Dead of Night, page 7
“I’ve read there’s a way by measuring the body’s core temperature—”
“Yes, I’ve already done that, but not with any . . .” She paused to organize her explanation. “Let me put it this way. After somatic death—that’s when the body as a whole stops functioning—a corpse’s core temperature can remain normal for one, even two, hours afterward, depending on conditions. Then it drops by one to one and a half degrees per hour. That’s what you’re talking about. I did my preliminary examination at eleven-thirty. Applebee’s temp was thirty-five Celsius, which is only two degrees below norm. See what I mean?”
Intentionally ignoring the point, I said, “Then he could have died half an hour or so before the girl came on scene. What a relief if Melinda heard that. It might spare her one hell of a lot of emotional turmoil down the road.”
Ms. Graves began to chuckle, her tone saying, Okay, you win.
I said, “It’s a good cause.”
“You’ve never met the girl before, Ford?”
“Nope. But she needs help.”
“Are you always so persuasive? If the motivation wasn’t so noble, I might be offended. Instead, I might let you persuade me to have a cup of coffee after we’re done. There’re a couple of all-night places near Kissimmee. But we can’t stay long. I’ve got an early call.”
I said, “I’d like that. I really would. But there’s another detective coming to talk with me, and it’s already close to midnight.”
The woman was nodding, looking at me, stroking her brown cheek, amused. She waited for a while, letting me see that she knew something I didn’t, before asking, “Why can’t men just come out and say that they’re already involved with a woman? Is it because they want to leave their options open? Or is it because they’re embarrassed?”
“Embarrassed?”
“Embarrassed to be in love.”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Not until I asked you out for coffee. That expression on your face. Talk about panic. For a second, I thought you might run away and hide.”
“For the record, Ms. Graves, the answer would have been yes. Under different circumstances.”
“Rona.”
“Rona.”
It was true. I’ve met enough decent, interesting women over the years to wish that we lived lives proportionate in number to the number of strangers we’d like to get to know better.
The woman gave me a fraternal pat on the shoulder. “You really are a persuasive one. The professor type, but with charm. I’ll speak with the girl. You’re right. It could be a good and healthy thing for me to do. If Her Highness the constable reads the official report, though—well, there’s no way to control that.”
My cell phone began to ring as I thanked her. Watched her walk across the lawn toward Applebee’s brightly lighted house.
With the phone to my ear, from across eleven hundred miles of America, I listened to my old workout pal, my lover, and the expectant mother of our unborn child say, “Ford, what bullshit excuse do you have this time? Have I told you lately what a gigantic pain in the ass you are? If I haven’t, let me say it again just to be sure you’ve pulled your head out of your butt long enough to listen.”
I waited until she’d repeated herself before I replied with affection, “Hello to you, too, dear Dewey Nye. You expect to kiss an infant with that sailor’s mouth of yours?”
“You’d give a week’s pay to get a wet one from me.”
“More.”
“Really. Then I may start charging.”
She could. Dewey is a very kissable woman: Blond, fit, five-ten, and 160 pounds or so of raging, self-reliant pregnant female. She was once ranked among the top-ten tennis players in the world, and plays mostly golf now, beach volleyball, and some racquetball. Still competitive and outspoken. It’s hard to tell from her locker-room vocabulary, but she’s also intuitive and sometimes overly sensitive.
“How much would you pay?”
It was fun talking with her. Nice not to be locked inside my own brain, launching from a ski ramp over and over, seeing Applebee in the closet, so I played along. “Money is so awkward between friends. I was thinking more of a barter system. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. So to speak.”
“Oh sure. Take it out in trade. Trouble is, it’s tough to remember what you look like. I see you so seldom. Or even hear from you.”
I thought, Uh-oh. She wasn’t playing anymore.
“I’m serious, Doc. I got a bellyful of baby, and I can’t carry the load alone.”
“Dewey, I tried to call twice this morning, got that damn recorder. And my evening has been—unbelievable.”
“Bite me, Thoreau. So what’s your excuse? It’s ten o’clock in farm country, which is beddie-bye time, sport, for those of us ladies who happen to be knocked up.”
She was calling from the little farm she’d inherited outside Davenport, Iowa. It’s a house and barn on two hundred acres where the Mississippi River flows west, then turns sharply southward toward Missouri. Cornfields, rolling hills, white two-story houses, red barns, hickory and oak, narrow gravel roads. Because she was pregnant, Dewey had decided the family farm was the right place to be.
“A good luck sorta deal,” she explained it. “Something I can feel, but can’t explain.”
It was one of those instinctual judgments that I’m incapable of understanding, so take pains not to contest. Why risk offending someone you care about?
So I’d been commuting to Iowa when my schedule, and my lab work allowed—not often enough, obviously. Flying back and forth between the west coast of Florida and Quad City International Airport, Moline, Illinois, at least once a month. When I wasn’t visiting, I telephoned often, and always, always just before bed.
I apologized again, adding, “Trust me, you’ll understand when I explain. Not now, though, Dew. Tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
She didn’t want to let it go, but at least sounded playful again. “Tomorrow, huh? Why don’t you let me guess? You probably had those Coke bottle glasses of yours glued to some test tube. Or maybe you discovered some kind of insect that’s new to science. If that’s what it is, I hope the thing crawls out of the jar and bites you on the ass. Or on something that’s a lot more delicate.”
The woman cracked herself up. She was making her familiar chortling noise, as I replied, “Nope, Dewey, I keep that particular item reserved for you. Only you.”
“You’d better, Thoreau. If you don‘t, I’ll . . . I’d get you blind drunk one night, then tattoo my name on that pecker of yours. ‘Dewey Aubrey Nye’ ”—she spoke louder to prevent me from interrupting—“the whole thing. Middle name and all. That way, when you’re in some freezing locker room all shrunken up, or just before you started boinking some new chick, she’d look and see DAN. My initials in capital letters. Get it? She’d be like, ‘Hey, get this fruit loop away from me!’ Like some sweetie boy had branded you. Your own special butt buddy named Danny Boy!”
Dewey has lived as a gay woman, so maybe that’s why she uses language she wouldn’t tolerate from outsiders. Not that she seems to worry about offending. You never know what she’s going to say or do next. It’s one of the reasons I like her. The only predictable thing about Dewey Nye is that she always does the unexpected. Each and every day, she reinvents herself in some small way—a new quirk, a favorite new word, an unexpected interest. Every morning, she opens the door to a secret little carnival that is going on inside her head and chooses a different ride to try, a new attraction to investigate, or flavor to taste.
If you’re among the lucky few, she’ll sometimes invite you to travel along.
Over the years, she’s invited me into that private place several times . . . but then always uninvited me later. Usually for good reason.
This time, though, we seemed to be sticking. Maybe because there was more at stake.
Trying to sound stern, I said into the phone, “Jesus, that’s a tired old joke. I’m not even going to reply until you stop making that awful hooting noise. It’s disgusting.”
“Awww-hoo-hoo-hoo. I can just see it! Your pecker with a guy’s name on it. Three letters in red, blue . . . no, lavender —and all it says is DAN unless I’m around, get you in bed, and make the thing angry. Then it’ll say my whole freakin’ name. Some of it, anyway. Ohhhh ... Awww ... Oh, my poor ribs.”
“Stop,” I said. “You’re making me wince. Don’t babies sleep inside the womb? At least try to pretend you’re normal.”
Baby.
Live your entire life alone, it’s a scary word. We’d both given it a lot of thought. The subject was not without fresh scars.
The previous spring, Dewey discovered that she was pregnant. It was unplanned; a surprise to us both. But that didn’t make it any easier when she miscarried near the end of the first trimester.
Only a few weeks before she lost the baby, a blind ex-carney and fortune-teller named Baxter had told me something bad was about to happen to a child of mine. I’d shrugged it off until I got Dewey’s hysterical call. It gave even a skeptic like me pause.
He’d also told me that I would soon end the life of a friend.
Unsettling. If I believed in such things.
So, in June, I visited the lady in Iowa where we talked it over. Discussed all the pros and cons, all the many obligations, responsibilities, the amount of time, money, and dedication that were necessary.
When we both felt certain, we gave it another try. Dewey’s the one who insisted that the smart thing to do in any business partnership is hash out the details of dissolution before starting. We did that, too, even though I secretly believed it trivialized the commitment—but I was also secretly relieved. Each had the right, we agreed, to end the partnership, but parental rights, and financial obligations, remained.
In September, we found out that she was pregnant again. So I’d been commuting when I could. Lately, I’d also been working my butt off so that I could get away and spend the holidays with her as promised.
Still chortling, though not nearly so hard, she reminded me of that promise now.
“But you can’t use this tattoo gambit as some lame excuse for not showing up for Christmas. You will be here a week from now? Sunday, the nineteenth.”
As I replied, “I’ve already got my flight booked,” I was also watching Rona Graves, the medical investigator. Watched, puzzled, as she rushed out onto Applebee’s porch, then trotted down the steps. She was in a hurry, but also in distress, judging from her jerky, uncertain movements.
Graves was searching for someone, head scanning, as Dewey told me, “Tomlinson’s welcome, too. But no dope smoking on my property. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m not sure Iowa’s ready for someone as weird as Scarecrow. It’s so freakin’ cold here tonight, they’d stick him in a padded cell if he went out wearing one of his sarongs, and no underwear.”
Scarecrow—a pet name for one of her favorite people. She still credits him for healing her after she’d been badly injured. A spiritual intervention. Another instinctual conviction beyond my understanding.
I was about to say something when I noticed that Graves was waving at me, calling, “Ford? Dr. Ford! Get in here quick. Hurry, please.”
Her turn to panic.
I told Dewey, “Hey, something’s come up. Gotta run. Call you later.”
Before I hit the terminate button, I heard her say quickly, “Make sure you do, Thoreau, because there’s somethin’ important we need to discuss. Guess who called me, who wants to visit—”
I told her, “I will. I will,” already walking fast toward the house.
8
Graves was waiting on the porch, holding the door open. She used her hand to urge me along. Beside her was a uniformed deputy, a huge guy. He shifted from one foot to another, hands on his gun belt, an indicator of stress.
So I hurried, ran up the steps, asking, “What’s wrong? Is it Melinda?” because that was the only possibility that entered my mind. Because I’d shown an interest, maybe Graves felt I deserved to be informed.
That vanished when the woman said in a rush, “You’re a biologist, you said. My God, I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It’s just awful. So maybe you can figure out what’s happening, what’s going on inside.”
“Inside where? The house?”
“No. Him. Dr. Applebee. Maybe you can identify whatever it is that’s . . . Jesus, I can’t even describe it.”
The deputy said in a sheepish Southern voice, “Miz Graves, I’m sorry, but I can’t go back in there. I think I’ll be sick if I go back in that room. If it’s okay with you, I’d rather stay out here where the air’s fresh.”
Graves dismissed him with a nod of her head, still speaking to me. “Do you mind taking a look? You’re not going to like it. But it’s closer to your field than mine.”
I was thinking, What the hell’s going on? as I followed after her, Graves hurrying, taking long steps. “The body’s in the room where you broke through the door. We were getting ready to cart him out when one of the deputies noticed that . . . when we noticed those . . .”
In her hand she carried a couple of odor-reduction masks. They consisted of elastic ear loops connected to a gauze rectangle. She turned and shoved one toward me. “You’ll want this.”
I’ve seen some nasty things. Witnessed scenes so appalling that an attempt to communicate detail would reenergize the event and give the thing life again. Those images are best sealed away, never reviewed in memory or conversation. Invite the monster to return, you may end up living with the monster. It’s just my way of dealing with it.
What I saw in Applebee’s house ranks among the worst. I took one look and knew I’d never burden anyone with the details. Ever.
The two detectives who’d questioned me earlier would’ve agreed. They were in the yard just outside the broken French doors, each hunched over in the shadows, hands braced on thighs like exhausted runners. One was sucking in great gulps of air. The other was coughing into the bushes.
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.”
