by Becki Willis
“I’ll help!” she said frantically. She wasn’t about to stand there with the body.
“I know it’s not pleasant, ma’am,” he said, his voice gentle, “but you’d be more help standing here and keeping the chickens away.”
“Oh.” The flap of nearby wings swept the small word away.
Madison turned her back to the body as she shooed away the curious birds. She fought back a wave of panic as she watched Cutter move away from her, leaving her alone with the dead man. She was almost thankful when one feisty rooster pecked at her calf; the brief sting of pain gave her something else to think about, other than the fact that she stood two feet away from a grotesquely mutilated body, swollen by heat and ravished by a flock of chickens.
Low-to-the-ground grid panels were used as fences within the house to create distinct sections down the five-hundred foot corridor. The fences helped distribute bird density for more equal access to feed pans and water lines, while still being low enough for the growers to step over. With no heed now to unbalanced sections, Cutter Montgomery jerked holding stakes from the ground and began maneuvering the long panels amid the feathered sea of white.
He dutifully made his way back toward Madison, who was careful to keep her back to the dead man as she circled his prone form, flapping her arms to chase away chickens. If the situation had not been so dire, she might have laughed at the crazy sight she must make. When she made a round and saw Cutter just a few feet away, a sound that was half-sob, half-laughter escaped her scorched throat and she almost tripped on her own clumsy feet.
“We need to push all the birds forward,” he advised. “Go to the back wall and start herding them this way.”
Madison soon learned that herding several hundred chickens was about as easy as convincing a pair of petulant toddlers into doing something they refused to do. Every time she thought she was making progress in moving the mass forward, a half dozen birds slipped behind her. While she chased those birds down, another dozen or so decided to backtrack.
“This isn’t working,” Cutter announced after several minutes. Madison would have agreed, but she was too busy trying to get a deep breath, horrid odor and all. The combination of physical exertion and excessive heat zapped her energy and robbed her of air. Bent at the waist to catch her breath, she barely heard him as he planned their next course of action. “We’ll just make a section here around the body. That will have to be good enough, at least until the police gets here.”
Madison nodded incoherently. In retrospect, maybe getting her unruly twins into the bathtub hadn’t been as difficult as she remembered; it was certainly easier than getting all these feathered fowl to move. Maybe she should take chicken houses off her list of offered services…
As Cutter Montgomery went to work erecting a triangular fence around the dead chicken grower, Madison shooed birds away and followed simple instructions. She held the panels as Cutter drove stakes into the ground to make them stay upright, careful to keep her eyes averted from the body. Bending to hold the low fences brought her closer to the cloying smell that permeated the air and turned her stomach, but Madison held her breath as much as possible. Even without the noxious fetor of death, the odor in the chicken houses was already so overpowering it was enough to make any sane woman run the other way.
Madison, however, had always found that sanity was over-rated. Ignoring the bile that rose in her throat, she took tiny sips of air through her mouth and steeled herself to the task that must be done.
To keep her mind off the mutilated mass just feet away, Madison tried to concentrate on something else. She wondered what the twins were doing. It was still mid-morning, so they would probably be in their shared Science Lab about now, or maybe in their respective classes of English Lit and Algebra. Didn’t Bethani have a math test today? Madison worried that her daughter’s grades were slipping. The move had been hard on the fifteen-year-old, especially after losing the father she so adored. Blake seemed to be adjusting better than his sister was, but with boys, it was often hard to tell. Not for the first time, Madison felt the swell of insecurity wash over her, making her question herself and her decision to move back to her hometown.
“There, that should do it.” The firefighter’s satisfied grunt brought Madison from her musings and back to the situation at hand.
Without thinking, Madison glanced over at the body they protected. After so carefully avoiding the sight since her initial discovery —and even then she had not looked at his face— this one careless action was a brutal and cruel slap of reality that brought Madison up short. With no chance to brace herself to the sight before her, she was less than a foot away from the distorted flesh that slipped from Ronny Gleason’s face. One unseeing eye stared straight up at the ceiling; the other had been pecked out by the chickens, leaving a bloodied, empty socket in its place. His mouth gaped open and was a festering place for dozens of swarming flies and beetles and maggots. The skin of his neck was ripped from a hundred sharp claws marching over it, and what was once his Adam’s apple was now pecked clean.
Horrified, Madison jumped to her feet and whirled around. She slipped in the wet litter beneath her feet and went down amid the chickens. Scrabbling for traction, she used whatever she could find —chickens, the filth she lay in, a nearby feed line— to push herself upright and get her feet beneath her once again. She ran for the end door, stepping over and sometimes on the hapless chickens in her path. She wrestled with the door that stood between her and freedom, finding even the simple doorknob too difficult to manage in her hysteria.
When the handle finally turned, Madison burst out into the gloriously fresh air and gobbled it in with deep, greedy gulps. The cold air collided in her airway with remnants of her breakfast, on its way up from her queasy stomach. As Madison choked and gagged and gasped for air, the police finally arrived on scene.
***
Brash deCordova pulled behind the fire truck, grateful that at least the VFD had responded to the call in a timely manner. With his crew of exactly three officers, himself included, the police department was stretched thin across the connecting cities of Juliet and Naomi, collectively known as The Sisters. The Volunteer Fire Department often filled in the gaping holes.
Okay, so maybe the term cities was a bit presumptuous, he acknowledged to himself. Even thrown together, the population of the two towns barely scraped two thousand. Admittedly, he was not chief of a thriving metropolis, but there were plenty enough residents to keep his job interesting and his hours long. And according to Vina, his ever-efficient clerk and the best department coordinator he had ever known, the arrival of the area’s newest three citizens bumped the department into a new category that qualified them for additional state funding. The dream of having a fourth officer might finally become a reality and take some of the workload off his over-stressed team.
Dreaming aside, Brash had work to do. Never mind that he worked last night’s shift and should be sleeping right now. A minor wreck along the highway tied up Officer Perry, as well as most of the fire department. Officer Schimanski was responding to a report of a suspicious person lurking around The Gold and Silver Exchange. Which left him to respond to the report of an unattended death here at Gleason’s Poultry Farm.
Just a few hundred feet to the north, he mused as he stepped into the dank and putrid interior of the chicken house. Then the farm would fall under the county’s jurisdiction. But no, last year’s re-districting of the Naomi city limits —a blatant and obvious effort to outrank their rival town’s population— landed the farm within his responsibilities. So much for a nap.
Even with the lights turned up, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the interior lighting. Over the tops of fluffy white feathers and through the haze of dust that seemed to always inhabit the houses, Brash could see a figure at the back of the long structure. Judging from the rig outside, his guess was Cutter Montgomery. A good kid, the police chief thought, always ready and eager to help. Let’s see what he found this time.
Halfway down the house, Brash decided being an over-worked, under-paid, sleep-deprived public servant was still a far sight better than being a chicken farmer. Even without the smell, the noisy din of thousands of clucking birds was enough to drive him to drinking. A few more feet, and he got a whiff of another kind of odor. The undeniable stench of death immediately reminded him that his own career was hardly glamorous.
“What have we got?” he called out when he came within hearing range of the other man.
Cutter Montgomery turned to acknowledge the officer’s presence. “Ronny Gleason. At least, I think that’s who it is. Kind of hard to tell, considering.”
Stepping over the fence with an easy stride, Brash deCordova crouched beside the badly damaged body. Using the antenna of his hand-held radio, he gingerly pushed and pulled at the dead man’s shirt, trying to determine if there were any obvious signs of foul play. No bullet holes, but slashes from a knife could be easily confused with slashes from chicken claws.
“I’d say it’s definitely Ronny,” he agreed as he eyed the body. “Good idea with the fence, by the way, even though the damage has already been done. So who found the body?”
“New worker.” With a thumb, he motioned toward the end door which still stood ajar. “Losing her breakfast, as we speak.”
“Her?”
“Yeah, but to give her credit, she hung in there longer than I expected. She’s been a real trooper, helping me section off this area and keeping the birds away. I know a lot of men who couldn’t have done what she did.”
“You’d need an iron stomach, that’s for sure,” Brash muttered. He lifted his wrist to his nose and breathed against it, hoping to dilute the reek of death laced with ammonia and wet litter. He could not recall ever smelling something quite so repulsive. Ignoring his own stomach’s protest, he studied the body for a few moments longer. “As far as I know, Ronny was in good health. How old do you figure he was?”
The fireman shrugged. “I think he was younger than my dad, so late forties, maybe? About your age, I’d say.”
Brash pulled to his feet and did his best to stare down at the younger man. Given the fact they were both within an inch of six feet tall, the attempt was not as effective as he hoped. He resorted to a glare. “Just how old do you think I am, boy?”
Unfazed, the younger man grinned cockily. “Old enough to consider me a boy.”
“I don’t even qualify for mid-forties,” Brash grumbled. Forty-two was still the early forties, was it not?
“No, but I could still hear your knee pop, even over all this racket,” Cutter quipped.
“Perils of playing football.”
“I know. My old man pops the same way.”
Brash pretended to scowl as he stepped over the fence. And with no popping joints, he was proud to note. “Don’t forget your old man can still whip your ass, boy,” Brash informed the younger man. He felt the need to defend the great Tag Montgomery. After all, Tag had been not only his hero, but also his mentor. Between the two of them, they still claimed most of the standing records for The Sisters Fighting Cotton Kings. For good measure, he threw out another warning. “And so could I.”
Cutter Montgomery merely laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Exerting his authority, Brash got in the last word. “You stay with the body; I’ll go talk to the witness.”
But as the police chief walked away, the younger man called after him. “Fine by me,” the fireman insisted affably. “I guess the smell doesn’t bother the younger generation near as much as it does you old folks.”
CHAPTER TWO
Madison swiped the back of her hand across her mouth as she knelt at the edge of the white rock road. Tears stung her eyes and her stomach burned, but she thought the worst of it was over. Surely, there was nothing left in her stomach to heave.
She heard the crunch of footsteps on the driveway behind her. Hurriedly wiping her face and righting her filthy and crumbled t-shirt, she struggled to her feet. The Montgomery boy had been more than tolerant of her so far, but she knew she had to pull herself together. The police would be here soon, but with any luck she would be long gone before the Chief showed up. She didn’t want to see her high school crush for the first time in twenty years, looking like this.
“Ma’am?” That was not Cutter Montgomery’s deep voice rumbling close behind her. “Ma’am, I understand you were the one to find the body. Could I have a few words with you?”
The police must have arrived. She hadn’t heard the sirens because she was too busy purging her body of the lining of her stomach. Remembering the peppermint in her pants pocket, Madison slipped the morsel into her mouth as she nodded and turned around.
She practically choked on the mint when she saw the man standing before her. As she sputtered and coughed ungracefully, Madison gazed into the soulful brown eyes of none other than Brash deCordova, the boy she had loved from afar in high school.
“Ma’am? Are you all right?” he asked in concern.
With her face so blotchy and red, Madison was grateful he did not recognize her. After all, he had hardly given her a second glance in school. Three years her senior, he was king of the high school when she schlepped in as a lowly freshman. Why should he suddenly recognize her now, after all these years?
Madison coughed one last time. “I will be,” she insisted, her voice coming out ragged and hoarse.
“I’m Chief of Police deCordova, ma’am, and I’d like to ask you a few questions. Would you be more comfortable sitting in the patrol car?”
She managed a stiff shake of the head. “I’m fine.”
Brash reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small notebook. Madison could not help but notice he had nice hands, fingers all long and lean. Always athletic in high school, he still had a good, solid physique, with no pudginess around the middle. His dark russet hair was as thick as ever, but there were now a few fine strands of silver woven in here and there. It gave him a distinguished look. And my word! The man was as good-looking as ever, maybe even more so now.
“Ma’am?” Apparently she had missed something he said, because he looked at her in concern, waiting for her answer to the unknown question.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I understand that you’re a little shaken up, ma’am. I’ll try to make this as brief as possible. Could you walk me through what happened this morning? How did you come to find Mr. Gleason’s body?”
Madison pushed a limp strand of hair from her forehead, inadvertently leaving a streak of dirt or worse in its wake. Even before falling, she was covered in dust, grime, and questionable chicken substances. After the fall, there was little question as to what covered most of her legs from the knee down, one elbow, and patches of her sweat-drenched shirt. Even to her own nose, she reeked. What difference did a splatter or two of vomit matter at this point?
Yet as horrible as her own body smelled, she feared she might never cleanse the stench of dead flesh from her nose’s membranes. Shivering, Madison pulled her thoughts together and began the arduous task of reliving her horrendous morning.
“Mr. Gleason hired me to walk houses for him while he was away this week. I came by a couple of days last week to learn the ropes before he left. He-”
“Excuse me. Hate to interrupt, but do you know where he was supposed to be going this week?”
“Uhm, deep-sea fishing. Out of Galveston, I think.”
Scribbling in his notebook, he glanced up for only a second. “Any idea who he was going with?”
Madison shook her head. When she realized he had returned his gaze to the notebook, she verbalized her answer. “No idea.”
“Okay, so you showed up today, ready to work. You knew where to find the keys?”
Madison frowned. “None of the houses were locked. The computers don’t even have pass-codes on them. All I had to do was show up and go to work.”
“Describe to me what you were hired to do.”
“Wal
k houses.” When he glanced up again expectantly, she expounded on her answer. “You know, make four rounds in each house, picking up dead chickens, looking for water leaks, that sort of thing. I have to record the number of dead chickens and throw them in the incinerator out back. I also have to record the levels of ammonia in each house, the gallons of water consumed, and check back-up temperatures.”
The police chief flashed a smile that still had the power to set Madison’s heart aflutter. “Sounds like you really did ‘learn the ropes’, as you called it. Have you done this sort of work before?”
“Hardly,” she muttered. “There aren’t many chicken houses in Dallas.”
“Oh? Is that where you’re from?”
“I’ve lived there for the past fifteen years.” And will be headed back there soon, with any luck.
“When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Gleason?”
Madison’s mind was reeling, bouncing back and forth along with the conversation. She supposed this was all part of the technique, intended to put a witness as ease. Or to lull a suspect into admission, a wicked inner voice whispered. Was she a suspect? The thought caused a new shiver to dance down her spine.
“He called me yesterday morning. He reminded me of a couple of things I needed to do and said he would be leaving by early afternoon.”
“What were you supposed to do if you had any trouble?”
“He gave me his cell phone number, although he said he might not have service out in the Gulf. He also gave me the number for Barbour Foods’ Poultry Division and for his Service Tech.” A thought occurred to her. “Oh, dear. I suppose I should call them, shouldn’t I?” She fished in her pocket for her cell phone, but the officer held up a restraining hand.
“Not yet. We’ll take care of that in due time. I still have a few more questions.”