by Alicia Scott
“You can’t trace the poison?”
“No.”
“Why not? I thought you had computers for that sort of thing. Labs? What the hell is our budget paying for these days, anyway?”
Jack grew tired. They’d had this conversation before. Nothing had changed. For a moment, Jack contemplated telling the man they’d get a lot further a lot faster if he’d shut up and leave them alone. Of course, he said no such thing. “Straight Arrow Stryker” never lost control.
“Pure potassium is readily accessible,” he intoned quietly. “All hospitals commonly administer it in a diluted form to patients recovering from surgery. According to the doctors, it’s available at all nursing stations in a hospital, and the nursing stations are unlocked and unmonitored.
“We interviewed all the hospital staff, and no one remembers noticing any potassium missing. Of course, the potassium may have come from an outside hospital. It might have been ordered directly from a medical supply store. At this point, there’s no way to know.”
“You can’t tell a brand or a batch or something like that?”
“If we had a bottle or label, maybe we could. If we had a needle, we could trace the parts, the manufacturer, maybe get prints or DNA. But we don’t. We just have a victim with a potassium level over ten mils per liter. We have a crime scene with no signs of a forced entry. There are no latent or patent prints. We have no hair, no fiber. At this point, the most likely suspect is Casper the Friendly Ghost.” Jack’s voice ended with an edge. He and Stone had the highest arrest record in Grand Springs, dammit. They were good, they were serious, they were committed. So how could they not determine who murdered such a fine woman as Olivia Stuart?
“But…but…” Hal was struggling now. Jack couldn’t tell if it was from honest emotion or just frustration. Hal wasn’t a particularly strong man, but he was hard to read. He said abruptly, “What about my mother’s last word?”
“Coal?” Stone shrugged. “To tell you the truth, we’re just not sure. My personal theory is that she was talking about the strip mining debates. She was really against strip mining in Grand Springs, just like you’re really for it….”
Hal stiffened. Now his face was definitely shuttered. He’d been taking some heat on the subject, particularly from Rio Redtree, top investigative reporter for the Grand Springs Herald. “I sold my stock in the companies. And I’ve asked Josie to look into both the advantages and disadvantages of permitting strip mining in Grand Springs. I’m a fair man.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “Do…do you think one of those companies might have something to do with my mother’s death?”
Jack glanced at Stone. They’d argued this matter numerous times without reaching a conclusion. Jack didn’t believe a person would refer to a political debate as her last word. He also wasn’t a big fan of conspiracy theories. Stone felt the strip mining companies had enough to gain from Olivia’s death to make them likely suspects.
“It’s possible,” Jack said carefully, “but not probable. The cause of death was poison, and statistically speaking, poison is a ‘personal’ MO—we see wives murdering husbands, a jealous lover spiking a rival’s drink, that sort of thing. For poison to be used in a hit… That would be unusual.”
“Then go out and interview everyone she knew!”
“We did. We asked you for a list of associates, remember, Hal?” Jack said. “Then we talked to everyone on that list. Business associates, neighbors, friends, family. I have the interview notes right here.”
“And?”
“And we don’t have any substantial suspects. Olivia was a well-respected mayor, friend and mother. Even her political opponents thought highly of her. She was a good woman, Hal. Her loss is deeply felt.”
Hal looked away. Maybe the emotion was genuine, after all. “You know, there were no ‘intimates’ on that list, Hal,” Jack said quietly. “No past boyfriends, romantic interests. Can you think of anyone, maybe a jilted lover—”
“Olivia? Date?” Hal laughed harshly. “My mother was much too sophisticated for the men in this town. And she was tougher than all of them.”
Abruptly, Hal planted his hands on Jack’s desk. “Let me spell it out for you. I did my part. I’ve given you all the information you’ve asked for, and I’ve given you more than three months to get results. Well it’s almost the end of September, detectives, and you have nothing. I’m not impressed. The taxpayers of this town are not impressed. And the budget for the police department is about to come up for review….”
Stone’s feet dropped to the floor. He was half out of his chair before Jack pulled him back down.
“Understood. And I tell you again, Hal, there’s no one who wants to solve this case more than we do. No one.”
“Huh.” Hal’s expression was blatantly unconvinced. Jack had to dig his fingers into Stone’s arm while Hal glanced at his watch. “Thirty minutes are up. I have to get to my next meeting with Jo—”
“Mayor? Call on line one,” the receptionist interrupted.
Hal grunted and took the call. He shook his head, said he’d get to it in a minute, sighed and hung up. “Incompetence,” he muttered. “Sheer incompetence.”
Jack studied Hal for a long time. Stone had gone still beside him. “Your meeting with Jo?” he asked quietly. Was the man so dense he could not see the significance of his own words?
“Jo? Oh, Josie Reynolds. You know Josie.” Hal headed toward the door. Jack and Stone didn’t stop him.
Stone waited until the acting mayor was completely out of sight before speaking. “Josie Reynolds. Do you think…?”
“We interviewed her, right?” Jack was pawing through the notes. “She discovered the body. She called 911. The EMTs said she’d started CPR before they arrived.”
“I was the one who talked to her, I remember now. Ah, hell, I don’t know, Stryker. She was pretty broken up, you could tell she and Olivia had been close. I heard Olivia had been the one to give Josie the job as treasurer. She took Josie under her wing, made her feel at home.” Stone contemplated his thoughts. “You’ve met her, right? I’ve seen her around, at the usual places, but I’d never really spoken to her before Olivia’s death.” He grinned abruptly. “Odd, you know, for a man like me not to approach a beautiful lady. But…well, she seems to keep to herself. As much as it wounds me to admit it, I’m not sure she would have considered me her type.”
Jack nodded. He had been introduced to Josie Reynolds two years ago when she’d taken the job as town treasurer, and she wasn’t the kind of woman a man forgot. Five foot six with a cloud of blond hair and frank blue eyes, she looked more like a beauty queen than a CPA. By all accounts, however, she was good. Olivia had described her as spirited, passionate, and committed. She got her job done. That was about all Stryker knew. He had always made it a point to stay clear of Josie Reynolds, though he could never say why. And not once in the past two years, in all the times their paths had crossed, had she ever approached him. Without saying a word, they seemed to have settled upon a policy of mutually-agreed avoidances. He kept to his side of the room. She kept to hers.
Stone rose to his feet. “Hungry? I think they can hear my stomach in Wichita by now.”
Jack automatically shook his head.
Stone knew better. “Hey, Straight Arrow, when was the last time you ate?”
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re fine then I’m ugly—and we both know I’m not ugly. I’ve seen that look in your eye, Jack. You’re in bulldog mode and have been for weeks. How many of those files are you bringin’ home at night? How many times are you gonna pore over them with your face scrunched up? You get any more lines in your forehead and people will mistake you for a road map.”
“You’re not exactly lolling around popping bonbons.”
“Nope. But I got smart. I married Jessie.” Stone beamed, Jack rolled his eyes. Stone was so gaga over his new wife, it made a man ill. Jack honestly wished Stone the best and he liked Jessie, but having been married once be
fore himself, he never intended on having Sucker stamped on his forehead again.
“Go meet Jessica for lunch,” Jack said sagely.
“Is that an order, boss man? You know I’d do anything for my partner.”
Jack just grunted.
“I’m telling you, Jack, you’re too intense.” Stone gathered up his sport coat. “Unwind a little, smell the roses. Take a beautiful woman out to dinner. It’ll put a skip in your step.”
“That’s what Grand Springs needs right now—skipping detectives.”
“Absolutely. I’ll be back in an hour. Feel free to solve the case while I’m gone.”
“I’ll do that.”
Stone waved, but Jack didn’t wave back. He had his nose buried in the files, looking for Josie Reynolds’s interview notes. Josie Reynolds. Jo. Josie.
Josie Reynolds whom he had always avoided. And yet he always knew exactly where she was in a crowded room. Stryker set down his pencil. No more reading. He would talk to her in person. And he would closely watch her eyes.
* * *
Josie Reynolds had never met Gabe Chouder, but she knew him. In the last three months it seemed she had met all the Gabe Chouders of the world, and now as he stood before her desk, she wondered if she would be able to help him any more than she’d helped the others.
Gabe owned a small dairy farm outside of Grand Springs. Two hundred and fifty-four dairy cows on a spread that had belonged to his family for three generations. Now most of those fields were under three feet of mud and silt. His grain silo was destroyed. The water-soaked straw and alfalfa bales had been hauled away before they spontaneously combusted and burned down the little Gabe had left.
When the flood warnings had been issued, Gabe and his son had rounded up the cows, while his two daughters had tended the calves. The cows had been lined up in the milking parlor, which was set on higher ground. He’d done this before, he told Josie, and it had always worked. Grand Springs’s valley didn’t flood much or deeply. The rivers in his low-lying land overran some springs when the snow thawed too fast. Maybe he’d get a foot or two of water.
But the storm had hit; the skies opened up and poured into swollen rivers. Banks had given way. Mountainsides already at saturation point hadn’t been able to take any more. In a span of thirty-six hours, Mother Nature had burst and Gabe Chouder’s life would never be the same.
The water had risen three feet in a matter of hours. He and his son had raised the calves into the hayloft, but below, their cows had bawled in terror as lightning filled the sky and the wind rattled the roof.
Gabe’s wife and daughters were evacuated before the next heavy water hit, but Gabe and his son stayed in the milking parlor. They watched the water rise—the cold, black water which began to freeze their cows’ lungs. Exposure set in. Then shock. The fat, complacent, gentle dairy cows that had never been bred to withstand harsh conditions, began to succumb one by one—the barn filled with their last scared moans.
Gabe wasn’t an emotional man. He’d lived on farms all his life, he understood nature was cruel. He’d accepted it all. Now, however, he contemplated taking a shotgun and shooting every one of his cows so they wouldn’t have to suffer the rising water. So the bawling would go away.
But Gabe didn’t. Because some cows remained standing. Even as the water grew colder, the night darker, they stood. Their companions sunk around them, but some survival instinct, some need deeper than definition, kept them on their feet. If they could try, he had to let them.
He lost one hundred and twenty-six cows that night.
The rest endured. When the water finally receded, they sank into the mud, their legs shaking too hard to support them. And he and his son rubbed them down as if they were champion athletes who’d just brought home the gold.
He had one hundred cows left and twenty-eight calves. His house was ruined, his fields wouldn’t be fit for at least a year. His tractor worked, but the pumps in his milking parlor had to be replaced.
“I got straw,” he told Josie now, “from the last batch donated from Oregon. But there wasn’t much alfalfa given out. Sly’s letting me use one of his fields, but grass ain’t enough for dairy. I’m gonna need forty…fifty thousand in feed to get through the winter.”
“Did you go to the fairgrounds and talk to FEMA?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He twisted his baseball cap nervously. “There’s all these agent people sitting around the Exhibition Hall. You gotta find the one right agency for your needs, they told me. I filled out the paperwork, but no one knew what to do with me. They asked me what I made gross—”
“Gross?”
“Yes, ma’am. And I told them two hundred thousand. So then they said I wasn’t supposed to be in the farmer’s line, I was supposed to be in the small business’s. I went to small business’s, but that man said I was a farm, not a small business, and he sent me back to the first agent. Ma’am, I got a farm to get up and running. I got a hundred head to milk twice a day. I can’t keep making appointments, filling out paperwork and standing in line. It’s been more than three months. The farm people finally wrote me a check for twenty thousand. That’ll fix the milking parlor, buy a little feed. Then what?”
“Okay.” Josie raised a hand. She understood how overwhelmed he felt, because in the beginning, she’d felt that way, too. Now, after more than three months, she’d learned how to navigate the system that was drowning him. “We have a few options.”
He perked up. Most of the people she met were honest, hardworking folks, men of action. Bureaucracy and red tape killed them. Things to do made them happy.
“First, I’ll take this copy of your paperwork over to FEMA and talk to them myself. It’s actually net earnings that matter, which is why you were having some confusion. I can get it straightened out for you, though, no problem. However—” she skimmed his carefully recorded financials with an expert eye “—you’ll probably only get ten or twenty thousand more. That won’t be enough.”
The tight look had reappeared around his eyes. His hands methodically twisted his hat. “No, ma’am.”
“Do you have flood insurance?”
He smiled weakly. “Flood insurance for these parts? Seemed too pessimistic.”
“I know, believe me, I know.” Josie opened her filing cabinet and began pulling out flyers. Grand Springs hadn’t had a significant flood in sixty years. Most people had been caught uninsured. She passed a small stack of papers over to Gabe, smiling when he winced. “They’re not forms,” she assured him, “it’s information on programs for you to consider. It sounds like you’ve started fixing your milking parlor.”
“Yes, ma’am, with the FEMA money.”
“And you’ve been milking your cows?”
“Yes, ma’am. Sylvester has let me use his parlors for a bit. I got my cows at his place.”
“So you have some income?”
“A little.” He looked haggard. “But the price of milk is low, and production is down by half. The cows have been through a major trauma, ma’am. They got respiratory problems, they’re weak…. It’s going to take a year before they’re back one hundred percent.”
“If I can find you feed, Mr. Chouder, can the cows pay for their food?”
“Yes, ma’am. I think so. But that’s it. The rest of the expenses…” He shook his head.
“For now, you need your herd to support itself and get strong. You’ll have a rough winter, but if we can get you through, next year will be better. Has anyone talked to you about the low-interest loans available through FEMA?”
He was already shaking his hands, pushing the paper back. “No offense, ma’am, but you know how much debt I already have? I take more, and I slave for the banks for the rest of my life—or until the next disaster strikes and they foreclose on my farm. No, thank you, ma’am. I’ve seen too many good farmers go down that tube.”
Josie understood fully. Most of the small businesses in Grand Springs were financing their way through the next year. As she’d been tel
ling Hal time and time again, farmers just didn’t have that option. They needed more ingenious solutions.
“I know of a few other programs for you to consider,” she told him quietly. “First, have you heard of the Mennonite Disaster Service?”
“They’re like the Amish, right? I’ve seen them around town. The women wear little white caps.”
“That’s right. They’re not quite like the Amish. They use modern equipment, so to speak. Right now, we have ten Mennonite couples staying at the Boy Scout camp. They drove in to help out. They’re a volunteer service, and they’ve been rebuilding homes and farms across the valley. In their group, they have an electrician and a plumber, so they’re full service—”
“They just do this?”
“Yes.” She indicated the little blue flyer. “They help those in most dire need first. The fact that you have three children and are uninsured may put you at the top of their list. You’ll have to go to the camp and speak to them. If you qualify, they can probably repair your home in a matter of days and help you get your milking parlor reinstalled, as well. They’re very, very good.”
Gabe looked uncertain, but after a moment, he took the flyer. “At the Boy Scout camp, you say?”
“Yes, sir. Talk to them, Mr. Chouder. They’re here for people like you. Someday, maybe you can return the favor by helping build somebody else’s home or barn.”
“All…all right.”
“And the Grand Springs Farm Bureau has opened a bank account for all the donations and fund-raising moneys. A lot of that money will be used to purchase alfalfa to get through the winter. However, you can also apply to receive a small grant. We probably can’t afford to give more than a few thousand per farmer, but it will give you something.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He wasn’t enthusiastic. A few thousand barely bought a new cow, let alone got a farmer through a winter.
“Finally, I’m looking into starting an adopt-a-farm program.”
“Ma’am?”
“It’s been tried in a few other states, Mr. Chouder, with a fair amount of success. Basically, we would do a bio on your farm and match you up with a volunteer who would ‘adopt’ your farm. They would help out with the expenses, sponsor you, so to speak, for the next winter.”