The Homing

by John Saul

  “Bailey?” Mark Shannon repeated.

  “My dog,” Kevin told him. His own voice as numb as his father’s, Kevin finished the story of how Molly had found the body. “What happened to him?” he asked. “Why did he die?”

  Shannon shrugged. “Hard to say. Could have been a heart attack, or a—”

  He was about to say “stroke,” but as his eyes fell to Otto Owen’s right hand, he cut the word off.

  The palm of Otto’s hand between the thumb and forefinger was clearly marked by what looked to Shannon like a tiny puncture wound. Frowning, the deputy began examining the body more closely.

  There were two of the minute puncture wounds on Otto’s face, and still more on his left hand and arm. He rose to his feet, strode to his car and spoke brusquely over the radio, then returned to where Russell Owen was waiting by his father’s body.

  “I’ve got Manny Gomez coming out to lend me a hand with this, Russell,” he said. “And we’re going to have to get Ellen Filmore involved. With cases like this, an autopsy is pretty standard procedure.”

  Russell Owen nodded. “But you must have some idea of what killed Dad,” he said.

  Mark Shannon’s eyes flicked uneasily toward Karen and her daughters, and he decided to say nothing of what he suspected until he was absolutely sure.

  He would not be sure until Ellen Filmore examined the body.

  Ten minutes later Manny Gomez arrived in his pickup truck, and together the two deputies began putting Otto Owen’s corpse into a body bag.

  Karen, able to watch the oddly impersonal process for only a moment, quickly turned away and guided her daughters back up to the house.

  Russell and Kevin both stayed with the deputies until the patriarch of their family had been put into the back of Gomez’s truck, then walked back to the squad car with Mark Shannon. “You’ve got some idea of what happened, don’t you?” Russell asked again.

  Shannon hesitated, but now that Karen and her daughters were no longer within earshot, he decided there was no point in holding his suspicions back from Russell. “I’m not positive, but it looks like something stung Otto,” he said.

  Russell’s jaw tightened. “You mean bees?”

  “I don’t mean anything,” Shannon replied, more gruffly than he’d intended. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” He reached out and grasped Russell’s shoulder. “I’m real sorry about this, Russell. Soon as I find out anything, I’ll call you. In the meantime, you just sit tight, and don’t get yourself worked up until we know exactly what happened. Could be I’m completely wrong and those marks aren’t even stings. Maybe he was already dead, and some kind of bug just bit on him. Might not mean a thing.”

  “But if it was bees,” Russell pressed, “then I’m getting Carl Henderson out here right away. Dad thought something was wrong with the hives … that there was something wrong with the bees—”

  “Goddamn it, Russell,” Mark Shannon cut in. “If I’d thought you were going to grab onto something like that, I would have kept my mouth shut. Just take it easy until we know what happened, okay? And if it was bees that killed Otto, you can bet I’ll order every hive UniGrow has in this valley taken out before the day’s over. But let’s not go off half-cocked. Say the wrong thing to the wrong people, and we could have a panic around here. Just after what happened to your wife’s girls, we already got people talking about African killer bees. So let’s just wait and see, okay?”

  Russell hesitated, as if about to say more, then changed his mind and nodded agreement. “Call me as soon as you know anything.” As Shannon climbed into the squad car, he spoke again. “Mark?” The deputy looked up. “After the autopsy, do I have to, well—” He faltered and fell silent, but Shannon understood exactly what he was asking.

  “Just tell me what you want done,” Shannon said. “No reason why I can’t take care of it.”

  “He wanted to be buried on the property,” Russell said, and for the first time his voice began to tremble, as if the full impact of what had happened had only now finally struck him. “There won’t be any funeral or anything—you know how Dad felt about that kind of thing. I guess I’ll need some kind of casket, though.”

  “He wanted a pine box,” Kevin said as his father once more faltered. His eyes glistening with tears, he repeated to the deputy what he’d heard his grandfather say so many times. “The cheapest one we can find is what he always said. No funeral, and no service. We’re just supposed to bury him next to Grandma, and plant a tree. He—He said the rest was just for show, and he didn’t want anything to do with it.”

  As Kevin tried to control the sob that threatened to choke him, Mark Shannon nodded. “I’ll take care of it. And it shouldn’t take too long. If you want, we can probably bury him tomorrow morning.”

  “We’ll do it,” Russell said. “Just let us know when we can come and pick him up, and Kevin and I will bury him.”

  As the squad car drove away, Russell and Kevin started slowly walking back up the hill toward the house, but as they came to the house in which Otto had lived all his life, and in which Russell himself had grown up, they paused, and Russell reached out to lay his arm across his son’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “No matter what happened to him, it’s better to go fast than to just start getting older and weaker and sicker. That’s what he never wanted, and at least it didn’t happen to him.” He pulled Kevin closer—self-consciously, almost roughly. “You and I should be so lucky, huh, Kev?”

  Kevin hesitated, then managed to nod.

  But still, he wondered: What could be so lucky about being dead? And from the look on his grandfather’s face, Kevin was pretty sure dying must have hurt a lot.

  In fact, it had looked to Kevin as if his grandfather had been screaming when he died.

  Why had no one heard him?

  “Well, what do you think?” Ellen Filmore asked an hour later, after she’d given Otto Owen’s corpse a thorough examination. She’d found several more of the puncture marks in Otto’s skin: three of them on his left leg, one on his right, and three more on his chest.

  Yet it hadn’t been the stings that killed him, for despite the clear punctures in the skin, the wounds showed little of the characteristic swelling that would normally have accompanied the sort of marks she’d found on Otto’s corpse.

  What had killed him, she was fairly certain, was not the stings themselves. Rather, the stings had induced a massive heart attack; an attack that killed Otto almost instantly.

  Finding no more injuries, and already fairly certain she knew what had happened to the old man, she finally called in the local expert for confirmation of what she thought.

  Now, looking up from Otto’s body, the expert nodded his agreement.

  “Scorpions,” Carl Henderson said. “No question about it. And not surprising, considering where they found him. There’re probably dozens of them under that shed. The question is, what was he doing out there?”

  Ellen Filmore sighed deeply. “I don’t see how we’ll ever find that out,” she said. “But what a horrible way to die.” Her gaze shifted to Henderson’s and she shook her head sympathetically. “At least the heart attack ended it quickly for him.”

  Carl Henderson nodded in silent agreement, seeing no need to say anything else.

  His secret, for now, was safe.

  CHAPTER 12

  Karen paused in her unloading of the breakfast dishes from the washer and glanced at the clock over the kitchen sink.

  Quarter past eleven, and there had been no sign of Julie since breakfast.

  But why should that surprise her? After all, for the last two days, nothing on the farm had felt quite right, nothing had been normal.

  Karen still shuddered every time she thought about Otto Owen’s death.

  Scorpions.

  The very word sent shivers through her body now. Ever since she’d heard the results of the autopsy, she’d imagined them everywhere on the farm, lurking in the corners of the house, hiding under e
very rock on the property.

  “But that’s crazy,” Russell had insisted when they talked about it yesterday. “They’re here, of course—they’re pretty much everywhere where the climate is fairly dry. But they’re more afraid of you than you are of them, and they do their best to stay hidden.”

  “Well, they didn’t stay hidden from Otto!” Karen had insisted. “My God, just to think of it gives me the willies! And if it could happen to Otto, it could happen to any of us! You know it could!”

  “I suppose it could, if we go rooting around in places where they’re likely to be, when they’re likely to be there,” Russell told her. “But why would any of us be poking around under the sheds in the middle of the night?”

  “Why was Otto?” Karen immediately challenged.

  But of course there had been no answer, and since there were no witnesses to what had happened to Otto, there would never be an answer.

  But when she thought of how close to dying both Molly and Julie had come before Otto finally did die, Karen’s impulse had been to take her daughters, leave the farm, and never come back.

  Indeed, it had been far more than an impulse—it was an almost irresistible urge. But as she thought about it, she realized that even if she could bring herself to abandon her new husband and her new life—both of which she loved—there was really no place to go.

  Russell was right—there were scorpions everywhere she’d ever lived, but Otto was not only the first person she’d ever known to be killed by them, he was the first person she’d ever even heard of being killed by them.

  Bees, of course, were even more ubiquitous than scorpions, and if the African strain had come as far north as Pleasant Valley, it either already was or soon would be everywhere else in California as well.

  Besides, the hives had already been replaced—the first truck from UniGrow arrived the night after Otto died, taking away every hive on the property in the cool and darkness of night, when all the bees were inside. The new hives were delivered last night.

  Yesterday Russell had sprayed insecticide under all the sheds on the property.

  Yesterday, too, they buried Otto, obeying his wishes that there be no funeral and no service. The five of them had gone up to the small plot of land where Russell’s grandparents, mother, and first wife were already buried, and together Russell and Kevin lowered Otto’s pine coffin into the grave they’d dug the day before.

  Though nothing was said aloud, Karen had silently prayed for Otto’s soul.

  Nothing else: no formal gathering of Otto’s friends, no wake, not even a reception.

  Exactly as Otto had wanted it.

  And today they were all trying to pretend that things were back to normal, even though Karen was sure it would be weeks before Russell and Kevin were truly used to not having Otto around. For herself, Karen felt a certain relief that the old man was gone, which she was both ashamed of and determined to keep a secret. Yet it was true, for even the day after Otto had died, Karen found herself feeling more relaxed in the house, treating it as if it were finally her own. And she knew why: it was simply because Otto was no longer there, reminding her of the way Paula had done things, either out loud or merely with silent looks of disapproval.

  But there was still a question Karen couldn’t get out of her mind: Why had Otto been out at that shed in the middle of the night in the first place?

  And why hadn’t he yelled when the first of the scorpions struck him?

  Was it possible that he had, but none of them heard him?

  The questions seemed to chase each other endlessly through her mind, but this morning she was trying not to think about them, just as she was trying not to think about the possibility that Otto had lain in the darkness for hours, his body seared with pain from the scorpions’ potent stings, crying out for help while the rest of them remained soundly sleeping in their beds.

  The kids, too, seemed unusually subdued, and though the grounding that Russell had issued the night Otto died had not been lifted, neither had it had to be enforced. Kevin, Karen knew, was mourning the death of his grandfather in his own way, too uncertain of himself to talk aloud about his feelings, but suffering nonetheless.

  Then there was Julie.

  Julie seemed to be taking Otto’s death harder than any of the rest of them, and though Karen had tried to talk to her about it several times, her elder daughter had obstinately insisted that nothing was wrong, that she was “just fine.”

  Karen, though, was pretty sure she knew better, for the last words Julie had spoken to Otto had been uttered during the parody of obsequiousness she’d put on at breakfast the morning of the day the old man died. Julie hadn’t had a chance to speak more than a word or two to Otto after that, and hadn’t been able to give him the apology she’d been intent on making when she’d gotten stung.

  Guilt, Karen knew, could make people behave in strange ways, and Julie was certainly behaving strangely.

  The first day after Otto’s death hadn’t been too bad. Julie had been late coming downstairs, and certainly hadn’t spoken much, but Karen had expected that.

  Yesterday, though, Julie had pretty much stopped speaking at all, and though she’d helped Molly with the horses, she flatly refused to vacuum the downstairs area of the house. “I hate that vacuum cleaner, and you can’t make me use it!” she told Karen.

  Facing her daughter’s anger squarely, and preparing herself for a long argument, Karen had folded her arms over her chest. “Fine,” she said. “Then use a broom. I really don’t care.”

  To her surprise, Julie had done exactly that.

  It took her three times as long to do the job with the broom instead of the vacuum cleaner, but Julie hadn’t complained.

  In fact, she hadn’t spoken at all.

  Nor had she spoken this morning, when she came down for breakfast. She simply sat in silence at the kitchen table, consuming her breakfast.

  And consuming, Karen reflected, was exactly the right word, too. Her eyes fixed unwaveringly on her food, Julie had eaten not only her normal piece of toast, bowl of cereal, and glass of orange juice, but a stack of pancakes and three pieces of bacon, as well.

  Then, after helping Molly with the horses, Julie simply disappeared.

  “Go see where your sister is, will you, honey?” Karen asked Molly, who was sitting at the table with a catalog of equestrian supplies, compiling a list of things she absolutely had to have “or I’ll die,” which would not only have filled the tack room to overflowing, but broken the bank account as well. But at least Molly was starting to behave normally, finally emerging from the shock the discovery of Otto’s lifeless body had engendered.

  Now, the little girl ran out of the kitchen, and a moment later Karen heard her pounding up the uncarpeted stairs, her footsteps thundering through the farthest reaches of the house. “Quietly!” Karen called after her, shaking her head. A minute later Molly crashed back down the stairs, both feet making a resounding thud as she took the last five steps in a single leap.

  “She’s on her bed!” Molly reported as she came back into the kitchen. “She’s just lying on her bed, staring out the window.”

  Leaving the ham she was slicing for lunch, Karen told Molly to start setting the table, then went upstairs herself.

  Julie’s door was standing ajar, and sure enough, Julie was stretched out on the bed, her eyes fixed on the window.

  Karen rapped gently at the door. “Julie?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  For a moment there was no response at all, and then Julie turned to look at her. “I’m fine,” she said, but there was a flat tonelessness to her voice that belied her words.

  “Then I think you should come downstairs and help your sister and me get lunch ready.”

  Julie shrugged, but made no move to get off the bed.

  “Sweetheart, are you sure you feel all right?” Karen asked once more.

  “I’m fine,” Julie insisted for the second time. “I’ll be down in a couple of minutes, okay?
”

  As her mother left the room, leaving the door standing open, Julie flopped back onto her pillow.

  Once again she’d lied about how she felt.

  She’d wanted to tell her mother about the unbearable sickness she was feeling, to tell her about what had happened early in the morning of the day they’d found Otto’s body.

  Ever since she heard what happened to him, she’d been thinking about how she herself had awakened in the field and thought she was covered with red ants.

  At the time, she’d been sure it was just a horrible dream, that it hadn’t really happened at all.

  But what if the ants had really crawled all over her, just like the scorpions had crawled all over Otto?

  Why hadn’t the ants so much as bitten her, the way the scorpions had stung Otto to death?

  For almost two days now she’d been thinking about it, but no matter how hard she tried to find an answer, there was none.

  And even worse than not being able to find an answer was what had happened when she’d finally decided to tell her mother about it. It had been late yesterday afternoon, and she was in her room, lying on her bed, just as she was now. The door was open, and she could hear her mother down in the kitchen, starting supper.

  They were alone in the house, and all Julie had to do was get up and go downstairs. They could talk, just like they used to when she was a little girl.

  She started to sit up and swing her legs off the bed.

  Nothing happened. Nothing at all!

  She tried to cry out, to scream to her mother that she was paralyzed.

  Tried, and failed.

  For a long time—she didn’t know how long—she’d lain on her bed, and slowly, from somewhere deep within her, she began to understand.

  No words were spoken, nor even formed in her head.

  But as the minutes had ticked by and she was still unable to move, a concept had come into her mind.