Bee Conspiracy, page 7
“Where’s the respirator I gave you?” Fossil asked.
“I got to get out of here,” the guard replied as he ran past Fossil towards the exit.
Fossil headed for the external portion of the vault, which had been left open. This was the area where the safe deposit boxes were located. He put the fogger on the floor and pulled a key out of his pocket. He went to box 637 and placed the key in the box. The smoke still obscured him from the view of any cameras. The box opened easily and he glanced at the contents inside. It had a birth certificate which read: Howard Skulberry. There were a couple of school transcripts, the deed to his house and a few sentimental keepsakes: an elaborate family tree of his genealogy hand lettered on parchment paper, an old diary and an antique butterfly Christmas ornament made out of gold and brass. But that was all. None of this was what Fossil wanted. He stuffed it all back into the box and slid the drawer back into the panel.
Fossil looked at his watch. The fog would be dissipating. He rushed over to the spot by the camera as the air cleared. He turned off the fogger and picked up the bag with the rodent. Then he headed upstairs. The bank manager met him as he emerged from the building. He introduced a new replacement security guard. “I have a new guard who will take over and follow you now.” The beefy guard held a respirator in his hand.
“No need. I’m all done,” Fossil replied. He handed the bag to the bank manager.
“What was it?” the manager asked.
“As I suspected, dead rat tucked inside your air vent.”
“It’s in here?” The manager dropped the bag.
“Yes, it’s there. I suggest you start to install bait traps around the perimeter of the building.”
“Of course!” the manager said. “Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome,” Fossil replied. “Go ahead and frisk me,” he nodded to the beefy security guard. “I have to get to another job.”
Beefy Security gloved up and put his hands on Fossil. He gave him the full pat down. He found nothing.
“You’re good,” Beefy replied.
Not really, Fossil thought. This entire exercise had been a complete waste of his time.
***
Duke and Kelso sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic. They were only about a mile from HQ, but it was a brutal mile. There was a Lakers game at the Staples Center and rush hour traffic. He pulled out his button, the flashing light used to turn an unmarked vehicle into a police car. “You can’t go Code three,” Kelso warned.
“Spare me the back seat driving,” Duke said as he prepared to push the siren button. Kelso grabbed the siren trigger from him.
“I won’t let you do it,” Kelso replied. “It’s against the law.”
“You are in my city. You let me worry about the law, Ranger.” He snatched the trigger back and pressed. The siren blared and traffic parted in front of them like the Red Sea. Duke floored it and the car lurched forward into the opening and Duke sped towards HQ. On the horizon the sleek police admin building loomed.
Duke quickly took the button down and silenced the siren within a block of the parking lot. He pulled into the garage and hopped out, handing the keys off to a motor pool worker. Kelso headed towards the open elevator doors behind him. “Was that really worth the ten minutes we saved?” Kelso asked.
“Without a doubt,” Duke replied. The elevator doors opened and they stepped out onto the fifth floor. They walked down the hallway towards the robbery-homicide division. Detective Peters greeted them both enthusiastically.
“I’ve been going through the local security cam footage and I got something else,” Peters told Kelso, knowing that Duke would not be interested. Kelso ambled over to his desk where the computer monitor showed a head shot photo of an attractive bleach blonde woman. “She visited Skulberry the morning he died.” He played back a doorbell camera video of this woman walking to her car at six thirty in the morning. She was wearing stiletto heels and a short dress that were obviously from the night before.
“Is she a call girl?” Kelso asked.
Peters nodded. “Name’s Valerie Wilder. She’s done some porn. Has one prior for solicitation.”
“Last known address?” Kelso asked.
“On it,” Peters replied.
Duke sat down at his desk shaking his head. He wondered if Peters was doing this on purpose to give him some payback? He had played his fair share of practical jokes on Peters. There was that one time where he put superglue on the seat of Peters’ unmarked car. Or the time he put live goldfish in his box of Pepperidge Farms Goldfish crackers.
“Duke???” Captain Brader emerged from his office in a mood.
“Yessir?”
“I have a department shrink in the office. Says you broke an appointment.”
“I was all the way across town, Captain. It took forever to get back here.”
“Don’t care. Get in here. You tell her.”
“She’s going to want to psycho-therapize me right there in your office.”
“Yeah. Get it done. I’m leaving.”
“But I have to pick up my daughter. Her car’s in the shop.”
“Bagley!”
Kelso perked up at attention and marched over. “Yessir?”
“Can you pick up Duke’s daughter? He’s got a shrink appointment and apparently his daughter doesn’t know how to use Uber.”
“Of course, sir!” Kelso replied.
“Give him your car keys,” Brader ordered Duke.
“Excuse me sir?” Duke bristled.
“You don’t expect me to offer him a department vehicle for your personal business, do you?”
“No, I guess not,” Duke answered. He threw the keys at Kelso and quickly typed a text message. Kelso’s phone pinged. “That’s the address. And if I find the smallest, slightest, tiniest little pebble dent or scratch on that car you will pay in spades.”
“Duly noted,” Kelso replied as he strode out of the room with enthusiasm.
Duke entered the Captain’s office. Mariam Baker of LAPD Behavioral Science Services was waiting behind Brader’s desk. She wore a navy blue business suit and white collared oxford shirt. “Good afternoon, John,” she said. She disliked his nickname and refused to use it.
“I see you’re doing house calls now?” Duke replied.
“I do what it takes to get the job done,” she answered.
“Are we going to analyze my dreams again?”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“How about a lion’s roar shock test?”
“It’s Rorschach, John. It’s a man’s name. He invented the test. It has nothing to do with the king of the jungle. But I think you knew that. Why must you mock the tools of my profession?”
“I think you’re reading that into it. I didn’t intend to...”
“You haven’t been attending group meetings as instructed, John.”
“That’s because I’m not an alcoholic.”
“Nobody is forcing you to label yourself, Duke. We just want you to attend the peer-to-peer meeting.”
“How many people walked out of that bar with two beers in their system that night? Are you calling them alcoholics?”
“Those people do not carry badges for the city of Los Angeles, and they also didn’t engage in a high speed pursuit afterward, John.”
“No one was hurt. I apprehended the suspect safely! Do you think I could have done that drunk?”
“Some people function very well under the influence.”
“I see, so you’re saying I should have let the street racer take over the boulevard and terrorize city residents because I had a couple of beers in me?”
“I don’t know, John. I wasn’t there so it’s not for me to answer.”
“Right. You’re just the Monday morning quarterback. Questioning every move I made.”
“Like it or not, you represent this city. So every action you take can be scrutinized.”
“I guess the answer then is to take no action. Is that what you’re getting at? Just do nothing and it’ll all be okay.”
“No. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I am simply here to ask questions. That’s it.”
Duke looked at his watch. Peters and several other Detectives smirked as they saw him squirm in his seat. He got up and closed the blinds to the Captain’s office. He had no intention of being the afternoon reality show for the entertainment of the robbery/homicide division.
***
Kelso drove Duke’s root beer brown Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme down a tree-lined street in Mar Vista, an affluent West Los Angeles suburb. Ahead he spotted his destination: a well-kept Montessori pre-school in a vintage 1930s remodeled service station. The vehicle service bays were now a classroom and the island for the gas tanks was a jungle gym.
Kelso pulled up the driveway into the parking lot and parked over the line in two spaces so that no one could accidentally door ding Duke’s car. Beryl was not waiting outside. He realized he did not have her phone number so he could not text her he was there. He got out of the car and walked inside the school.
Beryl was face to face with an aggravated mother. “We keep this facility spotless, Ms. Akron,” Beryl remarked.
Ms. Akron did not concur. “You think I don’t know what lice bites look like?” Her child was happily playing with a medieval castle toy army on a mat nearby.
“I didn’t say that, Ms. Akron,” Beryl calmly replied.
“He’s got several around the hairline! I saw the eggs myself. Right up against the follicles. He couldn’t have gotten them from anywhere else!”
Beryl took note of Kelso’s arrival and waved, a bit confused. She put up her finger to indicate she needed a minute. The little boy on the mat walked over to Kelso and took in his uniform. “Are you a ranger?” he asked.
“Something like that,” answered Kelso.
“I like rangers. I like Chip n’Dale Rescue Rangers!”
“That’s a good movie,” Kelso answered.
The little boy took Kelso’s hand and led him over to the castle. Kelso looked over at Ms. Akron and Beryl and shrugged. “He’s a friend. Here to pick me up,” Beryl explained.
“Be careful!” the mother replied. “He has lice thanks to this place!” She turned back to Beryl. “I am going to have to wash his hair in insecticide and I want to be reimbursed. That shampoo is not cheap.”
The little boy gave Kelso a plastic jousting knight on a horse and he took a horse-drawn wagon. As he was chasing the wagon with his knight Kelso took a good look at the little boy’s scalp. “Those aren’t lice bites!” Kelso barked so that the mother could hear.
The mother stomped over. “I did not give you permission to look at my son’s scalp,” she said.
Beryl saw Kelso was throwing her a lifeline. “He works for the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife. Specializes in insects,” she chimed in, seeking to boost Kelso’s credibility.
“Those are bedbug bites,” Kelso replied as he pointed to a couple red blotches on the child’s neck. “He doesn’t just have them near his hairline. He has a few on his neck, on his shoulders and arms. That’s the tell-tale sign. It’s all about location. And I don’t see any nits on his follicles. That’s dandruff you’re seeing.”
“Does he have an M.D. too?” Ms. Akron asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“No, ma’am. I have a degree in entomology, though.”
“Entomology?”
“It’s the study of insects,” Beryl piped in.
“People pick up bedbugs from infestations in mattresses, overstuffed furniture or things like that. Since there are no mattresses here, only foam rubber mats and cots, there is no way your child could have picked up the bedbugs in this facility,” Kelso offered.
“Are you suggesting that I have an unclean home?” Akron bridled.
“No, absolutely not. Is there anywhere else your son slept in the past few days?”
Ms. Akron had a thought. “Mikey? Did you and your dad sleep at his house the last three nights?” she asked.
“No,” Mikey replied. “We went to a hotel for a sleepover with his girlfriend. I got my own room!”
Ms. Akron was livid. “Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”
“But I’m playing, Momma!” Mikey replied.
“I don’t care. We have to go.”
Beryl appeared relieved. She was apparently off the hook. “I’ll put away the toys. You go with your mom, Mikey.” Ms. Akron took Mikey’s hand and led him towards the door.
“Bye, Ranger!”
“Bye, Mikey,” Kelso replied. “See you around.”
They left and there was instantly a calmness in the room. Beryl beamed at Kelso. He had been a knight in shining armor for a moment there. Maybe she had misjudged him.
***
Los Angeles International Airport was located not far from Beryl’s preschool in a suburb called Westchester. Departing planes took off over the ocean from the LAX runways that headed in a westerly direction. The runways ended in sand dunes that bridged the gap from the airport to the ocean. These dunes had been defended by local environmentalists and naturalists as a nature preserve and butterfly sanctuary.
Kelso had heard of this butterfly sanctuary over the years and, since he was in the neighborhood, he programmed his Waze to take him past it on the way back to Beryl and Duke’s house.
Beryl leaned towards him. “I appreciate what you did for me back there at the school. It was very gallant. But full disclosure – I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m on a man-cleanse. Not available.”
“No worries,” Kelso replied. “Friends help friends.” He looked at the fenced perimeter of the sand dunes and saw a sign that read:
El Segundo Blue Butterfly Sanctuary
“It’s nothing personal. I just need to be alone for awhile.”
“Did you just break off an engagement?” Kelso asked.
“How did you know?”
He pointed out her ring finger. She had tan lines. She looked down and it made her self-conscious. “I need to use stronger sunscreen.”
Kelso pointed out the sand dunes. “There used to be hundreds of thousands of butterflies flying all over here. It was the prettiest creature you ever saw: the El Segundo Blue.” An ascending 707 flew overhead drowning out his voice.
“Where are they now?” she asked, caught up in the reminiscence.
“Most of them are dead. The airport took away a large part of their habitat. This area is all they have left.” He pointed out another sign that read:
Warning: The capture or killing of butterflies in this area is strictly forbidden –punishable by a fine of $3000.00 and possible imprisonment.
Home of the El Segundo Blue Butterfly, an endangered species.
“Couldn’t the butterflies migrate somewhere else?” Beryl asked.
“Their only food source is a special kind of milkweed that grows in these dunes,” Kelso answered.
He slowed down the car and pulled over. A lone El Segundo Blue was hovering around the pink blossoms of a milkweed plant.
Beryl was captivated by the sight. “The flowers are beautiful.”
“It’s called coastal buckwheat. You see the wings of the Blue?”
She looked at silver-gray wings dotted with spots of black and yellow. “Gorgeous,” she said.
Suddenly the lone El Segundo Blue was joined by a swarm of others. Not far behind them, a sweaty man with a pock-mark face snuck through a hole in the chain link fence around the sanctuary. He pulled a large butterfly net behind him and chased over the dunes towards the swarm. He did not care about the sign that clearly read: No trespassing.
Kelso stepped out of the car. “Give me a minute,” he told Beryl.
***
A class of school kids made its way through the butterfly aviary on the front lawn of the Sage Chemical office campus. Morphos, stoplights, tiger leafwings and pink-spotted cattlehearts fluttered about above the third graders heads as they oohed and aahed. Their teacher pointed out a row of butterfly chrysalids that were soon to hatch. A charismatic young woman in safari outfit, the Sage director of corporate relations, addressed the class. “We’re adding new butterflies every single day, so visitors may see a different combination of species each time they come by.”
A precocious young man in Crocs raised his hand in the air.
“Yes, you have a question?” the corporate relations director responded.
“I would like to know how you kill the big ugly bugs, but you don’t kill these beautiful bugs,” the boy asked.
Corporate Relations paused a moment as she composed her answer. “Well, that’s an excellent question. Here at Sage Chemical, it is not our mission to kill bugs. We are simply here to help agriculture come up with the best methods to grow the most crops in the most efficient way possible.”
A little girl in polka dots raised her hand. “What’s agriculture?”
“Agriculture is farming,” Corporate Relations replied.
“You say you don’t kill bugs but then why is he here?” the Croc-shoed precocious one asked. He pointed to an exterminator truck with a cockroach bolted to the top. It was Albert Fossil’s exterminator van and he pulled into the circular driveway in front of the main office building.
“Excuse me, children,” Corporate Relations answered. She rushed off towards the van.
Albert Fossil put the cockroach-mobile in park and stepped out. He walked towards the lobby. He tried to ignore the safari outfit heading towards him. “I’m sorry sir, you can’t park your van here,” Corporate Relations announced.
Fossil looked at her with disdain. “I work for Mr. Lund,” he replied curtly.
“Perhaps you didn’t get the memo that no exterminator or chemical trucks of any kind are permitted on the premises.”
“Go ahead and tow it then. I don’t care.” He walked inside the lobby where he was met by a security guard. He did not stop when the security guard stood in his way. He walked right past the front desk.
The security guard rushed over and placed his hand on Fossil’s shoulder. It was a bony shoulder, with strong sinew. “Take your hand off my shoulder,” Fossil warned.
“Listen, mister, you can’t just park your cockroach wagon in front and waltz in here like you own the place.”
