Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

Mixed in with the takeout food from a half dozen restaurants and stores were the remains of watermelon, cantaloupes, strawberries, and bananas I had bought at roadside stands. But local merchants and tailgate fruit vendors didn’t lie in wait to poison their customers. Maybe Doc Voss just had too many shadows left in his mind from Vietnam, I thought.

Temple Carrol’s car came up the drive and stopped. I raked all the decaying food I had bought in supermarkets into a pile and rebagged it, then leaned over and picked up an empty half-gallon milk carton.

“I went to the hospital this afternoon and you were asleep. When I came back you were checked out,” Temple said.

“I hear you shook them up in the E.R.,” I said, and sat down on the scrolled-iron, white-painted bench under the chinaberry tree, my head dizzy from bending over.

She wore a pair of soft boots and rust-colored jeans and a checkered tan shirt. Her eyes fixed on mine while she slipped a stick of gum in her mouth.

“You remember a lot?” she asked.

“Big blank.”

She nodded, her jaws chewing slowly.

“The doc says maybe you saved my life,” I said.

“Dull night. A girl has to do something for kicks.”

The sky was lavender and streaked with fire behind her head. She put her hands in her back pockets and lifted her chin slightly.

“I guess I remember pieces of things,” I said.

“Pieces? Wonderful choice,” she said.

I looked away from her stare. My face was cold and moist in the breeze. I could feel blood veins tightening in my head, my vision slip in and out of focus. “You were there for me. That’s what I remember, Temple,” I said.

“There for you? Wow,” she said, her face heating.

I couldn’t think of an adequate response. I ran one hand through my hair and stared at the tops of my boots.

“What are you doing with that milk carton?” she said irritably.

I rubbed my thumb over a tiny burr on the side, then splayed open the top for Temple to look inside.

“I have the milk delivered. There’s a puncture in it. Like the kind a hypodermic needle would make,” I said.

On Monday morning I met Tobin Voss in his office out by the four-lane. A half dozen books were opened on his desktop. On a glass-covered bookcase behind his chair was a framed color photograph of him and his flight crew in front of a Huey helicopter.

“Here’s a copy of the paperwork from the lab. You ever hear of a World War II Japanese group called Unit 731?” he said.

“No.”

“They conducted experiments on Chinese prisoners in Manchuria. The subject probably doesn’t come up often in our trade negotiations with Tokyo. Traces from your specimens show similarities to a couple of toxins they developed.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Put it this way. I can’t tell you with certainty the toxic element that was in your system. But I can tell what it’s not. So that creates an area of speculation. The best I can come up with is this historical stuff.” Then he smiled and asked, “You haven’t been to Africa lately, have you?”

“Why?”

“According to my nifty book here on political intrigue and assassination, Unit 731’s gift to biological warfare has been used to murder several democratic leaders in Africa, primarily because its symptoms are like a number of fatal viruses carried by diseased animals.”

“How about Central Africa, the old Belgian Congo?”

His eyes dropped to an open page in his book, then looked at me again.

His humorous cynicism was gone. “How’d you know?” he said.