Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop Read online

  The hives that were not strapped down seemed to float in the air for an instant before crashing to the roadway below. Those that were bound to the bed of the trailer were whipped to the pavement as the flatbed began its roll. In both cases, the hives did not seem to simply break or crush or fall apart; they literally exploded. Eighty-five hives had lined that trailer, each weighing almost a hundred pounds. As each hive struck the roadway, the brittle drawer-like supers separated, then splintered into a thousand pieces, vomiting a tangle of wood, wire, wax, and honey. At first, the bees seemed to spill out from the wreckage like pouring gravel. Then, slowly, the million-or-so that survived the crash began to rise into the sky in a black, boiling, living cloud of venom.

  Pete sat upright in the center of the road.

  All three boys stared wild-eyed, gawking at the carnage spewed out on the road behind them and the slowly rising cloud above. Almost simultaneously they remembered—and they turned back again to see the flash of the green Bel Air less than a quarter of a mile away.

  Andy and Jimmy dropped to the roadway and Pete scrambled to his feet. All three boys stood jumping, shrieking, and waving their arms in frantic, futile arcs.

  “There they are!” Kathryn’s father called to the backseat. “All three of them, waving their hellos!” He lay on the horn and shoved the accelerator to the floor.

  The nose of the sedan tipped upward as they reached the rise. Kathryn heard the whine of the engine as the wheels spun free of the ground, and she felt the lug of the tires as they dropped away below the car. Then at last came the glorious moment when she floated free of the car—or was the car falling away from her? It didn’t matter. To Kathryn, it was the sacred moment when she rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.

  For an instant, only clouds and sky were visible through the windshield of the airborne sedan. But as the weight of the engine forced the nose of the car back to earth, a hellish landscape rose into view. In the left lane lay a broken and twisted flatbed; to the right, the crushed shell of a diesel cab and the smoldering undercarriage of a gray pickup; straight ahead, a graveyard of crumpled and shattered white bones. And above it all was a massive, swirling black cloud of …

  “Holy … Hold on, Kath!”

  Less than a second later the sedan smashed into the first of the hives. The tires lost all traction on the sea of honey and insect parts and spun helplessly to the right. The right fender struck the twisted chassis of the diesel, and the sedan lurched onto its left side. To Kathryn’s astonishment she found herself standing perfectly erect, still pressed between the rear window and seat, as if she were suddenly back home standing in front of the storm door, watching the backyard rushing toward her. Just as suddenly, the car flipped onto its rounded top, and Kathryn was thrown face-forward against the window glass. Six inches below her nose she saw a yellow dash streak by, then a dot, then a much longer dash, and then at last the car came to rest.

  For a few moments Kathryn lay perfectly still, unable to move but perfectly aware of everything around her. Above and to her right she heard the engine cough and sputter and die. She heard the wheels somewhere above her continue to spin a full minute longer. She detected the acrid stench of burnt rubber, the thick, sweet smell of diesel fuel, and—strangely, more than anything else—an odor like smashed bananas.

  She lifted her head a few inches and saw a spatter of blood from her nose on the glass below her. She watched as tears began to fall straight away from her eyes, splash, and run down the window to her right. Out of habit, she rolled her body to the right—but this time she found herself lying on the crumpled ceiling of the car amid paper cups, floor mats, cigarette butts, and coins. She slowly turned to look at the back of her father’s head, and through a wash of tears saw his body hanging behind the wheel, suspended by his seat belt. His shoulders sagged against the ceiling with one arm extending straight out, and his head was tucked under like the ducks she had seen on the pond behind her house.

  But she had never seen her father’s neck bent at an angle like that.

  She reached out to touch her father’s arm, but then she heard a shout from somewhere outside the passenger side of the car. She turned to the window—all of the glass was still intact. She looked out to see an old man in a khaki jacket standing not more than twenty yards away.

  Far beyond him, still atop the rise of the railroad tracks, stood the figures of three helpless boys.

  The left side of the man’s face was covered with blood, and he stumbled toward a motionless black form on the ground ahead of him. He dropped to his knees and buried his face in the dark fur. Beside him, a mottled gray pup paced anxiously back and forth.

  Suddenly the pup started, then spun to its left and snapped at the air. It jumped again and whirled back to the right. In another moment it was leaping, whirling, and kicking like the wild horse Kathryn once saw at the state fair in Raleigh.

  The man staggered to his feet. He swung at the air around his face with one hand, then both. He began to duck and weave and flail at the air like a boxer facing some menacing shadow. Now he began to wave his arms frantically around him and pulled his jacket up over his head, running a few steps one way, then the other.

  For the first time Kathryn looked up into the sky. She saw a great, swirling black cloud that seemed to be slowly descending around them like a plague, and a single word screamed out in her mind: FIRE! She saw no flames, but she remembered what the fireman once told her class: The hottest fire is the one you can’t see. It was like watching hell itself. The man and his dog were being tortured by flames but were never consumed.

  A wave of panic swept over Kathryn. “Daddy! Wake up! We have to get out of here!” She twisted around and put her feet against the window glass. She pulled back and with all of her might kicked out against the glass.

  Nothing.

  She kicked again and again as the cloud outside grew thicker and darker and closer. She began to weep hysterically, but stopped with a gasp. She saw the man, now barely visible through the whirling cloud, begin to stagger directly toward her. His face looked swollen and blue with patches of black and gray, and his hands clutched at his throat. He bent forward, then straightened and threw his shoulders back and his chest out, as though he were straining to draw each breath through a long tube. He stumbled forward two steps, then suddenly stopped and dropped his arms limp at his sides. For a moment he stood perfectly still, as if somehow at peace with this unexpected fate, and then fell headlong on the pavement not more than ten feet from Kathryn’s window. Kathryn screamed and scrambled back from the glass. There were no flames, yet the man’s body grew steadily darker—and the black patches seemed to be moving.

  Kathryn’s eyes were fixed in horror on the blackened figure before her. She crawled back, back, until she was flattened against the opposite window glass, her arms frozen down and out to her sides. She felt a tiny tickle on her left wrist and frantically jerked it away. She turned.

  Near the ground, her father’s window was still open just a hairline crack. The crack was lined with the wriggling heads, legs, and wings of a thousand enraged bees struggling to squeeze through. Behind them, a thousand more pressed forward. Both windows were completely covered with a shifting, throbbing, crawling mass of black-and-yellow insects.

  Seven-year-old Kathryn took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and screamed.

  Cary, North Carolina, April 21, 1999

  Nick Polchak rapped his knuckles on the frame of the open doorway. He glanced back at the Wake County Sheriff’s Department police cruiser blocking the driveway, orange and blue lights silently rotating.

  “Yo!” Nick called into the house. “Coming in!”

  A fresh-faced sheriff’s deputy in khaki short sleeves poked his head around the corner and beckoned him in. Nick wondered where they got these kids. He looked younger than some of his students.

  Nick stepped into the entryway. Dining room on the right, living room on the left. It was a typical suburban Raleigh home, a colonial
five-four-and-a-door with white siding and black shutters. A mahogany bureau stood just inside the door. At its base lay three pair of shoes, one a pair of black patent leathers. Nick shook his head.

  He knew the layout by heart: stairway on the left, powder room on the right, down a short hallway was the kitchen, and the family room beyond that.

  Nick paused in the second doorway and took a moment to study the young officer. He stood nervously, awkwardly, constantly checking his watch. His right hand held a handkerchief cupped over his nose and mouth, and he winced as he sucked in each short gulp of air. Nick followed the officer’s frozen gaze to the right; the decomposing body of a middle-aged woman lay sprawled across the white Formica island in the center of the kitchen.

  Nick knocked again.

  “Officer … Donnelly, is it? I’m Dr. Nick Polchak. Are you the first one here?”

  “I was just a few blocks away, so I took the call.” He glanced again at his watch. “Our homicide people ought to be along within the hour.”

  Nick began to stretch on a pair of latex gloves and stepped around to the victim’s head. “The name on the mailbox said ‘Allen.’”

  “Stephanie Allen. That’s all I’ve been able to get so far.” The deputy nodded silently toward the family room, where a solitary figure sat slumped forward in a red leather chair with his face buried in his hands. Nick raised his own left hand and wiggled his ring finger. The deputy nodded.

  “I didn’t get your name—did you say Kolchek?”

  “Polchak. Nick Polchak.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re from around these parts.”

  “I’m from Pittsburgh,” Nick said. “And I’d say you’re not.”

  The deputy grinned. “How’d you know?”

  “You left your shoes at the door.”

  “They don’t do that in Pittsburgh? I guess they don’t have the red clay.”

  “The police don’t do that in Pittsburgh. They figure if you’ve got a dead body in the kitchen, you’ve got more to worry about than dirty carpets.”

  The body lay faceup, stretched out diagonally across the island under the bright kitchen fluorescents.

  “Very handy,” Nick said. “Too bad I don’t find them all like this.”

  The head rested in one corner, with medium-length blond hair flowing out evenly on all sides. There were deep abrasions and contusions on the neck and lower jaw. The body was in putrefaction, the second major stage of decomposition. The skin was blistered and tight from expanding gases, and the stench was considerable. There were sizable maggot infestations in both eye sockets and in the gaping mouth cavity. She had been dead for several days—maybe a week or more.

  “You got here fast, Doc. I thought the medical examiner’s office was in Chapel Hill.”

  Nick shook his head. “I didn’t come from Chapel Hill. I came from NC State. I picked up your call on my police scanner.”

  “From the university? What were you doing there?”

  “That’s where I work.”

  Nick removed a pair of slender forceps and a small magnifier from his coat pocket. He bent close to the victim’s head and began to carefully sort through the wriggling mass of maggots in the left eye socket.

  “Wait a minute. You’re not from the medical examiner’s office?”

  “Never said I was.”

  “Then who in the—”

  “I’m a member of the faculty at NC State. I’m a professor in the department of entomology.”

  “A professor of what?”

  “I’m a forensic entomologist, Deputy. I study the way different necrophilous arthropods inhabit a body during the process of decomposition.”

  The deputy stood speechless.

  Nick plucked a single plump, white larva from the wiggling mass and held it under the magnifier. “I’m the Bug Man.”

  The deputy began to blink rapidly. “Now just hold on … you’re not supposed to … you’re not a part of this …”

  “Relax,” Nick held the forceps aloft. “It’s just one bug. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “You need to leave, Dr. Polchak.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—you’re not a medical examiner, and you’re not with the department. You shouldn’t be here. It’s not procedure.”

  “Not procedure. I have assisted the authorities on seventy-two cases in thirteen different countries. How many homicides did you have in Wake County last year? Five? Ten?”

  The deputy shrugged.

  “And how many of them did you work?”

  “I never heard of any Bug Man,” the deputy muttered.

  Nick glanced down at the man’s stocking feet. “Now there’s a surprise.”

  Now Nick turned to the motionless figure in the red chair. “Mr. Allen,” he called out. “I’m Dr. Nick Polchak. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “No,” came a whisper from under the hands. “No questions.”

  “Mr. Allen,” the officer broke in. “This man is not a part of the official police investigation. You don’t have to answer his questions.”

  “He’s right,” Nick said. “But you can if you want to. And when the homicide people get here, Mr. Allen, they’re going to ask questions—quite a lot of them. First the police will ask you when you first discovered your wife’s body.”

  The man looked up for the first time. His face was ashen and drawn, and a deep purple crescent cradled each eye.

  “It was less than an hour ago,” the man said. “I called the police immediately.”

  “Immediately? Your wife has been dead for quite some time, Mr. Allen.”

  “I’ve been out of town. I just got back, just today. And then I found her, like … like this.”

  Nick nodded. “Next the police will ask you where you were during that time.”

  The man did a double take. “Me? Why me?”

  “Because the one who discovers the body is always a suspect.”

  “Like I said, I was out of town. I was in Chicago, on business. For a whole week—they can check it out.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Nick said, “and I’m sure they’ll find you’re telling the truth. Their next question will be: What day did you leave for Chicago?”

  The man thought carefully. “Last Wednesday. The fourteenth.”

  “That would be … seven days ago exactly. And prior to that time, Mr. Allen, did you see your wife alive and well?”

  “We said good-bye right here, on Wednesday morning. She was perfectly healthy.”

  “You’re sure you left that day? On the fourteenth?”

  “Of course I’m sure! You think I can’t remember a week ago?” Nick held the specimen up and studied it closely. Then he looked back at Mr. Allen.

  “Care to try again?”

  Nick dragged a chair from the breakfast nook into the family room and sat down opposite the man, with the tiny white specimen still writhing in the forceps in his right hand. He offered the magnifier to the man. “I want you to take a look at something.”

  “I can’t look at that. Get that thing away from me!”

  “Oh come now,” Nick whispered. “You have a stronger stomach than that—don’t you, Mr. Allen?”

  The man looked startled; he hesitated, then reluctantly took the magnifier in his left hand.

  “Pull up a chair,” Nick called back to the deputy. “Learn something.” Nick slowly extended the forceps. “Take a look at that end. Tell me what you see.”

  The magnifier trembled in the man’s hand.

  “Little lines,” he mumbled. “Sort of like slits.”

  “How many little lines?”

  “Three.”

  “Give the deputy a look, Mr. Allen. Those ‘little lines’ are called posterior spiracles—think of them as ‘breathing holes.’ The maggot you’re holding is the larva of a common blow fly. That fly landed on your wife’s body shortly after her death and began to lay eggs in the softest tissues—the eyes, the
mouth, and so on. Those eggs hatched into larvae, and the larvae began to feed and grow.

  “Now when a larva grows, it passes through three distinct stages of development. Are you following me, Mr. Allen? Because this is the important part: The larva doesn’t develop those breathing holes until the third stage. And after many studies, we know exactly how long it takes for this species of fly to reach that third stage of development. Guess what, Mr. Allen? It takes more than a week.”

  The man began to visibly shake as Nick rocked back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got so far. You’ve been out of town for a week—exactly a week. You say that you saw your wife alive one week ago, yet there are insects on her body that prove that she died more than a week ago.”

  “Well … uh …,” the man stammered, “maybe I was gone … longer than I thought.”

  “The airline’s records can clear up that little point. And I’m betting those same records will show that you made your reservations the same day that you traveled—sort of a last-minute business trip, you might say. I have just one more question for you, Mr. Allen. The police won’t ask you this one, but it’s something I’ve always wondered about …”

  Nick leaned forward again.

  “When you strangle someone, can you feel the hyoid bone break, or is it all just sort of soft and squishy?”

  The man jumped frantically from his chair and lunged toward the door. He ran like a man in a funhouse, stumbling first one way and then the other, throwing himself from wall to wall, ricocheting wildly down the hall toward the open door.

  The deputy sat frozen in astonishment, staring wide-eyed at the doorway.

  “I think you’re supposed to run after him,” Nick said. “That’s what they always do on TV.”

  The deputy thrust the magnifier and forceps into Nick’s hands and raced barefooted down the hallway. Nick rose slowly from his chair, shook his head, and headed back toward the body. As he passed the hallway he caught a glimpse of the mahogany bureau just inside the front door.