Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (2 page)

Her chewing never stopped—not for conversation, not to shovel in another chunk of Black Angus beef, not even to take a drink of water. The woman even chewed water—or maybe the water only served as a lubricant, like the oil a machinist pours over a spinning drill bit to keep it from overheating.

From time to time her lips would part, and the tip of her tongue would dart across her teeth and plunge into the deep recesses of her gums, searching out tiny morsels that had somehow escaped the crushing molars. Whenever this happened a little lump would appear in her cheek like a mouse under a rug, dart left and right, then vanish again. Nick wondered how the tongue had survived so long—how it had avoided being shorn clean off, because the relentless teeth waited for nothing. He imagined what would happen if the tongue hesitated a nanosecond too long: He envisioned the severed tip dropping off and landing like a crouton on her Caesar salad.

Nick sat mesmerized. Another bite, another drink, another cobralike lash of the tongue, and all the time the words kept coming—though he had long ago stopped comprehending them.

“Unbelievable,” Nick said unconsciously.

“You're sweet,” she said. “I like you too. Pass the bread.”

He slid the basket halfway across the table, using the misdirection as an opportunity to slide his cell phone from his pocket and check for messages. Unfortunately, there were none.

The woman smiled as she chewed. “You know, since we don't work in the same department, we probably never would have met. It was awfully nice of your friends to set this up.”

“I owe them one,” Nick said.
One Australian funnel-web spider in each of their shoes
.
Why can't they mind their own business?

Every six months or so, Nick's married colleagues in the Entomology Department at North Carolina State University began to feel sorry for him, the only single professor in the department. Longing for Nick to share in their connubial bliss, his colleagues began to match him up with “compatible” women from the faculty and staff of other departments—the term “compatible” apparently being loosely defined, as in, “She's a carbon-based life-form too.”

But what really infuriated Nick was that every six months or so he gave in, despite two tragic object lessons per year that should have kept his memory fresh. Like clockwork, every six months his colleagues began to feel sorry for him, and then for some inexplicable reason Nick began to feel sorry for
them
, feeling sorry for
him
. The inevitable result was a departmentwide pity party culminating in some comic tragedy just like this one—a blind date from hell.

The whole thing was nuts—but here he was again, right on schedule, and his luck was no better this time than it had been in the past.
Who chose this woman?
he wondered. Which one of his dewy-eyed colleagues actually thought that the two of them might be compatible, and what selection criteria had he employed? Was this actually someone's idea of a life partner? The woman wasn't unattractive; she was just—dangerous. If they crashed together in the Andes, she would probably eat him before he was even dead.

And to make matters worse, he had invited her to
dinner
—and not at just any restaurant, but at the Angus Barn, one of Raleigh's pricier establishments. Why did he have to commit himself to an entire meal? Why not a mocha grande at Starbucks—to go? Why didn't he ever
learn
? But no; every six months his optimism took over his common sense, and every six months Nick got stuck with the check—in more ways than one.

He glanced down at the bread basket; it was empty. She had done serious damage to the relish tray, grinding down the carrot sticks like a pencil sharpener and popping the olives like breath mints. She had single-handedly emptied two cheese crocks—both the sharp smoked cheddar and the tangy blue cheese; then came the three-cheese ravioli appetizer; then her ten-ounce filet, medium rare—

“What's the matter?” the woman asked unexpectedly. For the first time in forty-five minutes, she stopped chewing and looked at him.

Nick felt a twinge of panic, like one of his students caught sleeping in class. “What do you mean?”

“You're not eating.”

Nick looked down at his plate. She was right—he had barely touched his own food; he had barely spoken, for that matter. For the last forty-five minutes, he had felt like a man pinned down by enemy fire.

“I've been—preoccupied,” he said.

“You've been looking me over,” she said with a grin. “A woman notices that.”

Nick measured the distance to the fire exit.

“What is it you do again? I know you teach entomology.”

“I teach entomology.”

“So teach me something about entomology.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I don't care. Anything.”

Nick watched her knife and fork moving with the speed and precision of a hibachi chef. “Okay,” he said. “The locust is a member of the genus
Schistocerca
. It has the unusual ability to change its habits and appearance according to its population density. By nature, the locust is a solitary creature that migrates individually. But as their numbers enlarge, the competition for food increases and they become more and more aggressive—that's when they begin to swarm. In the 1870s there was a swarm of locusts eighteen hundred miles long and a hundred miles wide over the Great Plains. Three and a half trillion locusts formed a dark cloud half a mile high. They ate everything in sight: grain, fabric, small animals —even one another.”

“What happened to them?” she asked.

“They suddenly died off.”

“All of them?”

Except for their queen.
“Yes, all of them.”

“So that's what you do—you teach about locusts?”

“No. I'm a forensic entomologist, actually. I only teach to pay the bills.”

“A
forensic
entomologist. What is that, exactly?”

“I study necrophilous insects.”

“What kind of insects?”

Necrophilous.
It means ‘dead-loving.'” “

“They love to be dead?”

“No, they love to
eat
the dead. I study the insects that eat people after they die.”

Her mouth dropped open, which was not a pretty sight. “There are bugs that eat people?”

“Of course. What did you think happened to bodies after they die?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Americans die at a rate of six thousand per day. That's a lot of corpses piling up. Where do you think they all go?”

“To funeral homes, I suppose.”

“To funeral homes—where they drain your blood and powder your nose to make you look nice for your family and friends. They're not fooling nature; they're just buying time.”

“What does that mean?”

“The instant you die—the very
instant
—your body begins to decompose. Every cell in your body needs oxygen to survive, but when the heart stops and the lungs cease to function, there is no more oxygen. Without oxygen, the mitochondria fail; the cells begin to starve. In desperation they begin to cannibalize themselves, consuming their own enzymes and membranes until the dying cells rip apart at the seams, scattering cellular debris everywhere—which is exactly what the bacteria have been waiting for.”

“The bacteria?”

“Bacteria are everywhere in the bloodstream, ordinarily held in check by the body's immune system—but after death there is no immune system, so the bacteria engorge themselves on the cellular remains. They multiply exponentially, producing heat and gas as they grow. The body bloats, the gas escapes through the body's natural orifices, producing packets of scent molecules that drift away in the breeze—where the insects are waiting.”

“What insects?”

“The dead-lovers. Iridescent blue-and-green blowflies; gray, blunt-bodied flesh flies; insects that have adapted to feed solely on the decomposing tissues of the dead. The pregnant females circle in the air, tracking those scent molecules back to the body. They land, looking for a place where the tissues are soft and moist—the eyes, the ears, the oral and nasal cavities.”

The woman's face began to slowly contort into a disgusted sneer. Nick didn't notice. He was a bug man and he was talking about bugs now; this was his subject area, his one true passion in life. Besides, he hadn't spoken in forty-five minutes, and he was on a roll.

“The flies lay their clutch of eggs,” he said. “Three, maybe four hundred each—and then they take off again. The eggs hatch and maggots emerge; the maggots stuff themselves on the decomposing tissues—thousands upon thousands of them, consuming the body at an astonishing rate. As the famous taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus once said, ‘The progeny of three flies can consume a dead horse more quickly than can a lion.'”

She closed her eyes and held up one hand. “Nick.”

“Since insects pass through distinct developmental stages, by studying the insects on a corpse we can determine almost exactly how long they've been there—and thus, the time of death. All you have to do is collect maggot samples from the various orifices. Take your filet, for example: It's basically a thick slab of muscle tissue, much like—oh, let's say a cross section of the human thigh—”

“Nick!”

Nick stopped. The woman had a strange look on her face—the sort of look a person gets when they first learn that calamari is really squid.

“Can we talk about something else?”

“You asked me what I do.”

“I know, but I didn't know you did . . .
that
. Do you really have to work with dead people?”

“It helps.”

“How can you stand it?”

“As coworkers go, I recommend them.”

She shuddered. “Well, let's talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Something besides work—
your
work, anyway.”

Nick shrugged. “Okay. What do you do?”

She glared at him. “I've been telling you that for the last forty-five minutes.”

Nick blinked. “Would you excuse me a moment?” He pulled out his cell phone and checked for messages again.

“You keep looking at your cell phone,” she grumbled. “A woman notices that too.”

“Sorry. I'm sort of on call.”

“In case somebody dies?”

“In a way, yes. I volunteer with an organization called DMORT—the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team. DMORT is a part of the National Disaster Medical System, under FEMA. Whenever there's a disaster involving mass casualties—like the World Trade Center or United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania—then DMORT is called in. Whenever the number of casualties is too big for the local coroner's office to handle, we show up. Our job is to help collect and identify human remains.”

“You
volunteer
to do that?”

“Sometimes I can't believe the things I volunteer for.”

“Has there been a disaster somewhere?”

“There's a hurricane called Katrina moving northwest across the Gulf of Mexico right now. It was a category 1 when it hit Florida the night before last; then it was downgraded to a tropical storm. But now it's out over the Gulf again, and it's sucking up energy from the hot sea; it's up to a category 4 now, and some say it might become a 5. The National Hurricane Center says it's heading for New Orleans; if it keeps going, my DMORT unit will be activated—just in case.”

At that moment, Nick's cell phone mercifully rang. He scrambled to open it.

“Nick Polchak.”

“Nick. It's Denny with DMORT.”

“It's about time.”

“I called your office first. You're usually there on a Saturday night.”

“I should be there now.”

“Some grad student answered your phone. He said you were on a
blind date
—in a
restaurant
—with a
woman
.”

Nick didn't reply; he just kept nodding and staring straight ahead.

“Nick, is it true?”

“Denny. Please.”

“Just tell me: How's it going?”

“A disaster of unprecedented proportions,” he said. “It makes you wonder if there's a God.”

“That bad, huh?”

“All the needless suffering—all the wasted resources—it could have been prevented. Why don't we ever learn?”

“Well, then, I've got good news for you. We just got word from the Emergency Operations Center: NDMS has activated us—Katrina's predicted to make landfall early Monday morning. How far are you from the airport?”

“Twenty minutes. My go-bag is in the car.”

“Whoa, slow down. NDMS has to call you back with travel arrangements first. You should have four hours at least. Relax, have a cup of coffee. Enjoy your date.”