Tammy hit it again.
Smack.
She hit it twice more and, when it still wouldn't die, unfolded the paper and dropped it square on the stubborn bee. Amazingly, the paper marched along the floor, pulled along by the still-not-dead insect.
"What does it take to kill you?" Tammy complained.
This time, she stomped on every crumpled inch of the newspaper with both feet.
"I think I got it this time," she panted, stepping back.
"It's dying anyway," Krombold said.
When Tammy lifted the paper, the bee was still intact. It just hadn't moved much.
"I fixed its fuzzy ass!" Tammy chortled.
The bee then resumed its painful crawling.
Before Tammy could descend on it again, it crawled under a closed door. The funereal black letters on the frosted panel said Togo Nozoki.
"Damn, that is one ferocious bee," she panted. "No wonder they're feared from Brazil to Mexico."
"It looked like an ordinary bumblebee to me," Krombold allowed.
"That shows how much you know," Tammy snorted. "That was a killer bee. An Africanized killer bee. Loaded with neurotoxins and other poisons lethal to people."
Dr. Krombold frowned. "I must be mistaken ...."
"About what?"
"I think we should bring Dr. Wurmlinger into this."
"Now you're talking!"
Chapter 12
Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger was no different from any child who went through a normal bug period. He just never grew out of his.
There was no insect on earth he didn't know, but he specialized in what others called pests. He was the leading authority on the social life of fire ants, on scuttle-fly dispersal and migration patterns of the corn borer.
He knew whiteflies from gypsy moths, and could tell the summer temperature from the pitch of the cicadas chirring in the trees.
It was true that not all of the multitudinous species of insects on earth had been cataloged and classified. But Wurmlinger was the first to identify every insect of his native Texas, the state with the greatest diversity of insects in the United States. He could at a glance distinguish an ant thorax from that of a wasp, although they were in fact closely related. He could tell the forelegs of a praying mantis from the hind legs of a grasshopper and separate wartbirt from field crickets.
And after three hours of methodical sorting and classifying, he came to one inescapable conclusion: the owners of La Maison Punaise had not ingested any portion of any species of bee known to man.
He rendered his expert opinion when Dr. Krombold returned with a rather breathless-looking young blond woman in tow.
"The victims in question didn't die from ingesting bee parts or associative glands or toxins," he said.
"Forget them!" the blonde snapped. "We got a killer bee cornered in an office. It just murdered my cameraman."
"How do you know it's a killer bee?" Dr. Wurmlinger said, twitching in curiosity.
"It zapped my cameraman, and he died just like that!" Tammy snapped her fingers once. "It's a damn shame he didn't have the presence of mind to point the lens back on himself. It would have made great pictures. Death by killer-bee sting."
"No, you misunderstand me. How do you know it was an Apis mellifera scutellata?"
"A what?"
"Bravo bee, or so-called killer bee."
"It looked like one. It was big and yellow and fuzzy."
"Africanized killer bees are not distinguishable to the naked eye, and they are not in any way or shape fuzzy," Wurmlinger noted.
"This one was."
"I would like to see this bee with my own eyes."
Dr. Wurmlinger was led to the locked door of the office that formerly belonged to Dr. Nozoki. He gave the dead cameraman a sidelong glance and, evidently finding him less interesting than a live bee, ignored him.
"I have the key," Dr. Krombold offered.
"Is this safe?" Tammy asked. "Maybe we should spray some Raid under the door."
Wurmlinger visibly flinched. "No doubt the bee is dead by now," he said.
Dr. Krombold unlocked the door and pushed it open gingerly.
"There is nothing to be afraid of," Wurmlinger assured him.
Tammy had retrieved her minicam and had it up on her shoulders. The light was burning hot, but the protective glass was broken, exposing the hot bulb. Faint vapor curled out from it.
Dr. Krombold went in first and looked around. His puzzled gropings caused Tammy to say, "It crawled in, remember? Look on the floor."
Dr. Krombold did. "I see no bee," he reported.
Thereupon, Wurmlinger entered and gave the room the benefit of his practiced eye.
There was no bee on the floor. Nor was there a bee, dead or otherwise, under the heavy mahogany desk. He looked in other places. Behind a trio of beige filing cabinets. In the wastepaper basket. Even at the base of a human skeleton suspended from a chain on some kind of dull metal standard.
The brownish white bones, held together by steel wire, rattled.
"No bee."