Sheriff Hoyt laughed. “You’re a regular comedian. Yessir. Oughta get your own reality show. Pretty soon, though, you’re gonna find out the hard way nobody else is laughing. Now get the fuck out of my face and let real men do their jobs.” He walked over to Kurt’s body, calling out, “Knock it off. Rick, you get Paulie on the radio. Tell him to get out here, take some pictures, collect casings. We got ourselves one uptight, by-the-book police chief on the scene here, so I will expect everything in triplicate.”
Everybody gave Sandy a sideways glare.
Sheriff Hoyt continued. “If in doubt, bag it, catalog it, report it. C.Y.A. gentlemen, C.Y.A. Somebody get hold of Chirchirillo. Tell him I expect a coroner’s report on my desk no later than six p.m. this evening. Rest of you, spread out. We got a body to locate.”
Sandy decided to wander around the property herself. She didn’t think Ingrid was in the house. Not unless Kurt had stuffed her somewhere, and she didn’t think that was likely. She supposed he could have tried to hide her body in the barn, but again, her gut reaction after seeing Kurt like that on the front steps, she didn’t think he had anything to do with her disappearance.
She also didn’t think that Ingrid had finally run off. It wasn’t in her nature. Sandy started to wonder if maybe Ingrid had had some kind of accident, and Kurt had missed her during his search. It still didn’t sound right, but it sounded like more of a possibility than Kurt throwing her in the wood chipper.
Since she’d already been through the house, she thought maybe it couldn’t hurt to take a glance in the basement. She drifted around to the back, waited until no one was looking her way, and lifted up one of the cellar doors. There was a chain attached to a lightbulb at the bottom of the steps, but the bulb was broken. She flicked her Maglite around but only saw some old lumber, a rusty water heater, a pile of old cabinets, some gas and oil cans, and a tangle of rakes and shovels leaning against the corner. Cobwebs cloaked everything.
Over in the corner, there was a three-foot square of two-by-fours that had been nailed together. At first Sandy thought it was a cover or hatch that had been tossed on the floor. She saw scuff marks around it where the dust and cobwebs had been disturbed recently, and she realized that it was the cover to the septic tank. Kurt must have been having problems with the plumbing. She nudged it aside with the tip of her boot and tried to breathe through her mouth as the stench crawled out and burned her eyes. She quickly aimed the beam of her Maglite down there, but saw only murky, chunky liquid. The rest of the tank stretched out of sight under the wall of the house. If Ingrid’s body was down there, then Sandy was happy to let the sheriff’s men find her.
Sandy pushed the cover back over the access hatch and left the basement. It felt damn good to get out in the fresh air again. She walked down to the henhouse and looked inside. Empty. The hens were quiet, still in their nests.
Sheriff Hoyt’s voice came barreling down the lawn. “You still here?” He stood in the open back door, hands on his hips. “What part of leave this fucking crime scene did you not understand?”
Sandy gave him a wave and walked back up the sloping lawn, heading for her cruiser.
Sheriff Hoyt wasn’t finished. “Listen. You are not welcome here. Go write some parking tickets or show some Boy Scouts how to wipe their ass. If you aren’t gone in sixty seconds, I will cite you for obstruction.” He ducked back inside and let the screen slam behind him.
Halfway to her car, she decided a quick check in the barn couldn’t hurt. If Ingrid was hiding out in there, Sandy thought it might be best if she was the one that found her, not those assholes in the house. There was also a chance that Ingrid would remain hiding from any men, but she might come out for Sandy.
Sandy stepped into the stifling heat of the barn, stood still for a moment to let her eyes adjust. “Ingrid?” she called softly. The only response was a few weird insect noises in the shadows in the back, as if a couple of crickets were trying to woo a whole colony of sick cicadas. “Ingrid? This is Chief Chisel. I can help you. Ingrid?” She took another step inside.
A few moths fluttered through the angled shafts of sunlight that speared through the roof. Something rustled in the dry straw to the left, near the livestock stalls. The uneven calls of the crickets or whatever they were got louder. Sandy looked up into the gloom. Some kind of insect was making a clicking, scratching sound up there, as if it was crawling over the rafters and along the galvanized steel roof.
The skin on the back of Sandy’s neck started to itch and she took a step backward toward the sliding door. Now it sounded as if the barn was alive with movement. The insect calls grew even higher pitched, even more insistent. They sounded frantic, hungry.
She had a sudden, overwhelming sense of being stalked and surrounded and let her fear pull her from the barn. Once out in the full sunlight, she tried to slow her breathing, slow her racing heart, and tell herself to stop being such a wuss. There was nothing dangerous in the barn. Maybe all the bullshit with Sheriff Hoyt was affecting her instincts.
It didn’t work. She could feel the sweat coating her back, still chilly despite the sun. Could still hear those strange insects, that rustling in the straw, the skittering across the roof. She walked quickly to her cruiser and kept her eyes down. She didn’t want any of the sheriff’s men to see her nervous and unsettled. She opened the driver’s door and was about to get in when she noticed something else.
In the barn, the insects had been loud and boisterous. Now, outside, she couldn’t hear anything but the wind. No insects at all. The farmhouse and the surrounding cornfields were unnaturally silent.
CHAPTER 11
“Like a fucking BOSS!” Elliot shouted into a cloudless sky.
Elliot was a string bean who sported maybe five or six actual muscles and had a face that was perpetually sunburned year round. He was Kevin’s best friend. When Mrs. Kobritz visited her daughter in Green Bay, Kevin practically lived at Elliot’s house. It was hard to tell who was happier to have a best friend.
Elliot was probably the smartest kid in town. His parents had sent him off to build robots in Bloomington for two weeks earlier that summer. Once he got back, he waited across the street for Kevin every day after summer school.
Today, Kevin hadn’t said a word. He hit the street, pedaling hard, and blew right past Elliot. Instead of rolling toward his house where Mrs. Kobritz was waiting, he headed north, to Highway 100. Elliot struggled to keep up. He didn’t press his friend, content to wait until Kevin told him what was up.
Elliot followed Kevin all the way to the town dump, way out on Route 59. There, they’d slipped under the chain that prohibited anyone from dumping anything unless it was a weekend, followed the dirt road as it twisted through the mountains of garbage and junk until they found a cul-de-sac, complete with an irresistible target. The old TV was sitting out all by itself, begging to be destroyed.
Kevin squeezed his fingers around the checkered grips of the Smith & Wesson, fighting against the sweat that wanted the gun to slip. He couldn’t bring himself to place his index finger against the trigger. Not yet. He sucked in a shallow breath, fighting to let it out smoothly through his nose. He wasn’t worried about crying in front of Elliot. Crying wasn’t a big deal. They’d cried in front of each other plenty of times.
Elliot knew all about Jerm and Morgan and Javier, of course. He was a target himself. Knew exactly what Kevin had endured. Of course, it was worse for Kevin, since his mom was the chief of police and all that. When Kevin had told him what he had been planning, Elliot had listened in awe.