THE SPEAKER SERVES IN THE UNITED STATES MILITARY.
JONATHAN PRITCHARD, PH.D.
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
“Good Lord,” Melanie said, reading over his shoulder. “The military. And the CIA has long and deep ties with Fort Detrick. God, Robert, maybe you are right about who created malaria reading!”
“We don’t know that yet,” Cavanaugh said. She was so emotional—as quick to conclude as she had been to deny. That wasn’t the way it
was done. The way it was done was with persistent doggedness, accumulating evidence drop by hard-squeezed drop. He didn’t say this aloud. He’d heard the fear and dread in Melanie’s voice.
Felders phoned a second time. “Bob, listen. One more thing.” Felders sounded as unhappy as Cavanaugh had ever heard him, and he hesitated before going on.
“I don’t like telling you this, and if anybody ever asks me if I did tell you, I will deny it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I called in every marker I was owed in Washington, New York, and Virginia. Probably left a talk trail that’ll set the OPR after me eventually. Fort Detrick has the CIA, as you know, and the CIA has a secret dirty-tricks unit stationed at the fort. They don’t report to the commanding general, except as a hidden part of the CIA. It’s possible he doesn’t even know the unit is there, although not likely. I couldn’t get names, duties, or even the size of the unit. Probably small. But they’re there, and I’m told they’ve pulled some nasties, although nobody can give me specifics. Or won’t. And I didn’t tell you any of this.”
“Yes. No. Can you find out what ‘the Birthday Project’ is? I know it’s something to do with Fort—”
Felders hung up on him.
“What?” Melanie said in a high, strained voice. “What was that about?”
He told her. She listened, expressionless, then turned away.
“Melanie, it’s not conclusive. It’s just one more lead. One piece. As I told you—”
“I know what you told me. Now let me tell you something. I’ve been reworking that T. rutilus data all afternoon. And I’ve got some thoughts about it.”