by John Koloen
Insects: The Hunted
A Novel
John Koloen
Watchfire Press
Table of Contents
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About the Author
Copyright © 2016 John Koloen. All rights reserved.
Published by Watchfire Press.
This book is a work of fiction. Similarities to actual events, places, persons or other entities are coincidental.
Watchfire Press
www.watchfirepress.com
www.watchfirepress.com/jk
Cover design by Kit Foster
www.kitfosterdesign.com
Insects: The Hunted/John Koloen. – 1st ed.
Print ISBN: 978-1-940708-67-6
e-ISBN: 978-1-940708-66-9
NOVELS FROM JOHN KOLOEN
Insects
Insects: The Hunted
Insects: Specimens
For more details on upcoming releases from John Koloen, please visit watchfirepress.com/jk.
1
CORPORAL TOMÉ BARROS knew in advance that the best he could hope for from his supervisors was a formal obrigado, trabalho bom feito for his efforts at recovering bodies in the rainforest. There would be no talk of promotion, much less moving into a desk job. It didn’t help that he had to contend with the endless carping of Officer Nestor Belmonte, who believed that he would never be able to afford a family as long as Barros was his boss.
At first, the assignment had promise. For several days the federal police were involved in the search for Americans trapped in floodwaters. Then, when survivors appeared of their own accord, the feds moved on, leaving the cleanup to wildlife police and the environmental agency, IBAMA. Interviews with the survivors raised questions about several deaths and led to the discovery of other bodies.
It fell to Barros, Belmonte and Hugo Martins to hike through the mud and debris, retracing the steps of the Americans based on isolated GPS coordinates and guesswork. Two of the Americans, Howard Duncan and Cody Boyd, agreed to accompany Barros to help locate the bodies of a guide, an American student and a professor. It was a dirty, sweaty business and had all the earmarkings of busy work. Barros complained that even if they found the bodies, they would not be able to recover them since the rainforest was too muddy for vehicles and his group would be on foot.
“Why not wait for things to dry out another week or two?” he’d pleaded with his lieutenant. “Then we could use ATVs. Do the job in one day.”
The lieutenant was sympathetic but insisted that the orders were coming from above and there was nothing he could do about them. His superiors wanted to see progress.
Barros would never confide in Belmonte, and Hugo Martins was new to his squad, so he simply added this disappointment to the mountain of previous disappointments that seemed to be his lot in life. If only he could catch a break.
And then there was the business of the killer bugs that the Americans kept bringing up. Even though he’d seen several eviscerated and skeletal remains, he wasn’t buying that the victims were killed by insects. Where was the evidence? People die all the time in the forest and all that’s left of them are bones, and the big shots in the agency never gave them a thought. He knew their interest stemmed from the simple fact that one of the victims was an American. It was news in Brazil and the States.
What credit did he get for locating the bodies? None, just the “thank you for a job well done,” and now he was trudging through the mud looking for the bodies of a bunch of nobodies. Oh, and if it worked out, would you find the insects that supposedly killed them? And, by the way, would you mind recovering the decomposing American so we can get the embassy off our backs?
That’s how things really worked, he fumed.
2
DUNCAN AND BOYD kept to themselves, partly because none of the wildlife officers were fluent in English and partly because Corporal Barros, with his limited command of English, had made it known that he thought they were wasting their time.
“If we wait a week or two,” he harped in English mixed with Portuguese, “we could do this the right way. Ride in on vehicles, recover the bodies instead of just marking them so that we can come back to pick them up. What sense does what we’re doing make? I ask you.”
Duncan shrugged, explaining that he and his assistant wanted to help but weren’t able to spend additional time in Brazil.
“I need to get back to my lab,” Duncan said slowly, in English.
Were it not for the language barrier, he would have explained that though his expedition was a catastrophic failure, it was important to locate living specimens of Reptilus blaberus to study and that he hoped they would come across remnants of the colony that had attacked them, though with every step they took his hope faded.
The forest floor was a junkyard of debris. The trails they had followed during the expedition were obliterated or covered over with mounds of tree branches, silt, leaves, logs, dead stinking fish and other wildlife. However, they were making good time since the flooding had subsided and Duncan was hopeful that even if they found no insects, they’d be on a plane to America in a day or two. Using Boyd’s coordinates, they located the remains of a dog and a portion of the skeleton of its owner. Coming to the place where they’d buried the guide, Javier Costa, they found a ribcage protruding from the earth.
On the second day, after a fitful night in tents, they reached the end of the road where Carlos Johnson and Fernando Azevedo had died. Barros
took great interest in the clearing made by illegal loggers, scribbling detailed notes about the extent of the operation, the partially intact road the loggers had built and the tools that lay about. Belmonte and Martins circled the area, looking for bodies while Barros and the Americans gathered around an old truck that lay half buried in mud and debris.
“Carlos was over there somewhere, wasn’t he?” Boyd said, pointing toward an area near the truck.
“I thought so,” Duncan said, cautiously approaching a pile of debris between two trees.
“I don’t see him,” Boyd said.
“You’re sure that’s the right place?” Duncan said.
“Definitely. The truck was right across from where he died.”
“But he’s not there now.”
“Maybe he is. Maybe he’s covered up.”
Duncan explained to Corporal Barros that they were looking for the body of the American.
“He died right there,” Boyd said.
“You know, a flood changes things. Maybe the body, you know, floated away,” Barros said, sounding his words carefully.
“Maybe he’s under the debris,” Duncan suggested.
3
BOYD COULD NOT bring himself to look at Johnson’s body, which the wildlife officers found wedged between trees. He was glad that they were tasked only with locating bodies and that removal would be done later when vehicles could be used. He watched as Duncan briefly looked at the mangled, stinking corpse and nodded that it was Carlos Johnson. As far as Boyd was concerned, they had accomplished their goal and should return to Manaus and from there fly home.
Belmonte and Martins counted five skeletal remains around the clearing, none of them with identification. As intent on leaving as Boyd was, Duncan felt torn at not having accomplished his goal of capturing specimens. Everywhere he looked he saw the remnants of a devastating flood and no sign of Reptilus blaberus.
Nobody wanted to spend another night camping so the party hurriedly retraced their steps to the cabin where they’d tied up the boat that had brought them from Manaus. On the hike, Duncan suggested to Boyd that they organize another expedition to capture specimens.
“You can’t be serious,” Boyd said.
“Without specimens I’ve accomplished nothing. This whole trip might just as well not have happened,” Duncan said.
“Don’t say that. Carlos is dead.”
“I know,” Duncan sighed. “Do you think they’d want us to quit? For chrissakes, they died trying to…”
“No, they didn’t,” Boyd said angrily. “They died because we got caught up in a flood. They died because we were someplace we shouldn’t have been. I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault, but they did not expect to die when we started out. This was one big fuck up and the only way to deal with it is to walk away from it.”
“You’re right, of course. I was just thinking out loud.”
4
BARROS HAD SET a brisk pace. Duncan and Boyd fell behind while Martins and Belmonte stayed just out of earshot of their leader so they could discuss their plans for retrieving and selling the gear the Americans had left behind.
The two officers had rummaged through the discarded equipment while searching for bodies. Belmonte pocketed a small video camera that he snatched from the mud. On the march back to the cabin, they talked in whispers as their boss and the Americans led the way.
“We might be able to sell this stuff on MercadoLivre,” Belmonte whispered to Martins. “Those Americans bought first class stuff. Those tents, if they’re not torn up and we can find the poles, are worth hundreds of reals.”
Martins shrugged.
“We could come back, you know, on the weekend. Might be dry enough to get out here on an ATV or something. Would be worth it. If we had an ATV,” Belmonte said.
Martins shook his head.
“Think about it what it would cost. We’d need a boat, an ATV and a trailer to haul stuff. And we’d need a trailer for the ATV, otherwise we couldn’t get it to the boat. We’re talking hundreds of reals just to get started, maybe thousands.”
“I got a cousin who’s got one. I could ask him,” Belmonte said excitedly, then frowned. “Course he’d want a cut, which would only be fair.”
Martins grimaced.
“It’s gonna cost so much we’ll end up losing money. I mean, do you have a pot of gold somewhere to pay for this?”
Belmonte shook his head.
“You’re right. It sounded good in my head but we could lose our shirts.”
“Not only that, but if we got caught we might lose our jobs. It’s a crime scene, you know.”
“Well, at least I got the camera,” Belmonte said. “It might be worth something.”
5
BECAUSE OF HIS previous involvement with the Barbosa case, and the presence of corpses, it fell to State of Amazonas civil police investigator Eduardo Dias to determine whether any crimes occurred as a result of the ill-fated Duncan expedition.
“It’s unfortunate they can’t be charged with gross stupidity,” he told his colleagues.
All that remained was to interview the surviving guide, Antonio Suarez. Dias did not have a high opinion of guides. All one needed to be a fishing guide was a boat. Most sport fishermen brought their own equipment and paid deposits for fuel, bait, food and other expenses. Dias understood that Suarez was an employee of Javier Costa, one of the victims. Although he knew nothing of Suarez, he expected him to lead an itinerant lifestyle with no permanent, full-time vocation or address. Locating him, especially given his common name, would be difficult, assuming he lived in Manaus. So he would focus on Costa. But first he would go over materials recovered by the wildlife officers who located the bodies. Because of the possibility of criminal charges, evidence that had been recovered was forwarded to the civil police. This included an iPhone that had belonged to one of the victims but had been underwater for several days. The computer jocks in his office told him to forget about recovering data from the phone.
“The wildlife officers found an illegal lumber operation,” Dias told his supervisor.
“If that’s all you’ve got, then it’s an environmental crime. Throw that back to them.”
“I still need to find this guide, and what about all the corpses?”
“Any evidence of homicide?”
“Well, the bodies were mostly just bones. You know, the Americans kept saying it was insects that killed them,” Dias said.
“I know, that’s what you said about that first body.”
“I’m still waiting for the pathologist’s report.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I’ll just keep looking for the guide, see where it goes.”
“OK, but don’t waste time on it.”
Looking over the list of names that were part of the expedition, he typed “Fernando Azevedo, Manaus” into a Google search window. In seconds a list of citations popped up, including his phone number at the Federal University of Amazonas. That was easy, he thought, while leaving a message on the professor’s answering machine.
6
HOWARD DUNCAN WASN’T expecting a hero’s welcome when he entered his office for the first time since leaving for Brazil. And he didn’t get one, having arrived on campus in the evening. Unable to have his phone replaced until tomorrow, he was dismayed to find hundreds of emails waiting for him on his desktop computer. He scanned through several pages of them and decided to have Cody Boyd, his graduate assistant, read them or assign one of the entomology department’s work-study undergrads to do it. But that couldn’t happen until tomorrow, and he was worn out from the flight from Manaus to Houston Intercontinental, followed by the two-hour drive in a rental car to his apartment just off campus.
Though he was exhausted, he’d driven straight to his office with a vague notion that sitting at his desk in familiar surroundings would somehow put every unfortunate thing that happened in Brazil behind him. Not ready to deal with his colleagues, he found comfort in leaning back
in his black Aeron and staring at the acoustic tile ceiling. He wondered whether his colleagues were aware of what had happened in Brazil.
At Boyd’s urging, he’d called Carlos Johnson’s parents from the U.S. consular agency in Manaus. They already knew their son had died in the rainforest and were curt and short in their brief conversation. Duncan sensed their anger, listened politely and offered condolences multiple times. Although he didn’t discuss it with the parents, during the flight to Houston he thought about sponsoring a scholarship in Johnson’s name.
“The family might like that,” Boyd said wistfully, sitting alongside Duncan. “But I wouldn’t bring it up yet.”
“Too soon, I agree. But it’s something to think about. Maybe you could check it out for me. You know, find out if we have to work through the dean’s office or through the administration. Whatever.”
Boyd smiled. It’s “we” when he wants me to do something and it’s “me” when he gets credit for something, he thought.
“Sure, tomorrow,” Boyd said.
7
EDUARDO DIAS HAD no problem locating Professor Azevedo’s office. The door was locked and Dias meandered through the halls in search of an administrator who could have it unlocked. By chance, in a small lounge, he asked a woman wearing a lab coat where he could go for help. A young man sitting at a nearby table looked up upon hearing the detective mention the professor’s name.
“Excuse me, sir,” the young man said, “Are you looking for Professor Azevedo?”
Dias smiled at the woman as she turned away.
“I’m looking for his office. I’m with the civil police and I’m conducting an investigation into his death.”
“It’s a sad thing. My name is Daniel Rocha and I am, or was, the professor’s assistant. I can take you to his office.”
“So you know about his death?” Dias asked.
“Oh, yeah, everybody knows. I went down there to find him.”
“Really! That’s interesting. Were you part of the expedition?”
“Oh, no, no, no. The professor left a message on the answering machine that he was in trouble and I tried to help, but as it turned out…”