by Edward Lee
“Here, here.”
“I’m relieved,” Clare said.
In less than complimentary phraseology, Clare and Joyce briefed Rick on their beachside encounter with Adam. “Put a collar and chain on that oddball,” Rick suggested. “Don’t let him get out of the yard.”
Clare sipped her beer. “So when are you going to tell me why you call him Ranger Jingles?”
“It’s too gross,” Joyce said.
“And Joyce should know,” Rick blurted next. “She actually had the honor of—”
Joyce jabbed him in the ribs again, after which he chuckled and put his arm around her.
Joyce instantly bumped her knee against his, then Rick took his arm off with a look on his face that said Oops.
Clare saw it all.
She wasn’t surprised by the awkward silence that followed.
“Look it’s not right for us to be dishonest,” Joyce owned up. “Rick and I are…kind of…involved.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed,” Clare said.
“But you have our guarantee that that all stays out of the workplace,” Rick added.
Clare put on a cheery smile. “Good, ’cos if it doesn’t I’ll fire both your butts on the spot. Seriously, though. Any relationship between the two of you is your business.” Maybe it was the shooter and the half a beer she’d drunk so far, or maybe it was just because she liked them, and felt that she needed to be honest too—but Clare couldn’t resist. “Just do me favor. Next time you decide to fool around in the woods, don’t do it in front of the loading dock surveillance camera—like you did the other day.”
Joyce turned beet-red. Rick buried his face in his hands.
Now it was Clare’s turn to be amused. “Now that’s what I call a reaction.”
Now Rick put his arm back around Joyce. “Like they say, women—can’t live with ’em, can’t put big rubber corks in their mouths when they talk too much.”
Joyce elbowed him in the ribs. Hard. “Yeah, and men—can’t write ’em off on your taxes ’cos there’s no deduction for life-support for a penis.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Clare assured. “Just try to keep the public smooching to a minimum, and the same for when you’re around Mrs. Grable. She’s a sweetheart but she loves gossip.”
It was far better for the air to be cleared on the matter, and Clare knew it would be a lot easier for her to deal with them on a day-to-day work basis as a result. For the next hour, they took turns talking a little bit about themselves, and Clare found it interesting as well as encouraging that they all had similar histories in that they’d all served as military police in the Air Force and were all raised in the Foster Care system.
“And it looks like we all turned out all right,” Rick said. “I don’t know about you and Joyce, but I haven’t shot up any schoolyards lately. And I never even smoked pot. Yet all the time you’re hearing on the news about how Foster Care fails.”
“Funny we should be talking about it,” Joyce added. “Grace Fletcher mentioned that she was an orphan too.”
“And she was in the Air Force,” Clare said, remembering the snapshot she’d seen. “She was a captain in the Air Force Security Service.” More mental gears began to turn. “In my cottage I found some snapshots, and one was of Grace and the two previous guards all standing together.”
“Donna and Rob?” Rick said.
“Yeah, and it turns out that Donna is someone I know—er, knew. Her name’s Donna Kramer. I went to basic and primary AIT with her at Wright-Patterson.”
“Yeah, but that’s not really a coincidence that we all happen to have been MPs in the Air Force—Dellin even told me, they save money on background checks.”
“I know, but isn’t it odd that we’re all orphans?” Clare asked. “During training, I knew Donna Kramer pretty well, and guess what she told me once? Her parents abandoned her when she was little, and the state put her in the system.”
Now Rick’s eyebrows shot up. “Rob Thomas, the third guard—”
“No way,” Joyce said. “You’re not gonna tell us that he was an orphan, too.”
“He was an orphan too. We were on permanent duty together, he and I were hanger guards at Holloman. We partied together at the EM club every weekend, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t mention that to me. Said his father died before he was born and his mother got killed in a car crash when he was a baby.”
“Kind of weird,” Clare said.
“So weird, in fact, that we need more beers.” Rick ordered another round from the knockout barmaid. “And what’s weirder is how they all vanished overnight.”
“Oh, Rick,” Joyce said wearily, “don’t start with that malarkey again.”
“Please,” Clare said. “Let’s hear some malarkey. Joyce, you said they all quit because they were afraid of alligators or quicksand or something.”
“Grace told me she came from up north and she put in her notice because she couldn’t stand the heat, which is kind of reasonable when you consider how damn hot it gets out here. Then that night I ran into Rob right here—”
“You never told me you dated him,” Rick said with a bit too much haste.
“I didn’t. He was just here.” Joyce winced. “And shut up. But he said he and Donna put in their notice because they thought the site was too hazardous between the ’gators and the quicksand and all that. They were light-weights, that’s all. And it’s a good thing they were ’cos we got their jobs.”
“Sure, but it’s not a good thing if we actually got their jobs because they all died.”
Clare instantly straightened on the barstool. “Because they all what?”
“Hey, there were all kinds of rumors,” Rick pointed out. “Everyone in the area had a different story. They were afraid of alligators, they were all drunks, they got caught in a love triangle, they were fugitives with warrants out on them. Hell, I even heard that Dellin caught them doing a three-way naked pretzel while they were on duty.”
Well, Clare thought. At least I can attest to that last one… But it was too inappropriate to mention the videotapes. And too embarrassing, she caught herself. They’d probably ask to see the videotapes themselves, and— There are a few scenes on those tapes where Grace and Donna were using the green vibrator on each other…the same vibrator Joyce saw ME using… But the direction of the conversation was intriguing now; Clare wanted to hear more.
“I love a good mystery,” she cajoled. “Keep going.”
“Keep going,” Joyce sniped. “That’s what I tell him every night, but he just rolls over and starts snoring.”
“No, no, you’re confusing me with Ranger Jingles—”
Joyce elbowed him in the ribs. Hard.
“Come on, Rick. This is fascinating. What else did you hear?”
Rick leaned over on his elbows. “Then I’m sitting in here one night and an off-duty local cop comes in. He gets faced in a hurry and starts spouting off about how his chief is afraid the town’ll lose a lot of their peak-season tourist business if the newspapers find out about all the yahoos who’ve been disappearing.”
“You mean, like—”
“Local rednecks and meth-heads, like that girl you found the other night,” Rick went on. “This cop said that a bunch of ’em have been disappearing over the last year. Said they think they’re getting hit by bull sharks that knock over their canoes and little row boats when they paddle out to—can you guess where?”
“Fort Alachua Park,” Clare said.
“Right, our side of Fort Alachua Park. Why? Because it’s a great poaching ground. Cop said they’ve been finding a fair share of boats capsized in the bay, and some of those boats have been registered—to yokels who’ve been reported missing.”
“Interesting,” Clare said.
“But that’s not all—”
“Give us a break, meat-head!” Joyce complained. “You’re boring the yeast out of all our beers.”
Rick thumbed her way. “Wanna know the real reason she
wants me to shut up?”
Clare smiled. “Why?”
“Because she’s afraid, too—oww!”
Joyce elbowed him again.
Rick rubbed his ribs. “If you keep doing that, you might hit some stray nerve branch, might make me impotent.”
“Don’t I wish.”
Clare tugged Rick’s sleeve. “What were you saying? The boats they found were registered to people who turned up missing?”
“Some of them. Even the most irresponsible yokels register their boats so they can get their full saltwater fishing licenses. This cop said over a dozen of them have disappeared.”
“Okay, the big scary story’s over. That means Wicky Poo can shut up now.”
Rick held up a finger. “But…there’s more.”
“Somehow I thought there would be,” Clare said. “So out with it, please.”
“I stop by here one night for a beer when Joyce is working, and one of the drop-dead gorgeous barmaids starts making some time with me because—” Rick shrugged “—let’s face it, who can blame her? I’m a damn good-looking guy and she knows the total package when she sees it—”
“Somebody give me a barf bag!” Joyce howled.
“Anyway, she starts telling me about the last time she saw Donna; it was supposedly the night before she disappeared. Donna came in here to get some carry-out—three orders, said she was on her way to meet Grace and Rob, and she specifically said that they all put in two weeks notice.”
“Big deal, Bozo,” Joyce offered. “So what if they decided to leave the next day? People balk out on their two-week notice all the time. They didn’t feel like waiting so they left.”
Rick kept talking as if Joyce hadn’t spoken at all. “Aaaaaaand, while she was waiting for her food, she has a few drinks but, wouldn’t you know it? She gets a little tipsy.”
“How convenient,” Joyce droned. “It’s too bad the total package wasn’t here. If she was that drunk, he might’ve gotten lucky.”
“Hey. She would’ve been the lucky one. Anyway, she has one too many Johnny Blacks and she starts telling this barmaid about how they’re all scared shitless because there’s—”
“A monster prowling the park,” a voice behind them cut in. “Not a man, a monster.”
All three of them turned around at the same time. Dellin was standing behind them, smiling with his arms crossed.
“Hi, Dellin,” Joyce said.
“I guess we better buy the boss a drink,” Rick added, “so he thinks we’re cool.”
For some reason, though, Clare was nearly choked up. She couldn’t have been more delighted to see Dellin, but the sight of him left her tongue-tied.
“Thanks for the offer, Rick, but I’m just here for a carry-out grouper sandwich.” Dellin was wearing tennis shorts and a t-shirt that read UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA ONCOLOGISTS GROUP - CHARITY LEAGUE. He looked right at Clare. “How’s it going, Clare?”
“Uh, fine. Great,” she blurted. “Pull up a seat.” PLEASE!
“Naw, I can’t stay; I’m pooped. I’m in this charity softball league with the Florida Physicians Board. We did a double-header today.”
“Did you hit any home runs?”
“No, we got crushed both games. I struck out grandly, though. Ten times, as a matter of fact.”
Clare’s heart was fluttering. She knew it was a foolish reaction but she couldn’t help it.
“Well, I guess I’m not in that bad of a rush,” he reconsidered. He took the stool right next to Clare. “I did stop into the clinic today,” he went on, “before the game. And I saw your incident reports.”
Clare had to drag herself out of her distraction. He’s going to think you’re a complete airhead! Say something. “Then I guess you also saw—”
“The cockroach in the refrigerator? I sure did. And the other report said something about a frog?”
“A big frog, near the lake. Adam accidentally ran it over in his truck. It was enormous, just like the cockroach. Much bigger than it should’ve been.”
Dellin didn’t seem the least bit alarmed. “Mutagenic pollution is a lot more common than people think, especially in Florida, and I have an advantage understanding it simply because I’m a cancer physician with a background in genetics and organic transfection. Ultimately most cancer is the result of a process of mutation, often precipitated by foreign substances. Every cell in the human body has a mutagenic gene. Carcinogenic toxins will target that gene, and from there anything can happen because the entire DNA blueprint becomes misappropriated and, hence, adulterated.”
“I left my doctorate at home, Dellin,” Rick said. “Do you think you could put that in—”
“Less sophisticated technical terms, sure,” Dellin caught himself. “There’s a switch in every cell in your body. The switch regulates changes and growth. When pollutants get into a cell and throw that switch, anything can happen. One thing that happens most often is a highly accelerated growth rate. That’s obviously what happened in this case.”
“I’ve heard about stuff like that happening in the area, near lakes and reservoirs,” Joyce said. “But have you ever seen cockroaches that big before?”
“Well, not that big, no. That really was enormous.”
Clare felt stifled by her own shyness. It was Dellin, she knew, and her intense attraction to him.
“I have seen frogs, though, as large as the one Clare described in her report. It was at a transfection study I did some work for several years ago.”
“What exactly does that mean—transfection?” Clare finally got a few more words out. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a genetic engineering term. Transfection is like gene splicing, only on an even smaller molecular scale. When you put genetic properties from one cell into another cell. A growth gene, for instance. If you saturate a growth gene with carbon in a high-oxygen environment, then put the compatible part of that gene in, say, a liver cell, the liver cell grows at an exponential rate. Controlling the nature of the growth is the key, though. The growing liver cell doesn’t develop normally. It becomes tumorous, then malignant. Here’s an example: An industrial pollutant that seeps into a lake or a pond can transfect mutagenic properties into a frog egg. The growth gene in the egg—the switch—is turned on in an abnormal way, then you’ve got your giant frog. What we’re doing at the clinic is the opposite of that process. We’re turning those growth genes off, which leaves the cancer helpless against the patient’s own immune-system responses.” Dellin suddenly frowned at himself. “Jeez, I’m sorry, I must be boring everyone to death. This isn’t exactly bar talk.”
“Oh, it’s fascinating,” Clare insisted, but then darker recollection began to spoil some of her infatuation. Dellin was criminally charged in the Army, prosecuted… The last thing Clare wanted to do was challenge Dellin, or put him on the spot, but her urge to feel him out on the subject was too irresistible.
I wonder what he’d say if…
“So what we’re talking about,” she continued, “is someone sneaking out to Lake Stephanie and dumping toxins into it?”
“Probably not someone,” Dellin replied with no hesitation. “After World War Two, the Army Air Corps buried a lot of unexpended explosive propellants on this end of the park. Most aerial bombs of that era contained ammonia-based explosive compounds. Those same kinds of compounds are well-known chemical mutagens. During the war, Fort Alachua was an Army bomb center. They’d test different kinds of bombs here on obsolete ships they’d put out in the bay. It was also a practice range. But some of those propellents they buried are seeping into the inner-island water systems. Unfortunately, there weren’t any dumping regulations back then. Their only concern was winning the war, not environmental protection.”
The casual response to Clare’s question relieved her. It didn’t explain the criminal notice, and she couldn’t very well call him on that. But suddenly Adam’s allegations seemed much less probable.
Dellin smiled. “As for the far more interesting
subject you all were talking about when I came in—”
“A monster in the swamps,” Rick said though a grin.
“Yeah, that was one of the rumors, I’m afraid,” Dellin admitted. “A psychopath or even a monster. Anything that Donna Kramer may have told anyone else was just founded in an over-excited imagination. Local poachers disappear on occasion, and yes, it’s logical that some of them were eaten by alligators because that’s what they poach in most cases. And some are likely eaten by sharks: they’re drunk in the first place, their canoes tip over because they’re careless—instant shark food. But the rumor mill turns anyway, and we’re talking about a class of people who are largely uneducated and much more prone to alcohol- and drug-related delusions. Every locale will have it’s own version of the Jersey Devil, or Goat Man, or the Loch Ness Monster. This happens to be our version.”
“Thank God for rednecks,” Rick said. “Life would be so dull without them.”
“That’s pretty much what Kari Ann Wells said the other day,” Clare offered, “before the ambulance took her. She said that something attacked her—not a man, a monster.”
“Or a pink elephant,” Joyce said. “That crystal meth junk makes you see anything.”
“And from what I understand,” Dellin said, “she was a long-term addict. All kinds of delusional disorders are the result, then outright schizophrenia. It’s a terrible tragedy. Drugs cause people to flush their lives right down the toilet.”
Dellin had sensible answers for everything, which further encouraged Clare to discount any implications of Adam’s. There was one more question, though, and Joyce asked it before Clare could:
“But Dellin, our gullible minds need you to solve one more mystery. What exactly did happen to Grace, Donna, and Rob?”
Dellin shrugged. “I fired them.”
“What for?” Rick asked. “We heard—”
Dellin nodded amusedly. “That they were convicts, dopeheads, thieves—I know. I heard all those stories too. In truth, they weren’t any of those things, they were just irresponsible, low-quality employees. I mean, it wasn’t just a little negligence here and there, it was an out and out abuse of their positions. They were having hot tub parties every other night at Grace’s cottage while they were supposed to be on duty. One night I caught them, so I fired them. Had no choice. It was my bad judgment for hiring them in the first place, and Harry was pretty ticked off at me because we had a major therapy session starting up right at the same time. I had to take valuable time away from that to replace them. I definitely could’ve been a better judge of character; their military records were all quite good from what I could see.” Another discrete smile, in Clare’s direction. “But I like you all much better than them, and I’m sure that things will work out fine. In a strange way, it’s a good thing I fired the previous crew.”