Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop: 2 Bugman Novels in 1

by Tim Downs

  The muted television in front of her flashed images of chatty news anchors exchanging smiles and nods. Kathryn stared at it blankly for a few minutes, then reached for the remote and switched to channel four. The screen turned bright blue. From the bottom drawer of the entertainment center she took a videotape marked OUR WEDDING and slid it into the machine. She sat back down on the floor and pulled her legs up tight against her chest, resting her chin on her knees.

  The church custodian had reluctantly agreed to shoot the video, and he seemed to spend the first fifteen minutes learning to work the camera. A random shot of the church ceiling was followed by a shot of his own shoes, followed by a series of nauseating pans and zooms to nothing in particular. There were broken sound bites of music and laughter interspersed with a few colorful words from the custodian himself. The cinematography slowly began to improve, however, and soon a shot of the front of the sanctuary revealed two bridesmaids and the groom—with Peter and Jimmy at his side.

  Finally the bride herself appeared in the double doorway leading down the center aisle. A crude facsimile of the “Wedding March” began to blare from the organ—even worse than she remembered it—and the dozen-or-so guests scattered throughout the pews rose and turned toward Kathryn as she entered the sanctuary. She walked alone, no father to give her away.

  She arrived at Andy’s side and turned to face him. Words were spoken—the sound was indistinguishable—then the camera jostled, cut off, and started again several yards closer to the bridal couple. It was a tight shot on their faces, and at the sight of Andy’s smile her tears began to flow.

  From somewhere beyond the wedding party a voice began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together today in the sight of God and man …” Kathryn watched her own face, then his, then hers again. She saw nothing in their eyes but hopes and dreams and possibilities.

  How long ago was this? It seems like forever.

  “Repeat after me,” the voice continued. “I take you, Kathryn, to be my lawfully wedded wife, knowing in my heart that you will be my constant friend, my faithful partner in life, and my one true love.”

  “I take you, Kathryn, to be my lawfully wedded wife …”

  For some inexplicable reason the custodian chose this moment to pan slowly across the members of the bridal party. There was Amelia on the left, who constantly hitched up her slip throughout the service, followed by dear cousin Rose who married shortly thereafter and moved away to … Where was it? Colorado?

  The voice boomed out again: “I affirm to you in the presence of God and these witnesses my sacred promise to stay by your side as your faithful husband for better or for worse, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health.”

  “… my sacred promise to stay by your side …,” Andy repeated, while the camera suddenly jumped to the other end of the row and settled on Jimmy. Smiling Jimmy, always happy—maybe not so happy, Kathryn thought, but always a smile on his face. The camera panned slowly to the left, stopped briefly on Peter, and finally came to rest on the groom once again.

  Kathryn suddenly stopped. She reached for the remote and backed the tape up to the image of Jimmy, then watched again as the camera rolled past Peter. What was that? What was he doing? She rewound the tape again and let it go, moving closer to the screen this time.

  “I promise to love you without reservation,” said the preacher, and after each phrase Andy repeated his words. “To honor and respect you, to provide for your needs, to protect you from harm, and to cherish you for as long as we both shall live.” Was it just her imagination? No—there it was again! Each time Andy spoke, Peter’s lips also moved. He was repeating the vows himself, but in silence.

  “… for as long as we both shall live,” Andy finished solemnly, and Peter ended at precisely the same instant.

  Kathryn turned off the tape. What did she just see—and why had she never noticed it before? Was Peter simply empathizing with Andy, willing him to remember his lines like a bowler urging a ball back into the center of the lane? Or was it something else … something more?

  She got up and angrily ejected the tape. Why was she even wondering about this? What was so unusual about Peter’s behavior? Peter hadn’t done anything a thousand other best men hadn’t done before him. The only reason she found herself considering some deeper motive was the ridiculous suspicions Nick had planted in her mind.

  But somewhere inside her a voice whispered: Is it really so ridiculous?

  She tossed the tape back in the drawer and kicked it shut, then flopped down on the sofa and reached for a paper. Her life was complicated enough right now without searching for hidden meanings.

  The phone rang and Kathryn unconsciously reached for it.

  “Hello,” she said absently.

  “Mrs. Guilford.”

  The voice on the other end was thin and hollow, almost a whisper. It sounded strangely distant, as though it came from somewhere very dark and very far away.

  “Who is this?”

  “Nick.”

  Kathryn sat up in alarm. Something was wrong—terribly wrong. Whatever it was had produced a tone of voice that she never dreamed she would hear from the unflappable Nick Polchak—and it terrified her.

  “Where are you? What’s happened?”

  There was a long pause on the other end. “Do you know where Teddy lives?”

  “He lives in a trailer, doesn’t he? Off Lead Mine Road?”

  “How soon can you be here?”

  “Fifteen minutes. Why? Nick, what is it?”

  “It’s Teddy,” came the whisper. “He’s dead.”

  The bullet had entered at the base of Teddy’s skull and passed easily through the soft tissues of the brain, exiting through the left eye with sufficient velocity to penetrate the flimsy trailer wall and escape. Death was instantaneous. He fell headlong, his arms still curled around the two crumpled sacks of groceries. The bags still seeped a variety of liquids, but none was as horribly stark and vivid as the red-black pool that lay directly beneath his face.

  Kathryn sat on the cool trailer floor with her legs drawn up tight and her head down on her knees, staring at the curled and yellowed linoleum beneath her. She had wept until her soul was empty, and now there was nothing to do but sit and nurse the pounding ache inside her head. Each time she glanced up at Teddy’s body sprawled before her, she felt another wave of grief. It angered her that already each wave had begun to diminish a little, like the wake of a distant boat.

  Teddy had fallen facedown. The force of the fall shattered the nose and incisors and forced the jaw back into the skull. He lay in this grotesquely comical position with a bag tucked neatly under each arm, looking somehow trim and tidy even in death.

  Kathryn raised her eyes and looked across at Nick, who sat opposite her in exactly the same position—arms wrapped around legs and head resting on knees—except that his eyes never left Teddy’s body. It was the first time Kathryn had ever seen his huge, dark eyes completely motionless, almost lifeless. They no longer darted and evaluated and analyzed; they just gaped open like two black sewers, draining the image before him of all horror and misery and pain. Kathryn wanted to say something, but she knew from experience that sometimes sorrow is so profound that speech is blasphemous. She just looked at him, using her eyes as best she could to comfort and soothe and hold.

  “I did this,” Nick said in an almost inaudible voice. “This is the result of my foolishness—my sloppiness—my stupidity.”

  Kathryn shook her head. “You couldn’t possibly have—”

  “I should have seen it coming. I should have recognized the danger. I should have warned him to be careful.”

  “Nick, this is not your fault.”

  Nick met her gaze. “You haven’t asked me how I happened to discover Teddy’s body.”

  Kathryn said nothing.

  “This morning I went to the lab. Teddy wasn’t there, and the door was open. The office door. The final specimen, the one we were waiting for—it was allowed to escap
e. Someone removed the container from the Biotronette and took the lid off. It’s gone, Mrs. Guilford, along with any hope of proving that Jim McAllister was murdered. Who left that door open? Who took the lid off that container?”

  “It had to have been Teddy.”

  “Never.”

  “But it’s possible that he—”

  “Listen to me!” he shouted. “You came to me to investigate the death of Jim McAllister because you believed he would not take his own life—and you believed this in the complete absence of any evidence or witnesses to support your opinion. You believed not because of logic, but because you knew him—and you knew this was something he would never do.”

  Kathryn nodded sadly. “I also found out that sometimes people don’t act the way you expect them to.”

  “Then why are you still here, Mrs. Guilford? Why did you choose to continue this investigation? Have you changed your mind? Have you decided that suicide is something your snow-blowing friend just might have done?”

  “No. Never.”

  “And I’m telling you, Teddy would never have made such amateurish mistakes. When I saw that open container I knew—I knew to come here—and I knew what had happened to Teddy before I ever opened the door to this trailer.”

  Kathryn paused. “You think someone released the fly on purpose? And you think Teddy was murdered to cover it up? But why?”

  “Because Teddy saw the fly before it was released.” He held up the brown leather logbook. “Teddy’s log. His last entry indicated eclosion at 11:56 last night—that’s when the mature fly emerged from its puparium. Teddy saw it. I’m betting he knew what it was—and where it came from. Someone wanted to make sure he didn’t tell anyone else.”

  “Who?”

  “You already know the answer to that question—we both know—you just don’t want to believe it.”

  Kathryn closed her eyes and began to slowly shake her head.

  “We have some very expensive equipment in that lab,” Nick said. “But nothing was stolen. In fact, the only thing disturbed in the entire building was one plastic container. Whoever opened it had to know what it was and why it was significant. Who else does that leave but Peter St. Clair?”

  “Nick, that makes no sense.”

  “He left the door open to make it appear that the fly had escaped by accident. But Teddy would never have left the container uncovered and he would never have left that door open—and at that hour of the night the fly would never have left the lab on its own. It would have remained inside, attracted to the light. Your friend released the fly outside, then left the door open to make it look like it was all an accident.”

  “If Teddy saw the fly, why in the world would he call Peter?” Kathryn asked. “Peter wouldn’t understand what it was or why it mattered. You had your cell phone with you last night—why wouldn’t Teddy call you?”

  “He did try to call—but he didn’t leave a message.”

  “And even if Peter did drop by the lab for some reason late last night, why in the world would he want to let the fly escape?”

  Nick looked at her. “There’s only one possible reason, Mrs. Guilford—because your friend Peter has something to protect. Because he was in some way involved in Jim McAllister’s death.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.

  “Look. Andy, Jimmy, and Peter all loved you—but Andy won the prize. Then they all went off to war. Andy was killed; that left just two. Both of them came home hoping to fill Andy’s shoes, but only one could win. Two men vying for the love of the same woman, Mrs. Guilford—that’s called motive. And in my world, motive has a powerful smell.”

  “He didn’t have a motive to commit murder.”

  “Didn’t he? In Jim McAllister’s mind something was terribly wrong, something that his sister said he wanted to make right, remember? Maybe he found out Peter was about to propose, maybe he felt that he should be next in line. Maybe what Jim wanted to make right was Peter—but maybe Peter made it right first.”

  Kathryn looked at him sadly. “You say I’m unwilling to believe—it sounds to me like there’s something you’re not willing to believe.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That Teddy—dear, wonderful Teddy—was only human, and that he might have just made a mistake. That his murder has nothing to do with the fly or the lab or the Gulf—or with Peter. Admit it, Nick—it’s possible.”

  Less than five feet away was the brain that could answer all of their questions—but it was not a brain anymore. It was just a lump of convoluted tissue with a black tunnel torn through the center, three hundred billion lifeless cells already shrunken and ashen gray since the life-giving blood had ceased to flow. His extremities were blue, and lividity was evident in the face and arms where the purplish blood had already settled.

  Nick reached out to press the skin to see if it would blanch.

  “Did you know that a body begins to cool at a rate of one-anda-half degrees per hour?” he said in a distant voice.

  “Nick …”

  “The sphincters relax, and the bowel and bladder void. The skin becomes waxy and translucent, and the head begins to turn a greenish-red. The eyes begin to flatten and the corneas become milky and opaque. Rigor mortis begins in the face and lower jaw and then spreads lower and lower and—”

  “Nick. Stop it.”

  Nick suddenly noticed a sound above him. He lifted his head; in the air above Teddy’s body a single black-and-gray fly drifted. It slowly descended in an erratic pattern until it came to rest on the moist tissues of the entry wound at the base of Teddy’s skull.

  Nick lunged forward and swung at the fly. It darted away and hovered momentarily, then began its erratic descent again. He swung a second time, then a third, each time with growing rage—and each time the gravid female waited patiently for this minor annoyance to subside before pursuing her biological destiny.

  Nick jumped to his feet swinging wildly, chasing the black speck higher and higher into the air. He whirled to the right and grabbed a wooden chair from the dinette.

  “Nick … don’t!” Kathryn screamed, rolling onto her side and shielding her head with both arms.

  The first wild arc caught nothing but air. The second tore off a cabinet door and sent plastic plates and cups clattering across the floor. The dazed fly, disoriented by the cyclonic winds, tumbled to the ground—and Nick was on top of it in an instant. He swung the chair high overhead and brought it down with a deafening crash again, and again, and again, until he was left holding nothing but a single splintered spindle.

  He dropped to his knees, panting, the adrenaline slowly beginning to withdraw its talons. Kathryn lay on her side, staring at him wide-eyed, her arms still covering her head.

  “Go ahead,” he muttered. “Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That’s a lot of fuss over a little shoofly pie.”

  From outside the trailer came the sound of an approaching engine. Nick glanced up to see the black-and-white patrol car and a bronze Ford LTD crunch to a stop, followed by a rolling cloud of dust. A moment later the screen door opened, and in stepped the sheriff, followed by Mr. Wilkins. The tiny trailer suddenly seemed impossibly crowded.

  “Thanks for hurrying.” Nick glowered at the sheriff. “Stop for donuts?”

  “It’s been a busy morning.”

  The sheriff surveyed the trailer quickly, stopping abruptly when he noticed Kathryn crouching in the corner and the dark, red circles under her eyes.

  “Did you have to bring her in on this?”

  “I came because I wanted to,” Kathryn said angrily. “I came for Teddy’s sake.”

  The sheriff looked down at the pile of kindling at Nick’s feet and the broken spindle still in his hand.

  “I shouldn’t have to tell you this, Doc; this is a crime scene. Until Mr. Wilkins here is finished with it—until I’m finished with it—you don’t touch anything.”

  Nick looked at the coroner. “I see you broug
ht the ice cream man. I didn’t know you deliver, Mr. Wilkins.”

  Mr. Wilkins looked as indignant as possible and turned to the sheriff. “Sheriff, do I have to conduct my investigation in this unprofessional atmosphere?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Nick said, “unless you leave.”

  “You are way out of line,” the sheriff said. “Mr. Wilkins is the official coroner of Holcum County. Now step aside and let the man do his work.”

  Nick stood up and dusted himself off. “Before you proceed with your evaluation of the crime scene, may I make a couple of observations? I think you may find them helpful.”

  The sheriff nodded doubtfully, while Mr. Wilkins folded his arms and said nothing.

  “This is Teddy’s laboratory log,” he said, handing the brown journal to the sheriff. “His last entry was made at 11:56 last night, placing the time of death sometime in the last eleven hours. You’ll notice there is some lividity, which takes about three hours to begin, narrowing the window somewhat more.”

  He knelt down and pointed carefully to the entry wound at the back of Teddy’s skull. “Probably not a suicide,” he said in the general direction of Mr. Wilkins. “The entry wound is star shaped, indicating a contact wound. That means the gun was in contact with Teddy’s head when it fired. The gases escaping from the barrel ripped the skin open in a star-shaped pattern. Someone stepped up behind Teddy and fired execution-style. That indicates to me that someone was waiting for Teddy.”

  Kathryn interrupted. “But how could anyone have gotten that close without Teddy seeing?”

  Nick stepped to the wall switch and flipped it on. Nothing happened. He stepped around Teddy’s body to the single light fixture that hung in the center of the ceiling. The white glass bowl had been removed and one bare bulb stood out like a pearl thumb. He picked up a dishtowel and covered his hand, then reached up and gave the bulb a quarter-turn to the right. The brightness of the light caused all of them to wince and turn away.