Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (6 page)

“Call it what you want; that's the way it is. This is a rescue-and-recovery effort, Nick. Got that? Rescue
and
recovery—but rescue comes first. As of tomorrow, all willing and able DMORT personnel are to assist in rescue efforts in New Orleans.”

“I wasn't trained for search and rescue,” Nick grumbled.

“C'mon, I've seen you recover bodies from every imaginable location—trees, cliffs, power lines, caves. Search and rescue can't be any harder than that. The only difference is that the body walks away later.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“You don't have to take part, you know; it's up to you. I'm sure we could find something for you to do around here instead.”

Nick glared at him. “You jerk—you know I'll be there.”

Denny grinned. “Yeah, I know. You'd rather die than miss the action.” He started to turn away, then stopped. “One more thing,” he said. “We're a team, okay? We've been together a few times now. I really need you to be a team player this time.”

Nick shrugged. “I'm a team player.”

“Yeah, but there are different kinds of teams. There are ball teams, where everybody has to work together like a well-oiled machine; then there are cross-country teams, where it's every man for himself. I need you to play ball this time. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?”

“You want me to play on the Region IV softball team.”

Denny smiled—but only a little. “Just think it over.”

He turned and left.

“Hello, Nick.”

Nick turned to find Dr. Woodbridge standing behind him. Her arms hung down with her hands folded in front of her at the waist, with her two index fingers pressed together at the tips and pointing at the floor. She stood with one foot slightly in front of the other, like a spokesperson about to demonstrate a new product. She was smiling, and the moment Nick made eye contact her eyes locked onto his.

“Beth,” Nick said.

“How are you doing, Nick?”

“Fine. If you'll excuse me, I was just about to—”

“You weren't listening, were you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My introductory comments. You weren't listening.”

“Sure I was. Bowel movements—got it.”

“I said if I ask you, ‘How are you doing?' please don't brush me off. So—how are you doing?”

“Oh, right, I remember now. Well, let's see: After careful consideration, I would say that I'm—fine.”

She reached into her blazer pocket and removed a folded slip of paper. She opened it and held it up to Nick. On it was written a single word: FINE.

“That's amazing,” Nick said. “You're like that Criss Angel guy. Can you do the levitation? I really like that one.”

“I wrote it down before I came over here,” Dr. Woodbridge said. “It was my prediction of what you would say when I asked you how you are.”

“You've really got me pegged,” Nick said, “along with about 90 percent of the other men on the planet. Maybe I should try that; maybe I should write down a word for you.”

“And what would that word be, Nick?”

A few colorful possibilities crossed Nick's mind, but he thought it best to keep them to himself. He tried to maintain eye contact with her as he spoke—not because he wanted to, but because he thought she might use it as some kind of test for elusiveness or guilt. He found it almost impossible to do so; her gaze was so intense that every time he made solid contact it was like touching an electric fence. It was her most annoying habit—a skill she had probably honed through years of private therapy with evasive neurotics. She didn't look
at
him, she looked
through
him; it was as if she were an ophthalmologist peering through his pupils at his retinas, searching for some capillary that was about to explode. Maybe it was supposed to communicate interest or compassion, but to Nick it just seemed—
annoying
. That was the word that kept coming to mind; that was the one he should carry around in his jacket pocket. Then she would ask, “How are you, Nick?” and he could just flash his little piece of paper: ANNOYING.

He started to look away, but her eyes darted ahead of his like a cutting horse herding a straying heifer back into the herd. That was another annoying habit; she demanded eye contact in return. During past mental health debriefings, Nick had sometimes felt like his head was a volleyball being smacked back and forth into the center of the court. He found it exhausting and it gave him a headache.
What kind of mental health is that?
he wondered.
I can get headaches on my own.

“I couldn't help overhearing the last part of your conversation with Denny,” she said.

“‘Couldn't help overhearing.' That's an interesting choice of words. How about, ‘Did my best to listen in.'”

“If you wish. You do know what he was referring to, don't you?”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“Is that an answer or an evasion?”

Annoying.
“Look, are we having an interview already? I just got here an hour ago; how much stress can I be under?”

Beth smiled. “No, this is not an interview. I just wanted a chance to say hello before things got busy. It's been a long time. I've thought about you.”

Nick looked at her—as if he had a choice. She was wrong; Nick had been listening closely when she had made her opening comments. He had heard every word she said; he had heard her when she said, “I really do care,” and he knew that she really did. It was the
way
she cared that bothered him. He couldn't help but feel that he was some sort of case study to her: the Bug Man—the weirdest guy in DMORT—someone who might be the subject of an award-winning article in the
Journal of Personality Disorders
.

“I've thought about you too,” Nick replied.

“How ambiguous.”

“Isn't it? I hear women love a man of mystery.”

She seemed to care about Nick the same way that Nick cared about his giant hissing cockroach from Madagascar—something that fascinates you, not something you form a genuine attachment to. At every DMORT deployment they had shared, Nick seemed to become an object of special interest to her. He didn't mind her attention—what man would? He just didn't like the X-ray burns that came with it. He could never decide whether she was a woman trying to change him or a therapist trying to take him apart. Maybe it was just his male vanity, or maybe he was just an unwilling specimen trying to wriggle off the microscope slide; either way, it was just one more thing about her that he found irritating.

“I want you to know that I plan to check up on you on a regular basis,” she said.

“What makes me so lucky?”

“I think you're going to be working under a lot of pressure.”

“No more than anyone else.”

She paused. “
Within and without
—remember?”

Nick remembered. “Within and without” was a phrase she had coined—one of those cute clinical clichés that therapists love to drum up and tuck away for future book titles. “Within and without” was her way of saying that a man's response to stress is determined by two things: the extent of the external pressure, and the nature of his own internal wiring. With Nick, her emphasis had always been on
within
.

“Has the book come out yet?” he asked. “I sure hope I'm on the cover.”

“Do you deflect everything with humor?”

“No, sometimes I just walk away. Shall I demonstrate?”

“Nick, you can't get rid of me that easily.”

“How many women have told me that? But I'm still single.”

“I think that's the way you want it.”

“I'm just looking for the right woman—but the wrong women keep blocking my view.”

“Nick, I'm just trying to do my job.”

“And I'm just trying to do mine—so let me.”

“I'll be glad to—as long as you do your job in a healthy way.”

“A
healthy way
? What's
healthy
about any of this? Do you know what DMORT members do, Beth? We volunteer our spare time to collect human remains at mass-casualty sites—does that sound healthy to you? We do it so that some grieving widow can gain a sense of closure by burying a bone fragment from her husband's ring finger—is that healthy? Nobody around here is healthy, Beth. We're all a little crazy in our own way.”

“I never said you were crazy.”

“No, that would be bad clinical technique—but that's what you're thinking.”

“Would you like to know what I'm really thinking, Nick?”

“No, I wouldn't. Look, I'm not crazy, I'm
special
—my mother told me so. The whole world is crazy, and it takes a lot of special people to keep it running smoothly—that's just the way it is. I like myself the way I am, okay? And if I work a little harder than most people or stay up a little longer, well, that's just dedication to my work.”

“You're sure that's all it is?”

“Trust me, I'm a specimen of good mental health—and if I do decide to go postal, I promise not to do it on your watch.”

She just eyed him for a moment, considering; then she turned and walked over to a briefcase lying open on a folding chair. She returned and handed Nick a document in a clear plastic cover.

“Do you remember our last deployment?” she asked.

How could he forget? This was their sixth deployment together, and each one seemed to end a little worse than the one before. Dr. Woodbridge first joined the ranks of DMORT in 1999, at the site of the Egypt Air disaster near Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. Nick didn't trust her from the start; she seemed to show a little too much interest in the mental motivations and inner drives behind these strange people who willingly gave up their spare time to collect the dead. When she was finally introduced to Nick, the one his colleagues mysteriously referred to as the Bug Man, it was as if her entire focus shifted to him—as though she had found the Prince of Darkness himself, someone twisted enough to supply a lifetime of fascinating study and analysis. Nick resented the extra attention; there was nothing wrong with being fascinated by insects —or by their forensic application. More than 90 percent of all animal species on earth are insects, and Nick could never understand how some people seemed to find nine-tenths of the world disgusting or scary.
They're the ones who need a psychiatrist
, he thought.

The trouble began with more and more frequent “debriefings,” during which Dr. Woodbridge attempted to probe deeper and deeper into the machinations of Nick's mind. At first, Nick resisted. “Have you ever witnessed the death of a family member?” she asked.
No, but I can think of a couple I'd like to
. “When did you first show an interest in insects?”
It was in my baby crib—my mobile had blowflies instead of canaries.
“Would you say you have fulfilling relationships with the opposite sex?”
The living ones or the dead ones?

But she wasn't deterred, so Nick devised a different strategy: He thought that if he answered all her questions completely and forthrightly, it might satisfy her curiosity and get her off his back.
Fool
—he knew better now. During this phase he made some regrettable admissions: He told her that he liked insects more than people; he told her that he found the human species, as a whole, irrational and disappointing; worst of all, he told her that he preferred not to think of himself as a human being at all—that he preferred to think of himself as a bug. From that point on, Dr. Woodbridge welcomed Nick into her office with special eagerness—like a biologist receiving a specimen of bubonic plague.

It was on their third deployment that Nick made his big mistake.

The simple fact was that Dr. Woodbridge was a very attractive woman, and not all of Nick resented her special attention. They sat hour after hour in her little office, seated close and staring face-to-face, talking intimately and openly about feelings and families and stress. At one point Nick thought he detected something different in Dr. Woodbridge's eyes; he wondered if her interest in him was becoming more than professional. But he had no way to be sure; he had proven himself thoroughly inept at reading signals from the opposite sex in the past, and he could think of no way to come right out and ask. So instead he improvised a simple experiment: Midway through a lengthy analysis of Nick's attachment issues, he suddenly leaned forward and kissed her—and sure enough, she kissed him back.

Hypothesis confirmed.

At that point their relationship became something more. That's when Dr. Woodbridge became Beth—and that's when the trouble began.

Nick began to have second thoughts almost immediately. They lived on opposite coasts, so their relationship would be relegated to DMORT deployments—an atmosphere hardly conducive to romance. To make matters worse, his significant other was also his psychiatrist. He had been required to expose the workings of his mind to her, and he regretted that already—was he now supposed to open his heart too? He found himself revisiting his basic motivations for involvement with DMORT, and romance simply wasn't one of them—it would only make things more difficult.