Thrillers in Paradise

by Rob Swigart

  “That would be nice,” Strachey said quietly. “You said something about sheep when I came in.”

  “Sheep. We have no sheep here. To speak of. We don’t need wool, you see. Pigs, yes. Chickens and dogs and a lot of goats. Wild animals. No sheep.”

  “You’re thinking of the photos. Sheep get a disease. Viral, called scrapie. Similar to number of other diseases – Creutzfeldt-Jakob, Alzheimer’s disease…”

  “Yes,” Takamura interrupted. “I read the report.”

  “The point is,” Strachey said slowly, “the causes of these diseases are not clearly understood. What is known is that they are very slow. They take years to appear… once symptoms show up, though, progress is rapid.” He picked the report off Takamura’s desk. “Look.” He put his finger on the reproductions of the photomicrographs.

  “Normal brain cells.” He tapped a picture. “Round cells, called astrocytes, here. In the infected tissue these cells have swollen, become star-shaped. Sheep brain tissue here, infected with scrapie.”

  Strachey looked at Takamura. “Our problem is that these people all could have what is called a slow virus, which means they contracted the disease years ago, perhaps decades. The virus hides in the nerve cells, then one day, for reasons unknown, out it comes, killing on the way. Quite quickly, too. We need to find what all these people have in common, in the past.” He gave an unhappy emphasis to the last phrase.

  “Or?” Takamura said after a moment.

  “Or else we have something else, and it’s not something I want to think about.”

  “Think about it,” Takamura told him.

  “Or else we have a mutant. That’s a real problem.”

  “Why?”

  Strachey started to pace the narrow office, back and forth.

  “Look, we have never even seen the organism responsible for the slow virus diseases. In fact, it probably is not a virus at all, but what we call a viroid, for lack of a better term. Evidence is… indirect.”

  Takamura was relentless. “What’s a viroid?”

  “A naked virus. It has no protein coat. Consequently it attracts no antibodies. It can’t be recognized by the host. It acts like part of the host’s genetic material. It co-opts the host’s protein synthesis machinery, maybe. And it’s small, just a few hundred base-pairs long.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Strachey sighed. He held his hands in front of him, cupped. “Think of a virus, say a smallpox virus, as being about the size of a large truck. Then a viroid would be the size of your kid’s rubber duck. They’re small.”

  “So we’re dealing with an organism you can’t see?”

  “Worse. We can’t detect it at all. Not yet, not to my knowledge. It’s just that they’re the only logical explanation. There is an awful lot we don’t know.”

  Takamura sat on the edge of his desk. He picked up his hat and ran his forefinger around the brim. He put the hat back on the desk and looked at Strachey.

  “Who does know?” he asked softly.

  “A man named Silver did some work on these things some years ago. I don’t know if he’s still working with viroids, but he published a couple of papers on possible genetic effects of viroids.”

  “Really?” Takamura said.

  31

  Chazz saw the Brat as soon as he started down the far side of the parking lot toward the van. It sat on the main road, blocking half the entry. He could make out two figures inside.

  He looked around. There might be just enough room to make it to the highway in front of the Subaru, but it would be close; there was a runoff ditch on either side of the access road, and the van would probably topple if he dropped a wheel into it. If he turned left downhill after passing the truck, the Subaru would have to make a U-turn, but it appeared that all they had to do if he attempted to leave was pull ahead, and he’d be blocked.

  A service road blocked off by a chain wound uphill to the left. Two cement paths twisted away from the parking lot, one to the lookout and the other in the opposite direction down the canyon to a picnic area. Otherwise, trees or hillside crowded all four sides.

  Another sign indicated there were restrooms up the service road.

  “Patria,” Chazz said quietly, taking her arm.

  “Mmm,” she said.

  “We have a problem. See the silver Subaru down there.”

  “I see it. Tourists, hm?”

  “It’s been following me off and on for a couple of weeks now. Since the day you came. They’re blocking the road.”

  “Charlie, come on. They’re not doing anything. Why would they be after you?”

  Chazz was unlocking the driver’s door of the van. He frowned. “I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s just Dewilliter’s vague rumors and sense of foreboding. You never call me Charlie unless you’re worried.”

  “Dewilliter? He’s the…?”

  “Lobelioids.” He swung open the door. Looking through the passenger window he could see the Brat was still there. “I had a hunch we should look at brain tissue, and I certainly don’t like the implications of that if something turns up there. Then there was the robbery; things are beginning to stink. Whoever it is may have something to do with the murders. I want you to go up the service road toward the bathroom. Slip the chain off and drop it. The service road may have another outlet somewhere. On Cobb’s map these hills are crisscrossed with dirt roads. Once I’m through, slip the chain back on and jump in. If they’re after us, we can delay them for a while and hope. If they’re not after us, there’s no harm done.”

  Patria started without another word up the tarmac toward the restrooms. Chazz climbed in and started the engine. He was watching the access road. The Subaru was still there.

  He put the van in gear and backed out of his parking place. Patria was almost to the service road. Slowly he shifted into first and started down the hill. Was the Subaru edging forward? He was sure they had seen Patria head up to the restroom.

  He wanted it to look as if he were coming around the parking lot to wait for her. He stopped beside the service road, blocking the view. The sliding door to the van was not visible from the truck. Chazz climbed back and opened it.

  Patria reached the chain. It dropped to the ground. Chazz turned swiftly onto the service road, over the chain. In the rearview mirror he saw the Subaru start up the access road toward the lot. He stopped just past the chain. Seconds later Patria jumped in and slammed the door. The van spun its wheels for a moment, caught, and lunged up the service road. The Subaru swung around behind them and hit the chain. As Chazz watched the rearview mirror, the chain slid up the hood of the Brat and slammed into the windshield, which starred with cracks. He could hear over the whine of his own engine the clashing of gears.

  The van clattered up the road, spraying dirt. By now they were back in the cloud and couldn’t see.

  “That’ll stop them, won’t it?” Patria shouted.

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Chazz wheeled around a turn. A side road went off to the right; he debated with himself for a moment, then turned. At least it headed in the general direction of the highway, he thought. He had to slow down; the road was deteriorating rapidly, deep ruts full of rainwater.

  The old white van jounced and clattered. The ruts were slick. Streaks and spatters shot across the sides, dappling the windows. Chazz had to stop at one point, so he cranked down the window to listen. Above and behind them he could hear the sound of the four-wheel drive. He smashed into gear and went on. The van began to slide on the worst of the slick spots, fishtailing against the banks.

  Ahead the road dipped, covered with swiftly flowing water. The tracks plunged in and out the other side. Chazz gave the van a little extra gas and hit the water, which sprayed across the windshield as the high vehicle began to slip. He fought delicately for control as the wheels lost contact with the bottom, it seemed, and he was hydroplaning. Water seeped under the doors.

  Suddenly they were out the other side, the wheels caught
in the ruts and the van bounced hard. Chazz cracked his head against the ceiling, hanging onto the steering wheel. Behind them he could see the Subaru start down the hillside toward the flood.

  His wheels caught again and they lunged forward, uphill. Water was flowing in a ditch alongside the road. They swung around a bend, and in front of them was empty sky, and far away the opposite wall of the canyon. Across the sky hung a rope with a sign. The sign said STOP in large red letters. Chazz slammed on the brakes and fishtailed to a halt at an angle to the rope.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  His back bumper was against the rope, inches from the dropoff. He inched the van forward, away from the road into the heavy brush, ferns and bushes to the right. The hill had collapsed and fallen away, taking the service road with it. Below was bare slope, talus, dirt and rock. Far down the slide he could see trees and shrubs. Beyond that was cliff and the river far below. The dark clouds were close overhead. The only way out was the way they had come, and even now he could hear the Brat whining in four-wheel drive up the hill.

  He threw open his door and ran back to the rope, which was stretched between trees on either side.

  The Subaru was getting close. He took out his pocket knife and started sawing at the rope. The Subaru engine was whining up and down the scale as it hit soft spots in the road, ruts and firmer dirt, shifting up and down. They were in a hurry. He hoped.

  “I don’t see any other way to be in harmony with this,” he muttered. “So we’ll just get off the line of attack.” The rope parted. Chazz threw himself back as the Subaru swung around the final bend.

  The driver slammed on his brakes when he saw the empty sky, but it was too late. The little truck wobbled violently, front tires plowing through the dirt and debris; but with the rope gone he’d had no warning, and there was nothing to slow the truck. The front tires slipped over the edge. The truck seemed to pause there for a long moment; then, with slow-motion grace, to tilt down. The passenger seemed to be trying to open his door as the Subaru picked up momentum. In a moment it was gone from sight.

  Chazz went to the edge and watched as it slithered down the slope. It made surprisingly little sound. The slope was too steep for them to stop, and they slid out of control through the dirt and rock of the slide. The Brat slithered several hundred meters downhill, checked momentarily in the clump of trees, plunged on.

  Patria stood beside him. They watched the Subaru twist down the slope, on and on, until it reached the forest where the tiny silver truck caught sideways in a gentle embrace. It looked like a toy as the doors opened and the two men climbed out. They were going to have a long climb back up to the highway.

  Chazz waved, then he and Patria turned back to the van. He drove slowly back to the parking lot. The flooded section did not seem all that deep this time.

  He stopped at The Honeycreeper to call Takamura.

  32

  “Now tell me,” Patria said quietly. She looked steadfastly out the window.

  Chazz pretended ignorance. “Tell you what?”

  She sighed. “Don’t be obtuse. What’s going on? Why did you call me here?’

  He drove in silence for a while. Finally he said, “Maybe it was a mistake… You’re doing good work, and I’ve gotten a little stale. I thought I wanted…”

  “Don’t start it,” she warned. “I love you, Chazz. I like your mind, which I think you have been wasting lately; I like your body, when you can let go. I like being with you, too, but a family wouldn’t get you more interested in your work, and it sure as hell would interrupt mine.”

  “I know, I know.” He tried changing the subject. “I saw your piece in Anthropological Review. It was very good.”

  “Thank you.” She stared out the window for a time, watching the landscape reel past, the cane fields, red mud roads, the deep green mountains shrouded in cloud. “It was good, wasn’t it? And you know what?” She turned toward him. “I think you’re jealous. Yes, you are, aren’t you? I hadn’t thought…”

  Chazz frowned. “I guess I am at that. You’re excited by what you do.”

  She brushed the back of his forearm with her long fingers. “Well. So don’t think you brought me here. I brought me here. And don’t change the subject. What’s going on? Tell me. Those people were after us.”

  He made a gesture of assent. “Okay. I guess somebody is playing rough, and I don’t know who. I don’t even know why, not yet. I’ve ideas, bad ones. The fact is, I wanted a family, you, with or without children. That’s what I was thinking about. I’m sorry. I didn’t know about all this, these people.”

  “You.” She stared at him. Her expression was unreadable. “Well,” she said again. The cane fields flashed past. The day was dark and hot.

  He passed the Koloa turnoff. Patria said nothing. As they passed the Community College, she touched his arm. “That was something, with the van,” she said softly, a ghost laugh in her voice. “The Maya dream together,” she said. “Maybe we could learn it, to dream together.”

  He smiled swiftly. Forest and cane fields gave way to city. The County Building was raked by restless sunlight.

  Takamura was in his office. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  “Before you say anything, I need to know if you found them.”

  Takamura shook his head. “No sign. You don’t know who they were?”

  “No idea. We didn’t get a good look at them. They were a good ways down the hill before they stopped. It should’ve taken them quite a while to get out.”

  “Oh, the truck was there. Hanapepe Police waited at the top, but they probably headed downhill to the bottom of the canyon instead. There are lots of trails out down there.”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Don’t worry about it; there’s nothing we could do. We don’t have enough people. By the way, we did check the registration. It was false – a dead end. Our problems are just beginning, though. I’ve been making lots of calls today.”

  “Oh?”

  “Strachey thinks we have something called a slow virus.”

  “Like the Fore?” Patria said.

  “Yes,” Chazz answered. “You were right. I was afraid of that.”

  “Why were you afraid of it?” Takamura wanted to know. “Because they’re very difficult to detect, they take a long time to incubate, and often disappear after the damage is done.”

  “Yes. So Strachey said. He also suggested something he called prions, whatever they are. I’ve tried getting him some assistance. No one can help us. State Health has a problem on the big island with hoof-and-mouth disease, it seems.” He stood up and went to the window. The ancient volcano was hidden by cloud, a wet dirty gray that still refused to give up its moisture. Palm fronds tossed restlessly over the lawn. “Let me tell you a story,” he said to the window.

  “A story?”

  “You might like this one.” He flipped one of the slats of his Levolor blind up and down, up and down.

  “It seems there was a Navy ship, not large, but with a heavy cargo. In the hold of this ship was a treasure. Five hundred pounds of platinum, though that is not really important.

  “When I was a small child in an internment camp, a kamikaze pilot who must have been off course in bad weather over heavy seas saw this boat. He probably was low on fuel and was not going to make it back to his carrier, for he chose to fly his airplane into this ship. Ordinarily he would not have chosen such an insignificant target, but this day he did.

  “The ship sank; it took down the treasure too. People have been looking for it ever since. One of those people was Rake Wyman. Apparently he found the ship. Now he’s dead.”

  “Was he killed?” Patria asked.

  Takamura dropped the slat of his Levolor blind and smiled at her. “That,” he said, “is what we are trying to discover.”

  “Who?” Patria asked quietly. “And how?”

  Takamura turned back. “The platinum would be worth about three and a half million dollars today.
That explains why but not who. You know, I think it might clear up,” he said. “It often happens that way before a big storm.”

  “I doesn’t make any sense,” Chazz said. “‘A slow virus is an inefficient way to kill someone. It’s unpredictable, it takes a long time— decades, as often as not— and even then you can’t count on it. Unless.”

  Takamura said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow. “‘Unless this is a deliberately selected mutation.” Takamura sat down.

  “That’s unthinkable, though. Unless someone has gone ‘twist’ as a friend of mine would call it. There have been cases. The Tylenol killings, and a few years ago a lab technician killed eight people with typhus bugs. Researchers go around the bend, too. Revenge, delusions. Do we have a madman in this island?”

  Takamura stood up again. “Tell me,” he asked, leaning over his desk and looking straight at Chazz, “is it possible to make this bug?”

  Chazz shook his head. “No. Not easily, at least.”

  Takamura straightened slightly, but he continued to look at Chazz. “Why not?”

  “Two reasons. First, what we’re talking about is small, very small, and poorly understood. Second, the rules governing recombinant research were worked out at Asilomar. No one is going to fool around with them.”

  “I would like to be comforted by such thoughts,” Takamura said quietly. “Truly I would. But we have too many coincidences here. Ritual mutilations by a cult, death by disease, a diver after sunken treasure dead in the water. Now someone’s after you. Why? Let us, for the moment, assume terrorists, shall we?”

  Chazz moved restlessly in his chair. “That would be difficult to assume.”

  “Nonetheless, Dr. Strachey thinks we have a viroid. These people have died of a neurological disorder, a nasty one. The signs make it look like witchcraft. It is deliberate. I think terrorists are testing a new weapon. They could ransom the world. And with the platinum, they can afford the necessary research.”