Venom: A Thriller in Paradise (The Thriller in Paradise Series Book 3)

by Swigart, Rob

  Sammy shrugged. “It could happen. You could see her from the Kuhio Highway, but who pays attention? You drive along, see a ship out to sea, say, ‘Oh, how nice, a ship.’ Later, driving the other way, you see a ship. Same ship? Who knows? So you say, ‘Oh, how nice.’”

  Cobb laughed. “Okay, Okay. She was out there for up to thirty hours, drifting back and forth with the tides. And before that, she was returning from Tahiti. But why would she come to Kauai instead of Honolulu? In fact, why wasn’t she headed toward Vancouver?”

  “Ship’s log?” Sammy suggested.

  “No help— no entries for the past three days. There may be other pages missing, we can’t tell. There are gaps in the sequence.”

  “Curious.”

  “Very curious. Pages missing, perhaps. The log was written on lined paper in a three-ring binder. Anyone could have taken them out. It’s just that some days there are no entries. So we don’t know why she was headed this way. And the implications, if someone got rid of pages from the log, are ominous.”

  The silence that followed was broken abruptly by the startlingly loud and insistent beeping of Cobb’s pager. He smiled and went reluctantly to the telephone in the hallway behind the dining room. Sammy smiled broadly at Sergeant Handel. “Now tell me the truth, Sergeant,” he said softly, as soon as Takamura was out of earshot. “Is there a poison, toxin, disease or other biological threat here or not?”

  Handel was surprised. “What makes you ask that?”

  “Tut tut, young man. I am in finance, now. Expenditures are my business. An airplane, even a small one, dispatched to the Big Island to bring one Dr. Charles Koenig back to Kauai on very short notice has implications of a toxic sort, don’t it?”

  “The paramedics were worried about Mrs. Takamura. She’d gone on board to investigate— didn’t know the ship wasn’t a derelict when it drifted into the bay, so she looked it over before calling in. She touched two of the bodies and lowered the anchors. She didn’t touch anything else, but I think the lieutenant felt that Dr. Koenig might be able to help.”

  “And?”

  “And Mrs. Takamura is fine. Badly shaken for a while, but fine. She was reading someone named Hegel.”

  “Mmm. Bad sign. Dr. Koenig any help?”

  Scott smiled. “Worried about the expense?”

  Sammy shrugged “Almost three hundred dollars, county money. I write the checks.” He looked up as Cobb sank back into his seat. “What’s up, Boss? You look funny.”

  “Very strange,” Cobb said, so softly they had to lean forward to hear his next words. “That was Dr. Shih. One of our bodies has come back to life.”

  FIVE

  THE BEAST

  The air in the bowl of Nawiliwili harbor was hot and close and dead. Vacationers lay around the enormous Roman pool and panted, from time to time rousing themselves from their lethargy to order iced tea or rum drinks from the outdoor bar. On the small, narrow beach the few bathers draped towels over their faces and fell into a sun-drugged sleep. The tennis courts were deserted, heat waves rising from their green and red surfaces. The golf course was green but still.

  Narni stared down at the pool until her eyes hurt from the sun’s glare. The pool was impossibly blue, with geometric patterns laid into it in black tile. In the middle an irregular island scattered with beach chairs displayed ample racks of skin to the sun. A bestiary of monumental sculptures— smooth-flanked rabbits and hippos and the like— spat water in looping arcs over the swimmers. The brochure assured her this was the largest swimming pool in the entire state of Hawaii. Narni believed it, though this startling fact held less interest for her than the hotel’s promoters might have wished.

  She pushed her hands against the balcony railing and went back inside, pulling her beach robe around her. Enough. Enough sun. Enough sitting around her room waiting for something to happen. Enough drinking in the bar with other doctors’ wives. Enough throwing time away.

  She picked up a brochure and leafed idly through it. Mark was downstairs at some meeting or other. Radiology and AIDS or Tomography for the Timid or something. He was at the bar, laughing over the latest brain-dead jokes. He was putting his sly moves on that pediatrician from Long Beach. Or something.

  The brochure was colorful, the text crowded in a hodgepodge of typographic styles. Restaurants. Hotel floor shows. Surf contests. Flowers. Exotic plants. Tropical flora in a research setting, she saw. There were daily tours of the Douglass Research Center, a not-for-profit plant and marine research institution with an international reputation. Call for reservations. She picked up the phone. Better than waiting around here for Mark to remember he was still married.

  She looked at herself in the hotel mirror, a slightly stocky blond with the early stages of a very good tan. In her late thirties. Well, mid-thirties. What the hell.

  Her rental car was waiting.

  At the hotel entrance she examined the tourist map. After a moment’s hesitation, she headed up the hill toward Lihue, passed discount stores, a number of small and decaying shopping blocks, a furniture store advertising a perpetual going-out-of-business sale, and the County Building, then turned left onto the Kuhio Highway. Sugar cane laid out its unrealistic green against the red volcanic dirt; the mountainsides that thrust up out of the center of the island were draped in grayish-green vegetation, peaks shrouded in scattered rags of cloud.

  She leaned back as she drove and watched the scenery flow by, a tourist in paradise. Every mile took her further into her escape, a flight into a green freedom unlike any at home. The highway curved along the shoulder of the hills, displaying a continuous panorama of cane and sea, palm and lawn, eucalyptus and volcanic cone. Within the narrow confines of primary colors the variety seemed limitless: bumps and thrusts, smooth contours and sudden surprising geographical leaps, endless variations on the color green, and beyond that the color blue. She was feeling buoyant and a little excited when she turned down the road to the Center.

  A blond guard in a surfing T-shirt leaned out holding a clipboard and asked the purpose of her visit. She told him she had read of the Center’s reputation, its contributions to the world’s understanding of tropical plants and marine biology. She said she was looking forward to this tour.

  “There are ten people on today’s tour,” the guard told her. “Usually we get professionals, botanists and biologists, sometimes amateur horticulturists. Enjoy yourself.”

  He checked her name off the list, handed her a paper badge, and showed her where to park. She wrote “Narni” on the paper and stuck it to her shirt. At the main office she joined a motley collection of middle-aged Americans with sunburns.

  “Are we all here?” asked a very serious if somewhat nearsighted young woman in a short denim skirt, looking down at a clipboard. A mingle of amused voices answered her. She counted myopically, nodded, and smiled briefly. “Right. Then let’s go, shall we?” They trailed off behind her in a ragged line.

  The DRC sprawled over a vast wedge of ground with its base at the sea and its point in the mountains; it included all the island’s types of terrain, microclimate and vegetation. Gardens displayed many kinds of tropical plants and trees, flowers and birds, as well as exhibits of tide pools and smaller marine life.

  “One of the missions of the Douglass Research Center,” the guide announced, “is to investigate potentially useful drugs we might be able to extract from marine plants and animals. We examine everything from sea slugs and puffer fish to sponges and corals. This building is relatively new. The DRC started as a botanical garden then became, because of Mr. Douglass’s bequest, a center for biological research, including molecular and cellular biology. Now we have added the investigation into Nature’s Bounty to our mandate.”

  Narni noted the flamboyant public relations language: Nature’s Bounty!

  At the water lily exhibit she began to notice the man. He was apparently by himself, looking with a kind of intense gravity at every plant, every exhibit. She allowed herself to drift closer to hi
m, idly curious. No, more than curious. She looked at his hands. They were strong, well-proportioned, powerful hands. There was, she thought, something of the beast in those hands, so unlike Mark’s soft, manicured, tame ones; Mark’s professional hands, his long, tapering, clinical fingers, so distracted when they touched her.

  “Isn’t it fascinating?” she asked quietly. She had a pleasant voice that softened the banality of her question.

  “Yes, indeed,” the man answered. A hint of French background flavored his words. “There is so much to learn from nature, is it not so?”

  They fell into step together, examining the exhibits, talking quietly. She found herself telling him her husband was a doctor, here for a radiology convention. He took his convention seriously, she said, and attended all the sessions, leaving her to lie by the pool or take tours like this one. This was the first time she had left the hotel in four days, it was such a relief. Her husband’s name was Mark, he practiced medicine in Santa Barbara, California, they lived on a small ranch just outside of town. She had horses, played tennis three times a week, took a cooking class. She knew this made her sound dull and suburban, but it wasn’t such a bad life. She enjoyed movies, chamber music, and gardening. She had friends.

  He nodded as he walked beside her, attending to her words. She put her hand on his forearm to tell him what she had learned about the display of native ohia lehua, which grew in a variety of guises, from low-lying shrub to majestic tree, many unrecognizable as members of the same species. “It’s almost as if the tree were able to disguise itself to fit into any environment,” she said. Her name was Patricia, but she liked to be called Narni. She did not tell him why, thinking that being French he probably did not know about the Narnia books she had loved as a child.

  He smiled at her as she spoke, saying nothing about the hand she had left on his arm. Her grip tightened as she felt the cords of hard muscle there. He did seem like such a strong man, she had noticed his broad shoulders draped in a subtly tailored Palm Beach jacket. His gray slacks were also lightweight and hand tailored.

  He was a remarkably handsome man, but, she thought, not a vain one. He had assets that he employed to their best effect, that was all. So different from Mark, whose professional manner struck her suddenly as pompous.

  Her hand stayed on his forearm as they drifted along, exchanging deeper and deeper confidences.

  He told her he thought he could get to like Kauai. He had always liked islands, especially tropical islands. He had spent most of his adult life on one island or another, which accounted for his very deep, rich tan. He was truly blessed to be French, for France owned many islands, among them some of the most beautiful in the world. France had strong historic ties with others she no longer owned.

  His hands, she thought, did not really belong on a man who worked as a clerk at the French consulate in San Francisco processing visas and immigration applications. They were strong. An outdoorsman’s hands, hard-edged and competent.

  Later, up on the hillside, they could look out over the coastal plain at the ocean, blue and tranquil and inviting. Motorboats, a small yacht, a ship under tow, what looked from this distance like a dive boat, they all seemed scarcely to move at all.

  “It seems so…” She tightened her grip, as though squeezing his forearm would produce the word she wanted. But she stopped.

  “So… what?” he asked her with a smile that showed the edges of his even teeth.

  She shrugged and smiled at him apologetically. “Deceptive?” she said with a laugh.

  He started for a moment, as if he suddenly sensed a danger. “How so?” he asked softly.

  “Oh,” she made a helpless gesture, sliding her palm up to his bicep. “Ι don’t really know. It’s just that under the surface that looks so peaceful, so much like paradise, it must be like everywhere else. People have passions, fears, worries. They fight, get sick, give birth, die. You know? Yet from here it looks absolutely changeless and peaceful.”

  “Ah,” He said, relaxing. “You are a… thoughtful woman. That is very nice. I like that.” She felt a warmth she had not felt in a long time.

  They walked on. It was clear now that they would not talk about what they were going to do, though they both knew. When they stopped to examine something in the upper gardens, he looked out over the ocean, allowing the sun to shine into his eyes so he had to squint a little, hooding the gray clarity in them. His profile was clean, with elegant lines.

  Later, when they were in a broad one-story building that housed several rooms containing row upon row of aquariums, he put his arm around her waist. They had drifted through a room with a shark exhibit and another of tropical fish, and had finally come to one with shellfish and snails.

  “You see that?” he said, indicating a horizontal spiral shell moving slowly along the sandy bottom of the tank. The shell was about five or six inches long. “A cone snail. A geography cone, because the pattern looks like a map, very lovely shell, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her voice was a little thick. She leaned against him, hugged his arm to her with her own, letting him cup the soft ample flesh of her breast.

  “Watch,” he said, pointing with his free hand.

  The snail stopped moving and allowed a slender, pale worm-like organ to emerge. A school of blennies formed, darted here and there, in perfectly coordinated quick turns and shifts. They rose as one to the top, nuzzled the undersurface, darted suddenly to the far end, then returned. As suddenly as their pattern had formed, it dissolved.

  One fish drifted away and, nosed at the rock, its small oval mouth working at invisible particles. The snail did not move, but the proboscis extended an inch or so and waved slowly, as if wafting back and forth by the current.

  The fish darted an inch or two in the direction of the snail, then a fraction away. The snail slithered a bit out of its shell. The blenny, unaware, moved another inch, settled to the sand, and did not move.

  The snail’s proboscis extended toward the fish so slowly it did not appear to move at all. Cupped around the base of the serpentine organ was a sheath. There was about it such an air of animal sexuality that Narni shivered against him, despite the heat. She was not wearing a bra under her light jersey, and she could feel her nipples tighten against his fingers.

  “What’s he going to…?” she began, but the proboscis suddenly darted the fraction of an inch remaining between it and the fish, the blenny thrashed briefly, seemingly attached to the snail, then fell still, paralyzed.

  She watched in fascinated horror as the snail’s mouth distended and moved behind the fish, engulfed its tail, and millimeter by millimeter swallowed it. The mouth itself, much longer than the proboscis, now lay on the sand as the snail began to digest its meal. It looked like a miniature python extended from the shell.

  “It shoots a barbed dart called a radula into the fish,” he said softly. She trembled against him, her breathing shallow and fast. “Propelled, how do you say, hydraulically by a very effective venom, a paralytic. Fish cannot move, cannot… breathe.”

  “It’s awful,” she said.

  “No. It is the Bounty of Nature.”

  He said it without apparent irony, and her nervous laugh stopped abruptly. But her breath tightened, and their return together in her rental car was confirmed, although she did not know it until they reached the parking lot after the tour and he told her he had come by taxi.

  She drove a little recklessly, hitting some of the turns a little too fast. Sugar cane rushed past at the edge of the road, a thick green blur where the cane was mature, a red-and-green pointillist pattern where the new growth was just breaking ground. They passed the turnoff to Koloa and could see for a moment down the long eucalyptus tunnel to the south before it closed up and fell behind them.

  As she slowed on the approach to Lihue, she started to tell him that her husband had a meeting on bone scanning that would last through dinner, that she didn’t do this sort of thing as a habit, in fact this would be the first time, but
he merely pointed straight ahead, toward her hotel and she smiled shyly instead. They were staying at the same hotel, and she thought perhaps he was a radiologist too, except that he worked for the consulate in San Francisco. She smiled, recognizing her relief that he was not a doctor.

  There was a parking area before the main entrance, and he gestured abruptly. She looked at him. “I could let them park…”

  “No.”

  “Of course, you’re right.” She parked and they walked to the entrance, a modest portico that led to a long downward escalator, a trip that ended in a fairyland entry flanked by enormous Chinese vases. Suddenly the two-acre reflecting pool, with its monumental fountain of galloping horses, opened before them. Jets of water rose over sixty feet in the air.

  “Your room?” she asked huskily. The muscles in his arm jumped as he showed her the number on his room key.

  He was standing by the opened drapes of his suite looking out across the narrow hotel beach at Nawiliwili Harbor, brightly lit by the afternoon sun, when she pushed his door open. She closed it and smiled shyly. He did not move, did not turn. Beyond him, the water was dark blue, an effective contrast to the green slopes across the harbor. No boats on the other side of the park. It was a tranquil scene, almost static, as if the life had been leached from it, freezing it into the frame of the window like a work of improbable art.

  She paused a moment, then went into the bathroom. A few minutes later she paused naked in the doorway and watched him staring out the windows.

  He was examining his reflection in the window dispassionately. She thought this must be the way he examined all things he considered beautiful. She began to flesh out his character traits. His high forehead, she thought, crowned by light brown hair swept straight back, concealed knowledge both practical and arcane. His eyes, a startlingly clear gray, held both intensity and honesty. The straight, thin nose gave an impression that Norman barons lurked in his ancestry, an impression he took pains to encourage, for although it was in no way true, it had more than once opened doors to him that might otherwise have remained forever closed.