Nick of Time (A Bug Man Novel) (17 page)

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Just making sure nothing was overlooked,” Nick said.

Nick turned to the bed again and tried to visualize the scenario. “Mr. Hotchkiss was confined to bed,” he said. “He was refusing food and he was dehydrated, so he probably had very little energy—yet something motivated him to drag himself out of bed. He got out on this side—probably headed for the bathroom there—but he didn’t make it far. He collapsed right here, facedown on the carpet.” He checked the photo again—and for the first time noticed the body’s close proximity to the wall.

He looked at Malone. “Do you by any chance have a crowbar?”

“A what?”

“A prybar would be even better—you know, one of those flat things roofers use to pry off old shingles.”

“I know what it is. What do you need it for?”

“I can be out of your hair in ten minutes,” Nick said. “A prybar, a crowbar—either one will do.”

Malone looked exasperated, but the promise of a quick conclusion to this unexpected annoyance seemed to spur him to action. He left the room without further objection and returned a few minutes later with a flat black bar of metal with a blunt blade at one end and a curve at the other. He handed it to Nick.

“Thanks. Are you from around here, Mr. Malone?”

“No, I’m from Jersey.”

Nick got down on his hands and knees next to the wall and laid the photo on the carpet in front of him. “Sheriff Yanuzzi’s from New York. Vacation home?”

“I used to come up to the lake every summer. When this place became available I decided to make it permanent.”

“Can’t say I blame you. I noticed excavations on either side of you—looks like some other folks got the same idea you did.” Nick used his hand to measure along the baseboard, estimating the distance from the edge of the bed to the point where the victim’s head would have rested on the carpet—according to the photo, that was the part of the body closest to the wall. When he completed his estimate he picked up the prybar and jammed the flat blade between the drywall and baseboard.

“Hey!” Malone shouted. “That’s my wall!”

“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “This’ll only take a minute.”

He pulled hard on the prybar and the fragile pine baseboard pulled away from the wall like an archer’s bow, then suddenly gave way and snapped in half with a resounding
crack
. Nick grabbed the broken ends with his hands and began to peel the baseboard away from the wall, one popping nail at a time.

“Who’s going to repair this?” Malone demanded.

“The police, of course—they can fix anything.” Nick tossed the broken baseboard aside and shoved the prybar into the space where the edge of the carpet tucked up under the drywall. He pried the carpet up just enough to be able to work his fingers under the edge, then began to pull the carpet back from the wall with both hands. It came away with a coarse ripping sound, exposing the tack strip and green foam padding beneath.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Nick looked back over his shoulder. “Would you mind holding this carpet for me? I need to look for something.”

Malone took the carpet from Nick and held it while Nick knelt by the wall and began to crawl along on hands and knees, searching the narrow half-inch channel that lay between the tack strip and the bottom edge of the drywall.

He stopped. “Bingo,” he said.

“What? What did you find?”

Nick turned his head to the side and looked up at him.

“Have you got an envelope? Any size will do.”

“Are you serious?”

“Two minutes and I’m out of here. Just drop the carpet—it won’t go anywhere.”

Malone hurriedly produced an envelope; Nick took it without looking and set it on the carpet beside him, keeping his focus on that exposed narrow channel. He removed a pair of long slender forceps from his jacket pocket and began to probe in the gypsum dust under the edge of the drywall. A moment later he straightened, holding up an object almost too small to see. He adjusted his glasses for a better look.

“What’s that?” Malone asked.

“It’s a puparium,” Nick said. “A cocoon, you might call it. It’s what a maggot leaves behind when it pupates into an adult fly.”

Nick dropped the tiny rice-shaped puparium into the envelope and searched for more.

“So I’ve got flies?”

“No, you
had
flies—these would have died three years ago.”

“Then what difference does it make?”

“It all depends on what kind of flies they were.” Nick collected several more specimens, then carefully sealed the envelope and placed it in his shirt pocket. “That should do it,” he said, rising and dusting off his knees. “Don’t bother showing me out—I know the way.”

“Wait a minute. What about my wall?”

“Baseboard is really cheap,” Nick said. “You can buy it at Home Depot.”

“You said the police would fix everything!”

“That’s what they always tell you. Personally, I’ve been disappointed.”

“So you just walk into my house, rip up my carpet, and walk out again?”

“That was my plan. Is there a problem?”

“Yeah—I want my wall fixed and I want it fixed now!”

“C’mon, it’s an empty room—it’s not like you hang out in here, right? Besides, there’s a chance I might need to come back to collect more specimens.”

“Why?”

“I could explain, but it would bore me. Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll call Sheriff Yanuzzi and see if I can build a fire under him. In the meantime, just leave everything the way it is.”

“How will I know if you need to come back?”

“If you open the door and I’m standing there, I need to come back.”

“Very funny. How about calling first next time?”

“Trust me, that rarely helps. Now, would you mind giving me some directions? I need to get to Penn State.”

17

S
heriff Yanuzzi heard the thick click of the door latch followed by the tinkling of the brass bell hanging over the door. “Be with you in a minute,” he called from the back room. He returned the last two manila folders to the file cabinet and rolled the drawer shut, then stepped out into the main office.

He found himself looking at a woman of medium height with straight coal-black hair that hung down almost to her waist. Her eyes were a striking shade of green—he noticed it all the way across the room—it gave her face a kind of fierce intensity. She was tanned and freckled and she was wearing some kind of long, loose-fitting dress or gown—
like they used to wear back in the Village
, he thought. Sitting to the right of the woman was the largest dog Yanuzzi had ever seen, with rolls of thick black fur and jowls that drooped from its snout like saddlebags. On her left sat two more dogs, if they could be called that. The gray one was missing a foreleg and had a patch of thick white fur on its chest, and the little one . . .
Man—that’s the sorriest excuse for an animal I’ve ever seen
.

Yanuzzi just stood there, staring at the strange foursome.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him. “Is there a problem?”

“I don’t know yet,” Yanuzzi replied. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for my fiancé.”

Yanuzzi walked over to his desk and sat down. “What’s your fiancé’s name?”

“Nick. Nick Polchak.”

He scribbled the name on a legal pad. “Address?”

“Nick lives in North Carolina,” she said. “I live in Virginia.”

Yanuzzi paused. “Then why look for him here?”

“Because he was coming here—at least he said he was. He was supposed to call me the other night, and he didn’t, but he left a message and said he was driving to Pine Summit. This is Pine Summit, isn’t it? Then he didn’t call me again, and—”

“Slow down,” Yanuzzi said. “Why don’t we start with
your
name?”

“Alena. Alena Savard.”

“How long has your fiancé been gone, Ms. Savard?”

“Two days.”

“And when was your last contact with him?”

“Two days ago. Didn’t I just say that?”

“You said he called and left a message. When was that?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“You heard from him just yesterday?”

“I didn’t hear from
him
—it was a message.”

“And in this message, did your fiancé sound unusual in any way? Did he sound confused? Disoriented? Incoherent?”

“He’s always incoherent,” Alena mumbled. “He’s a man.”

Yanuzzi quietly set down his pen. “Do you mind if I ask a personal question, Ms. Savard?”

“That depends.”

“When are the two of you getting married?”

“Saturday,” she said glumly. “Why?”

“I’ll file a missing person report if you insist, but I don’t think it’ll do much good. You just heard from your fiancé a day ago; ordinarily in a situation like this we wouldn’t get involved unless we considered the person ‘at risk.’ You know what I mean: under fourteen, a possible crime victim, physically or mentally impaired—things like that. We don’t get involved at all when we consider the person ‘voluntarily missing.’ ”

“
Voluntarily
missing—what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m not so sure your fiancé is ‘missing.’ No offense, Ms. Savard, but people get cold feet before a wedding— it happens all the time. Maybe your fiancé just needed a little breathing room. You know—time to think things over.”

“I never said I wanted to file a missing person report. I said I was looking for my fiancé. Nick’s right about you people— you’re always jumping to conclusions.”

“If you don’t want to file a missing person, what are you doing here? This is a police station, not a lost and found.”

“I just thought maybe you’d seen him,” Alena grumbled. “Tall guy, dark hair. Big funny glasses. Real handsome too, if you can get him to take the goofy goggles off. He probably made it up here yesterday afternoon. Nick Polchak.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell—but then, we get a lot of tourists through here.”

“I just thought maybe he’d stop here.”

“Why?”

“Nick’s a forensic entomologist,” she said. “You know—a bug man. A friend of his was murdered, down in Philadelphia. I think he came up here to look into it.”

“Why here?”

“I don’t know why. He didn’t say.”

“And you thought he might have stopped in here to ask for my help?”

“No,” Alena said. “Nick likes to do things his way. I thought you might have seen him because he gets into a lot of trouble. It’s not like he means to; trouble just seems to follow him around. I figured you’d probably see him sooner or later, so I thought I might as well check with you first.”

“Sorry,” Yanuzzi said. “I don’t remember seeing him.”

“You’d remember Nick,” she said. “He makes a big first impression.”

Yanuzzi nodded to the three dogs waiting patiently by her side. “Those mutts all yours?”

“Yeah, they’re mine.”

“Three dogs,” he said. “They could eat you out of house and home.”

“I have thirty-four more at home.”

“Wow—does your fiancé know what he’s getting into?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“Do all your dogs look like those three?”

“Does it matter?” She rested her hand on the big dog’s head. “This one is the toughest dog in the world. The gray one there, she’s the world’s best cadaver dog. And the little one, he’s the world’s smartest dog—a tracker. It doesn’t matter what they look like, Sheriff—what matters is what they can do.”

Yanuzzi smiled. “You brought dogs to track down your fiancé?”

Alena didn’t reply.