Nick of Time (A Bug Man Novel) (23 page)

“A cop did this?”

“No, some kind of private consultant—said he was a forensic something-or-other. He was an idiot, if you ask me—he just walked in and started tearing up the room. Look at this place!”

“It’s none of my business, but why are the cops interested in your bedroom?”

“It’s not my bedroom, okay? I sleep down the hall. The previous owner used to live in here—this is all his stuff.”

“So what were the cops looking for? Was he into drugs or something?”

“No, he wasn’t into drugs—he just died of old age.”

“In here?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Creepy.”

“Look, I don’t have time for ghost stories. Can you fix this mess or not?”

“I can if you’ll get out of my way,” Alena said. “I’ll need to restretch this carpet, and I can’t exactly do that while you’re standing on it. Do you mind?”

When Malone left the bedroom Alena quietly closed the door behind him. She looked at the torn-up carpet and wall; Nick had obviously been searching for something, and he needed to peel back the carpet to find it. But what was he looking for? The only thing she knew for sure was that Nick was investigating a murder—but why he came to this house and what he was searching for in this room were mysteries. But Alena did know something else: Her fiancé was a forensic entomologist, a man who was interested in all things dead, and if Nick was interested in this room, there was a reason.

She rolled the carpet out flat again and turned to the three dogs who sat lined up like furry figurines. She snapped her fingers and singled out Trygg; she wiggled her fingers and called the three-legged cadaver dog over to her. Alena opened her shoulder bag and took out a folded red bandanna with a large polka-dot pattern; she opened the bandanna and showed it to the dog, then knelt down, rolled it, and tied it around the dog’s neck.

Now she stood up with the dog beside her as if they were both saluting a flag. She snapped her fingers once, then made a tossing motion with her right hand. The dog’s nose immediately began to quiver over the carpet, its two hundred million olfactory cells lifting scent molecules from the tightly twisted carpet fibers, testing the air for the slightest hint of one very specific odor—the scent of death.

When Trygg reached the area to the left of the bed, she lay down.

Alena called Trygg away from the spot to the far corner of the room. It could have been a false alert—it was possible, though Trygg’s ability to detect the telltale odor of death was almost unerring. She called the dog to attention again and sent her back out into the room; Trygg immediately walked to the same exact spot and lay down again.

At some point in the past—a week ago, a month ago, ten years ago—something dead had lain on that carpet in that exact location—and if Malone had his facts straight, it was probably the previous owner. There was no way for Alena to know how long ago it had happened, because cadaver dogs are able to detect the lingering scent of human remains even after hundreds of years. But there was no doubt about it: Someone had died there, and the body had lain there long enough to impregnate the carpet with the scent of decomposing flesh.

But why were the police interested in an old man’s death— and why was Nick? And what in the world did he tear up the room looking for?

Alena pulled back the carpet again and looked at the padding; nothing seemed unusual about it. Then a thought occurred to her: Maybe Nick didn’t pull back the carpet to expose the floor—maybe he did it to expose the wall. She got down on her hands and knees and peered into the narrow crack between the tack strip and wallboard . . .

She saw them—dozens of tiny little brown-colored capsules.

She went to the nightstand and opened the top drawer; it was filled with medical supplies. She needed something long and thin . . .
Q-tips—perfect
. She took the cotton swabs and returned to the wall and used them to flick the little capsules out of the crevice and onto the carpet pad; when she had dislodged half a dozen she scooped them up in the palm of her hand and deposited them in an empty pill container.

She held the pill container up to the light. She knew what the little capsules were—the things bugs leave behind when they grow up—but she had no idea what they meant or why they were important. But these things had to be what Nick had been looking for, and if Alena could figure out why they were important, she might know what was keeping her fiancé so distracted.

Then something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She turned to the bed and saw Trygg lying on top of the mattress with her head on top of her left paw, looking at her; when their eyes met the dog’s tail began to wag.

Alena just stared.

The prone position was the dog’s alert—her signal to Alena that she had detected the scent she was instructed to find. Trygg had been specifically trained never to lie down just to take a break—that would send mixed signals. And the dog would never jump up on a piece of furniture just to be playful—not while she was working. Trygg had the best work ethic of any dog Alena had ever trained; when Trygg was on the job she was all business, and if the dog was lying down, it could only mean one thing.

Just then the door opened and the man poked his head into the room.

Alena made a quick flipping gesture and the dog quietly leaped from the bed.

Malone looked around the room. “What’s the holdup in here? It’s a simple job—I thought you’d be half finished by now.”

“I can’t finish it today,” Alena said.

“What? Why not?”

“They told me this was just a drywall job. Look at all this— there’s baseboard, and painting, and one of the tack strips has to be replaced. I’ll have to take some measurements and come back later.”

“Unbelievable,” Malone muttered.

“Hey, talk to Public Works about it—they fill out the work orders.” Alena took out her cell phone. “I’ll just grab a few pictures to show them what we’re dealing with here. Any idea how to work the camera on this thing?”

The man grabbed the phone from Alena’s hand. “Can you people possibly get any more incompetent?”

“Sorry, new phone—I just got the thing.”

Alena watched as the man demonstrated the phone’s camera function—then she took the phone back and snapped a few photos of the carpet and wall. “There—that oughta do. I’ll get out of your way now.”

“When are you coming back?” he asked.

“Soon as I can—I’ll have to check my schedule.”

“Well, how long is this going to take?”

“Trust me,” Alena said. “I’m working just as fast as I can.”

24

A
lena slid the white handkerchief out of the shade and into more direct light; the morning sun was casting long shadows and she wanted to make sure there was plenty of light for the close-up photos. She sorted through the little pile of rice-shaped capsules with her finger and selected one at a time, pushing it away from the others to photograph by itself.

The vacant lots on either side of the lake house were under development and most of the pines had been cut down and cleared away, leaving plenty of unshaded space and even a few handy tree stumps Alena could choose from to use as a copy stand for her photography. She had pulled her truck over less than a quarter mile from the lake house, just past a long stretch of woods left to provide a visual barrier from the new construction. Thirty yards away from her there was an enormous excavation in the hillside where it sloped down toward the lake; backhoes and bulldozers swarmed in and out of it like termites, scooping up bucketloads of dirt and dumping them into haulers that rumbled past her with blue smoke belching from their tall exhausts. Men and trucks were everywhere, so no one had noticed when one more pickup pulled in among them.

She kept thinking about Trygg and the dog’s two alerts in that bedroom—once on the floor near the bed, and again on the bed itself. But how was that possible? Malone said the previous
owner
had died in there, not
owners
—but there were two death sites in that room. Trygg had been trained to detect the scent of death only; if the old man had dragged himself out of bed and expired on the floor later, Trygg would have detected only one scent—the one on the floor. A dead man doesn’t get out of bed and fall on the floor, and he sure doesn’t pick himself up off the floor and crawl back into bed again. So why did Trygg find
two
locations?

Alena held the cell phone as close as the tiny lens would allow and clicked the picture. That was the last of them—now if she could only get through to the man. She punched the number into the cell phone for the umpteenth time and heard a voice that was becoming way too familiar: “Good morning, North Carolina State University.”

“Now listen,” Alena said. “The guy’s name is Noah and he’s an entomologist—how hard can that be?”

“Ma’am, I told you—I can’t search the directory by first name only and an entomologist could work in several different departments: forestry, ecology, agriculture . . .”

“And you’ve connected me with most of them and all I get is answering machines. So can we try it again?
Noah—entomology
.”

“I’ll try the entomology department in the College of Agriculture.”

“You do that—I’ll wait right here.”

Seconds passed, and then a voice announced: “Noah Ellison.”

Alena waited for the rest of the message: “I’m not here right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number and a brief message .  . .” It was the same monotonous message she had heard twenty times already.
Professors
, she thought.
Doesn’t anybody work at that university? Or is everybody just too important to answer their phones?

But the same voice continued, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Alena was startled out of her stupor. “Hey—is this a real live person?”

There was a chuckle on the other end. “Well, at my age that’s a matter of conjecture. This is Dr. Noah Ellison, chairman of the Department of Entomology. Whom are you trying to reach?”

“You—and I’ve been trying for almost an hour! I keep getting bounced around from department to department—some of them I can’t even pronounce. How many ‘Noahs’ do you guys have down there, anyway?”

“I haven’t a clue—but we have about two thousand faculty and another four thousand staff, so I’m afraid we could have quite a few. Sorry for the confusion—to whom am I speaking?”

“Noah, this is Alena Savard. Do you remember me? We met at a cocktail party at your house last summer.”

“Of course I remember you, dear—you’re Nicholas’s fiancée.

I have your wedding invitation posted on the bulletin board outside my office. All of the faculty stop by to chat about it; I can’t get a thing done. Barbara and I are planning to attend on Saturday— we wouldn’t miss it for the world. How is Nicholas, by the way?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t find him.”

There was a pause on the other end. “When did you last see him?”

“A couple of days ago. He drove up to Philadelphia—he said there was a meeting he didn’t want to miss.”

“That would be the Vidocq Society,” Noah said. “As far as I know, it’s the only meeting on earth Nicholas will willingly attend.”

“Well, when he got to Philadelphia he found out a friend of his was murdered.”

“Yes—that sometimes happens when Nicholas is around.”

“So he drove to the Poconos to investigate and I haven’t heard from him since.”

“The Poconos?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure why—that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry. Nicholas has a way of getting caught up in things at times—he can be quite singular when he has a goal before him.”

“Yeah, me too—like when I’m getting married tomorrow and I don’t have a fiancé. That’s why I came here looking for him.”

“
You’re
in the Poconos too?”

“That’s where I’m calling you from.”

There was another pause. “Alena, are you sure that was a good idea?”

“Skip it, Noah. I’m way past that. Look, I need your help.”

“Of course. How can I be of assistance?”

“I took some photos with my cell phone. I want to send them to you—can you tell me how to do that?”