Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop: 2 Bugman Novels in 1

by Tim Downs

  “Did you know that ants and termites alone make up 20 percent of the entire animal biomass of our planet? Did you know that one out of every four animals on earth is a beetle? Your little town of Raleigh has a population of what—a quarter of a million? There may be two million insects in a single acre of land. Insects eat more plants than all the other creatures on earth. Without insects, we would be living in an ecological nightmare—mountains of rotting organic matter everywhere. Without insects, half the other animal species on earth would probably perish—yours included. My species rules this world; you are a member of an annoying minority group. When you ask me if this is worth knowing, you’re asking me if life itself is worth knowing.”

  Nick studied the young man’s face. Like all undergraduates, he knew how to look suitably repentant; it was one of their most basic survival skills. This one looked like a cocker spaniel that got caught peeing on the rug. He was sorry—so very sorry—that even phys ed majors like him had a three-hour science requirement.

  Nick let out a sigh. “Let me bring it down to your level,” he said. “The kissing bugs of Central and South America can consume twelve times their body weight in blood. That’s the equivalent of a Sigma Chi drinking two hundred gallons of beer at one party.”

  The entire class let out a cheer.

  Nick turned back to the blackboard. “I should never have turned around,” he said. But before he could return to his private lecture, another student, sensing the opportunity, spoke up.

  “Dr. Polchak, what are your office hours? I can never find you.”

  “My office is here in Gardner Hall, room 323. Knock on my door; if I answer, those are my office hours. If you really need to whine about something, talk to me after class.”

  “But I can never catch you after class. Am I supposed to talk to your back while you’re running down the hall toward your lab?”

  Nick nodded. “That works for me. Now can we get back to this? I’ve got a lot of material to cover. And yes,” he said with a nod in the direction of the cocker spaniel, “this will be on the final. The only thing I will not require you people to remember is useless knowledge—and in case you’re wondering, there is no such thing as useless knowledge.”

  But as the classroom quieted once again, an unusual sound drifted forward from the back of the room. Heads began to slowly turn—Nick’s last of all. There, spread-eagled atop a cool, black laboratory island, was a student fast asleep. He lay on his back, mouth open, with a little pool of spittle beside his face.

  A piece of chalk snapped in two.

  “Did I ever tell you,” Nick said slowly, “about a case I had several years ago? It was in Colorado, in an area near a meatprocessing plant. The men who worked there carried an unusual type of knife, something like a boning knife, and they were very adept with it.”

  As he spoke, Nick started back through the classroom toward the sleeping student.

  “They found one of their employees in the bottom of a nearby ravine with his gut sliced open. The body had been there for several days. After seventy-two hours, forensic entomology is the most reliable way to determine postmortem interval, so the local medical examiner asked me to come in before they moved the body.”

  As Nick passed each row of students, he gestured for them to follow.

  “I could see the body from the top of the ravine, lying in an opening between some small trees. It looked as if they had painted a chalk line around the body, like they do to mark the placement when a body is finally removed—only the body was still there. When I got closer, I realized what it was. The long gut wound had allowed a massive maggot infestation in the abdomen, and the maggots had completed their third instar—they had eaten all they could hold, and they were leaving the body, looking for a safe place to pupate. There were so many maggots exiting all at once that they formed a white outline, slowly moving outward toward the trees.”

  Nick was standing over the lab table now with the rest of the class gathered silently around. He spoke quietly, glaring down at the oblivious student. Nick opened a drawer and removed a scalpel and a pair of forceps. With the forceps he gently lifted the boy’s shirt near each button, and with a quick flip of the scalpel sent each button tapping across the table. Now he used the forceps to peel back the shirt, leaving the bare chest and abdomen exposed. The student brushed an imaginary fly from his nose, licked his lips, and let out a long, moaning snore.

  “I examined the abdomen. The wound stretched from the breastbone to the groin—just the kind of incision a man would make who’s used to gutting Herefords. The maggot mass was enormous, the largest I’ve ever seen. I wanted to measure the temperature at the core of the mass. I slid in a probe—it was almost 120 degrees at the center! But maggots can’t regulate their own body temperature, and that’s about the point where thermal death occurs, so the maggots were circulating away from the core as fast as they could. The cooler ones were wriggling their way toward the center while the overheated ones were struggling to get out, venting their excess heat on the surface like tiny radiators. It was amazing! The entire mass looked like a pot of boiling ziti.

  “Then all of a sudden, I felt something land in my hair. I brushed it off without thinking about it—then it happened again. Then something hit my arm … then my back. Finally, something landed on my neck, wriggled for a minute, and rolled down my back. I looked up …”

  Nick stood beside the boy’s head, leaning ever closer as he spoke. He held the gleaming scalpel directly in front of his face, and the volume of his voice began to slowly rise.

  “When maggots flee a body, they instinctively look for a drier place to pupate. To a maggot, dry means high, so they climb anything they can find: a rock, a bush—even a tree. Thousands of maggots had inched their way up the surrounding trees, crawled out to the tips of the lowest branches, and now they were dropping off. It was raining maggots, and they were landing on my neck and rolling down my back. And there’s only ONE thing in the WORLD that I HATE more than MAGGOTS DOWN MY BACK …”

  The boy’s eyes popped open. Two great brown meteors crashed down on him, mere inches from impact, led by the flash of surgical steel.

  Nick spoke in a low, rumbling tone: “DON’T-EVER-FALL-ASLEEP-IN-MY-CLASS.”

  With a quick flip of his hand Nick placed the cold, blunt butt of the scalpel on the boy’s breastbone and drew it firmly down the center of his abdomen. The boy shrieked, clutched at his chest with both hands, and rolled off onto the floor. Nick looked up at the rest of the stunned students.

  “Now then. Does anyone else have a question?”

  Dr. Noah Ellison, chairman of the NC State Department of Entomology, tapped his spoon against the side of his coffee cup; the various members of the faculty committee took their seats and shuffled into silence.

  “We have a number of items on our agenda this evening,” Dr. Ellison began. A man directly across the table raised his hand slightly and, without waiting for recognition, plunged ahead.

  “Perhaps I might suggest an appropriate starting point,” he said with a dripping Southern lilt in his voice. “Let’s see now. We could begin with research reports from our various agricultural extension stations. Then again, we might consider the budget allocations for new equipment in the graduate laboratories. Now, what was that other item? It escapes my mind just now—oh yes, now I recall.” He shot a glance toward the end of the table, where Nick Polchak sat slumped in his chair with a copy of the Journal of Medical Entomology open on his chest. “We could discuss Dr. Polchak’s decision to dissect a student in his class this morning. Yes, let’s begin with that.”

  Nick closed his journal. “I didn’t actually dissect him,” he said, “though the idea does open up some interesting research possibilities. Some of these undergraduates, I’m sure no one would miss.”

  “Why, Dr. Polchak,” the man replied, “rumor has it that you have an entire woodland forest filled with decomposing undergraduate students. Whatever would you do with another?”

&
nbsp; The man glaring at Nick was Dr. Sherman Pettigrew, tenured professor of Applied Insect Ecology and Pest Control. Dr. Pettigrew had several years of seniority on Nick, and he had strongly opposed the decision to hire Nick in the first place—but his “foresight went unheeded,” as he liked to put it, and now he took every available opportunity to remind Nick that he was not, and never would be, welcome. He despised Nick’s arrogant iconoclasm; he was horrified by the very idea of forensic entomology; and most of all—though he would never admit it—he resented Nick’s popularity with students.

  For Nick’s part, Sherman Pettigrew represented everything he hated about academia, traditional entomology, and the South. Sherman Pettigrew was a large man, in his midfifties, but with the face of a child: round, soft, and still bulging in places that should have long ago turned to muscle and sinew. It gave his face a look that Nick found hard to take seriously, even in an argument. He had the old Southern habit of always wearing white: white shirts, extra starch, with the cuffs buttoned tightly about his wrists; white cuffed pants with knife-edge pleats; white socks; white shoes—that’s what irritated Nick the most—and an ever-present white linen handkerchief for mopping beads of sweat from his pudgy forehead. His choice of apparel did his physique no favors, and only added to his babylike appearance. “Light colors make a room look bigger,” Nick once said to him. “Don’t they have decorators in the South?” Nick had an entire collection of nicknames for Dr. Pettigrew—the Great White, the Bulgy Bear—but since their very first faculty meeting together, Nick had addressed him as “Sherm”—not Sherman, not Pettigrew, and never, ever Dr. Pettigrew.

  “Perhaps you find this amusing,” Dr. Pettigrew replied. “I, for one, fail to see the humor in it. Even as we speak, there is an aggrieved family meeting with the university’s counsel, deciding whether or not to take legal recourse—legal recourse as in lawsuit, Dr. Polchak. While your colleagues are submitting papers to academic journals, you may find yourself submitting to a deposition.”

  “I read your last paper,” Nick said. “ ‘The European Corn Borer: Larval Parasitism in Selected North Carolina Hosts.’ What a snoozer.”

  “Dr. Ellison, I really must protest—”

  The aged chairman of the entomology department knew that it was time for a judicious intervention, but he hated to interrupt. For Dr. Ellison, the ongoing verbal volley between Dr. Polchak and Dr. Pettigrew was the highlight of these endless committee meetings, and he resented the role he was forced to play as peacekeeper and hand-slapper.

  “Nicholas, Dr. Pettigrew does have a point. We really cannot make a habit of attacking our students with surgical instruments.”

  “He fell asleep in my class,” Nick said sullenly.

  “Perhaps there is a reason for that,” Dr. Pettigrew offered.

  Nick glared at him. “I’m sure the European Corn Borer has them bouncing off the walls in your classroom, Sherm.”

  “Gentlemen,” Dr. Ellison said. “I think we’re all in agreement that Dr. Polchak’s disciplinary action this morning, while memorable, was a tad … extreme. We are now in the position of having to decide what to do about it.”

  “There is only one thing to do about it,” Dr. Pettigrew said. “I move for the immediate dismissal of Dr. Polchak.”

  A groan arose from the entire faculty committee.

  “A failed coup attempt.” Nick whistled. “How embarrassing.”

  “That also is a tad extreme.” Dr. Ellison frowned at Dr. Pettigrew. “However, some form of punitive action is necessary. I’m sure you understand, Nicholas, that to avoid legal action, the university must be able to demonstrate that you have been chastised in some appropriate way.”

  “You could make me take one of Sherm’s classes,” Nick suggested.

  “Nicholas, you’re not helping.”

  Suddenly, Nick took on a look of deep remorse. “There’s only one alternative,” he said. “Official censure. I’ll have to give up my classes for the summer and go away somewhere.”

  “This is patently unfair,” Dr. Pettigrew interrupted. “Everyone here knows that Dr. Polchak hates teaching. And every time he is ‘officially censured,’ he goes off to do whatever he pleases while the rest of us are forced to assume his class load.”

  “What else can we do, Sherm?” Nick said solemnly. “After this kind of tragedy, can we all just go back to business as usual? What would it communicate to the grieving family if today I vivisect little Bobby, and tomorrow I’m back teaching as usual? No, something must be done. I say we send me away. I say we apologize to the boy’s family. And I say we send him to Sherm’s class and let him sleep as much as he wants to.”

  Dr. Ellison wanted to smile, but his role required him to maintain a sober countenance. “I think there is something to what Dr. Polchak has suggested,” he said. “Very well, Nicholas, you will once again be officially censured by this department and by the university proper—”

  “That hurts,” Nick moaned.

  “And you will forfeit your summer classes—and all remuneration associated with them.”

  Nick winced. That did hurt.

  “And if I may make one more suggestion,” Dr. Pettigrew smiled. “It seems to me that Dr. Polchak could put some of this free time to good use—perhaps in some constructive activity that will help him to reconsider his errant ways.”

  “Such as?”

  “We all know the priority our department places on community service activities—especially our K-12 educational seminars. So far, Dr. Polchak has avoided them like the proverbial plague. There’s almost a month before the public schools dismiss; perhaps his involvement in this area would have a redeeming effect—a calming effect on him.”

  Under the table, Nick rolled his journal into a tight scroll and squeezed. Dr. Pettigrew smiled, taking special delight in this particular torture.

  Dr. Ellison turned to Nick. “Nicholas?”

  “Agreed,” Nick said through clenched teeth.

  With the issue settled, the committee adjourned briefly for refreshments. As Nick passed Dr. Ellison, he bent over and whispered in the old man’s ear.

  “So I have to go away,” he said. “Does anybody care where I go away?”

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 2003

  Riley McKay’s heels clicked and echoed down the hollow corridor of Fairview Elementary School. The shoes hurt. She curled her toes and wriggled her feet from side to side in a vain attempt to stretch out the unbroken leather. She longed for the comfortable Nikes she wore at the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office each day, but there were strict rules about the appearance of pathologists participating in community educational programs. It was Health Day for the second-graders at Fairview Elementary School, and in the opinion of her supervisor, such an auspicious occasion was no time to be a slouch.

  The blue glow from the windows at the far end of the corridor created a tunnel-of-light effect. It reminded Riley of the hallway that led to the autopsy room back at the coroner’s office: worn linoleum endlessly buffed to a dull shine; cinder-block walls layered with so many years of thick, glossy paint that the texture of each block had almost disappeared; and heavy oak doorposts and lintels that bore the scars of hundreds of daily collisions. The walls were dotted with odd-sized bits of paper too—but at Fairview Elementary the papers were chalk and crayon drawings, not headshots of trauma victims and reminders from the histology lab.

  Riley shook her head. She expected her pathology fellowship program to include some extracurricular duties—evening hours, extra weekend rotations, additional paperwork, and administrative chores—that just came with the territory. But why ask an MD with five years of pathology residency to conduct a seminar that any of the deputy coroners could do? Why ask her to—

  Just then a classroom door burst open, and a young boy ran directly into her, straddling her with his arms like a blind man walking into a pole. He instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist, then recovered and looked up at her sheepishly. Riley looked down into his b
eautiful eyes and brushed the sandy hair back from his face.

  “I got to go to the bathroom,” he said.

  Riley smiled. “When you got to go, you got to go.”

  He grinned back. Riley hoped for one more hug before he left, but he slid past her and raced off down the hall.

  “Where’s room 121?” she called after him.

  “Next one down!” he shouted back. “Ms. Weleski!”

  Riley rapped on the thick glass panel embedded with a crosshatch of black safety wire. A pleasant-looking woman sprung up from a seat in the back of the room and pushed open the door.

  “Ms. Weleski? I’m Dr. Riley McKay from the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office. You asked for someone to speak about our ‘Cribs for Kids’ program?”

  “Yes! Yes!” She took Riley by the arm and pulled her inside, effervescing with an enthusiasm perfected by twenty years of daily exposure to seven-year-olds. “Thank you ever so much for coming! But I’m afraid we’re running a bit behind. Our first presenter showed up a bit late,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “He’s just getting under way now.”

  “No problem. I can wait,” Riley said with a smile and a wink. She wedged herself into a chrome-and-plastic desk beside the teacher, squeezed off her shoes, and reached down to massage her aching arches.

  “My name is Nick Polchak,” said a voice from the front of the classroom. “I am a forensic entomologist. Can anybody tell me what that means?”

  Silence.

  “OK,” Nick said, “how about just the entomologist part? Does anybody know what an entomologist does? I’ll give you a hint: it comes from the Greek word entomos, meaning ‘one whose body is cut into segments … ’”

  Still nothing.

  Riley looked up to see a tall man with angular limbs and large hands. His appearance was casual, as if he had just stopped off on the way to a Pirates game. To Riley it looked as if he dressed quickly, and once dressed forgot what he had put on. No one’s setting a dress code for him, she thought. He wore a faded plaid oxford, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, over a gray Penn State T-shirt. His shorts were weathered and worn, the ragged edge more the result of wear than style. Everything about him seemed to say, “It’s not about how I look; it’s about what I do.” Riley smiled in agreement.