When they were alone in the office, Edson said, “I kill flies for a living, not people, Detective. Is this a serious visit?”
Edson laughed hard and Bosch forced a smile to be polite. Edson was a small man in a short-sleeved white shirt and pale green tie. His bald scalp had been freckled by the sun and was scarred by misjudgments. He wore thick, rimless glasses that magnified his eyes and made him somewhat resemble his quarry. Behind his back his subordinates probably called him “The Fly.”
Bosch explained that he was working a homicide case and could not tell Edson a lot of the background because the investigation was of a highly confidential nature. He warned him that other investigators might be back with more questions. He asked for some general information about the breeding and transport of sterile fruit flies into the state, hoping that the appeal for expert advice would get the bureaucrat to open up.
Edson responded by giving him much of the same information Teresa Corazón had already provided, but Bosch acted as if it was all new to him and took notes.
“Here’s the specimen here, Detective,” Edson said, holding up a paperweight. It was a glass block in which a fruit fly had been perpetually cast, like a prehistoric ant caught in amber.
Bosch nodded and steered the interview specifically toward Mexicali. The entomologist said the breeding contractor there was a company called EnviroBreed. He said EnviroBreed shipped an average of thirty million flies to the eradication center each week.
“How do they get here?” Bosch asked.
“In the pupal stage, of course.”
“Of course. But my question is how?”
“This is the stage in which the insect is nonfeeding, immobile. It is what we call the transformation stage between larva and imago-adult. This works out quite well because it is an ideal point for transport. They come in incubators, if you will. Environment boxes, we call them. And then, of course, shortly after they get here metamorphosis is completed and they are ready to be released as adults.”
“So when they get here, they have already been dyed and irradiated?”
“That is correct. I said that.”
“And they are in the pupal stage, not larva?”
“Larvae is the plural, Detective, but, yes, that is essentially correct. I said that, also.”
Bosch was beginning to think Edson was essentially an officious prick. He was sure they definitely called him The Fly around here.
“Okay,” Harry said. “So what if, here in L.A., I found a larvae, I mean a larva, that was dyed but not irradiated? Is that possible?”
Edson was silent a moment. He didn’t want to speak too soon and be wrong. Bosch was getting the idea that he was the type of guy who watched “Jeopardy” on the tube each night and barked out the answers ahead of the contestants even if he was alone.
“Well, Detective, any given scenario is possible. I would, however, say the example you just gave is highly unlikely. As I said, our suppliers send the pupae packages through an irradiation machine before they are shipped here. In these packages we often find larvae mixed with the pupae because it would generally be impossible to completely separate the two. But these larvae samplings have been through the same irradiation as the pupae. So, no, I don’t see it.”
“So if I had a person who on their body carried a single pupa that had been dyed but not irradiated, that person would not have come from here, right?”
“Yes, that would be my answer.”
“Would?”
“Yes, Detective, thatis my answer.”
“Then where would this person have come from?”
Edson gave it some thought first. He used the eraser end of a pencil he had been fiddling with to press his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.
“I take it this person is dead, you having introduced yourself as a homicide detective and obviously being unable to ask the person this question yourself.”
“You should be on ‘Jeopardy,’ Mr. Edson.”
“It’s Doctor. Anyway, I couldn’t begin to guess where the person would have picked up this specimen you speak of.”
“He could have been from one of the breeders you mentioned, down in Mexico or over in Hawaii, couldn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s a possibility. One of them.”
“And what’s another?”
“Well, Mr. Bosch, you saw the security we have around here. Frankly, there are some people who are not happy with what we are doing. Some extremists believe nature should take its course. If the medfly comes to southern California, who are we to try to eradicate it? Some people believe we have no business being in this business. There have been threats from some groups. Anonymous, but nevertheless, threats to breed nonsterile medflies and release them, causing a massive infestation. Now, if I were going to do that, I might dye them to obfuscate my opponent.”
Edson was pleased with himself on that one. But Bosch didn’t buy it. It did not fit with the facts. But he nodded, indicating to Edson that he would give it some consideration and thought. Then he said, “Tell me, how do these deliveries from the breeders get here? For example, how do they get here from the place down in Mexicali you deal with?”
Edson said that at the breeding facility thousands of pupae were packed into plastic tubes resembling six-foot-long sausages. The tubes were then strung in cartons complete with incubators and humidifiers. The environment boxes were sealed at the EnviroBreed lab under the scrutiny of a USDA inspector and then trucked across the border and north to Los Angeles. The deliveries from EnviroBreed came two to three times a week, depending on availability of supply.
“The cartons are not inspected at the border?” Bosch asked.
“They are inspected but not opened. It could endanger the product if the cartons were opened. Each carton contains a carefully controlled environment, you understand. But as I said, the cartons are sealed under the eye of government inspectors, and each carton is reinspected upon the breaking of such seals at the eradication center to make sure there has been no tampering. Um, at the border, the Border Patrol checks the seal numbers and cartons against the driver’s bill of lading and our separate notification of transport crossing. It’s very thorough, Detective Bosch. The system was all hashed out at the highest levels.”
Bosch said nothing for a while. He wasn’t going to debate the security of the system, but he wondered who designed it at the highest levels, the scientists or the Border Patrol.
“If I was to go down there, to Mexicali, could you get me into EnviroBreed?”
“Impossible,” Edson said quickly. “You have to remember these are private contractors. We get all our bred flies from privately owned facilities. Though we have a state USDA inspector at each facility and state entomologists, such as myself, make routine visits, we cannot order them to open their doors to an inquiry by police or anyone, for that matter, without showing notice of an infraction of our contract.
“In other words, Detective Bosch, tell me what they did and I will tell you if I can get you in there.”
Bosch didn’t answer. He wanted to tell Edson as little as possible. He changed the subject.
“These environment boxes that the bug tubes come in, how big are they?” he asked.
“Oh, they’re a pretty decent size. We generally use a forklift when unloading deliveries.”
“Can you show me one?”
Edson looked at his watch and said, “I suppose that is possible. I don’t know what has come in, if anything.”
Bosch stood up to force the issue. Edson finally did, too. He led Harry out of the office and down another hallway past more offices and labs that had once been the holding pens for the insane, the addicted and the abandoned. Harry recalled that once while a patrolman he had walked down this same hallway escorting a woman he had arrested on Mount Fleming, where she was climbing the steel frame behind the firstO of the Hollywood sign. She had a nylon cord with her, already tied into a noose at one end. A few years later he read in the newspaper that after getting out of Patton State Hospital she had gone back to the sign and done the job he had interrupted.