by Tim Downs
“Where?”
Alena raised both hands overhead and clapped twice. A few seconds later there was the sound of laughter and trampling feet, and Phlegethon came galloping up the row with Callie clinging to her back. The dog came to a stop beside her master, but Callie just rocked and kicked her legs to try to make the dog go again.
Kathryn looked at Alena. “Do you let her do this?”
“She loves it. She’d do it all day if I’d let her.”
“What happens if she falls off?”
“I suppose she’ll dust herself off and get back on again—a pretty good life lesson if you ask me.”
She looked at Alena’s left hand; Alena was holding a handful of cotton rags torn into long strips. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re tying up my tomato plants, aren’t you?”
“I just saw a couple hanging down and I thought maybe it would help.”
“Thank you. That was kind of you.”
“I pulled a few weeds too.” Alena nodded at the dog by her feet. “Ruckus doesn’t even alert when he hears you coming anymore. I guess we’re all just one big happy family now.”
Kathryn paused. “You finished searching my fields days ago, didn’t you?”
Alena just shrugged.
“Then what are you still doing here?”
“Same thing you are. Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“You know what.”
Kathryn shook her head. “It looks to me like Nick has made up his mind.”
“No,” Alena said. “Nick doesn’t call you because he can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“That PMI Nick gave the Sampson County police—they couldn’t find any suspects. There was nobody around to kill your husband during that time, so they think maybe you did it after all. And since you’re the one who asked for Nick’s help, they think he might have been part of it too.”
“That’s insane,” Kathryn said.
“I know—but they’re looking into it, so Nick knows he can’t talk to you right now. It wouldn’t look good to the police.”
“I didn’t kill my husband, Alena. I’ll admit I was mad enough a couple of times, but I could never do something like that.”
“I believe you.”
“You do?”
“I get mad enough to kill Nick sometimes, but I haven’t—yet.”
“Thanks.”
“He hasn’t made up his mind, Kathryn. He took me out to dinner, but we ended up talking about you the whole time. He hardly ever calls me either. At least he has an excuse for not talking to you.”
Kathryn looked at Alena’s eyes. “You didn’t have to tell me this, Alena—you could have let me go on thinking that I was out and you were in. Why did you?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s like you said: A friend would tell you.”
Kathryn put her arms around Alena’s neck. “You know, I’m really going to miss you.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“I’ll tell you something else,” Kathryn said. “I’m sick and tired of waiting around for some man to get his act together. Can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Would you mind watching Callie for a couple of hours this evening? I’ve got a date.”
“With that salesman?”
“That’s right—he’s taking me to dinner.”
“I thought he was cute.”
Kathryn looked at the darkening sky. “Maybe I should cancel—with this storm coming in and all.”
“You go ahead. We’ll be fine here.”
“Well . . . okay. I guess it’s a little late to back out on him. It’ll just be for a couple of hours.”
“Take your time—and while you’re at it, find out if he has a brother. I’m sick of waiting too.”
Just then a tiny winged insect flew into Kathryn’s hair. She let out a gasp and brushed at her hair with frenzied strokes until the insect dropped out and flew away. She looked at Alena sheepishly. “Sorry. I told you—I have this thing about bugs.”
“Then you’d better get out of here,” Alena said. “There must be thousands of those things—I’ve been brushing them off all day. I think those are the bugs your salesman friend sold you.”
Kathryn looked across her fields. She could see hundreds of tiny dark specks slowly rising out of the tomato plants like sparks from a campfire, then suddenly disappearing in the gusting wind.
“I thought these bugs were supposed to eat your bugs,” Alena said. “If this wind keeps up you won’t have any left—they’ll all end up in your neighbor’s cornfields.”
“I’ll ask Stefan about it tonight,” Kathryn said. “Look—keep a close eye on Callie, will you? She doesn’t like storms. Sudden noises frighten her—thunder really freaks her out.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Alena said. “You just have a good time.”
Kathryn turned and headed back to the house. Just as she reached the door an old Chevy pickup pulled into the driveway and stopped. The door opened and Ben Owen got out.
“I think this storm is going to be a bad one,” he called out.
“Talk to your Boss about it,” Kathryn said. “See if he can do anything.”
“The Boss can do anything he wants,” Ben said with a grin, “as he sometimes likes to demonstrate.”
“Do pastors always make calls in weather like this?”
“I’m here on business. I promised you a check, remember?”
“Oh, the CSA shares. Sure—come on in.”
They stepped into Kathryn’s parlor and Ben took a seat while Kathryn went to get the paperwork.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she called from the back. “Make yourself at home.”
“Take your time. Where’s that beautiful little girl of yours?”
“She’s out in the fields.”
“Did I take you away from her? Is she all right by herself?”
“She’s fine—a friend is watching her. Callie follows her around all the time. They seem to have a kind of . . . connection.”
“You’re lucky to find someone like that.”
Kathryn returned with the CSA certificates and Pastor Owen handed her a check. “I really want to thank you for this,” she said. “It’s very . . . Christian of you.”
“What a kind thing to say. I’m glad to be able to help, Kathryn. You know, you have a very special little girl.”
Kathryn didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
She smiled thinly. “This probably isn’t the time to go into it.”
“There’s no time like the present. I don’t get by this way very often.”
She slowly sat down on the sofa beside him. “It’s just that word ‘special.’ I feel this little jab every time I hear it.”
“Why? Your daughter is special.”
“You know, I have a next-door neighbor—a man I really dislike. He once called my daughter ‘twisted’ and it made me furious. But you know something, Ben? There is something wrong with Callie, and ‘special’ is just a polite way of saying it.”
“That’s not true, Kathryn.”
“Yes, it is. My daughter was born with a brain abnormality, something that keeps her from thinking and communicating like everybody else—like I do. Callie is all I have in the world, and I may never hear her say ‘I love you’ unless I say it to her first. I can barely touch her without her screaming. That breaks my heart, Ben—sometimes I don’t think I can bear it anymore. I don’t understand—did I do something wrong? What did Callie do to deserve this? Why would an all-loving and all-powerful God allow a beautiful little girl to suffer?”
“Is it Callie’s suffering we’re talking about or yours?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not, but it’s an important distinction. Callie seems like a happy little girl, and she’ll have a wonderful life—you’ll see to that. It won’t be as easy for you. You’ll
have to watch her grow, and you’ll go through a continual grieving process as you’re forced to let go of many of the things you dreamed your daughter would do or be.”
“Ben—how do you know all this?”
He smiled. “Have you ever met my son? Joey was born with a cord prolapse—his little body pressed against the umbilical cord in the birth canal and cut off oxygen to his brain. Joey is twenty-three now and he’s taller than I am—but he thinks at about a third-grade level. But you know what, Kathryn? Joey is a very happy young man—and he’s been a genuine source of joy to us.”
Kathryn shook her head. “How do you live with it, Ben? That didn’t have to happen to your son—why would God allow it?”
“There’s a passage in the Bible that I’ve thought about many times. Jesus once encountered a man who had been blind from birth. One of his disciples asked the same question you did: ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?’ The Lord said, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.’ I’ve often thought about that blind man and how much he must have suffered. I’ve also thought about his mother and father—they must have suffered too. But Jesus thought their suffering was somehow worthwhile, because it was intended to serve a greater purpose—a purpose that the blind man or his parents couldn’t have possibly imagined.”
“You think God ‘displays his works’ through a damaged child? I think the guy needs a new line of work.”
“Everyone is damaged, Kathryn—that’s what God wants us to see. The most damaged people of all are the ones who look at Callie and Joey and can’t see how beautiful they are. God knows this is hard for you, and he cares—but something important is going on here, and he’s willing to let it happen. Every person who ever comes in contact with your daughter will come away a better person. They’ll learn something from her about life—about what’s important and what’s not. I don’t believe that God causes suffering—but I do believe he uses it to challenge our view of life and to lead us back to him. Those are the works of God, Kathryn, and they’re important—more important than anything else. Forgive me if what I’m telling you sounds superficial; it’s really a very profound mystery. I think what it boils down to is this: You’re focused on what Callie needs to learn from you. You need to ask yourself, ‘What am I supposed to learn from her?’”
42
Nick had just stepped into his car when his cell phone rang. He rolled down the window to keep the heat bearable and took the call.
“Polchak.”
“Dr. Polchak, it’s Detective Massino over in Sampson County.”
“Long time no see, Detective.”
“Yeah, same here. Listen, I thought you might like to know that we’ve cleared your friend Mrs. Severenson. We’re no longer considering her a suspect in her husband’s murder.”
“I tried to tell you. What changed your mind?”
“The nature of the shooting, the presence of the drugs, the fact that Severenson left no life insurance—it just doesn’t fit. Everything points to a third party.”
“I don’t want to sound unappreciative, Detective, but those are the same reasons you came up with the first time around. Why the need for the second look?”
“That was mostly your fault, Doc. That postmortem interval you gave us, remember? We had no place else to look.”
“About that PMI,” Nick said. “There’s a possibility it was tampered with.”
“Well, if you come up with a new one, don’t send it to me.”
“Why not?”
“Sorry, Doc, but I’ve lost a little faith in this whiz-bang forensic technology of yours. We’re gonna do it the old-fashioned way: just gradually widen the search until we come up with another suspect.”
“Great—science takes a giant leap backward.”
“At least we won’t have anybody else to blame. Just send me a bill, okay?”
“For a faulty PMI? This one’s on the house. By the way: If Kathryn is no longer a suspect, then I’m assuming you don’t mind if I contact her again.”
“Help yourself—but if you’re planning a personal visit you’d better do it fast. The weather’s getting pretty bad out here. There’s a hurricane headed up the coast, and it’s pushing a big storm ahead of it.”
“Thanks for the advice. Hey—if you manage to find that guy, let me know, will you?”
“Will do.”
Nick leaned out the window and looked up into the sky. Massino was right—the wind was picking up and the sky was darkening to the east. He tried Kathryn’s number and listened. He heard a series of beeps notifying him that his call did not go through. He tried twice more with the same result.
He started the car and headed for Sampson County.
Nick headed south through the city and took Interstate 40 east. He watched the sky as he drove. The clouds in the distance looked so dark and ominous that they seemed to blend with the horizon. He wanted to get to Sampson County before the storm hit—he wanted to talk to Kathryn and explain the situation with the police. By now she must be wondering why Nick had been avoiding her. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.
The landscape around him was flat and monotonous, interrupted only by groves of lodgepole pines and the cell phone towers that seemed to be everywhere. He passed another tower and glanced up at it. What an eyesore, he thought. It was a purely functional device that the engineers had made no attempt to beautify or conceal—just a jumble of cables and steel struts jutting into the air like a metal scarecrow. Could they make those things any uglier? Why do they have to make them so tall?
Suddenly a light went on in Nick’s mind.
He grabbed his cell phone and punched in a number, hoping that the storm rolling in from the east hadn’t yet knocked out cell towers to the west. He held his breath until he heard Nathan Donovan’s voice answer the phone.
“Nick—we were just about to call you.”
“Put your wife on the phone.”
“You know, I’m starting to feel a little left out.”
“Then put me on speaker phone so you can both hear.”
Nick heard a click and then the sound of background noise.
“Nick,” Macy said. “I’m glad you caught us. Nathan’s just about to leave the airport and I’m about to board a plane.”
“Just listen,” Nick said. “There’s a big storm moving in and it’s knocking out all the cell phones—I don’t know how much longer I’ll have a signal. I’m in my car headed southeast toward Sampson County. I was driving along looking at the cell towers and all of a sudden I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“Everything—all of it. I know what’s going on here, Macy. My tomato theory wasn’t crazy after all, but I had it wrong. This isn’t about tomatoes—it never was.”
“Nick, slow down. You’re not making any sense.”
“The cell towers gave it away. I kept looking at them, thinking, ‘Why do they have to build them so tall?’ Then it came to me: They have to build them tall so they can broadcast—if the towers were any lower, the signal would get blocked.”
“What towers? What are you talking about?”
“I could never figure out what the cordyceps was for. Why would anyone infect an insect with a fungus just to make it climb, especially when the fungus kills the insect before it can do any real damage?”
“I have no idea.”
“Neither did I, but then it dawned on me: Whoever did this doesn’t care if the tomatoes are damaged because it’s not about tomatoes. The purpose of the fungus was just to make the hornworms climb.”
“Why?”
“So they can broadcast.”
“Broadcast what?” Donovan asked.
“Oh, no,” Macy said. “Diplodia.”
“Bingo,” Nick said. “All you’d have to do is impregnate the hornworms with that corn toxin. When the hornworms climbed to the top of the tomato plants, the wind w
ould carry the spores everywhere—they’d get maximum distribution. The man who received the marijuana, Michael Severenson—his farm is completely surrounded by cornfields.”
“Nick, the hornworms you found—the ones you collected from that farm—are you saying they were carrying the Diplodia toxin?”
“I don’t think so. I think the whole thing was just a test to see if the technique would work—just to see if the hornworms would survive the shipment.”
“In marijuana?” Donovan said. “That’s just crazy.”
“Is it? Think about it, Donovan. A down-on-his-luck guy named Michael Severenson thinks he can make a quick buck in the marijuana business—so he puts the word out that he’s looking for a supplier. Pretty soon a supplier contacts him. He offers Severenson the deal of a lifetime—a price too good to pass up—because this supplier isn’t interested in making money. He’s only interested in finding out if a shipment of tobacco hornworms can survive the trip from Colombia to the U.S.
“When the first shipment arrives Severenson breaks it open and sees that it’s ruined—the whole thing is a soggy, moldy, egg-infested mess. He’s furious; he knows he can’t sell the stuff—who would buy it? He thinks he’s been ripped off, but he knows there’s nothing he can do about it. What could he do, call the police?
“So what does he do with a couple of kilos of worthless marijuana? He can’t burn the stuff—it’s wet and the smell would be a dead giveaway. So he just throws it out—and that’s exactly what the supplier wanted him to do. The eggs hatch, the cordyceps kicks in, the hornworms climb anything they find nearby, and the Diplodia is released into the air.”
“Nobody would ever know where the corn fungus came from,” Macy said. “I just got off the phone with a man from the USDA—an expert on Diplodia. He told me that the fungus ‘overwinters.’ He said you could spread it right now, and nobody would even know it’s there until next year’s harvest.”
“It’s a great way to cover your tracks,” Donovan said. “By the time the fungus appeared, the perpetrators would be long gone, and the evidence would have long since disappeared.”
“It’s very clever if you think about it,” Nick said. “Why smuggle something yourself when you can get somebody else to smuggle it for you—somebody who wants to avoid the authorities just as much as you do? Talk about special delivery.”