Fatal Harvest

by Catherine Palmer

  Jill mulled over the idea. “But his e-mail made it clear he feels he’s not safe. He thinks someone is after him.”

  For a minute, Cole said nothing. Finally, he swallowed. “You know my son pretty well, Miss Pruitt?”

  “Jill. Yes, I think I do.”

  “Then you know Matt is different. I’ll admit that much about him, though I don’t like it when people say he’s obsessed or weird. When kids call him names and pick on him, I hate that. But the fact is, Billy’s right when he says Matt doesn’t fit into the normal world. You try to talk to him, and his head is somewhere else. He’s always been that way. Just different, you know?”

  “I know. That’s why he’s so wonderful.”

  At that, he turned to look at her. “You see the good in him?”

  “I see more than good. I see brilliance. Genius. I see a future full of possibility for your son. If I had a child, I’d be thrilled if he turned out just like Matt.”

  “His teachers tell me he has poor social skills.”

  “Well, they’ve never heard him talk about things he really cares about. Besides, what sixteen-year-old has good social skills?”

  He laughed. “I was a mess at sixteen.”

  “Me, too. But then, I’ve always walked my own path in life—trying to go in the direction God leads me. People don’t like that sometimes. They don’t get it. I stopped caring a long time ago what folks thought. That’s how Matt is. He gets his instructions from God, and he’s very literal about putting his faith into practice. I love that about him.”

  “Yeah. So do I.” He fell silent again. When he spoke, his voice was husky. “Anyhow, I figure Matt must have the notion that someone’s chasing him. You know, he gets these thoughts. He tries to reason things out—but if it’s not math or science, it doesn’t compute. I think he’s running from a phantom.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’m not so sure. The things he told me about companies like Agrimax…well, I was disturbed.”

  “What’s to fear? It’s pretty straightforward, if you ask me. Making money is their bottom line, and no one who believes in capitalism can have a problem with that. I realize these corporations run small businesses into the ground and then buy them. I know they force farmers to use their pesticides, fertilizers, seeds—everything. And I know they pay us bottom dollar so they can turn around and sell our produce to the highest bidder. I don’t like that, but it’s reality.”

  “You haven’t described capitalism—that’s a monopoly.”

  “No way. It’s hard-as-steel capitalism. And it’s not evil.”

  Jill felt her ears beginning to heat up again. “How can you say that? You’re a relatively small rancher. It’s not fair—”

  “It’s a game. We all play it. Even your famine-relief friends are playing along. These monster food corporations do their bit for world hunger so they can look good. They have their scientists out there developing special breeds of sheep in one remote corner of the world or eliminating a pest in another. Looking good for the newspapers and TV. Your people go along with it to get their handouts. But it’s all a big, complex game—and no, it’s not fair.”

  “If it’s a game, they ought to know they’re playing with the lives of millions of starving—”

  “What’s that?” Cole cut in. He leaned forward and peered through the windshield at a dark hulk in the distance. “Up ahead on the right side of the road. Do you see it?”

  “Slow down. It’s a car. No, a pickup. Hey, I think it’s Matt!”

  Her heart beating double time, Jill unlatched her seat belt as Cole pulled off the roadway.

  “What color is it?” he demanded. “Is it—no, it’s not Matt’s pickup. It’s…oh, great.”

  Jill saw the large shape emerge from the cab at the same moment Cole had.

  “It’s Billy,” they said in unison.

  Jill opened the door and stepped out onto the gravel shoulder. She glanced back at Cole. Shaking his head, he remained behind the wheel.

  The teenager watched her approach, a sheepish grin scrawled across his face. He took off his ball cap as she neared. “Hey, Miss Pruitt. I was hoping you guys might be coming along.”

  “Billy, what are you doing out here?” She shrugged. “Why am I even asking that? Did you tell your parents you were going to look for Matt?”

  “I called and left a message.”

  “So why did you stop?”

  “I got a…uh…it’s a flat. But I don’t have a spare. This pickup’s an old clunker, you know. I had already driven a long way past Loco Hills, so I kind of kept going for a while, thinking I could make it to Hobbs.”

  “Hobbs? That’s forty-five miles from here, Billy.”

  “Yeah.” He scratched his head. “I wasn’t sure how far it was. Anyhow, the wheel is shot. Like bad. I just kept driving, ’cause this stretch of road is like the desert or something. And then I started seeing the sparks, so I stopped. And that’s when it occurred to me you guys might be coming along. And here you are. Think you could give me a ride?”

  Jill turned and looked back at Cole’s pickup. Just what they needed—a huge sixteen-year-old wedged into the cab with them. If Cole was in a bad humor before, this would make him downright surly.

  “I think we’d better call your dad and tell him to come out and pick you up,” she told the boy. “He could arrange a tow.”

  “Miss Pruitt, would you please not do that? My dad is not cool about these things, you know? He’ll really ream me. I mean, it could be bad. Mega-bad. If you’d take me into Hobbs, I could try to find another wheel and buy a tire or something, and then—”

  “Come on.” She laid her hand on his back as they started toward Cole’s truck. “It won’t be mega-good with Matt’s father, but we’ll survive.”

  “Oh, he’s nothing like my dad. Mr. Strong is cool. I mean, he’s not around much, but he’s a good guy, you know? Like he never drinks or cusses or nothing, and he gets Matt whatever he needs—computer stuff and junk like that. And he takes him to church and out to eat. I never saw him get mad—never. Not till tonight. But he would never hit Matt or anybody, you know. He’s not like that.”

  Jill stopped short and caught the boy’s arm before they got into the pickup. “Does your dad hit you, Billy?”

  “Aw, it’s no big deal. I’m bigger than him now.” His laugh held no humor. “It used to be bad, and with my mom…well, that’s why she’s wanting out. I told her to get away, go to a shelter or whatever, but she stays. It’s little things like this with my truck—it sets him off, you know, especially if he’s been drinking. So if you could just take me into Hobbs, I can take care of it.”

  She nodded. Opening the door, she climbed in and slid next to Cole. “Billy’s coming with us. He had a flat, and his wheel is ruined.”

  “Hold on a minute now.” Cole reached across her and put up his hand. “Whoa, boy. You better just call your dad, and—”

  “I told him he could come with us,” Jill said. “Hop in, Billy. It’s no problem.”

  “No problem?” Cole grimaced as the boy slammed the cab door, and Jill’s elbow sank into his rib cage. “Whose truck is this, anyway?”

  “It’s yours. But I’m half of the duo, and I promised Billy he could ride along.”

  Cole sighed as he pulled back out onto the highway. Trying to make herself smaller than she already was, Jill attempted to think of something to say to ease the tension. Unfortunately, Billy smelled like a teenager who had gone too long without a shower and a toothbrush. She was fairly sure she could even catch a pungent aroma emanating from his shoes.

  Cole, on the other hand, smelled of something disturbingly masculine. Shaving cream? Or maybe it was the denim he wore. She wished his shoulder weren’t so hard. And that she could move her legs.

  “There’s a truck stop on the outskirts of Hobbs,” Cole said. “We’ll swing by and ask if they’ve seen Matt.”

  Maybe Billy and I can switch places, too, Jill thought. She’d rather have a door handle
against her hip than the hard plane of Cole Strong’s thigh.

  “I hope they have a restaurant,” Billy said. “I could eat a horse.”

  The sun had begun its climb through layers of El Paso’s brown smog as Matt pulled his pickup into a parking lot near the bridge spanning the Rio Grande. He had spent Thursday night in McKelligon Canyon, with the Franklin Mountains looming around him and an owl hooting in a tree nearby. The concrete tables at the picnic area where he parked were broken and sprayed with graffiti. Litter covered the ground. He hadn’t slept, and he’d been too scared to get out and use the public restroom.

  In fact, since leaving Hope, the only time he had set foot outside his truck was at a convenience store in Alamogordo. There he had wandered around selecting a road map, some Tylenol for his headache, four Snickers bars, a bag of Cheetos, and an orange soda. While paying for a tank of gas and his food, he had glanced at a television set. His own picture stared back at him on the evening news. Police were seeking the whereabouts of a sixteen-year-old in connection with a possible murder near Hope.

  Murder—him?

  Freaked to the max, Matt had barely made it out of the store without breaking into an all-out run. Luckily, the young clerk had been talking on the phone and hadn’t paid much attention to her customer. Still, Matt knew he had been recorded on the video monitor. Every highway patrolman in two states must be watching for his truck.

  As he had started across the desert toward El Paso, Matt tried to figure out why the police thought he might have killed Mr. Banyon. How did they even know he’d been out to the house in Hope? It didn’t make sense. No one had seen him there. For the hundredth time, he wished Billy were with him. Common sense was Billy’s specialty. He never did stupid things.

  Matt had turned the situation over and over as he drove, replaying the scene at Mr. Banyon’s house and trying to recall what clue he had left behind. He hadn’t dropped a shoe or a jacket. He’d thrown out his cell phone, but it was well hidden in the thicket. Surely they hadn’t found it. Not this quickly.

  He hadn’t been inside the house long enough to disturb anything. He’d just stared at that terrible face on the couch…at the bloodstain on the fabric…at the gun….

  The gun! He’d picked it up! Matt had groaned as the realization swept over him. Why had he picked up Mr. Banyon’s gun? Why had he even touched it? How stupid could you get? Now it had his fingerprints all over it. Next, they would track him to the convenience store in Alamogordo and then to El Paso and then they would get him. If the Agrimax men didn’t find him first, the police would, and he’d be charged with killing Mr. Banyon.

  How could he prove he hadn’t done it? He couldn’t. There was no way. He hadn’t been at school all afternoon. He hadn’t been with Billy. He had no alibi. He was dead meat.

  Somewhere along the road, he had pulled onto the shoulder and taken a moment to check his e-mail. Miss Pruitt had written to him again. She and his dad were worried. They knew about Mr. Banyon’s death, and they didn’t believe Matt had anything to do with it. But if he didn’t show up soon, his dad would go looking for him.

  Dad? Agrimax could ruin Cole Strong, and it would be his son’s fault. He shot back an e-mail warning Miss Pruitt not to write him again and not to go looking for him. He tried to make himself think straight. Tried to be brave and trust in the Lord.

  But this wasn’t supposed to happen. None of it! Mr. Banyon was going to take care of everything. He was planning to take the USB key to Josiah Karume. The chairman-elect of I-FEED would be attending some kind of a food summit in France this spring, and Mr. Banyon had arranged to fly over there and meet with him. Now Mr. Banyon was dead and Matt had the key—and everyone thought he was a murderer!

  There was no way Matt was going to Europe. The only course he’d been able to think of was to take the key to a different I-FEED official, in the hope that this person would be able to get it into Karume’s hands. Miss Pruitt had given Matt the names of several famine-relief workers to contact for his term paper, and he had e-mailed back and forth with Hector Diaz, the man who ran the Mexico division of I-FEED. Diaz’s office was in Juarez, just across the river from El Paso. So that’s where Matt was headed.

  But he probably ought to turn himself in right now and just get it over with. Being held by the police would be better than getting grabbed again by the Agrimax men. At least he could spend his life in prison instead of winding up dead.

  All those thoughts and fears had swirled through Matt’s head as he drove. He had crossed the state line into Texas, and somehow he made himself keep going. As he inched toward El Paso, he kept glancing in the rearview mirror, expecting to see flashing red lights. The USB key weighed ten tons in his jeans pocket. It was like an Edgar Allan Poe story he had read for English class. Instead of a telltale heart, the key was pulsing away in his pocket. Boom, boom, boom. Full of its secret sins.

  He hated having the key, but he knew he couldn’t just throw it out the window as he’d done with his cell phone. No, he had to carry out Mr. Banyon’s plan. He had to do God’s will.

  And so he had shivered his way through a sleepless night in the canyon. He had dried blood in his hair where the Agrimax men had thrown his head against the wall, but other than that, he felt okay. At dawn, he drove into El Paso and headed for the border crossing into Mexico. Figuring the authorities would be looking for his truck, he parked it and set off on foot toward the bridge, laptop under his arm and the key in his front pocket.

  Even at this early hour, the line of trucks and cars waiting to cross into Ciudad Juarez stretched half a mile. Pedestrians bustled along the walkway, few of them tourists. Those would come later. Matt had considered waiting a few hours to blend in better, but he decided to keep moving.

  The USB key growing heavier with each step, Matt approached the guard gate. He thought he knew the routine. His parents had taken him to Juarez when he was little, before his mother died and everything changed. And he’d been there a second time on a field trip in fifth grade. He figured he would have to show some identification. He had a passport from a trip he and his dad had taken to Cancún a few years back—the one and only vacation they had ever taken together. He was planning to use it again this summer for the youth mission trip to Guatemala. But it was back home in his desk drawer.

  Matt hoped his driver’s license would get him into Juarez. He would have to state his business and let the guard know when he was returning. What if they recognized him from the TV news or from police alerts? Would his next stop be a Mexican jail? He imagined the key pulsing, threatening to tell on him. Boom, boom, boom.

  Matt decided this would be a good time to pray. Protection, guidance, wise counsel—for all these things he petitioned the Lord as he followed the line of people closer and closer to the gate.

  “Buenos dias,” the Mexican guard said, glancing up at him. “Where are you going so early, my friend? And walking?”

  Somehow the Spanish he had learned at Josefina’s knee rose to the tip of his tongue. “Voy a la ciudad a visitar a un amigo.” I’m going into the city to visit a friend.

  “Su amigo?” The man grinned. “O su amiga?”

  Matt mustered a smile at the reference to a girlfriend. “Amigo solamente.”

  “What do you have there? The box?”

  “A laptop computer.”

  “You going to sell it in Mexico?”

  “No, no. It’s personal. Games and e-mail, that’s all.”

  The guard shrugged. “Have a nice day, señor.”

  “You, too.”

  Matt slipped through the narrow opening onto the bridge. Boom, boom, boom. Somehow the USB key had grown so enormous and heavy he wasn’t sure he would even fit on the causeway. Hardly able to believe he had passed the guard without incident, he made his way above the fabled river and was swept into the press of people on the Mexican side.

  Breathing too hard, Matt lifted up a prayer of gratitude and added another—a request for a taxi. Then the smell of fryi
ng sausage hit him, followed by the fragrance of freshly baked bread. Not far from the bridge stood a row of vendors’ carts. The snacks he had bought the evening before were long gone, and his stomach churned with hunger. From the vacation with his father, Matt knew the risks of eating and drinking in Mexico. They both had fallen ill after sampling some street food. “Be careful what you eat in Mexico,” Josefina had warned them after the fact. “You’ll get a bug.” An amoeba, his father had clarified. Dysentery.

  Now, surveying the row of sausages sizzling on an open grill, he tried to tell himself he could go without eating. This mission was all about hunger anyway, wasn’t it? Millions of people had nothing to eat, so why did Matthew Strong think he deserved to fill his belly? He passed up the meat and approached a cart loaded with fresh fruit. Could Mexican fruit make you sick? Flies buzzed around a tray of cut mangoes. Forcing himself on, he came to the bread vendor.

  “Pan, señor?” a woman asked. She was smiling at him, her eyes as dark and shiny as Josefina’s. “You want bread?”

  He was salivating by now, so hungry he thought he might faint. Could he at least have bread, the staff of life? “Uh, no,” he said. “That’s okay. Gracias, señora.”

  As hungry as he felt, Matt knew he couldn’t afford to get sick. Not before he found the man he was seeking. Not before he got rid of the key. Not before he was back home in the safety of his room.

  “A leather belt?” a man called out from a storefront. “Leather purse for your girlfriend? I make you a good price, señor!”

  Feeling light-headed, Matt approached the clerk. “I need a phone book. An address. I need a taxi.”

  “You come inside. Buy a new wallet!”

  “I don’t need a wallet. I need a phone book. Telefono. Yo quiero el direccion de la oficina I-FEED. De Señor Hector Diaz. I need the address of Hector Diaz.”

  “Come and see our beautiful leather jackets,” the man replied, guiding Matt into the shop.

  The scent of polished leather goods swept over him as he stepped through the door. Sandals, purses, backpacks, suitcases, attachés, vests and leather jackets filled countless shelves in the narrow room. Matt shook his head. This wasn’t going well.