Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle

by Tim Downs

  22

  Dr. Polchak?”

  Nick looked up from his microscope. He saw two figures standing in his doorway—a tall, heavy man with coarse black hair and a woman of similar age but much smaller in stature. They were both dressed professionally.

  The man pointed to the woman with his thumb. “She said we should make an appointment first, but I told her we’d have better luck if we just dropped by. We never agree on things like that.”

  “I don’t do marriage counseling,” Nick said.

  The woman smiled. “We’re not married, Dr. Polchak. If he wasn’t my partner I would have shot him a long time ago.”

  “Sounds like a marriage to me.”

  “I’m Special Agent Califano,” she said. “This is my partner, Special Agent Waleski. We’re with the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

  “The DEA. You got my sample then.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “And?”

  The woman paused. “You want us to shout it from the doorway?”

  “No need to shout. I can hear you.”

  “How ’bout we come in?” Waleski suggested. “That way we can all get to know each other better.”

  “Right. Sorry. Come on in.”

  The two DEA agents entered the laboratory and looked at the tables jammed with specimen cases, laboratory equipment, and electronic gear.

  “Look at this place,” Waleski said.

  Nick shrugged. “It’s not much, but I call it home.”

  “Do you actually know how all this stuff works?”

  “The only thing that works is the butterfly net—the rest is just to impress people.”

  Waleski looked at him. “No kidding?”

  Califano elbowed her partner in the gut. “He’s being sarcastic, dummy.”

  Waleski extended his finger toward a large red button on a formidablelooking apparatus. “What does this button do?”

  “It sends ten thousand volts of electricity surging up your arm.”

  “I’ll bet it doesn’t.”

  “I wish it did. If ‘Discovery Time’ is over, can we get down to business?”

  “Sure. Can we sit down?”

  “It’s a lab. There is no place to sit down.”

  “You work standing up?”

  “I stand up all day and I lie down all night. Do DEA agents do it differently?”

  “What about visitors?”

  “If I’m lucky they feel unwelcome and leave. What about my sample?”

  They gathered around an empty lab table. The edge of the table barely rose past Waleski’s waist but covered half of Califano’s torso, making her look even smaller than she did in the doorway. Waleski swung his briefcase onto the table and took out a multipage report.

  “This came in this morning. It’s from our Special Testing and Research Lab up in Dulles, Virginia.”

  “I wasn’t expecting a personal visit,” Nick said. “They could have just mailed it.”

  “They mailed it to us. They asked us to deliver it personally.”

  “Then I assume they found something.”

  “You sent the DEA an ordinary sample of cannabis, Dr. Polchak. Do you mind if I ask why?”

  “Because it wasn’t ordinary.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, first of all, the marijuana originated in Colombia.”

  Waleski glanced down at the report. “I was just about to tell you that—Red Colombian Haze, they call it. How did you know?”

  “Insect parts.”

  “Insect parts?”

  “Legs, heads, antennae, maggots—you always find insect parts in a marijuana shipment, just like you do in food.”

  “In food?”

  “Of course. Ninety-five percent of all the animal species on earth are insects. Many of them like the same food you do. It’s impossible to keep insect parts out of food; the FDA just limits their number. Take canned orange juice, for example: An eight-ounce glass is allowed to have up to five fly eggs or one maggot.”

  “So much for Happy Meals,” Waleski groaned.

  “Or take chocolate for example—”

  Califano held up her hand. “Stop! Don’t make me use my gun. Can we get back to the cannabis, please?”

  Nick nodded. “I’ve been going through the sample I collected, and I’ve been able to identify body fragments from a beetle that’s indigenous to Colombia. That means the shipment must have originated there.”

  “That’s not exactly unusual,” Waleski said. “The Colombians grow a lot of the stuff.”

  “There’s something else. The cannabis contained an extremely large number of insect eggs. Manduca sexta, to be specific—a type of hornworm.”

  “Is there anything particularly unusual about that insect?”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Waleski blinked. “You want to run that by me again?”

  “The unusual thing about Manduca sexta is that it’s one of the most ordinary insects of all. The larva is enormous. It has a very accessible nervous system and its organs are easy to isolate and dissect—that makes it a model organism for research. Entomologists call it ‘the white lab rat of insects.’”

  “Fascinating. So what?”

  “The white lab rat of insects—the perfect insect to choose if you wanted to conduct an experiment.”

  “What kind of experiment?”

  “To see if living insects could survive shipment in marijuana.”

  The DEA agents looked at each other.

  “Hiding insects in drugs?” Califano said. “That’s kind of an expensive shipping method, don’t you think? I thought FedEx was pricey—why would anybody want to do that?”

  “I don’t know why—but I think someone did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Manduca sexta is a North American insect—you don’t find it in Colombia. So how does a North American insect find its way into a drug shipment that originated in Colombia? It doesn’t—unless someone purposely puts it there. And the hornworm only feeds on plants from the Solanaceae family—potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco—never on marijuana.”

  “Did you say tobacco?”

  “Yes. Manduca sexta is the tobacco hornworm. Why?”

  Waleski opened the report. “Yeah, here it is—I thought I remembered that. The cannabis you sent us also contained tobacco leaves, shredded up along with the marijuana.”

  “Let me see that.” Nick grabbed the report and studied the chart showing the chemical analysis of the marijuana.

  Califano shrugged. “Maybe it’s just filler—somebody trying to make a few extra bucks.”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s all kinds of stuff that shouldn’t be in there: sugar, yeast, casein—”

  “What’s ‘casein’?”

  “A common protein—you find it in milk and cheese. Look at this: There’s even some wheat germ.”

  Califano smiled. “What do you know? The potheads are getting healthy.”

  “So what do you make of all this, Doc?”

  Nick looked at him. “Why are you here, Waleski? You two didn’t come over here just to hand-deliver a report—and the DEA wouldn’t get excited over one bizarre marijuana sample.”

  “It’s not just one,” Waleski said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “In the last month we’ve intercepted two other marijuana shipments exactly like the one you sent us—one in Iowa and one in Illinois.”

  “Were the same insect eggs present?”

  “Yeah—but we didn’t know what they were until now.”

  “Did they rear any of them? Did they let the eggs hatch and raise them to adults?”

  “I don’t think so. They just took specimens and preserved them. I can request samples for you if you want them.”

  “No need—I already know what they are. I wanted them alive.”

  “Why?”

  “Come here. Let me show yo
u something.” Nick led both agents to the microscope and let each one peer through the powerful lens.

  “What am I looking at?” Califano asked.

  “A tobacco hornworm. That little thing growing from the back of its head is a parasite of some sort. The insect is dead, but the parasite is still growing.”

  “I see it. What is it?”

  “I have no idea—but I’m fairly certain the parasite was present on the eggs when they were shipped. That’s why I wish your people had reared those other eggs—I’d like to know if they were infected with the same parasite.”

  Waleski took his turn at the microscope. “Yeah, I see it too. Is this something you don’t see very often?”

  “Some insects are commonly parasitized—not this insect.”

  “Is that a big deal?”

  “It might be. I don’t know yet.”

  Waleski looked up. “Look, Dr. Polchak, we’ve been instructed to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Where did you find your sample?”

  “Not far from here—on a farm in Sampson County. I’m investigating a murder there.”

  “A murder?”

  “A farmer named Michael Severenson was shot in his own tomato field. That’s where I found the marijuana, right there in the dirt—somebody had thrown it out. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think? Marijuana just happens to get tossed into a tomato field; the marijuana just happens to contain tobacco hornworm eggs; tobacco hornworms just happen to love tomato fields. Isn’t coincidence amazing?”

  “Then you think it was done on purpose.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Any idea where the drugs came from?”

  “I’m hoping you guys can help with that. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “So that’s why you’re here—because my sample matched two others you found, and you think the same guy might’ve sent all three.”

  “It looks that way to us. We look for similarities, Dr. Polchak—similar ingredients, similar packaging, similar method of transport. That’s how we track down suppliers.”

  “Well, let me know if you find this one. I’d like to know what he’s up to.”

  “It’s an interesting theory you’ve got there, Dr. Polchak, but there’s one thing you haven’t explained.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why would anyone want to smuggle insects in marijuana?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said, “but I have a feeling we’d better find out.”

  23

  Nick leaned into the door with his shoulder and pushed; a cascading stack of journals and books occupied both of his hands. The door slowly gave way under his weight and he stepped out of Gardner Hall and into the afternoon sunshine. He felt the last breath of airconditioning on his back, then the suffocating August heat. The heat felt almost comforting after a day in his chilly laboratory, but he knew the fuzzy feeling would last only about ten more seconds—then his eyeglasses would begin to fog over and his shirt would cling to his back and he would begin to curse the first misguided settlers of North Carolina.

  He headed across the small courtyard to the parking lot and his car—but on the way he glanced to his left and noticed a long brick building with almost no windows. There was nothing unusual about the building’s appearance; almost everything at NC State was constructed of red brick—the buildings, the sidewalks, even the massive courtyard in front of Hill Library cleverly nicknamed “the Brickyard.” There was a rumor around campus that a wealthy alumnus who manufactured red brick donated a certain number of bricks to the campus each year, and every brick had to be used or there would be no donation the following year. Nick didn’t get it. If the guy manufactured Legos, would all the buildings be made of red and yellow plastic?

  But it wasn’t the architecture that caught Nick’s attention. The nondescript three-story building was the home of NC State’s Biological Resources Facility. The top two floors housed Small Animal Research, where the rats and rabbits were bred for biological research purposes—but the ground floor housed the NC State Insectary.

  Nick set the books down on the sidewalk and headed for it.

  He tried the door but found it locked as always—it was a security entrance that had to be unlocked by someone inside. He looked through the window into the insectary manager’s office and saw the manager glaring back at him from behind her desk. He pointed to the door and waited, but nothing happened.

  Nick pushed the button on the intercom. “Come on, Maggie, let me in.”

  “Go away.”

  “I’ll just go find a security guard.”

  Five seconds passed before Nick heard a buzz and a click. He opened the door and stepped into the office.

  “No,” she said before he could even open his mouth.

  “No what? I didn’t say anything yet.”

  “No flies—I told you before. I let you talk me into it once and I told you never again. No calliphorids, no sarcophagids—I’m still having nightmares.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re exaggerating.”

  “Our facilities weren’t designed to hold flies, Nick—I tried to tell you that. We raise big bugs here: hornworms, budworms, earworms. Flies are too small. They get out.”

  “What’s a few flies among friends?”

  “There were thousands of them—they were everywhere. On the walls, on the desks, in the air . . . somebody left a sandwich out and the flesh flies all went for it. Female sarcophagids give live birth, Nick—remember? They don’t lay eggs—they drop little maggots like bombs. They went into a birthing frenzy—maggots were dropping everywhere. They were in my hair, Nick—my hair!”

  “Have you ever considered that you might not be in the right job?”

  “I like insects—I just don’t like them in my hair.”

  Nick paused. “By the way, I like your hair this way.”

  Her eyes were like knife slits. “Do you really think you can pacify me with a cheap compliment like that?”

  “I was hoping.”

  “No flies, Nick. I don’t care what you’re working on or how many you need—no flies.”

  “I don’t want any flies,” Nick said. “I just want some information.”

  She eyed him warily. “What kind of information?”

  “You raise tobacco hornworms here, don’t you?”

  “Of course. They’re one of our biggest sellers.”

  “Sellers?”

  “We don’t just raise insects for NC State; we sell them to companies for testing. Bayer Crop Science, Dow Agrochemical, DuPont—even the USDA. We sell to other universities too: Ohio State, Cornell—”

  “How many do you produce?”

  “About ten thousand eggs a day. Why?”

  “How do you ship them?”

  “If you’re really interested, I’ll show you.”

  She led Nick across the hall to a lab that was not much larger than her office. Along the right wall was a long counter brightly illuminated by fluorescent lights mounted to the melamine cabinets above. A young man and a young woman were seated at the counter. They were both dressed in powder-blue hospital scrubs and white hairnets.

  “Work-study?” Nick asked.

  “Yes. We’ve usually got four or five students working here parttime. They put in about a hundred hours of work for us each week—more now, during the busy season.”

  “What do they do in here?”

  She led Nick over to the counter. To the left of each student was a paper towel with a large petri dish sitting on it. The dish was covered with hundreds of tiny green dots.

  Nick pointed. “Hornworm eggs?”

  “That’s right. The students’ job is to put them into these cups.”

  In front of each student was a green cafeteria tray lined with little one-ounce plastic cups. Nick watched as one of the students dipped the tip of a small
paintbrush into his petri dish, picked up two or three eggs, and carefully deposited them into one of the cups—then she sealed the cup with a small cardboard disk. In the bottom of each cup was a thick layer of a spongy-looking substance the color of light coffee.

  “Is that a growth medium?” Nick asked.

  “Exactly—we make it ourselves in ten-liter batches. When the eggs hatch, they’ll feed on the growth medium until the buyer is ready to use them.”

  Nick looked at her. “What’s in that growth medium?”

  “It’s different for every insect. They all have their own special diets.”

  “What about Manduca sexta?”

  “Nothing fancy—just some torula yeast, Wesson salt mix, vitaminfree casein, wheat germ . . . we grind it all up in a food processor. We ship the eggs in units of one to five hundred. Some of the big companies will buy a hundred thousand at a time in the summer—they scatter them in their fields and then test their new pesticides on them. Just the other day we—”

  She looked around the laboratory, but Nick was gone.

  Nick opened his cell phone and scrolled through the address book until he found the home phone number for DONOVAN, NATHAN, FBI. He punched Send and waited.

  “Nick—how you doing?”

  “Put your wife on the phone.”

  Donovan paused. “I see you haven’t lost your social skills.”

  “Sorry. I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  “Aren’t you always?”

  “So why do you always insist on chatting?”

  “Haven’t talked to you for a while. How’s it going?”

  “I could go on all night—let’s do a sleepover. Put your wife on the phone.”

  “Hey, Nick.”

  “What?”

  “I just wanted to tell you—thanks for what you did up in northern Virginia. I got a big pat on the back for that and I thought I’d pass it on.”

  Nick said nothing.

  “Are you there?”

  “I was just basking in the glory. Praise from you is so rare.”