Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop Read online

  HERE’S WHAT READERS ARE TELLING US ABOUT THE FIRST BUG MAN NOVEL!

  “I read this book on vacation this past weekend, and once I began, I couldn’t put it down. The writing is clever, intelligent, humorous, and suspenseful. The words are so visual that the whole time I was reading, I was picturing the book as I would a movie. I’m already looking forward to the next Bug Man mystery.”—MD

  “I’ve read every Grisham novel and loved them all; however, not since The Firm have I enjoyed a book this much.”—LA

  “I loved Nick Polchak! He is quirky and fascinating. The humor is great and the story had a ton of fun twists and surprises.”—DG

  “Being a big fan of the TV show CSI, I looked forward to the release of this novel. But it blew my expectations away! If Bug Man is any indication of the types of novels Howard Publishing will publish, this new series will be a fantastic hit!”—SH

  “I can honestly say that I was held by every page. The characters were so unique and believable. I learned a great deal about insects in a very pleasurable format.”—LD

  “I could hardly put it down—when I get one this good it always makes me mad at myself because I finish it too fast and it is over.”—WH

  “How wonderful to discover a hero who hasn’t stepped out of the pages of GQ. His human frailties and quirky personality give hope to mere mortal men! My hat is off to Tim Downs. A masterful job!”—RF

  “I loved the Bug Man. What a wonderfully funny and bright character—well done.”—DC

  “I LOVED THIS BOOK! I read a lot of books, and I have to say that this is one of the best I have read in a long time. I am waiting for the sequel with great anticipation.”—KB

  “It was so well written that I could hardly put it down once I started reading it … and I hate bugs.”—MD

  “I was surprised that I liked it so much because I am not fond of bugs myself and secondly I don’t really like mystery novels, but I could hardly put the book down!”—MT

  “I seriously could not put it down. I loved Nick Polchak’s character and was amazed at the level of detail regarding forensic entomology. It was fascinating. The mystery kept me turning the pages and I am eager to read the next installment.”—BC

  SHOO

  FLY PIE

  &

  CHOP SHOP

  A BUG MAN NOVEL

  TIM DOWNS

  Our purpose at Howard Books is to:

  • Increase faith in the hearts of growing Christians

  • Inspire holiness in the lives of believers

  • Instill hope in the hearts of struggling people everywhere

  Because He’s coming again!

  Published by Howard Books,

  a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.howardpublishing.com

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Shoofly Pie and Chop Shop © 2009 Tim Downs

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Howard Subsidiary Rights Department, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3615-7

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6691-8 (ebook)

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  HOWARD and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact: Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected]

  Cover design by David Carlson Design

  Interior design by Gabe Cardinale

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.

  SHOO FLY PIE

  BUG MAN NOVEL 1

  For my beautiful Joy,

  whose constant love and encouragement

  keep the bugs away.

  Remember, I can do anything you think I can do.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for their generous contributions to this book: Dr. John Butts, chief medical examiner of North Carolina; Steve Bambara of North Carolina State University for his help with beekeeping; Major Dominic Caraccilo, commander of Headquarters Company, 2d Brigade, 82d Airborne, during Operation Desert Storm; Bill Poston of the North Carolina Department of Correction; Randy Young of Young Guns, Inc., in Apex, North Carolina; Chuck Henley at the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office; the Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution; the U.S. General Accounting Office; Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Biosystematics Unit; Gulf War Health Center; U.S. Army’s Armor magazine; U.S. Army Center of Military History; Brown-Wynne Funeral Homes of Cary, North Carolina; the American Beekeeping Federation; and scores of others who took the time to respond to my e-mails, letters, and phone calls.

  I would especially like to thank the forensic entomologists who generously gave their time to help me understand their remarkable field: Dr. Boris Kondratieff of Colorado State University, for helping me with the basics of FE; Dr. Robert Hall of the University of Missouri, for introducing me to Chrysomya megacephala; and Dr. Neal Haskell, for allowing me to attend his fascinating Forensic Entomology Workshop (a.k.a. Maggot School) in Rensselaer, Indiana. Thanks for assisting me with the science behind what is, in the end, a work of fiction.

  I also want to thank the individuals who made the publication of this book possible: literary agent Kathryn Helmers, who was as tenacious as a tick in shopping my manuscript; Jeff Tikson, my longtime advisor and friend; Ed Stackler, for his invaluable skills as an editor and story consultant; and the wonderful people at Howard Publishing, for their creativity, vision, and passion for the written word.

  Thanks, too, to the faithful friends whose opinions helped shape this book into its final form: Tim Muehlhoff, Kent Kramer, Joy Downs, Bill and Laura Burns, Jim and Renee Keller, and Dan and Julie Brenton.

  And thank God for the Internet.

  PROLOGUE

  Holcum County, North Carolina, 1975

  Zachary Sloan stepped out of the Rayford ABC Package Store and walked to the bed of his primer-gray Ford pickup. Two eager dogs greeted him. The first, Sloan’s favorite, was an aging black Labrador, now walleyed and graying at the muzzle; the other was a spotted pup of questionable lineage but unlimited enthusiasm. The dogs nuzzled the paper package in the old man’s right hand.

  “Get back, mutt. That’s for me.” He slipped the bottle into the right pocket of his khaki hunting coat and took a crumpled sack from under his arm. “This is for you two no-goods.” He tossed a fat pig’s knuckle onto the rusty truck bed, then climbed into the cab. He revved the engine, coaxed the transmission into reverse, and backed out on to Highway 29. The dogs took two quick steps back as he accelerated east.

  Fifty yards away to his right the tracks of the Norfolk and Southern ran parallel to the road, the side of the towering embankment silhouetted gray-blue by the afternoon sun. Sloan watched the telephone poles click by, each one clipping the hood of his truck with the tip of its shadow. Not far ahead, County Road 42 descended from the left through a vast, open expanse of fledgling corn and tobacco. It dipped down to cross Highway 29, then abruptly rose again to traverse the train tracks fifty yards away. There was no stoplight or sign at the intersection; none was necessary. Sloan could see vehicles approaching for miles in all directions—except from the right o
n County Road 42, where the Norfolk & Southern shielded the intersection like an ancient fortress wall.

  Three miles away, a forty-foot flatbed trailer lumbered cautiously down a dirt road and passed beneath a brightly painted sign that hung across the exit to the Good ‘N Plenty Orchards. Strapped to the bed of the open trailer was stack after stack of neat, white cabinets, each with a kind of oversize box top that overlapped at the edges. Each cabinet seemed to contain several drawers, expertly dovetailed at the edges. In the lowest drawer of each cabinet was a long horizontal slot stuffed tight with a rag and secured with twine. The drawers could not be opened, yet each cabinet was completely filled … with 40,000 honeybees.

  The dirt road ended with a sudden rise to join the county highway just north of the town of Rayford. The teamster cautiously eased the left wheel up onto the roadway. With one great gun of the diesel engine, the right wheel followed. The flatbed behind him rocked right, then lurched left. The beehives flexed and shifted uneasily like tottering stacks of cups and saucers. An angry murmur rose from within the whitewashed columns, then quieted once again as the flatbed settled onto the level roadway of County Road 42. With each grinding shift of gears, the diesel sent a plume of blue smoke into the sky, slowly gathering speed as it headed south toward the tiny town of Rayford.

  Sloan spotted the long flatbed with the alabaster cargo approaching from far away to his left. He eyed the intersection, then the flatbed, then the intersection again. Their two vehicles seemed to be approaching at equal speeds. Sloan pushed steadily on the accelerator, and the flatbed accelerated in kind.

  “Grits-for-brains,” the old man muttered. There was a common understanding in Rayford that commercial rigs should always yield to the locals—a common understanding, that is, among locals. Sloan took a different view entirely. His tariffs and duties had paid for these roads, thank you, and the meandering locals could get out of the way.

  Now Sloan had the accelerator pushed flat against the floor. Behind him, the dogs stood straight and alert, sensing a force of wind and a whine from the engine that they had never felt before. The pup stepped nervously to his left, stopped, then started right again. He began to whimper and pushed his nose into the side of his more experienced companion. The aging Labrador slowly hung his head, circled once, and lay down.

  High atop the railroad tracks fifty yards to Sloan’s right, three bicycles raced side by side in a dead heat, clattering across the half-buried crossties of the old Norfolk and Southern railway.

  Eight-year-old Andy Guilford suddenly veered to the right, forcing Pete St. Clair’s bike up against the steel railhead.

  “No fair!”

  Pete jerked back on the handlebars and jumped the rail altogether. His back wheel spun wide and cut a deep arc in the loose gravel ballast.

  “You can whine or you can win,” Andy shouted back. He swerved left now and jammed his foot into the rear tire of Jimmy McAllister’s rusting red beach cruiser. The bike lurched violently, almost throwing Jimmy onto his handlebars.

  The three bicycles simultaneously crunched to a stop at the crossing of County Road 42. For a while the three boys said nothing; they stood straddling their bikes, panting and mopping their foreheads, staring up the road one way and then down the other.

  “We did it!” Jimmy beamed. “We beat her!”

  “And I beat the both of you,” Andy chided.

  “Like fun you did!”

  Andy glanced to the left. He saw the great white flatbed barreling toward them, still a good mile away, and an old gray pickup streaking down from the left. Now he cupped his hand above his eyes and followed County Road 42 to the right. There was no sign of an automobile as far as the eye could see—no sign of her automobile. This is the way she would come—this is the way she came every Saturday afternoon when her father made his weekly drive into Rayford.

  “We beat her, all right,” Pete said. “But she’s bound to be along any minute. Better get ready!”

  The three boys tossed their bikes aside and scrambled for position. Jimmy hoisted himself up on top of the big metal signal box beside the tracks. He steadied himself, then slowly stood aright and spread his arms out wide.

  “This is where I’m going to be,” he said. “She’ll see me before she sees either one of you!”

  Andy stood eyeing the great gleaming crossing signal on the far side of the road.

  “No way!” Jimmy shouted over to him.

  “Just watch me,” Andy called back. He shinnied up the silver post as far as the flashing red target lights, then pulled himself up and over. He climbed past the black-and-yellow Norfolk and Southern sign, up past the great white X formed by the RAILROAD CROSSING signs, until he straddled the post cap like a skull atop crossbones.

  “Now who’s she gonna see first?” he shouted down. “She’ll spot me a mile away!”

  Pete peered up at Andy, then at Jimmy, then Andy again.

  “Hey, Pete!” Andy called down. “Maybe you could wave your hankie!”

  “Or drop your drawers!” Jimmy joined in. “She’s sure to see that!”

  Pete stood gloomily for a full minute, saying nothing. Then he stepped across the railroad tracks onto the pavement.

  He lay down in the center of the right lane—her lane.

  “Are you nuts?” Andy called down. “Get out of the road!”

  Pete lay motionless, staring at the sky.

  “Pete!” Jimmy shouted. “She’ll run right over you!”

  “She won’t neither. When the car hits the tracks, it leaves the ground. She’ll fly right over me.”

  “What if the car slows down this time? What if you’re too far from the tracks?”

  Pete said nothing.

  “She’ll never even see you!” Andy was almost screaming now. “She’ll run right over you and squash you like a bug, and she’ll never even know it!”

  “She’ll know,” Pete said under his breath. “She’ll know I did it for her.”

  Andy looked up. Far down County Road 42 he saw a tiny blur coming over the horizon.

  Inside that tiny blur, seven-year-old Kathryn lay on her back, sandwiched between the rear window and backseat of her father’s crumbling green ’57 Chevy Bel Air. Her left shoulder was wedged tight between the glass and vinyl, and her nose just cleared the window as it curved up toward the roof above her.

  She closed her eyes and felt the warmth of the afternoon sun on her full body. The wind from the single open window swirled around her and carried the smell of tobacco from her father’s cigarette. She rolled her head to the right and studied the back of her father’s head: the sun-furrowed neck, the leathery ears that protruded proudly into space, and the thick shock of auburn hair that always lay carelessly to the left. Last of all, she saw her father’s emerald green eyes in the rearview mirror. They were focused directly on her.

  “Know what I think?” he said, grinning. “I think you wish you was a big ol’ whitetail deer, so’s you could ride strapped across the hood.”

  Her heart raced at the thought that somehow it might be possible—to feel the wind in her hair, to watch the road rushing to meet her instead of always disappearing into the past.

  “Could I, Daddy?” she asked with childish hope.

  He laughed. “Your momma would shoot me dead. Why, she’d tan my hide if she knew I let you ride without a seat belt.”

  He glanced again in the mirror at Kathryn’s body stretched out atop the backseat beneath the rear window.

  “You be careful back there, hear?”

  He flicked his cigarette out the window and rolled it up, leaving just a hairline crack at the top.

  “Are the tracks coming, Daddy? Are we there yet?”

  “Almost! Get ready!”

  With a squeal, Kathryn wedged herself even tighter against the glass. She was in her favorite place on the best of days, and now she was coming to the best moment of all—when they came to the sudden rise in the road where the Norfolk & Southern crossed County Road 42. When n
o train was in sight it was agreed—it was expected—that her father would accelerate up the rise just as fast as the aging Chevy could possibly go. As they crossed the tracks and the road dropped suddenly away beneath them, the hulking sedan would magically lift from the ground like the pirate ship rising from the Blue Lagoon. Then, for one eternal moment, Kathryn would float weightless above the seat, above the car, above even the gigantic town of Rayford itself. It was the longest two seconds in the universe, an entire world within a world, a glimpse of eternity—and Kathryn was not about to let her father forget about it.

  “Faster, Daddy! Faster!”

  The signs flashed past like confetti now, and the code of dots and dashes on the pavement blurred together into yellow and white ribbons streaming out behind the car. She heard the growling complaint from the aging engine and the rising pitch of her father’s voice.

  “Here it comes, sweetheart! Get ready!”

  Zachary Sloan glared at the center of the intersection and shot defiant glances at the great white blur closing fast from the left.

  Two hundred yards …

  One hundred yards …

  Fifty yards from the intersection, Sloan slammed his hand down on the horn in a final act of anger and defiance and was instantly answered by the shattering bellow of the diesel’s great air horn. Both vehicles went raging, shouting, screaming into the center of the intersection.

  The Ford arrived a split second before the flatbed. The left headlight of the pickup smashed into the right fender of the diesel just behind the bumper. The hood sprung open and was instantly ripped away in the wind. The pickup spun right across the front of the flatbed, heaved onto its side, and continued through the intersection amid a shower of sparks and the deafening scream of metal on concrete.

  The force of the impact spun the diesel cab fully to the left, jackknifed at a right angle to the flatbed behind it. The aging retreads of the diesel skidded, then stretched, then exploded into shards of smoking rubber. The bare metal wheel rims dug into the pavement, and the cab slammed onto its side with astounding force. The flatbed trailer, sheared from its shattered cab, lurched right, then left, then right once again—and then flipped side-over-side down the middle of County Road 42.