I didn’t want to spend another night away from Sanibel. But how do you say no to a twin whose sibling has just died?
I got a room at a place outside Kissimmee called Caribbean Villas-but only after first having a late-night bottle of wine with Rona, the much-shaken medical investigator.
“I usually don’t guzzle my wine like this,” she’d told me more than once. “But after witnessing something like that-my God.”
I replied, “I’ll believe it about you if you’ll believe it about me. Then maybe we can rationalize a second bottle.”
Now Frieda and I were in my leaky skiff, idling away from the marina, headed for Night’s Landing. I wore a red Gore-Tex squall jacket zipped tight. I would have worn gloves if I’d had them-water intensifies cold. I was taking my time, going slow. A sheriff’s detective said he wanted to meet us at the house and go through Applebee’s personal effects, maybe find something that would tell them why two foreigners had been interrogating the man. Also how and why he had died.
I’d told Frieda about the Russians, but not about their interrogation techniques. Also told her about the two late calls made from my cell phone.
While on our second bottle of wine, Rona and I had re-dialed the numbers. At that late hour, we’d expected to get recordings, and did.
One was the voice of a woman who said I’d reached the environmental engineering office of Tropicane Sugar. The second was a digitized message that said I’d reached the Florida offices of Environmental Protection and Oversight Conservancy, a nonprofit group, and that I should try again during regular business hours.
Neither gave the option of leaving a message.
I knew a little about them both. Tropicane was one of Florida’s largest producers of cane sugar. It was a privately owned, megadollar corporation, from what I’d read. It employed hundreds of people, maybe thousands. A major economic and political player.
Frieda said it might have been Tropicane that had commissioned one of her brother’s dioramas. He’d done work for both organizations.
The Environmental Conservancy, or EPOC, was a watchdog organization. It kept a low profile in the way of The Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It was well financed, politically conservative. It favored lawsuits over headlines, unlike more controversial nonprofits, such as Greenpeace, PETA, and the Earth Liberation Front. It was a more thoughtful group that preferred to work in the background. That was my impression, anyway.
Frieda surprised me, saying, years back, she’d been introduced to EPOC’s founder, but the meeting had had nothing to do with environmental issues.
“At the time,” she said, “he was still a practicing research physician. Dr. Desmond Stokes. A real doctor, but he had a more holistic approach to medicine. I wanted to get pregnant, but was worried because I had an autistic twin. The genetics were risky.”
Stokes had published a study that suggested that high doses of vitamins during pregnancy, combined with a diet of organic whole foods, reduced the risk of autoimmune disorders in infants. Stokes was working on the premise that autism had an autoimmune link. His research suggested neurotoxin pollutants in the environment were contributing factors.
“Heavy metals,” she said. “The sort of stuff you and I find all the time in water samples. Mercury’s the most dangerous during pregnancy. It’s everywhere-vegetables, fish, even some infant vaccines. People don’t realize. So I went to one of Stokes’s lectures. Impressive. But a very neurotic guy. What’s the phobia when a person’s afraid of germs?”
I said, “I don’t know, there’s a whole list. Germ-a-phobic?”
That got me a smile. “Whatever it’s called, he told the audience his parents were doctors who’d specialized in infectious diseases and parasitology, and they’d given it to him-the phobia. Like he was kidding, but I think he was serious. He was explaining why he wouldn’t be shaking hands, hanging out later. I signed up for what he called a ‘dietary protocol,’ which meant buying his designer line of vitamins.”
Even I recognized the brand when she said it.
She added in a wry tone, “A year or so later, I read that the state took away his medical license because of a new procedure he was trying, sheep placenta injections. Something like that. You don’t remember?”
I told her I’d been working out of the country during that time. There was an entire Florida decade missing from my memory banks.
“It was ugly. Tabloid stuff, which I followed because I felt like I’d been taken in by a quack. He moved his whole operation to the Bahamas. The vitamin company’s huge, and Dr. Stokes is now so rich that he doesn’t have to worry about strangers and their germs. Founding EPOC was maybe a PR move, but it’s also a way he can fire back at the U.S. government with lawsuits. The ‘Angry Expatriate.’ He’s been called that.”
“Did your brother know Dr. Stokes? The autism could’ve gotten them together.”
“Possible, maybe probably-now that I know he had some contact with EPOC. Jobe was big on vitamins.”
“What about Tropicane? Any friends there? Someone who might be hanging around the office that late, waiting for his call?”
The woman shook her head: No. Said that Jobe being Jobe, he didn’t have personal relationships, especially with employers. He contacted clients at their office, never at home.
“But why would he call both offices that late, when he was in trouble?”
She said, “A clock meant nothing to him. Maybe someone was supposed to answer. I don’t know.”
Finally, I mentioned the guinea worms, told her that I’d found the parasite in his house, nothing more, and asked if Jobe had ever been to Africa. Could he have been doing research?
If the animal’s life cycle included water, she said, he might be studying guinea worms. But, no, he wouldn’t leave the country, and definitely not for Africa. He hated travel.
“A year or so ago, he surprised me by going to Cuba for some kind of meeting. When I asked about it, all he said was, ‘Never again.’ That’s how much he despised travel.”
Disturbing, but I didn’t react. The woman had enough to deal with.
Frieda is a lean, handsome woman who usually dresses more like a fishing guide than a respected scientist-pleated shorts, lots of pockets, baggy shirt-but on this chilly morning she wore business slacks and a suit jacket in mourning black. Her face was gaunt from lack of sleep, her brown hair dull as winter leaves. I was there for moral support, which consisted of providing a shoulder to cry on-she’d already done that a couple of times-and an attentive ear. Let her talk away some of the pain.
Talking about her brother’s disorder was part of the process. Perhaps because the subject had once been a source of shame.
As I listened, I also allowed my attention to shift to the bilge switch, periodically, and the amount of water leaking into my boat. I’d loaded it on the trailer the previous night and found a radiating crack near the starboard chine. I suspected this would be the last time I’d be aboard.
I flicked the bilge switch now, then accelerated onto a slow plane, as Frieda continued talking. “Asperger’s is a milder form of autism. Some call it ‘high functioning’ autism. Growing up, kids with Asperger’s lack basic social skills most of us are born with. They tend to focus their interest on objects, not people.
“Jobe had a tough time learning to talk. He didn’t like being around people, and he was obsessed with orderliness. He… well, here’s an example. He always counted his Cheerios, and separated M amp;M’s by color. His toys had to be arranged exactly the way he wanted. If anything screwed up our daily routine, he’d run around flapping his hands and crying. He wasn’t a brat. Emotionally, he was just incapable of handling disorder.