Scent

by Kelly, Clint L.

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “I wish I knew. I began by looking for commonalities, patterns. The attacks happened across the spectrum of age and socioeconomic groupings, and have a wide distribution geographically, with higher concentrations in the counties around Los Angeles and San Francisco. That makes sense. Higher density populations result in higher frequency of both the presenting phenomena and those willing to report them.”

  Brittany smacked her hands together. “Happens every August when my extended family gets together for barbecue.”

  Faye ignored the levity. “Time of day and day of the week were within statistically acceptable norms for randomness, with predictably more events on weekends, when more children are at play and more people of all ages engage in outside activities.

  “The techies gave me a grid showing kind of attack, location, victim names, results, and other vital details. I studied the focused printout of facts-at-a-glance until three significant indicators emerged.

  “First, all the primary victims are female. Second, their attackers are all mammalian, although a couple of the more rural reports mention the eerie absence as well of natural audibles, or vocalizations, from other animals common to the area, such as birds or frogs. Third — and this is most intriguing — in all cases a notation is made concerning the presence at the attack site, and on the victim, of a distinctive and appealing odor. In many instances, the report filer struggles to express how potent, beguiling, even tempting the smell is. That allure is personally upsetting to witnesses and emergency responders alike, who consider it sensuous and inappropriate to the scene. As one sheriff’s officer report eloquently expresses, ‘It was in sharp and unsettling contrast to the violence of the attacks.’ ”

  She pointed to a plastic evidence bag beside the stack of reports. “This is from a feline incident in Anaheim that was so vicious, the animal had to be euthanized at the scene. Animal Control reported that a mature tabby cat had ‘risen like a spit ting, snarling monster’ and attacked an adult granddaughter visiting her widowed grandmother in an assisted-care facility. The cat raked the victim repeatedly, nearly tearing an eye from its socket. The screaming granddaughter had the presence of mind to run into the hall, where a custodian clubbed the beloved pet with a length of pipe, breaking several of the cat’s bones in the process. The animal was too deranged and badly injured to be saved. A lethal dose of drugs ended its suffering. The traumatized grandmother required sedation.”

  Brittany sat heavily on the corner of Faye’s desk, no more smiles. She gripped its edges and appeared light-headed.

  From the bag, Faye extracted a beige silk blouse soaked black with blood and torn in several places. “I’m used to similar specimens rank with the aromas of struggle and carnage. Often the vapors that rush from those bags bear the stench of death and decay.”

  Brittany swayed slightly.

  “But not this time. Smell that?” The room filled with a divine aroma wafting from the gory blouse.

  Faye had never smelled anything so lovely, so engaging. She had to fight the urge to bury her face and nose in the stained cloth. Three days before, she had determined what it was, and the blouse only confirmed it. It had to be the new perfume creating all the buzz. Cassandra. What were they calling it? The very breath of beauty.

  The stout woman straightened and sniffed the air with what Faye could only interpret as enthusiasm.

  “I verified that in sixty-four of the incidents, the victims had received a sample vial of that new scent Cassandra that’s been in the news. They got it at a mall giveaway and applied it to their skin within two hours preceding attack.

  “The unfortunate granddaughter must have been among the few to obtain one of the test vials recently distributed free of charge to gauge public reaction.” Faye shook her head. “There would be a reaction, all right, and I’ve got to find the root cause.” She bunched the blouse in both hands and brought it close to her nose.

  Then she abruptly flung the blouse away, knocking the work stool over in her haste to put distance between her and the evidence.

  She grabbed Brittany’s arm and towed the reluctant woman outside the building. Faye bent over an empty bicycle rack and gulped air until her heart stopped racing. Brittany half-fell to one knee on the grass and shook her head as if bewildered by what she was doing outdoors.

  Faye fought for calm. “Here, I’ll help you up. Go back to your office, Brit. Thanks for the reports.” The woman tottered off once her legs again agreed to work in tandem.

  Faye pinched the inside of her elbow, and things came into sharper focus. She knew in her professional heart of hearts that there was something in the profoundly sweet perfume on that blouse back in the lab. Something inexplicably deadly.

  Something evil.

  Faye held her breath, returned the blouse to the evidence bag, and zipped it closed. She secured the papers on her desk and turned the floor fan on high to push the lingering scent out the door to dissipate in the hallway beyond.

  I need an informed opinion. Brit’s just an assistant; I need another researcher, someone more clinically objective. She grabbed the phone and punched in a four-digit extension.

  “Hello. You’ve reached J. Wyatt’s voice mail. Leave your name, number, and a short message, and I’ll get back to you. Believe me when I say, it’s worth the wait.”

  Faye rolled her eyes and changed lab coats. She placed the one with the lingering scent into the laundry drum, assuring herself that the lid was tightly fastened.

  The activity helped her to focus, to filter out the chaff and concentrate on the main thing. In humans, behavioral disorders were among the most complex and incapacitating of all pathological conditions. What most people did not know was that the same was true of canine and feline behavioral disorders. They accounted for the relinquishment and death of more pet animals each year than infectious, neoplastic, and metabolic disease combined.

  The conditions that could cause anxiety in animals to the degree seen in the recent attacks had her stumped. The animals went ballistic, then catatonic, and frequently nothing could be done short of killing them. It was similar to the crazed aggression of an animal about to be consumed by fire. But there were no indicators of any such abnormal circumstances. In fact, the reports were filled with bewildered comments on just how ordinary the days of the attacks had been. In the total absence of fire or comparable triggers, the deranged actions of the attacking animals was positively irrational.

  Unless the fragrance was somehow responsible for the atypical behavior in mammals with the exception of humans? Unable to shake the feeling of lost control that had made her flee the building, she wondered if the fragrance didn’t also have a strange hold on the people who wore it.

  A funny feeling was not going to hold up in court. Faye needed to corroborate the feeling with facts. She had read that retail sales of the perfume would begin on Monday. So little time. She punched up J. W.’s extension again and this time got an answering, “Howdy, Faye. Just about to call you back.”

  “You free to bounce ideas? Ten minutes, tops?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. My office.”

  OK, Figgy, what’s up?”

  Faye made a face at J. W.’s silly nickname for her, but with him there was no going back. The short, rotund coworker had purchased one of her mastiffs and named her Cruella. It didn’t take much for him to sing the entire song from 101 Dalmatians. Silly as it was, every time he warbled the words, she smelled warm puppies. It put her in a better frame of mind.

  “What do you make of these animal attacks that have been in the news?” she began.

  He peered at her through thick lenses, which he seemed to have found at the bottom of a barrel of cast-off eyeglasses.

  “Rabies?”

  “Ruled out. None of the biters display the classic symptoms —no increased salivation, no affected motor function, no paralysis. None of the animals have tested positive.”

  “Seizures?”
/>   “Do whales seize?”

  He shrugged. “Any presenting confirmations for seizures?”

  “None.”

  “Provocations?”

  “None.”

  “Startled response?”

  “None reported.”

  “Number of cases?”

  She checked the grid and made a quick calculation. “Close to one hundred and fifty reported cases in three weeks.” Only a fraction of animal aggressions were ever reported. Given the severity of the attacks, most of these probably would have been, even without the media hype. But still a percentage may have remained under the radar, for whatever reasons people had for preferring to keep their private lives private.

  J. W. whistled through the gap in his front teeth. “That’s a bunch. Fatalities?”

  Again Faye consulted the grid. “Seven. Plus three survivors in critical, five in serious, seven in guarded. Dozens in posttraumatic distress.”

  “Commonalities?”

  “Victims all women, attackers all mammalian, presence of an outside stimulus.”

  “Which is?”

  “In many if not all of the cases, victims are scented with a powerful, sweet-smelling perfume. Many report having applied the perfume immediately preceding attack. I suspect in every case we will find that the stimulus is Cassandra, that new orchid fragrance sensation set to go retail on Monday. The number of reported attacks spikes on weekends, corresponding with the cycle of free samples distributed in malls and other public places. People try it on, arrive home from a day’s shopping, Fido greets, Fido goes berserk.”

  J. W. sat on an adjoining stool and spun slowly counterclockwise. “Theories?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’ve narrowed it to olfactory hallucinations, maybe in combination with or the causation of additional visual and auditory hallucinations, producing sudden and/or severe psychic manifestations of an extremely unpleasant degree.”

  “Doggie LSD?”

  “Looks that way.”

  J. W. took a minute to revolve, deep in thought. Faye knew better than to interrupt. Jake had solved more than one mystery on the stool’s sixteenth revolution or higher.

  But after only thirteen revolutions he stopped and said, “Disposition of the attackers?”

  “A large percentage had to be destroyed, but in the larger animals, most notably killer whales, there have been no repeats of aggression by the same animals. I suspect that it is simply the absence of the olfactory stimulus.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m not sure.” She was reluctant to say what was at the back of her mind. Pleasant odors, the oils of certain plants, herbs, and flowers, had been shown to improve life physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. They made people feel better about themselves and others and encouraged positive attitudes, creativity, and innovative problem-solving. She’d seen the studies touting certain fragrances as useful therapy for reducing stress during medical procedures — both for the patient and the surgeon. She had friends who swore by lavender as an aid to relaxation and sound sleep. And hadn’t the scent of lemon been proven to help clerical workers make fewer computer keyboarding errors?

  It would be wonderful if one day aromas replaced prescription drugs in people’s medicine cabinets. But if she voiced what she was thinking, she could set those developments back a century or more.

  J. W. gave her a piercing look. “I don’t need to tell you, Fig, that the olfaction of mammals is way superior to mankind’s. But mutant nasal passages aren’t unheard of either. More than one dog with dysosmia has eaten tainted fish and died. My cousin’s basset has parosmia and smells imaginary aromas. I could put gravel in its dish, and it would chow down because it smells beef-flavored nuggets. Whatever this perfume is doing to these animals isn’t humane. We’ve got to tell the authorities.”

  He hadn’t smelled what was in that evidence bag. It was exquisite and captivating and unlike anything she had ever smelled before. Injury and harm made pleasant. She had held bloody rags contradicted by the ethereal smell of heavenly places.

  What was she thinking? Quite simply, that it masked the odor of violence and of the grave. That it redeemed death. That it was the scent of eternity.

  Only for a fleeting second, far back and fading fast, came the memory of how, with just one whiff, she had nearly lost control of all that was good and godly.

  She glanced uneasily at the laundry drum. It remained securely fastened.

  “Many animals use pheromones to establish dominant-recessive structures within a population, say a pack of dogs,” she said. “Why not an aberration of the system, leading to inappropriate pecking orders and unprovoked attack on the dominant species — us?”

  J. W. spun once. “I’m listening.”

  Faye tapped the eraser end of a pencil against her teeth. She appreciated open ears. “We know that the discriminatory power of the olfactory system is immense. Even a slight change in the structure of an odorant can alter its perceived odor, as in the razor-thin delineator between an orange and a sweaty armpit.”

  “Why, Miss Guterman, how you do flirt!”

  She ignored him. “Change the concentration of an odorant or even slightly alter its molecular structure, and you change its sensory receptor code. Change the receptor code, and you change the neural mechanism responsible for the perception of citrus and perspiration.”

  “Mama warned me about girls like you.”

  She made a face and his lit up. Theirs was a strange dance but it worked. “Stay with me, Professor Wyatt. We’re near a breakthrough.”

  “Carry on.”

  “Somehow the chemical stimuli in Cassandra misdirect the emotional reaction and ‘trick’ mammals other than the human variety — and even that’s not a clear given — into pathologically aggressive and vicious response. Nature has a number of these frauds up her sleeve — the voracious Venus flytrap, several mate-eating spiders, and all manner of camouflage, from insects that resemble sticks to fish that mimic their undersea surroundings. This is the first one I’ve experienced that, misapplied, invites harm.”

  J. W. frowned. “You’re telling me that in its natural environment, the Cassandra orchid’s pheromones send out a warning to animals to steer clear, as a kind of super defense mechanism.”

  Faye nodded and picked up the line of reasoning. “But when that scent is duplicated and taken into a foreign environment with no warning and no preconditioning to avoid it, the fauna panic and attack, no questions asked.”

  J. W. rose from the stool and began to pace the room, hands clasped behind his back. “Why the overkill? Why so severe a reaction?”

  Faye stared at the laundry drum. “Perhaps it’s like fish or snakes being endowed with venom far more potent than required for normal daily routine. Lavish excess is all around us. Why do many men remain fertile long after their spouses’ childbearing years? Why is the gestation period for a mouse just twenty-eight days? Does the world exponentially require that many more rodents?”

  Her colleague shrugged. “It’ll take the Man Upstairs to answer that one. All I know is, you’ve got to tell someone. That perfume cannot roll out on Monday. If it does, there will be carnage.”

  The criminologist flipped the pencil down. She walked over to the laundry drum, hesitated, lifted the lid, then quickly closed it again. That fast, the smell of heaven draped the room.

  Her associate’s eyes grew big. He gave a short, soft whistle. “That’s it? Incredible!”

  Faye Guterman’s shoulders dropped and a sudden weariness possessed her. She gripped the edges of the drum and shut her eyes.

  Her clinical training forced her to focus. She experienced a strange sense of abandon, the willingness to commit improprieties with her round associate. Faye hoped the urge wasn’t mutual.

  “How hard do you think it will be to locate the state’s attorney general on a weekend?”

  J. W. gave her an oddly frank stare and laid a pudgy hand on her sleeve. “Locating him’s g
oing to be fun, but not half as much as convincing him. You okay, Fig?”

  She snatched back her arm and felt the earlier panic return and fought it down. “‘Cruella DeVille,’” she said. “Just a few bars.”

  Chapter 18

  US Drug Enforcement Agent Greg Heidler strode toward the elevators in the east wing of Mercy General Hospital. His partner, Ladd, a German shepherd narcotics detection canine, trotted in harness at his side and a little ahead.

  Drug traffickers smuggled contraband into the country by ever more ingenious means and had moles and couriers in the most unlikely places. Like Mercy General. Orthopedic surgeon Enrique Juarez, from Guatemala, was seeing an unusual number of immigrant patients. A tipster said that the new leg cast of one Roberto Esteban, applied by the good doctor, was actually nine parts packaged high-grade marijuana and one part plaster. Discharge the patient, discharge five kilos of illegal substance onto the streets of San Francisco.

  As busts went, Heidler knew, it was small potatoes, but always there existed the chance of following the leads higher up to the exploiters of the poor and vulnerable.

  Hospital security would meet Heidler and Ladd outside Room 209.

  Heidler cast a quick glance at Ladd. The canine had a nose that contained twenty to forty times more receptor cells than his handler’s. Heidler was proud. With the right training, Ladd had learned to sniff out the tiniest quantities of drugs under often-adverse conditions.

  Ladd’s nails tapped against the tiles, and the dog and handler drew admiring glances and smiles from staff and visitors alike. Heidler liked to watch him move. When Ladd was on the job, he wore his mission in eyes bright and muscled body flowing with focused determination.

  In the elevator, the agent pressed the button for the second floor and told a curious little boy that Ladd was one of six brothers and sisters. “But he’s the only one in the service of his country,” he said, pride in every word. “The only one.”