(The following excerpt involves a conversation between campus police at a small Iowa college and Gideon Marshall, interim chair of the Geology Department, regarding the former chair, Clyde Renner, now deceased.)
“I know he had three grown
children,” I say, once we’re in my office with the door closed; “I believe they
were all sons. His wife must have had some relatives. They were all from
California, and I think the family is still back there.” I pause, acting
reflective. “Wait a minute. One of the boys is on the East Coast.”
“Well,” says Branch, “we were
able to locate two of them. They both asked about a will and whether they’d have
to be involved in a funeral.”
“Was there a will?” I’m actually
rather curious. “And will there be a memorial service of some kind?” If I had to
guess, there would not be one; you don’t want people smiling at some event as
supposedly somber as a “Celebration of Life” service.
“Right now the body is down at
the funeral home,” answers Branch; “we’re still waiting on the permission.”
“Why would you want an autopsy?”
I ask, mainly to see detective Branch’s response.
“Ever seen a bedbug, Dr. Marshall?”
The question is quite unexpected.
“No.” I answer truthfully. I’ve
never seen a bedbug, and hope to never see one, although we did have a problem
with them in the dorms not long ago.
“His place was crawling with
bedbugs, Dr. Marshall.” Leonard Branch is staring at me, almost as if I were a
bedbug myself. “We looked on Google. They suck your blood. We’re suspicious
that Dr. Renner might have died from some disease.” He’s serious, still staring
at me. “There’s always the possibility of an epidemic on campus.”
“Now that would be a problem,
wouldn’t it?” I’m sympathetic, sort of. Maybe instead of Google, later today
I’ll check the real scientific literature on bedbugs, just to see if there’s
any evidence that they transmit dread diseases—HIV, Ebola virus, or something
else that will turn your insides into a hemorrhaging pulp.
“Did anyone ever say anything to
him about bedbugs?” Another strange question from detective Branch.
“Why would anyone in a geology
department say anything to anyone about bedbugs?” I pause, looking straight at
Branch. “In fact, why would anyone in a geology department even know anything about bedbugs?”
“I don’t know,” replies Branch;
“I really don’t know. But someone must have said something to him.” It’s his
turn to pause. “You can get bedbugs anywhere. We found that out on Google.”
“Really? Why do you think
somebody might have talked to him about bedbugs?” An image flashes through my
mind: three officers over in Campus Security, between rounds looking for
expired parking meters, hunched over their computers, deeply engaged in
Facebook, Twitter, and Google, supposedly learning about bedbugs but actually
learning whatever somebody somewhere in the world wants to put up on the
Internet about bedbugs, disease, deadly viruses, blood pouring out of all your
bodily orifices, or anything else that the average person believes might be
creepy.
“Because we found this in his
house.” Branch reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a thick file. I notice
dark splotches on the paper, splotches I now know are dried bedbug feces
containing blood. Had I known that at the time, I would never have handled it.
But I laid the file on my desk and opened it. Page after page of information on
bedbugs. Renner had been doing research, if you can call it that, on bedbugs,
ostensibly in an effort to get rid of them without anyone knowing his place was
infested.
“What happens when you find
bedbugs in your house?” Now I’m actually curious. One never knows when
something embarrassing will show up, such as head lice and pinworms, both of
which came home from day care with our children years ago.
“You call the exterminators,”
says Branch, “but they contact County Extension. Evidently it’s important to
know where bedbugs occur.” And it would have been exceedingly important to
Clyde Renner that nobody know he had
bedbugs in his house.
“Really? Why? Can’t they just
spray or something?” My solution to insect problems is to spray.
“I learned a lot about these
nasty little critters,” replies detective Branch. He must have spent a lot of
time on the Internet, his source of all wisdom. “There’s a global epidemic.
There’s resistance to chemicals. They get in your luggage, and they survive in
an airplane cargo compartment.” He looks through his notes, flipping a couple
of pages on a little spiral-bound notebook. “The ones from Africa are
especially bad.”
“Clyde must have picked them up
on some of his travels.” I offer a scientific explanation for Renner’s bedbug
problem. Make that former bedbug problem.
“Just like the fleas, maybe.”
Leonard Branch is still flipping through his notebook. He gets to a certain
page, stops, looks up at me. “Notice anything unusual about Dr. Renner’s
behavior in the past few weeks, Dr. Marshall?”
“No,” I lie; “he seemed like the
same old plate tectonics expert.”
BE CAREFUL, DR. RENNER! is available as an e-book on smashwords.com, nook, and kindle.
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