by Tim Downs
“So I hit him. Just once. Right between the eyes. Not hard enough to kill him, just hard enough to shut him up. I needed some quiet, I needed some time to think. And then I looked at him lying there on the ground, and I knew what I had to do. It was just like Al Salman again. I didn’t plan it; I didn’t want it to happen—life just gave me the chance to straighten things out again, and I had to choose. I couldn’t just wish and hope that Jim would keep his big mouth shut, I had to make it happen. I had to be strong again.
“So I pulled out his gun, and I put it in his hand. And I was strong.
“But I didn’t have a plan, so I had to think. I went back in the cabin, and I thought—I thought for a long time—and I figured it all out. I loaded him in the trunk of my car, and then I laid him in the meadow back here in Rayford. I knew some hunter would find him, and I knew they would call it a suicide. And I knew you would weep and wail and mourn, and then you would get over it. And then everything would finally be the way it was supposed to be.”
Then, for the first time, the statue spoke. Without turning, without even moving, a tiny voice drifted up from Kathryn, half whisper and half-moan.
“Amy … You murdered Amy, didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t murder,” he grumbled. “I just put her out of her misery like her old cat. I had to. I didn’t know what Jimmy told her before he left; I didn’t know what she might tell you.”
“You killed Teddy too. And Mrs. Gallagher. Oh, Peter, Mrs. Gallagher.”
“You made me do that!” the sheriff snapped back. “You made me do it when you wouldn’t listen to me, when you got that Bug Man involved in all this.”
“You knew what that fly would prove,” Kathryn said. “That Jimmy died in Georgia and not in North Carolina. Then it wouldn’t be a suicide—then there would be questions.”
The sheriff said nothing.
“Do you know why it didn’t work, Peter? Because you were weak—weak in the mind, just like you’ve always been—weak in the mind and sick in the soul. When you went to the lab and let the fly escape, you thought you had fixed everything. But you didn’t. The fly left behind a little capsule, a kind of cocoon, and from that Nick still figured out where the fly came from. And when you were at my house, guess what Nick was doing? He was checking the radiator of your car, looking for flies just like the one he found on Jimmy’s body. He found them, Peter, he found them. And when he shows them to the authorities, there’ll be all kinds of questions. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the doc,” he shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll be showing anything to anybody. I stopped in at the lab on the way over—quite a mess. I don’t think Benjamin had a very hard time catching up with a blind man, do you?”
Kathryn began to tremble.
“You’re right about one thing,” he said. “After the doc’s death there’ll be a lot of questions asked around here—more than I’ll be able to explain. That’s why I can’t go back. That’s why it all has to end here.”
The sheriff pulled the slide twice more. Now only two bullets remained.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to understand—all this has happened because I love you. Because I was willing to be strong, because I was willing to do the hard thing for both of us.” He looked down at the gun. “And I’m going to do the hard thing again, Kath—for both of us.”
“You can kill me,” she trembled, “but we still won’t be together. Because I’ll be in heaven with Andy, and you’ll be frying in hell.”
“Don’t know much about hell,” he said. “But I figure there’s no heaven if I can’t be with you.”
He reached out and stroked her hair. A pair of bees circled her head once and buzzed away.
“I would never hurt you, Kath. I know how to make this quick and easy. I hope you understand that I can’t leave you behind. If I did someone else might have you—and that can never be. We were supposed to be together, Kath—and if we can’t live together, then …”
He slowly raised the Beretta and placed it at the base of her skull.
“Let me turn around,” she whispered. “Let me see you one last time.”
He lowered the gun.
She slowly turned.
In front of her she held a small, square crate covered with fine wire mesh. It was a bee crate—and it was empty.
She dropped it. It bounced away at her feet.
Around her torso, suspended by two white shoestrings, was a piece of screen wire rolled into the shape of a small tube. Inside was a single honeybee with an abdomen twice the size of an ordinary bee.
It was the queen.
And on the queen, on the wire tube, on Kathryn’s waist and breasts and arms and neck, three thousand honeybees swarmed in one buzzing, roiling mass of black and gold.
The sheriff gasped. His arms went limp, and the gun slipped unnoticed from his hand. He stared in utter disbelief—yet there she stood, her soft, pink skin swarming with thousands of wriggling, crawling creatures of her own private hell.
Kathryn slowly raised her arms above her head and then stopped. Her face was pale and rigid, her lips were pressed tight shut, and her eyes were fixed in a scream of terror and rage and indomitable will.
And Peter knew that she was right, that he was weak, and that he had never been worthy of this woman. He lowered his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. There was nothing left to say.
An instant later Kathryn threw her arms around his neck and squeezed.
There was a muted roar.
There was a muffled crunch.
And there was an overwhelming odor of smashed bananas.
Kathryn drifted in a velvet void. She turned without turning and looked about. It was black, everywhere black, nothing but black. She strained her eyes to stare deeper into the darkness, but she had no eyes to strain. She raised her hand to feel for her face, but she had no face, and no hand either. She was only a mind, floating free in the starless night of sleep—or was it death? There was no pain, there was no care, but she was somehow still aware. And somehow she knew that the darkness had an end, that if she had hands to reach out with she would find walls not far away—cool walls, smooth walls, curving up like a vaulted dome above her. And somehow she knew that she was staring at the inside of her own skull.
Then a buzzing sound whizzed by very close, a sound that some ancient instinct told her should evoke fear—but there was no fear, not here. There was a second buzz, then another, and each one struck the wall of her skull with a bright white spark and ricocheted back even louder and closer than before. The buzzing grew louder, and the sparks flashed brighter until it all blended together into one blinding, sizzling light. And suddenly the walls were gone, and the light came streaming in.
And the light brought back the pain.
Now a face appeared above her in the light. It was an odd face but nevertheless a strong and good face, and it was strangely familiar. The face began to soften and come into better focus. In the center was a pair of enormous spectacles.
She reached out her hand to touch the face, and she had hands again.
“Hello, Dorothy.” Nick smiled down at her. “Welcome back to Kansas.” He sat beside her on the edge of her hospital bed and cradled her right hand in his.
She looked up into the familiar brown orbs that bobbed and floated behind the glass—only now they floated in a storm of red and black that spiraled out from under his glasses like the fingers of a hurricane. Across his forehead was a long white bandage spotted with dots of scarlet.
She reached up and touched his cheek.
“Are you … alive?” she whispered, her lips barely moving.
“More or less—if you call this living.”
“You look terrible.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Her eyes drifted from his face, to her hand, to her arm. The hand looked normal enough, but on her forearm she saw a spatter of reddish spots and blister
s that increased in size and number until her entire upper arm seemed to erupt in a cascade of fleshy bumps and moguls. She reached up and felt about her face and neck. Her neck was a continuous mass of lumps and welts. Her cheeks were puffed and bloated, and her bloodshot eyes peeked out from their swollen sockets like two cranberries from a muffin.
“How do I look?”
“Lumpy is the word that comes to mind. But on you it looks good.” He leaned back for a moment, taking a better view. “You look like one of those Cabbage Patch Dolls, remember?”
She slowly rolled her eyes, then closed them.
“Those were very popular, you know.”
“How long have I—”
“Been away? About three days. Not bad considering you took about a thousand stings, mostly to the torso. The doctors stopped counting at seven hundred, but I counted more.”
She raised one eyebrow.
He shrugged. “I had some time to kill. A thousand stings is nowhere near the record, but still very impressive.” He leaned forward and gently brushed a stray wisp of auburn from her forehead. “I’m afraid your friend the sheriff didn’t fare as well.”
“What happened?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
She hesitated for an instant—only an instant—and then nodded.
“My guess would be he was unconscious before he hit the ground and dead within a minute—two at the most. You were very thorough. He took about as many stings as you did, but it didn’t take a thousand to kill him, just two or three. I warned him to stay away from bees. I should have warned him to stay away from women who wear them.”
She smiled, and it hurt.
For a minute he said nothing more. He just sat staring, slowly shaking his head. “Well,” he said abruptly, “I’d say your entomophobia has improved considerably.”
Another smile, another shooting pain.
She touched his face again. “He told me you were dead.”
“He told you that?”
“He saw the lab. He said it was a wreck.”
“Well that’s true. Of course, it was a wreck before. I think he was referring to the screen door. I had a little trouble finding the doorknob, so I had to run through it.” He paused. “Or maybe he was talking about my scorpion collection. I’m still looking for a few of them.”
Kathryn’s eyes widened.
“I was a little careless on the way to the office,” he said. “It seems I accidentally spilled my collection of north African fat tails on the floor—and I’m afraid the deputy had the unfortunate experience of falling down on them.”
She winced.
“It was heart failure or possibly respiratory collapse—probably both. He lasted less than an hour, but it was a very long hour.”
“Poor Beanie,” she whispered.
“The deputy’s cousins have already claimed his body.”
“And Peter?”
Nick shrugged. “No wife, no family, and no friends left, either. Nobody seemed to want the sheriff’s remains. Don’t worry, it’s all been taken care of.”
She took a moment to close her eyes and rest.
“Ronny,” she said suddenly. “Ronny was the supplier.”
“I figured. If the deputy couldn’t drive himself to Teddy’s trailer, somebody else had to do it—somebody who also had an interest in seeing Teddy dead. The sheriff was occupied; that left only one other interested party: the supplier. After all, if the sheriff went down, he could take Ronny down with him. I’ll bet Ronny was more than happy to drive. We’ll have to see what we can do about Ronny.”
“I don’t think anyone’s going to find Ronny.”
“The sheriff?”
She nodded.
“Very thoughtful of him. Saved us a lot of trouble.”
She pointed to Nick’s bandaged forehead.
“This? I was attacked by a Quercus falcata,” he said solemnly. “That’s a red oak to you. I ran into a tree—a very hard one. Which reminds me … I passed out in the tree. They never would have found me if you hadn’t made it back to the lab and given the police my general direction. After all you went through, you were still able to make a phone call?” Nick let out a whistle. “In Pittsburgh, you are what we call ‘one tough chick.’”
Kathryn looked up at him. “So what happens now?”
“You mean the investigation? We take the evidence we have to the authorities—not the ice cream man this time, the real authorities. The puparium should still be in the lab, and I’m betting the sheriff didn’t have time to dispose of my shirt, so we can recover the specimens I collected from his radiator, too. That should be enough to request an exhumation, and then the medical examiner’s office in Chapel Hill will look for further evidence.”
“So now I know,” she said sadly.
“So now you know. How does it feel?”
She said nothing.
“If it’s any consolation,” Nick said, “we proved that your friend didn’t take his own life. It turns out your hunch was right after all.”
“So was your sense of smell. About Peter, I mean.”
“And you’re off the hook. You may have hurt your friend’s feelings, but you didn’t drive him to an early grave. Too bad Amy’s not around to hear that.”
She paused. “And I found out something I thought I never would. I found out what happened to Andy.”
He squeezed her hand.
“Most important,” he said brightly, “you avoided a possible marriage to a deranged megalomaniac.”
“What? Did you propose too?”
“Not likely.” Nick smiled. “Proposing to you seems to be a definite health risk.”
Kathryn looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. “All in all, it was a good week’s work.”
“We worked pretty well together,” he nodded. “Which reminds me … Now that Teddy’s gone I’ll be needing a new assistant, and … well, I was just wondering …”
She blinked.
“… if you’ll be paying me anytime soon. It takes a lot of money to hire a research assistant, you know.”
She glared at him. “I’ll pay you,” she said crossly. “I said I’d pay you and I will. Twenty thousand dollars.”
“Plus expenses,” he reminded her.
“What expenses?”
“My car. Destroyed in the line of duty. Destroyed by you personally, I might add.”
“I barely scratched it!”
“The windshield is gone. The right door fell off. The rear fender is missing. There’s a bullet hole in the backseat. And after you left it, with the sheriff’s assistance it burned to the ground.”
She covered her face and let out a snort like a startled mare.
“I find your lack of respect for the dead alarming,” Nick said. “I have no choice but to bill you for the full replacement value of the vehicle. That brings your current total to twenty thousand and thirty-seven dollars. That might seem a little high, but I had a half of a pizza in the backseat.”
She laughed in spite of herself. It was agonizing, healing laughter.
“And I don’t take checks,” he frowned. “Not from your bank anyway.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
“You called me Kathryn,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“In front of the lab. When you said we had to separate, you called me Kathryn—not Mrs. Guilford.”
“That’s right, I did, didn’t I?”
“I remember something Teddy taught me. The first principle of taxonomy is: Never mind what a thing appears to be, what is its true nature? Well now I know for sure that I’m not ‘Mrs. Guilford’ anymore. I’m Kathryn again. Just plain Kathryn.”
“Kathryn,” he repeated. “That will take some getting used to.”
“Try it out from time to time. It’ll grow on you.”
He smiled again, and then he rose to leave.
“Do you have to go?” she said.
“I’m afraid so. I have another client who requ
ires my attention.”
“Another client? Already?”
On the extreme western boundary of Holcum County, in a remote area of old abandoned home fields, a pale green Quonset hut sits at the end of a winding gravel road. Behind the hut, across a short meadow, a dirt path disappears into the woods. Down the path, past the sagging hulk of a decomposing sow, past a mottled cadaver dressed in shreds of flannel, lies the burned-out skeleton of a ’64 Dodge Dart.
The windshield is gone. The rear fender is missing. The right door gapes open. But the trunk remains closed.
And inside the trunk, flies buzz, eggs hatch, and a thousand wriggling maggots engorge themselves on a bloated figure still wearing a sheriff’s star.
CHOP SHOP
BUG MAN NOVEL 2
For my father-in-law Bill Burns, my research assistant in Pittsburgh and Tarentum, who once climbed across a burning bony pile and lived to tell the tale. Thanks, Dad.
And for Joy—always for Joy.
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 1973
The young man set his glasses down beside the sink, then bent down and cupped handfuls of cold water against his face. He fumbled for a strip of coarse, brown paper towel, straightened, and studied himself in the mirror. You can do this, he said to himself. There’s a first time for everybody. Come on, Julian, you did a PhD in bioethics at twenty-five. You can do this.
“Good morning!” he said aloud. “I’m Dr. Julian Zohar.”
Too eager. For crying out loud, their daughter died thirty minutes ago! He replaced his glasses and turned back to the mirror.
“I am Dr. Julian Zohar,” he said solemnly. “First of all, let me say how sorry I am … how very sorry I am … how terribly sorry I am to hear about little Angela”—he picked up a file folder, flipped it open, and ran his finger down the page—“little Angelita.” Nice work, Julian. At least get the kid’s name right.
He took a deep breath, composed himself, and began again.