Dead of Night (11 page)

Neither gave the option of leaving a message.

I knew a little about them both. Tropicane was one of Florida’s largest producers of cane sugar. It was a privately owned, megadollar corporation, from what I’d read. It employed hundreds of people, maybe thousands. A major economic and political player.

Frieda said it might have been Tropicane that had commissioned one of her brother’s dioramas. He’d done work for both organizations.

The Environmental Conservancy, or EPOC, was a watchdog organization. It kept a low profile in the way of The Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It was well financed, politically conservative. It favored lawsuits over headlines, unlike more controversial nonprofits, such as Greenpeace, PETA, and the Earth Liberation Front. It was a more thoughtful group that preferred to work in the background. That was my impression, anyway.

Frieda surprised me, saying, years back, she’d been introduced to EPOC’s founder, but the meeting had had nothing to do with environmental issues.

“At the time,” she said, “he was still a practicing research physician. Dr. Desmond Stokes. A real doctor, but he had a more holistic approach to medicine. I wanted to get pregnant, but was worried because I had an autistic twin. The genetics were risky.”

Stokes had published a study that suggested that high doses of vitamins during pregnancy, combined with a diet of organic whole foods, reduced the risk of autoimmune disorders in infants. Stokes was working on the premise that autism had an autoimmune link. His research suggested neurotoxin pollutants in the environment were contributing factors.

“Heavy metals,” she said. “The sort of stuff you and I find all the time in water samples. Mercury’s the most dangerous during pregnancy. It’s everywhere—vegetables, fish, even some infant vaccines. People don’t realize. So I went to one of Stokes’s lectures. Impressive. But a very neurotic guy. What’s the phobia when a person’s afraid of germs?”

I said, “I don’t know, there’s a whole list. Germ-a-phobic?”

That got me a smile. “Whatever it’s called, he told the audience his parents were doctors who’d specialized in infectious diseases and parasitology, and they’d given it to him—the phobia. Like he was kidding, but I think he was serious. He was explaining why he wouldn’t be shaking hands, hanging out later. I signed up for what he called a ‘dietary protocol,’ which meant buying his designer line of vitamins.”

Even I recognized the brand when she said it.

She added in a wry tone, “A year or so later, I read that the state took away his medical license because of a new procedure he was trying, sheep placenta injections. Something like that. You don’t remember?”

I told her I’d been working out of the country during that time. There was an entire Florida decade missing from my memory banks.

“It was ugly. Tabloid stuff, which I followed because I felt like I’d been taken in by a quack. He moved his whole operation to the Bahamas. The vitamin company’s huge, and Dr. Stokes is now so rich that he doesn’t have to worry about strangers and their germs. Founding EPOC was maybe a PR move, but it’s also a way he can fire back at the U.S. government with lawsuits. The ‘Angry Expatriate.’ He’s been called that.”

“Did your brother know Dr. Stokes? The autism could’ve gotten them together.”

“Possible, maybe probably—now that I know he had some contact with EPOC. Jobe was big on vitamins.”

“What about Tropicane? Any friends there? Someone who might be hanging around the office that late, waiting for his call?”

The woman shook her head: No. Said that Jobe being Jobe, he didn’t have personal relationships, especially with employers. He contacted clients at their office, never at home.

“But why would he call both offices that late, when he was in trouble?”

She said, “A clock meant nothing to him. Maybe someone was supposed to answer. I don’t know.”

Finally, I mentioned the guinea worms, told her that I’d found the parasite in his house, nothing more, and asked if Jobe had ever been to Africa. Could he have been doing research?

If the animal’s life cycle included water, she said, he
might
be studying guinea worms. But, no, he wouldn’t leave the country, and definitely not for Africa. He hated travel.

“A year or so ago, he surprised me by going to Cuba for some kind of meeting. When I asked about it, all he said was, ‘Never again.’ That’s how much he despised travel.”

Disturbing, but I didn’t react. The woman had enough to deal with.

 

 

Frieda is a lean, handsome woman who usually dresses more like a fishing guide than a respected scientist—pleated shorts, lots of pockets, baggy shirt—but on this chilly morning she wore business slacks and a suit jacket in mourning black. Her face was gaunt from lack of sleep, her brown hair dull as winter leaves. I was there for moral support, which consisted of providing a shoulder to cry on—she’d already done that a couple of times—and an attentive ear. Let her talk away some of the pain.

Talking about her brother’s disorder was part of the process. Perhaps because the subject had once been a source of shame.

As I listened, I also allowed my attention to shift to the bilge switch, periodically, and the amount of water leaking into my boat. I’d loaded it on the trailer the previous night and found a radiating crack near the starboard chine. I suspected this would be the last time I’d be aboard.

I flicked the bilge switch now, then accelerated onto a slow plane, as Frieda continued talking. “Asperger’s is a milder form of autism. Some call it ‘high functioning’ autism. Growing up, kids with Asperger’s lack basic social skills most of us are born with. They tend to focus their interest on objects, not people.

“Jobe had a tough time learning to talk. He didn’t like being around people, and he was obsessed with orderliness. He ... well, here’s an example. He always counted his Cheerios, and separated M&M’s by color. His toys had to be arranged
exactly
the way he wanted. If anything screwed up our daily routine, he’d run around flapping his hands and crying. He wasn’t a brat. Emotionally, he was just incapable of handling disorder.

“Things in the external world—noise, certain smells, harsh light—it affects autistics differently. Seeing the color orange, for example—neon orange?—it made Jobe wince. Hearing several people speaking at the same time drove him nuts. He loved the sound of trains, though; the rhythm—but only from a certain distance. Amtrak goes through Kissimmee, the perfect distance, and one of the reasons he chose Night’s Landing. That, plus it’s close to Disney World.”

“He did environmental work for Disney?”

“Some. But that’s not what I meant. Jobe was uncomfortable in public places. Disney World was the exception. You’ve been, of course.”

“No. Never.”

“Really?
Well, my brother had a love-hate relationship with the place. Disney is the most orderly place on earth. Every venue is predictable and tidy. No surprises, no clutter. Jobe liked that. On the other hand, he hated what the theme park industry has done to Central Florida.”

Even so, she said, her brother went often, always by himself.

“Otherwise, autistics tend to retreat into their own internal world. A place where they can fixate in peace. With Jobe, it was water and numbers. He was hooked on both. Did you try to call him on the phone?”

“Yeah. His message was strange—leave your four-digit birthday, zeros included. Like it had something to do with astrology. I didn’t expect that.”

“No, not astrology. My brother couldn’t remember names—they were
words.
But he never forgot a birth date. That’s how he cataloged people. Phone numbers weren’t good enough. Phone numbers change. That would have been upsetting He even referred to family members by number. Our father was ‘10-7.’ October seventh. Our mother was ‘3-2.’ March second. He called me ‘6-6-4,’ because I was born a few minutes before him on June sixth. See how it works?”

I started to say, “I thought autism was a form of mental . . .” but caught myself.

Frieda patted my knee. “You were about to say ‘retardation.’ It’s okay. Most people think autistics are also retarded. About half
are.
IQs less than seventy. But some of those are savants. They don’t have the intellectual capacity to use a calculator, but they can look at a pile of toothpicks and tell you the exact number. Remember the film,
Rain Man
? That’s Jobe.

“Aspies are like alien beings who aren’t programmed to understand normal social behavior. They can’t decode body language, or sense the feelings of others. Even motives.
Especially
motives. If I told my brother that I wanted him to rob a bank as part of an experiment, he wouldn’t see it as sinister. It was an experiment, so that would make it okay.”

She added, “It makes them vulnerable. Early on, they learn to understand that they’re easy targets for cons and practical jokes. So Jobe preferred his own little world. No one was allowed in. Not even me, his twin. I learned never, ever, to push, because it doesn’t pay to piss off an Aspie.”

In my mind, I could hear the man’s voice crying over and over,
I can’t,
as if apologizing for being unable to cooperate.

Frieda said, “When we were kids, the doctors didn’t bother testing him—this was thirty years ago, remember. He didn’t talk, wouldn’t interact, so he was labeled retarded. Autism wasn’t recognized as a neurological disorder until we were middle school age.”’

But when Jobe was five, she told me, he stopped at a table where his mother was doing a complicated jigsaw puzzle. He studied it for a few minutes, then began to lock pieces together. Never paused, not one misjudgment. In twenty minutes, he’d finished a puzzle that would have taken an adult a week.

“Our mom was so darn happy; running around, laughing. Her so-called mentally retarded son had just demonstrated that he was actually very gifted.”

Further testing proved that the boy had an extraordinary gift for mathematics. He could multiply long columns of numbers instantly and factor cube roots in seconds. Jobe’s family was elated.

The elation, Frieda said, didn’t last.

Because of his behavioral problems, his tantrums and refusal to interact with people, doctors decided that if the boy wasn’t mentally retarded, then he must be mentally ill. At age six, Jobe was diagnosed as schizophrenic and social-phobic, with a severe anxiety disorder.

I’d turned my skiff into the island’s channel, slowing for the boat basin ahead, as Frieda added, “It was considered a dangerous combination. Particularly dangerous for me, his sister. I needed to be protected, they said. Jobe had never hurt me, but the potential was there. So doctors insisted that my parents have him institutionalized. He spent the next four years in an asylum, being medicated and treated just like the rest of the crazies.”

But, when she was eleven, Frieda said, their father read a news item about Asperger’s. He contacted one of the country’s few experts and had his son reevaluated.

Frieda leaned her shoulder against mine, squeezed my arm tight, pained by guilt. I shifted the engine into neutral and let the boat drift, giving her time to finish.

“Doc, I don’t know how he endured that place. I was terrified the few times I visited. The screaming, crying, people in straitjackets sitting around muttering. It even smelled of something dark ... chaotic. There’s that word again. We’d sent my brother into the thing that terrified him most. Chaos.

“Jobe told me there was only one place to hide. The asylum had a wading pool. There couldn’t have been more than six inches of water in the thing. But it was deep enough to cover Jobe’s ears if he lay on his back. He spent hours there lying in water, eyes closed. It was his only refuge.”

“Water,”
I said, sharing the significance.

“Yes. That’s why, last night on the phone, when you described him as having a look of peace on his face, like he’d been set free—it meant so much. My dear, sweet, misunderstood twin had suffered . . .”

She couldn’t finish. I turned so she could bury her face in my chest again.

 

 

Inside the late Jobe Applebee’s home, sheriff’s detective Jimmy Heller said, as if finding it difficult to believe, “The deceased was your twin. But you’ve never seen the upstairs?”

Her eyes dry, and more businesslike now, Frieda replied, “Nope. My brother was a private person. Geniuses can be idiosyncratic.”

I stood beside her at the stairs, admiring how she normalized her brother’s behavior by elevating it.

When we’d arrived, there were two detectives, not one. The second detective was the one with the digital camera and recorder. But he’d been called away, leaving us alone with Heller. So this meeting was more informal. Heller was a squat little man, plaid sport jacket, Bronx accent, smelled of cigars. He had the look of racetracks and bookies, not inland Florida. It caused the man’s questions to have a prying quality.

The question about the upstairs wasn’t out of order. An iron gate had been installed on hinges at the third step, locked with a padlock. We couldn’t find a key, so we’d have to climb over to search the rest of the house.

The detective pointed at the gate now. “Did you find
this
unusual? How many people you know got a lock on their stairs?”

“My brother despised conflict. The downstairs was available to visitors. The upstairs, though, was his. The gate was his way of not having to explain.”

Heller said, “Mind if we go up, have a look?” Said it in a way that let us know he didn’t need permission.

Frieda was taking off her suit jacket. “It seems like an intrusion. Even with ... even with him gone. But I guess we have to.”

Yes, we had to.

We’d spent an hour going through the downstairs. As we did, the detective told us that the boat used by the duo I’d described as Russian had been found abandoned in the south part of the lake near a road called Pleasant Hill Boulevard.