Warren Murphy: Feast or Famine

"I did, too. He was short and fat."

"No, tall and bean-poley."

"Actually, it was a woman."

"Forget it," said Tammy, disgusted with her opportunistic fellow men.

"I guess we pack it in," she told her cameraman dejectedly.

"You discourage easy."

"It's a discouraging game. I've been in it over two years and I'm not rich and famous yet."

"Life's an ordeal and then you fall into a pine box," the cameraman commiserated.

At that moment, Tommy's steely blue gaze fell on a light pole.

"What's that?"

The cameraman looked up. A thick clump of orange-and-black matter hung from the streetlight hood. It made him think of some kind of fungus, except pieces of it crawled along the surface.

"Bees. They're swarming."

"That's what I thought. Bees hum, don't they?"

"Actually, they kinda drone."

"The cop said the suspect hit man was wearing a Charlotte Hornets cap ...." Tammy mused.

"He didn't say 'suspect hit man.' That was your idea."

"Shut up! Shoot that light pole."

The cameraman shrugged and hefted his minicam onto his shoulder while Tammy chewed her red lower lip and said, "It's too much of a coincidence."

"What is?"

"That the hit man would be wearing a Hornets cap on the same site where bees were swarming."

"We don't know those bees were here yesterday."

"We don't know they weren't. And there's nobody here to say different."

The film shot, Tammy rushed the cameraman back into the van. She got her news director on the cell phone.

"Nice linking," Clyde said.

"Is it a story?" asked Tammy.

"Check out the medical examiner."

"Does this mean face time?"

"Get a shot of the eyeless dead guy, and I guarantee it," Tammy was promised.

As the van lumbered through crosstown traffic, Tammy was musing, "Do bees eat things?"

"Everything eats things."

"No, I mean like meat."

"Depends on the meat if they do."

"I wonder if bees could eat a man's eyes out."

"That kind of meat I don't think so. And weren't you raised on a farm?"

"I didn't pay too much attention to farm stuff. I was too busy trying to get out of the flatlands."

"I've heard of dragonflies sewing people's mouths shut, but not bees who eat eyes."

"Who cares about bugs anyway?"

"I don't know. Sounds like a Fox story to me-killer bees eat man's eyeballs."

Tammy snapped her fingers. "Killer bees. Wasn't that a big story about ten years ago?"

"Sure."

"Killer bees. They were down in Texas or something. Whatever happened to them?"

The cameraman made a nonchalant face. "Search me. I guess they died out."

"Well, they're back and if my theory is on the money, they're going to be the story of the century."

"What theory?"

"Mind your driving. I'm still working on it."

Chapter 7

"Tamara Terrill. Fox News. I'm here to see the medical examiner."

"He's conducting an important autopsy right now," the desk guard said, looking up at the electric sight of the blond newswoman towering over him, her chest puffed out to its greatest expanse. It was a noteworthy chest.

"Great. Stiffs make wonderful TV. C'mon, Fred."

"It's 'Bob,'" the cameraman said.

"Hey, you can't-"

"Shoot us, and we'll shoot back," the cameraman said, turning the harsh glare of his minicam light on the guard.

That was enough to get them into the building.

It was a maze of bone-colored brick, with toe-tagged bodies on rolling carts and formaldehyde aroma. The cameraman happily shot every hanging ice-cold hand and blue tagged-toe he could.

"We don't need that stuff," Tammy snapped.

"If we don't, I can sell it as stock footage to the 'X-Files' people."

The M.E. was bent over a dead man lying inert on a white porcelain autopsy table. It looked as if it had been hosting corpses since before the days of Prohibition. The M.E. didn't look up.

"I am busy here."

"You the medical examiner?" Tammy asked.

"Please douse that light."

Tammy snapped her fingers. The light went off.

"Tamara Terrill. Fox News. I'd like to talk to you about the dead man you autopsied yesterday."

"I autopsied many dead men yesterday. This is New York, after all."

"This dead man had his eyes eaten out of his sockets," Tammy explained.

"Yes, I am familiar with that case."

"In your expert medical opinion, could killer bees have done that?"

The M.E. snapped out of his professional trance and looked up at Tammy for the first time.

"Bees?"

"Killer bees. From Brazil."

"Why do you ask about bees?"

"There's a swarm of them attached to the light post over the crime scene."

"And why do you call it a crime scene, may I ask?"

"We'll get to that. Answer my question and I'll answer yours."

"I did not perform the autopsy on Doyal Rand, I confess."

"Oh. Well, I need to talk to the guy who did."

"I am sorry to disappoint you, but you cannot do that."

"You don't know how determined I am."

"I am sure you are quite capable, but the man in question happens to be the man I am presently autopsying."

Tammy blinked and said, "What?" and then added, "What did you say?"

"I am the new medical examiner. My predecessor lies here on this slab."

Tammy walked up, looked at the dead face and asked, "What happened to him?"

"He was found dead in this very room this morning."

"What killed him?"

"That, I am attempting to ascertain."

"Could it have been killer bees?"

"Killer bees, as I recall, are not normally fatal unless one is stung by great numbers of them."

"Was this guy stung at all?"

"It is a thought." And the M.E. went back to his duties.

Tammy watched.

The M.E. was speaking into a microphone suspended before his face on a flexible snake.

"Subject is a white male 180 centimeters tall and weighing seventy-seven kilograms. There are no discernible marks or contusions visible on the body ...."

"Are you getting this?" Tammy hissed to her cameraman.

The man rolled tape.

The M.E. was saying, "The throat and tongue appear swollen, and there is evidence of cardiac arrest. Lividity is normal, and rigor has not yet commenced."

"What's that?" Tammy interrupted.

The M.E. looked up. He saw Tammy's gesturing finger, and his eyes jumped to the spot on the dead man's shoulder where she was pointing.

Taking up a magnifying glass, the surviving M.E. examined the mark.

"Looks red," Tammy said helpfully.

"I can see that," the M.E. snapped.

"A moment ago, you were saying there were no marks."

"Hush!" the M.E. said.

With a tweezer taken up from a stainless-steel tray, he brushed at a tiny dark dimple embedded in the center of the red mark.

"Odd."

"What?"

"It appears to be insect fragments."

"A bee! Could it be a bee?"

"They appear to be too small for that."

"Oh," said Tammy, deflating.

Carefully, the M.E. scraped the fragments into a waiting envelope. He carried them over to a microscope, deposited the fragments onto a glass slide and inserted it into the microscope.

Bending over, he peered within.

"Can I see?"

"No."

"Okay, can you tell me what you see?"

"I see the crushed remains of a very small insect."

"A killer bee! It's got to be a killer bee!"

"I am no specialist, but bees don't grow to this size. It cannot be a bee."

"It's gotta be a bee. If it's not a bee, I have no killer-bee story. I need a killer bee for my story."

"It is not a bee of any kind," the M.E. said, straightening. "But this is very strange. I don't know what kind of insect could inject a man with fatal consequences."

"A wasp, maybe? Could it be a killer wasp?" No.

"How about a hornet? The alleged hit man was wearing a Charlotte Hornets ball cap."