Free Trauma by Graham Masterton

had a couple of problems at home, that’s all. My son’s in the hospital. Nothing life threatening, but it’s bad enough.”
    â€œFlu?”
    â€œFight.”
    â€œThat’s too bad. But boys will be boys, huh? I was always getting into fights when I was younger. The other kids called me Bug Boy and used to sit on my head and fart in my ear. Amazing I can still hear.”
    â€œI just lost my job at Glamorex, too. Well, maybe not. I’ll just have to see.”
    Howard handed her a mug of coffee. On the side it said,
Never ask yourself questions you don’t know the answer to
.
    â€œI’m not interrupting you?” she asked.
    â€œOf course not. I’m polishing my latest paper, that’s all. ‘New Techniques for Determining Time of Death from Sarcophagidae Larvae Invasion.’ Read it first, eat lunch afterward. Unless you’re deliberately trying to lose weight, that is. You been busy?”
    â€œPretty much. People keep on killing each other. Somebody has to clean up after them.”
    â€œYou said on the phone you had something interesting to show me.”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. I never saw one before, that’s all.”
    Bonnie handed Howard a brown paper bag. He moved his keyboard to one side and carefully tipped the contents onto his desk—a scattering of fig-leaf fragments and the black caterpillar that she had found at the Goodman home. The caterpillar beganto hump its way slowly across a sheet of graph paper. Howard leaned forward and peered at it from only inches away. Then he took a pair of half-glasses out of his desk, perched them on the end of his nose and peered at it even closer.
    Bonnie said, “I almost didn’t bring it—you know, what with Ray being in the hospital and all. But I thought I’d better in case it died.”
    â€œSure, sure. I’m very glad you did. Where did you say you found it?”
    â€œOn a fig plant. There were maybe six or seven of them. You must have seen that shooting on TV—the guy on De Longpre who shot his three children and then blew his head off? The fig plant was on the windowsill in one of the bedrooms.”
    Howard nudged the caterpillar with his fingertip to prevent it from crawling under his computer console. “Now, you’re a
very
unusual little guy, aren’t you?”
    â€œI don’t know whether it has any direct connection to the trauma,” said Bonnie. “But a couple of days ago I found some black chrysalis-type things at another trauma scene, and I just thought—you know—this is kind of weird.”
    â€œYou didn’t keep a sample of the chrysalis-type things?”
    Bonnie shook her head. “I couldn’t even tell you if they were the same kind of bug. But I just thought—you know—this is kind of weird.”
    â€œIt
is
kind of weird, Bonnie. It’s
highly
weird. This looks like
Parnassius mnemonsyne
, the Clouded Apollo. It’s a large butterfly with white, black-veined wingswith black spots. The dark, shadowy form occurs only in the females.… With age, the wings of the males become almost transparent.
    â€œThe interesting thing is that
Parnassius mnemonsyne
is found in only two places in the world: in the mountain pastures of Western Europe and in the hills of Chichimec territory in northern Mexico. Nobody knows for sure how this one butterfly could have developed in two such disparate locations. But there’s no doubt that it was the same butterfly. I have some samples outside, if you want to take a look.”
    â€œNo, thanks,” said Bonnie. “Just tell me why this caterpillar should have been crawling around some trauma scene.”
    â€œI don’t know. I mean, the Clouded Apollo has something of a sinister reputation in Aztec culture, but that’s superstition, nothing else.”
    â€œWhat reputation?”
    Howard Jacobson frowned at her and said,