Beside me, talking through her mask, Graves said, “All the shitty stuff I’ve seen in this business, you’d think I’d be ready for anything. Do you have any ideas? What the hell are they? And how’d they get inside him?”
I said, “I’m not sure. Give me a second.”
Applebee’s corpse lay on a collapsible gurney in the middle of the room. He was naked. The body bag beneath him had yet to be zipped. I took a couple of steps closer to the gurney, moving as if I were approaching a ledge… or something that might strike out and bite. Not looking at her, I said to Graves, “Do you have rubber gloves my size?”
She said, “Jesus Christ, you’re not going to touch one of those things, are you?”
“Maybe. I think they’re harmless-to touch, anyway. I need a closer look.”
I held out my right hand, eyes fixed on the body, until I felt her place surgical gloves into my palm.
“I think I know what they are. I’ve seen something similar, anyway. It was in Africa.” I paused for a second. “What happened to the bandage on his ankle? It’s gone now.”
“I took it off during my preliminary examination.”
I was pulling on a glove. “Then that explains it.”
The bandage had been taped over a dime-sized hole in the dead man’s ankle. The wound was black, gangrenous looking. Protruding from the hole was the head of something that was alive, active.
I moved closer as I snapped on the second glove. Took a few more thoughtful seconds to confirm that what I was seeing appeared to be the scolex, or head, and the anterior segment of a long, white parasite. Its prostomium-the tip-was knobbed. Its ventral underbelly was flat. The dorsal was ridged and segmented.
A worm.
One of several parasitic worms-a dozen or more-sprouting from the man’s body. Their movement, in chorus, gave the corpse an appearance of macabre, auguring animation. It was one of those nasty scenes that memory etches with acid, which is why I narrowed my focus from the general to the specific.
Visually, the parasite exiting from the ankle was the least repellent, and so I concentrated on it.
The thing was pencil lead-sized in diameter. The section that had already breached the hole was more than a foot long. Another two feet still lay beneath an elevated mound of blistered skin. I watched for a while, noting details that would not be shared. The parasite writhed and undulated like a baby snake fighting its way out of an egg casing.
The observation was fitting. Applebee’s body was serving as an egg casing. He’d been a vessel; host to a feeding, breathing subcommunity of parasites.
Now that the host was dead, members of the community were fleeing. They were abandoning this cooling vessel.
Every few minutes, the woman asked did I know what they were, what the hell they could be?
Some people burn adrenal excesses by talking. She chattered away before asking again: “You really think you’ve seen these things before?”
I was standing with my hands on the base of the gurney, leaning over Applebee. I was so focused, it took me a second to realize she was waiting for an answer.
“There’s a parasite I’ve seen in… West Africa, the poorest areas-Ethiopia, Nigeria. Maybe other parts of the tropics, too, but I’m not sure. They’re called guinea worms. People get infested by drinking water that contains little tiny water fleas. They’re actually copepods-barely visible-that have fed on the parasite during its larval stage. Copepods are little crustaceans related to crayfish. All they do is eat and reproduce. They’re worldwide. Ponds, ditches, even standing water in old tires. You need a microscope to see them, so you wouldn’t know they were in a cup of water.”
Graves looked at the body, then looked away. “Those things come from water fleas?”
“No. Inside the fleas, the guinea larvae develop teeth. Once they get inside a person’s stomach, they eat through the intestinal wall. When they’ve mated, ready to release larvae, the females move through the body’s soft tissues, and finally break through the skin looking for freshwater.”
Graves said, “My God.”
“Uh-huh, an unattractive life cycle. In Africa, I saw street people who were infected. The common treatment isn’t pretty. I’ll spare you.”
When the investigator pressed for details, however, I told her what I’d seen, finishing, “The worms can be three or four feet long, so it’s the only way to prevent them from breaking off beneath the skin. Which could cause infection, maybe death.”
“Ohhh, awful,” sorry now that she’d asked. She pointed. “But how do they know which areas of the body are soft enough…? Do you see the one that’s… that’s…?”
I looked, turned away. “I see. I don’t know how they navigate. It’s an interesting example of specialized adaptation.”
“Sickening’s a better word. These things aren’t found in the United States, are they? They can’t be. I’d know about something that nasty.”
“Guinea worms aren’t indigenous to North America. I’m almost as sure that they aren’t found in this hemisphere. They aren’t supposed to be here, anyway. These are exotics. Not native to Florida.”
I added, “Exotic plants and animals thrive here. It’s the heat, all the water. Or maybe these are just similar in appearance to guinea worms; not the same species. But I think they are.”
I stood, glanced around the room. One of the detectives had recovered. He was standing, his back to us. I wanted a pan of water-not to drink, but to see how the parasite reacted to water. I decided to find the kitchen myself. Rona Graves followed, relieved to be out of the room.
As we walked, she said, “Please tell me that we can’t be infected by contact with the body. God, I don’t think I could handle the thought of having-”
“No, don’t worry. You have to ingest contaminated water. I might be able to show you why in a second.”
“They’re from Africa? Do you know if Applebee had traveled to Africa? Maybe that’s where he was infected.”
“I’ll ask his sister, because you’re right: It’s important to nail down the source. If Applebee picked them up locally, if he wasn’t studying the things for research, this county’s got a serious problem. Maybe the entire state’s got a problem.”
“How serious?”
Instead of telling her, I took a chance and demonstrated; did it to convince myself of something that I already believed was true. Witness an emaciated street child using a Popsicle stick to spool a guinea worm and you’ll never forget what the parasite looks like, how it behaves, nor what you’ve later read about it.
In the kitchen, I’d filled a glass bowl with water. Now, back in the room, I placed the bowl on the gurney next to Applebee’s ankle. After several seconds, the parasite’s senses began vectoring, its bristled scolex twisting, searching. After a few more seconds, it leaned toward the bowl, arching like a caterpillar. Then it stretched until it could insert its head into the water.
Instantly, from its mouth, the parasite began to emit a milky current that bloomed slowly, slowly, murking the bowl.
“You’re seeing why it could be a serious problem. Males die after fertilization, so these are all gravid females. The milky substance is a stream of larvae. Each female releases tens of thousands.
“Imagine them dumping many millions of larvae into a lake or river. The copepods I mentioned feed on them, and the worm begins to develop. Then you or I come along, swallow or inhale a few drops of the water. Our bodies become part of the parasite’s life cycle.”
The woman made a shuddering noise. “Did Dr. Applebee know-do victims know-what they have inside them?”
“I’ll do more research when I get home, but I think it’s asymptomatic. Maybe a low-grade fever toward the end, but that’s all until the parasite begins to exit.”
Sounding woozy, the woman said, “Oh-hhh, that’s revolting. I’ve got to get out of here.” She turned and walked toward the hallway door. “What about the deceased? Is it safe for us to bag and transport?”
I told
her I thought it was, but suggested she contact the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta right away.
“They need to get a team down here and start collecting samples. It takes the female parasite a year or so inside the host to reach sexual maturity. If Applebee was infected locally, then they’ve had at least twelve months to spread.”
The Everglades watershed begins just below Orlando as a series of lakes known as the Kissimmee Chain. Lake Toho was one of the largest lakes in the system. I didn’t tell her that the entire southern part of the state might already be infested because of the natural, slow flow of water.
No one was more aware of the Everglades’ complicated interlinkings than Jobe Applebee.
Something else I chose not to impose on Rona Graves was a request for plastic specimen bags. I wanted to harvest samples of the parasite so I could have a look under the microscope when I got back to Sanibel.
The medical investigator didn’t seem up to that.
9
LOG
(Kissimmee motel)
13 Dec. Monday
Cold front dissipating, gray jet stream clouds. Damaged my boat. Nose, shoulder, ribs ache. Dreamed of parasites, then old familiar nightmare. Awoke w/sweats.
Spoke w/Dewey 3 times this mom. Still pissed off, irritable, eager to get off phone.
List: 1. Meet Frieda, search Applebee’s house. 2. Call Laken, check on sharks. 3. Xmas presents.
Frieda Matthews told me the family seldom disclosed the truth about Jobe, he’d done so well professionally.
There was a reason he was different.
“When we first found out, I guess we were ashamed. By the time we knew there was no reason to be ashamed, he’d already made it on his own. So it didn’t seem to matter.”
Her brother had been born with Asperger’s syndrome. She said it had nearly destroyed him as a child, but then defined him as an adult. He was one of those uncommon people who found success through his handicap.
Asperger’s is a form of autism; a neurological disorder that causes developmental problems.
“Aspey people, like Jobe, have a unique view of the world because their neuron pathways develop differently. They approach problems from unexpected angles because their brains are uniquely wired. It’s like there are two different software platforms for human beings. For every thousand IBMs like us, there are two autistic Macs.”
It was a little before noon on Monday, the thirteenth day of December, the morning after I’d found Applebee’s body. A gusty north wind was pushing gray stratus clouds toward Key West. The void was filled with Canadian chill, dropping the temperature into the midfifties. Because she’d been unable to sleep after hearing about her brother’s death, Frieda had left her son and husband in Tallahassee, pointed the family SUV toward Kissimmee, and called me on the way. Would I wait there for her?
I didn’t want to spend another night away from Sanibel. But how do you say no to a twin whose sibling has just died?
I got a room at a place outside Kissimmee called Caribbean Villas-but only after first having a late-night bottle of wine with Rona, the much-shaken medical investigator.
“I usually don’t guzzle my wine like this,” she’d told me more than once. “But after witnessing something like that-my God.”
I replied, “I’ll believe it about you if you’ll believe it about me. Then maybe we can rationalize a second bottle.”
Now Frieda and I were in my leaky skiff, idling away from the marina, headed for Night’s Landing. I wore a red Gore-Tex squall jacket zipped tight. I would have worn gloves if I’d had them-water intensifies cold. I was taking my time, going slow. A sheriff’s detective said he wanted to meet us at the house and go through Applebee’s personal effects, maybe find something that would tell them why two foreigners had been interrogating the man. Also how and why he had died.
I’d told Frieda about the Russians, but not about their interrogation techniques. Also told her about the two late calls made from my cell phone.
While on our second bottle of wine, Rona and I had re-dialed the numbers. At that late hour, we’d expected to get recordings, and did.
One was the voice of a woman who said I’d reached the environmental engineering office of Tropicane Sugar. The second was a digitized message that said I’d reached the Florida offices of Environmental Protection and Oversight Conservancy, a nonprofit group, and that I should try again during regular business hours.
Neither gave the option of leaving a message.
I knew a little about them both. Tropicane was one of Florida’s largest producers of cane sugar. It was a privately owned, megadollar corporation, from what I’d read. It employed hundreds of people, maybe thousands. A major economic and political player.
Frieda said it might have been Tropicane that had commissioned one of her brother’s dioramas. He’d done work for both organizations.
The Environmental Conservancy, or EPOC, was a watchdog organization. It kept a low profile in the way of The Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It was well financed, politically conservative. It favored lawsuits over headlines, unlike more controversial nonprofits, such as Greenpeace, PETA, and the Earth Liberation Front. It was a more thoughtful group that preferred to work in the background. That was my impression, anyway.
Frieda surprised me, saying, years back, she’d been introduced to EPOC’s founder, but the meeting had had nothing to do with environmental issues.
“At the time,” she said, “he was still a practicing research physician. Dr. Desmond Stokes. A real doctor, but he had a more holistic approach to medicine. I wanted to get pregnant, but was worried because I had an autistic twin. The genetics were risky.”
Stokes had published a study that suggested that high doses of vitamins during pregnancy, combined with a diet of organic whole foods, reduced the risk of autoimmune disorders in infants. Stokes was working on the premise that autism had an autoimmune link. His research suggested neurotoxin pollutants in the environment were contributing factors.
“Heavy metals,” she said. “The sort of stuff you and I find all the time in water samples. Mercury’s the most dangerous during pregnancy. It’s everywhere-vegetables, fish, even some infant vaccines. People don’t realize. So I went to one of Stokes’s lectures. Impressive. But a very neurotic guy. What’s the phobia when a person’s afraid of germs?”
I said, “I don’t know, there’s a whole list. Germ-a-phobic?”
That got me a smile. “Whatever it’s called, he told the audience his parents were doctors who’d specialized in infectious diseases and parasitology, and they’d given it to him-the phobia. Like he was kidding, but I think he was serious. He was explaining why he wouldn’t be shaking hands, hanging out later. I signed up for what he called a ‘dietary protocol,’ which meant buying his designer line of vitamins.”
Even I recognized the brand when she said it.
She added in a wry tone, “A year or so later, I read that the state took away his medical license because of a new procedure he was trying, sheep placenta injections. Something like that. You don’t remember?”
I told her I’d been working out of the country during that time. There was an entire Florida decade missing from my memory banks.
“It was ugly. Tabloid stuff, which I followed because I felt like I’d been taken in by a quack. He moved his whole operation to the Bahamas. The vitamin company’s huge, and Dr. Stokes is now so rich that he doesn’t have to worry about strangers and their germs. Founding EPOC was maybe a PR move, but it’s also a way he can fire back at the U.S. government with lawsuits. The ‘Angry Expatriate.’ He’s been called that.”
“Did your brother know Dr. Stokes? The autism could’ve gotten them together.”
“Possible, maybe probably-now that I know he had some contact with EPOC. Jobe was big on vitamins.”
“What about Tropicane? Any friends there? Someone who might be hanging around the office that late, waiting for his call?”
&nb
sp; The woman shook her head: No. Said that Jobe being Jobe, he didn’t have personal relationships, especially with employers. He contacted clients at their office, never at home.
“But why would he call both offices that late, when he was in trouble?”
She said, “A clock meant nothing to him. Maybe someone was supposed to answer. I don’t know.”
Finally, I mentioned the guinea worms, told her that I’d found the parasite in his house, nothing more, and asked if Jobe had ever been to Africa. Could he have been doing research?
If the animal’s life cycle included water, she said, he might be studying guinea worms. But, no, he wouldn’t leave the country, and definitely not for Africa. He hated travel.
“A year or so ago, he surprised me by going to Cuba for some kind of meeting. When I asked about it, all he said was, ‘Never again.’ That’s how much he despised travel.”
Disturbing, but I didn’t react. The woman had enough to deal with.
Frieda is a lean, handsome woman who usually dresses more like a fishing guide than a respected scientist-pleated shorts, lots of pockets, baggy shirt-but on this chilly morning she wore business slacks and a suit jacket in mourning black. Her face was gaunt from lack of sleep, her brown hair dull as winter leaves. I was there for moral support, which consisted of providing a shoulder to cry on-she’d already done that a couple of times-and an attentive ear. Let her talk away some of the pain.
Talking about her brother’s disorder was part of the process. Perhaps because the subject had once been a source of shame.
As I listened, I also allowed my attention to shift to the bilge switch, periodically, and the amount of water leaking into my boat. I’d loaded it on the trailer the previous night and found a radiating crack near the starboard chine. I suspected this would be the last time I’d be aboard.
I flicked the bilge switch now, then accelerated onto a slow plane, as Frieda continued talking. “Asperger’s is a milder form of autism. Some call it ‘high functioning’ autism. Growing up, kids with Asperger’s lack basic social skills most of us are born with. They tend to focus their interest on objects, not people.
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