Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle

by Tim Downs

  “Mind if I walk with you?”

  “Well, I can’t outrun you.”

  “What happened today?”

  “I have a feeling you already know. I have a feeling everybody does.”

  “You make good gossip,” Beth said. “You’re a very interesting man.”

  “You said that before. I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “It’s the way you say it—sort of like when I say, ‘The secondary screwworm is a very interesting maggot.’”

  She paused. “What did happen today?”

  “I was a bad boy—I took something that didn’t belong to me.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened today? That’ll save a lot of boring repetition.”

  “You were instructed to assist in rescue operations in the Lower Ninth Ward. Instead, you recovered a body.”

  “It wasn’t ‘instead’—it was ‘in addition.’ I guess they don’t give points for extra credit around here.”

  “Were your instructions unclear?”

  “I heard what they said. I disagreed.”

  “You disobeyed.”

  “I disagreed—there’s a difference. I’m not a machine, Beth; I don’t operate by remote control. In the field I have to make my own decisions.”

  “And you decided to act in violation of direct orders.”

  He turned and looked at her. “Look—this is not like the last time, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just couldn’t walk away from it, okay? It was the right thing to do, and I couldn’t let it go.”

  “I know.”

  They walked the rest of the way without speaking.

  “Well, here we are,” Nick said. “I suppose a gentleman would walk you home, but after all, the place is surrounded by razor wire.”

  “That’s okay. I know the way back.”

  She started back toward the DPMU, but a few yards away she turned back again. “Will you be able to sleep?”

  “The sleep of the righteous,” Nick said. “No problem.”

  “I’m serious. Will you be able to sleep?”

  “I will if you stop talking and go away.”

  “All right,” she said. “Good night.”

  Nick watched her until she reached the warehouse, then swung open the trailer door and crawled inside. On the floor to the left, Jerry was already in a deep sleep. He lay on his back with his chin slung low like a hammock; a deep, moaning sound was coming from somewhere inside him.

  Nick nudged his shoulder. “Hey. Jerry.”

  “Wha— Are we there yet?”

  “Wake up, you big snitch.”

  Jerry propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed his face. “What’d I do?”

  “‘According to Jerry, you went out of your way to find the body,’” Nick recited from memory. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Hey, he asked me. What was I supposed to do, lie?”

  “Next time, just leave out a few of the details—that’s called editing. Where’s the boy?”

  Jerry pointed toward his feet.

  On the floor at Jerry’s feet, two equipment bags lay end to end. Nick slid one of them aside and found J.T. curled up in a tangle of blankets. The boy slept so soundly that he didn’t even appear to breathe; Nick considered laying two fingers on his carotid artery just to make sure.

  “Poor kid,” Jerry said. “He was out cold the minute his head hit the pillow.”

  “Did anybody see him come in?”

  “Nah—they were all asleep before we got here. Most people work normal hours.”

  “Most people are boring.”

  “He can’t keep coming here, you know. It’s against the rules.”

  “He slept on a rooftop last night, Jerry—if he slept at all. What was I supposed to do, leave him there on the levee with a bunch of strangers? I thought the kid deserved a good night’s sleep.”

  “Doesn’t everybody,” Jerry said.

  “Well, sleep fast. We’ll need to get up early to sneak him out of here before the rest of them wake up.”

  “I thought the plan was to take him up to the Family Assistance Center.”

  “We’ll do that first chance we get,” Nick said. “Right now he needs to sleep.”

  Jerry heaved over onto his side, and Nick slid the equipment bag back in place to conceal the boy’s presence. His own sleeping bag was across the aisle to the right; he didn’t bother to climb into it, nor did he remove his glasses. He just rolled onto his back and lay there, staring at the bunk above him.

  11

  Wednesday, August 31

  Nick unlocked the chain from around the trunk of the tree and tossed it into the boat; it landed in the aluminum hull with a loud clank. The old magnolia was a perfect place to conceal the boat the night before, just fifty feet from the point where St. Claude Avenue became submerged but in water still shallow enough for wading. Nick slid the boat out from under the spreading limbs and swung it around toward the street.

  The old man had been nice enough to loan them the boat—too bad he didn’t throw in the trailer as well. It wouldn’t have helped anyway, Nick thought, because they had no vehicle to tow it with. DMORT maintained a small motor pool of cars and vans to shuttle team members the sixty-five miles to the city and back, but none of the cars had a trailer hitch—and none of them were scheduled to leave St. Gabriel while it was still dark. If you wanted to keep those hours—Nick’s hours—your only option was to hitch a ride on one of the countless relief vehicles constantly ferrying back and forth. This morning they had shared the cab of a FEMA semi hauling pallets of water and supplies into the city. Jerry and J.T. had slept the whole way down, leaning up against each other like tent poles, while Nick learned what he could from the driver about conditions in the city.

  The whole downtown was underwater, the driver told him; the Seventeenth Street Canal had a two-hundred-foot-wide breach in it, flooding the city with millions of gallons from Lake Pontchartrain. Charity Hospital needed to be evacuated, he said, and so did Tulane University Hospital just across the street, with eleven hundred patients between them. Both hospitals had been on emergency backup generators since 2:00 a.m., and the water was rising an inch every five minutes. Soon the water would drown the generators and all power would cease—lights, air-conditioning, even the ventilators of those on life support.

  Jerry and J.T. waited for Nick at the edge of the water. When the boat came within reach, they both grabbed the bow and dragged it up onto the pavement with a grinding crunch that sounded especially abrasive in the morning stillness.

  “Don’t you get tired of doing all the work for him?” Nick asked.

  “He’s just a kid,” Jerry said.

  “I was talking to the kid.”

  Nick emerged from the water like a robot, growing heavier with each plodding step; on the roadway, he peeled down the heavy rubber waders and wrestled them off.

  Jerry hoisted the gas can into the boat and reattached the fuel line. They had taken the empty can back to the DPMU the night before, stopping to refill it at a gas station in St. Gabriel. In New Orleans there was no fuel to be found—unless they siphoned it from the gas tank of an abandoned vehicle.

  “How long you figure we’ll have to keep doing this?” Jerry asked.

  “Beats me,” Nick said. “The driver said that FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Teams should start arriving today. I figure they’ll have to set up some kind of fuel depot.”

  “There’s a boat,” J.T. said suddenly.

  “Where?”

  “Can’t see it yet. Over that way, I think.”

  Soon both men could hear the high-pitched drone of an outboard motor echoing across the water. Seconds later, a sleek black rescue boat emerged from between two houses and headed toward the ramp.

  “It’s that LaTourneau guy,” Jerry said. “Man, he’s out early.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “Looks like he’s just getting back.”

  Th
e boat was laden with seven passengers and the NOPD officer at the helm; there were no other rescue workers aboard. LaTourneau swung the boat around and lined it up with the avenue; Nick and Jerry stepped aside as he gunned the motor and drove the boat up onto the pavement, killing the engine and rocking it forward at just the right moment.

  “Cool boat,” J.T. said.

  Jerry nodded. “That’s what I said.”

  “How’s fishing?” Nick called to LaTourneau.

  “Not bad,” he called back. “Looks like all you boys got is a minnow.”

  “Maybe—but he’s a keeper.”

  The passengers began to swing their legs over the Zodiac’s rubbery sides and slide down onto the pavement. There were men, women, and children in the group, but almost no possessions among them.

  “Listen up!” LaTourneau shouted to the group. “This is as far as I can take you. The Superdome has been opened up as a refugee center; you’ll find food and water and shelter there.”

  “What happens to us then?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know, sir. I imagine they’ll be bringing in buses to take you somewhere else.”

  “What about our houses? Our things?”

  “I don’t know. Right now, we’re just trying to keep people alive. You all know where the Superdome is: Take St. Claude Avenue as far as you can and then follow the river if you have to. That’ll be the highest ground.”

  They all looked at one another; none of them appeared to have any better options. Some of them shook their heads, some of them joined hands, and they all slowly started up the road toward the bridge and the city beyond—all except for J.T.

  Nick looked at LaTourneau. It was barely dawn, and the man was already returning with his first load of evacuees. He wondered what time LaTourneau had put in; he wondered what time he had knocked off the day before—or if he had quit at all. In the stark morning sun Nick could see dark circles under his eyes, the first telltale hint of fatigue, but the man still moved quickly, brusquely, as if there were no limit to his energy. His first boatload of grateful passengers had barely set their feet on dry ground, and LaTourneau was already standing ankle-deep in the water beside his boat, preparing to shove off again.

  “Hold on a minute,” Nick said. He walked over and extended his hand. “Nick Polchak—we met yesterday morning, but I didn’t catch your name.”

  “The name’s LaTourneau,” he said. “You’re the guys collecting bodies.”

  “That’s right. I’m a forensic entomologist; Jerry there runs a funeral home up in Indiana. The little guy, his name is J.T.”

  LaTourneau looked down at him. “Run along now, son. You’d better stay with the others or you’ll get lost.”

  “You ain’t my father,” J.T. grumbled, “and I ain’t your son.”

  “We told him we’d help him find his father,” Nick said. “They got separated in the storm.”

  LaTourneau looked at him. “How do you plan to do that?”

  “We’re working on it,” Nick said. “By the way, I was wondering: How many officers does the NOPD have, anyway?”

  “About sixteen hundred. Why?”

  “This is the second morning I’ve seen you out here all by yourself.”

  “It’s a big city.”

  “It’s a big neighborhood too. How many homes did you say—about six thousand? Seems like a neighborhood this size would merit more than one officer.”

  “Like I told you yesterday: We have no way to coordinate.”

  “I was talking to a guy driving a FEMA rig this morning. He said he heard on CNN that half of your officers failed to report for duty after the storm.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “That’s what he heard.”

  “He’s with FEMA, and he’s complaining about us?”

  “Yeah, you’ve got a point there. Nevertheless, half of your officers—any idea what happened to them all?”

  LaTourneau glared at him. “Where’d you say you’re from?”

  “Pittsburgh, originally. Right now I’m at NC State in Raleigh.”

  “How’s the weather up there in Raleigh?”

  “Fine, I suppose.”

  “Well, aren’t you the lucky ones. That means your homes are nice and dry, and your families are safe, and you’re free to jump in your Mercedes and drive down to help out the poor folks in New Orleans. We weren’t so lucky here; maybe you’ve heard, we’ve had some rain. Our officers are a part of this city, Polchak, and we got rained on just like everybody else. We’ve got people up in Plum Orchard, and Gentilly Woods, and Pontchartrain Park—they’re all underwater just like the Lower Nine, so we’ve got officers trapped on rooftops and in attics just like the people around here. They’ve got a right to stay alive, too, don’t you think? And they’ve got a right to look after their families—maybe that’s why some of them didn’t show up. Did you ever think about that?”

  “What about your family?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t have one—that’s why I was free to show up for work. Let me tell you something about NOPD officers: They’re some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever met; they put their lives on the line every day. I know this city; I know every alley and sewer in it. I’ve been with Vice and Narcotics for almost twenty years now, and believe me—our people are the only reason this place hasn’t turned into a cesspool a long time ago. So if you don’t mind, people are waiting—it can hit 130 degrees in some of these attics.”

  He shoved the Zodiac back into the water and jumped aboard. Once the craft floated free of the pavement, he started the engine and roared away.

  “He thinks I drive a Mercedes,” Nick said. “Welcome to public education.”

  “Why do you do that?” Jerry asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Annoy people.”

  “It’s a gift, I suppose.”

  “Well, get off his back. He’s trying to do his job, just like you and me.”

  “I didn’t say those things just to annoy him, Jerry. The NOPD’s got sixteen hundred men, and all they can muster is one lousy officer for the whole Lower Nine? The best thing he could do right now is round up some other guys—mobilize some resources. What’s he going to do, save the whole city by himself ?”

  “You heard what he said: The NOPD’s a part of the city too. They got socked in like everybody else. He’s got no way to ‘mobilize resources.’ At least he’s out here doing what he can.”

  “I’ve got to hand it to him, he sure puts in the hours. I hope the NOPD pays overtime.”

  They heard automobile engines behind them now and looked back up the road. Two vehicles hauling boat trailers were just coming across the bridge. One vehicle was emblazoned with the logo of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries; the other was packed with uniformed soldiers of the National Guard.

  “Looks like we’re finally getting reinforcements,” Jerry said.

  “It’s about time. We better shove off and give them some room.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Jerry said, motioning Nick aside. “What about the boy?”

  “What about him?”

  “Are we taking him with us again?”

  “What else can we do with him?”

  “Nick, this is dangerous work.”

  “So is standing on a rooftop in a hurricane. So is sitting in an evacuation center with thousands of angry people. I’d say he’s better off with us.”

  “I don’t get this,” Jerry said. “You never liked kids before—how come you suddenly want this one around? And don’t tell me it’s your fatherly instincts—bugs don’t have fatherly instincts.”

  “The kid’s got great eyes, Jerry. He can spot a cat on a rooftop at three hundred yards—can you do that?”

  “Nick, the kid’s expecting you to help him find his father.”

  “And we came down here expecting to recover bodies, but DMORT has us doing something else instead. ‘First the living,’ Denny told us. Well, the boy’s in the same boat we are, Jerry—first t
he living. I’ll get around to helping him find his father, but first he has to help us.”

  “Help us? How?”

  Nick turned and nodded to the two approaching vehicles. “That’s two more search-and-rescue teams, and there are bound to be more on the way. More boats mean more people; more people mean more accountability. We’ll be crossing paths with other boats now, and they’ll be watching what we’re doing. We’re supposed to be rescuing people—how can we be doing that if our boat is always empty? Don’t you see? As long as the boy is with us, it’ll look like we’re doing what we’re supposed to.”

  “What will we be doing instead?”

  “Looking for bodies, of course.”

  Jerry did a double take. “Nick, are you out of your mind? You know what Denny told you last night.”

  “Don’t rupture a blood vessel, Jerry. By this afternoon they’ll have a dozen SAR teams searching for survivors in the Lower Nine; how many people are checking for bodies? We’re working against the clock, too, you know. That body we found yesterday only had a handful of maggots left on it—in another day there would have been none at all. Think about it, Jerry: The very first body we looked at turned out to be a possible murder victim—how many others might be out there? We have to look—you know we do.”

  “You’re going to get me in trouble again, aren’t you?”

  “When did I ever get you in trouble?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I mean serious trouble.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I mean bone-breaking, bloodletting, life-threatening trouble.”

  “You mean you haven’t killed me yet.”

  “Now that’s a more positive perspective.”

  Jerry shook his head. “You’re using the kid. You can’t do that.”

  “I’m helping him, and he’s helping me.”

  “Are you really going to help him, Nick? I need to know that. You need to promise me too.”

  “Look,” Nick said. “Tonight we’ll take him back to St. Gabriel again, and we’ll get a technician to come down from the Family Assistance Center in Baton Rouge. They’ll take down his family information and do a cheek swab and get him into their database—that’s the best way to start looking for his dad. Fair enough?”