by Madelyn Alt
As fast as we’d traveled through the surrounding countryside, now that we were drawing nearer the feed mill, we were creeping by comparison so as not to broadcast our approach. Next to me, Tom had gone instantly, perhaps even reflexively, into police mode, his entire body on high alert. His eyes grew sharp, moving here and there, taking in all the shadowed coveys, the many pockets of quiet where a person could easily be hiding.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath. “Where to start? The guy could be anywhere.”
I watched as he unlocked the glove compartment and withdrew his ankle holster, his eyes still on the quiet scene in front of us. Without a word, I reached behind the seat and grabbed the heavy utility belt and bulletproof vest he always kept at the ready like the Boy Scout he was, and handed it to him.
“Thanks.” He opened his door and stepped out cautiously, drawing the vest over his head and securing the thick leather belt around his waist with a quick and practiced motion. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jeans, withdrawing a big pocket knife, which he tossed onto my lap. “Here. Just in case. Stay put. Lock the doors behind me.”
He closed the door firmly but quietly and moved away from the pickup with all the grace and danger of a panther on the prowl. His plain white T-shirt and blue jeans stood out all too easily beneath the bright glow of the security lights. A sitting duck, if anyone was out there with a serious reason for not wanting to be caught. Remembering what he’d told me about taking precautions, I punched the Lock button, feeling far more secure as the solid kachunk of the tumblers crunched into place. The weight of the folding knife in my hand reassured me even further—not that I’d need it, but its presence eased my mind anyway. At least, for myself; for Tom, well, that was another worry altogether.
This was the hardest part of dating a cop. One never knew from day to day whether his health and well-being would continue. I found myself leaning forward on the truck’s bench seat, staring out the windshield at the pockets of darkness as Tom darted in and out of them, hugging close to the walls. Why didn’t he take a flashlight? I wondered, fretting. Maybe I should turn on the headlights . . .
I forced the thought from my head and made myself relax back against the seat. There was no way Tom would see that as anything other than interference, and I’d promised him months ago to keep my nose out of police business. Not that I had ever intentionally intervened. Like my mom had a fondness for saying, trouble just seemed to have a knack for finding me.
I fidgeted anxiously. Nine forty-two on the clock, glowing bright green on the dashboard.
At nine forty-three another car scuffed to a halt beside the truck, red and blue lights flashing, but no siren. I turned my head, but the officer who had been driving had already leapt from its confines and was standing outside my window, face stern, one cautious hand on the butt of his gun as with the other he motioned for me to open the window. Far be it from me to get in the way of the law. I pressed the Down button, posthaste.
Recognition registered suddenly on his face—Jed Something, I remembered just as suddenly, an older, thicker version of Tom, whose gunbelt served only to emphasize the middle-age drift. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Thought I recognized the truck. Tom already here?”
I nodded. “Out there somewhere. I’ve lost track of him.”
“Right. You stay here.” He cut the flashers.
“Be careful. I haven’t seen anyone yet, but—”
He had already turned away from me. Just then the misty clouds that had been obscuring the moon shifted. I glanced up at the movement. My breath caught in my throat as the glow from the half-moon silhouetted a silo with its system of conveyers and chutes and ladders . . .
“Oh, my God. What is that?”
My voice was barely a whisper, but it was enough to make Jed pause. He turned back toward me and caught me looking up, up, up. Almost in slow motion he tilted his head back to follow my gaze to where a silent form hung heavily from one of the uppermost metal conveyer systems, as still as death in the airless night.
“Holy shit.”
In an instant he was scrambling for his squad car and the handheld spotlight the vehicle came equipped with. With a flip of a switch the spotlight flared into action, sending the entire area into spasms of light and movement. Officer Jed swung the light beam upward, aiming for the thing we had both seen but wished we had not. The beam swept past it once, twice, as his unsteady hands betrayed his nervousness. Finally he got it just right. The light caught and held on the . . . what was it?
Knowing Tom wouldn’t like it, but also knowing I couldn’t possibly not look, I quietly let myself out of the truck. Just for a minute, I told myself. Just long enough for a quick look-see. I wouldn’t get in the way.
In the next instant Tom came wheeling around the corner of the nearest building, gun in hand and held at the ready, his expression uberfierce and ready for business. Seeing it, I will admit—I quailed. Yeah, I know. Cowardly, but true. And in that moment the ten-year-old girl that still lived deep down inside me made the snap decision to try out the Invisibility Enchantment I’d read about and had been working on secretly for just such an emergency. Yes, it was spellwork, and a few months ago I’d have shied away from that—but I’d been working on coming to terms with my special abilities, and an innocuous charm could hurt no one. No, it wouldn’t really work like Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, but if I did it right, any impact my presence made might be lessened to the point that Tom wouldn’t notice or care that I had stuck my nose in things—again. Worth a shot anyway. Was it self-serving? Probably. But a girl has to look out for herself sometimes, and besides, how else was I supposed to satisfy my curiosity about what was going on here?
It took only a split second from decision to execution. Holding my breath deep in my lungs, I drew myself in, making myself as small and inconsequential as possible, holding the I’m-not-here-don’t-mind-me-fading-into-the-background thought with as much intensity as I could manage. I was stunned when it actually appeared to have worked: Tom’s gaze skated past me without pause. The minute he identified Officer Jed as the reason for the sweeping beam of light, his shoulders relaxed visibly, and he lowered his handgun.
“Glad to see you could make it, Jensen.”
“Did you see—”
“Anyone?” Tom finished for him. “Nah. I think whoever was snooping around is gone. I haven’t seen or heard a thing since—”
Jensen cut him off by swinging the light up and jerking his head toward the hanging . . . thing. For an instant, Tom looked frozen, too, by the sight. Then he revved into action, reholstering his gun and fastening the snaps. “Do you want to take the ladder, or do I?”
Jensen grimaced. “Ho, jeez. God, I hate heights. Why does it always have to be heights?”
“I dunno. You want me to climb it?”
“Nope, I’m on it. You’re not even supposed to be on duty, remember?” He girded his loins—well, his utility belt—shifting it around his meaty middle. Jensen did not seem to share Tom’s predilection for physical fitness. He cast a mischievous glance at Tom. “You gonna be ready to catch me if I fall?”
“Hm.” Tom made a leery face. “You know, you’re not really my type. How about if I radio for backup instead, big guy?”
The cop’s version of gallows humor. Even in tense situations, nothing much fazed them for long. I, on the other hand, was completely weirded out by the thing hanging above us. I didn’t envy Jensen much. That climb looked like a bitch and a half. Since I didn’t even manage to pass rope climbing in middle school gym class, I felt his pain.
“What—or who—do you think it is?” Tom mused aloud, rubbing a hand over the jaw I had been nuzzling not so long ago.
Jensen shrugged. “We’ll know when we get there, I guess. I don’t see why anyone would have climbed up there to off themselves, but stranger things have happened.” Surely the understatement of the year, I thought wryly as Jensen continued, “What I want to know is, why always on my watch?”
Jensen made his way over to the silo and eyeballed his target as Tom called out helpful suggestions. As for me, I edged back on the fringes, as quiet as the proverbial mouse, watching the proceedings from my ringside seat with that heady mix of emotions that comes from rubber-necking at traffic accidents and funerals—half-revulsion, half-fascination, all guilt.
The higher Jed Jensen climbed, the higher the anticipation grew. Behind us in the barns across the way, the hogs were restless. Their strange grunts and squeals rang out over the sounds of the fans and machinery, filling the air with an unease that pressed in on me. I hadn’t been expecting that. I took a deep, steadying breath and scuffed my feet against the pavement in an attempt to ground the nervous energy that the animals projected as strongly as any human.
Jensen was at least halfway up when an F350 pickup truck skidded in off the road, spewing gravel in typical testosterone-charged fashion as it shuddered to a halt beside Tom’s much smaller version. The driver jumped out, leaving his door open as he pushed back his felt cowboy hat to stare up first at the spotlighted conveyer system high above, then the dark spot of the uniformed officer inching his way up the heights of the round-backed ladder. He stopped a moment with his hands on his hips and mouth open as though stunned by the scene unfolding before his eyes.
The stillness of the moment didn’t last long.
“What the hell is going on here?” The man’s dark eyes swept from Tom, to me, to the police cruiser, then back to the scene high above. “Can someone please tell me what in the blue blazes is going on?”
Tom was digging in the back pocket of his jeans, withdrawing the flat wallet that contained his badge and identification. He flashed them at the newcomer. “May I ask you to state your business here, sir?”
The man stared at him, his rugged face red beneath a tan that spoke of hours spent in the open air on a regular basis. “My business? Well, that’s just the point, Officer . . . Fielding, is it? This”—he swept his hand to indicate the widespread grouping of buildings and silos—“is my business. I’m Joel Turner. I own Turner Field and Grain Systems.”
Even if I hadn’t been gifted with sensitivities from the Powers That Be, I would have known by the set of the shoulders beneath the button-down cotton shirt and the forceful slash of his hand that Mr. Joel Turner was a man of few words and even less patience.
“Mr. Turner,” Tom said before the man could get himself even more worked up. “I take it Dispatch didn’t get ahold of you. I’m afraid there’s been a report of possible trespass here on your property. A driver passing by the place saw flashlight beams and suspicious movement, and called it in.”
“No, they got ahold of me, all right. Trespass, huh?” Turner’s gaze roved over his widespread property, sharp as a hay fork. “So what are you standing around for? Shouldn’t you be out there looking? And while you’re at it, maybe you wouldn’t mind explaining the fool climbing up the side of Big Ben.” The silo, I assumed, not the clock tower. “What the hell is that thing up there?”
“That fool,” Tom replied in a clipped manner that said he did not care much for Turner’s choice of words, “is a fellow police officer currently risking life and limb to investigate vandalism of your property. As for what is up there, we don’t have an answer to that yet.”
As though he had heard the discussion below and sought to put an end to the speculation, Jensen gave a shout. As one, all eyes swiveled upward. Jensen hooked an arm around one of the ladder steps and pressed his back against the safety cage to brace himself. A second later we heard the crackling sputter of his voice coming from Tom’s radio.
“False alarm. It’s just a dummy that some jackass decided to haul up here to make trouble.”
“A dummy?” Tom responded into his own shoulder mike. “You mean, like a store mannequin?”
“More like a scarecrow. Rough. It looks like someone put it together themselves.”
“Hm.” Tom thought for a minute. “How about it, Jensen? Can you get to it to get it down?”
There was a moment stretched long, rife with hesitation, and I knew Jensen must be surveying the distance between his body and the dummy itself. Twenty-five feet on solid ground was a cakewalk. Twenty-five feet of open air with a freefall of one hundred feet to a hard landing on a concrete slab was not a pretty prospect. The radio sputtered again. “Well . . . yeah, sure I can. I mean, maybe it would be better to wait until morning, since there’s no real urgency. I mean—”
Without a word Turner turned on his heel and stalked off toward a low-slung building across the way. A utilitarian sign on the front minced no words to identify it as the OFFICE. Tom whipped his head around to watch him, then spoke into the radio’s mouthpiece again. “Hang on, Jensen.”
“Copy that. But be quick about it, would ya? Can’t say as it’s all that fun up here.”
Tom stuffed his wallet back into his pocket and jogged after the feed mill owner, who was punching the buttons on a numerical keypad just outside the office door. Turner barely looked back at Tom as he came up behind him; instead, when the system made a high-pitched blip blip, he shoved his way inside without further ado. A light switched on, spilling carelessly across the yard. Turner stayed in the doorway, his bulk preventing Tom from following while he worked at something just inside the door. In the next moment, there was a loud clunk from above, a mechanical whirr, and the jingling of metal as the system of pulleys and conveyers lurched into motion, and the dummy right along with them.
High above, Jensen gave a shout. The radio on Tom’s hip squawked again. “Well, why didn’t you do that sooner, son? That just made things a helluva lot easier.”
Tom looked at Turner. Turner turned away beneath the weight of the attention, ducking his head down enough that the brim hid his eyes. He shrugged. “I don’t do . . . never mind.”
Fifteen minutes of wrangling, adjusting, and reverse-climbing later, and Jensen had hauled the lumpy figure down in a fireman’s over-the-shoulder hold, letting himself down one careful step at a time—not an easy feat when you were a good thirty pounds overweight and a little doughy around the middle. Tom and Turner lifted the thing from him as soon as they could reach it, and between the two of them lugged it to the ground. For a scarecrow, this dummy appeared to be surprisingly heavy.
Everyone gathered around. No one seemed to notice or care that I had inserted myself into the circle. The thought made me puff up with pride—my invisibility charm seemed to be working even better than I had hoped. This particular skill could prove useful.
The thing that had been hanging from the conveyer system was not a mannequin, but as Jensen had described, it was distinctly man-shaped, and it was most definitely crafted by someone with a sick sense of humor. Its face was a burlap sack, just like any moldering scarecrow holding court over the crows and blackbirds in the veggie rows, but its eyes were big black X’s, its mouth a Frankenstein grimace of stitchery in red yarn. The thing had been suspended from the conveyers by a noose securely knotted—hangman-style, I noted, grimacing at the implied suggestion. It was dressed in an old button-down shirt, clean but worn blue jeans, and atop its “head,” a straw cowboy hat.
One after another, three sets of eyes, mine included, lifted from the dummy to Mr. Turner standing at its feet and traveled from his boots up to his low-on-the-brow cowboy hat. He scowled suddenly—the meaning was not lost on him either.
“You wouldn’t know who might be leaving this kind of thing for you, do you, Mr. Turner?” Tom asked, his voice neutral. “I mean, it’s a weird thing for anyone to do. Kinda eerie, you might say, hanging it up there for you to find.”
“Shit.” Turner lit up a cigarette, cupping his hand around the tip until it burned Devil-red in the night. He took a long drag, then blew the smoke out, his stare dragon-cold and intense. “What makes you think the thing was meant for me?”
Tom raised a brow and stared him down, just as cool. “What makes you think it wasn’t?”
Turner just shrugged. “I didn’t sa
y that. I just don’t think you can jump to that conclusion without cause.”
A tic was making an appearance at Tom’s left temple—I knew how much he hated having his authority compromised, and he hated mind games even more—but he kept his cool.
Jensen, as the officer in charge of the scene, rose from where he’d been kneeling beside the dummy and stepped in. “I think this might be enough cause even for you, Mr. Turner.” He handed him a piece of paper, wrinkled from handling. “I found this on the, er, the body when I was holding on for dear life a hundred feet up.”
Turner accepted the paper, the briefest twitch of his fingers before taking it the only sign of uncertainty. His mouth turned down at the corner in a sneer. “Death threats for unfair business practices.” He made a sound of disgust. “I knew this was a load of hog shit. This isn’t a case of vandalism, Officers. This is nothing more than a simple case of sour grapes.”
“How do you figure?”
Turner shrugged. “We’ve had a lot of major expenses this last year—purchasing some of the other feed mills and co-ops in the county—”
“All of ’em, I heard,” Jensen provided helpfully.
“I guess that’d be about right. In any case, with the economy in the crapper, we’ve had to make some modifications to our pricing scheme just to stay out of the red and pay our own creditors. You know how it is.”