the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Off the top of her head she couldn’t think of a single project her boss was supposed to be working on with the Department of Defense. She wondered what brought him here.
“Wychulis. Good, you’re on time. Enter,” Irene Baldwin said with a wave of her hand then darted back into her office before her last guest had even reached the elevator.
Baldwin had changed the office so remarkably from its previous occupant that each time Mary Ellen walked in she had to remind herself she worked for the government, not a Fortune 500 company. But it was also a reminder that Baldwin not only
Where framed black-and-white photos of agricultural history had hung on the walls, there were now canvases in vibrant-colored oils with abstract images that on closer inspection could depict stalks of grain or bird’s-eye views of a forest. The new wall decorations looked like they belonged in a contemporary art museum instead of the office of an undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture.
“Sit,” Baldwin told Mary Ellen.
Her one- or two-word commands reminded Mary Ellen of dog obedience school.
Baldwin continued to stand behind her desk and pull file folders from a neat stack piled on the polished corner. The only other things on the desk were three pens and a legal pad.
“I have questions,” she said, sorting through the contents of a file folder.
Mary Ellen sat on the edge of her chair. Of course, she had questions. Every morning she had questions and she expected Mary Ellen to save her precious time by providing the answers. Mary Ellen kept her back ramrod straight, her feet flat on the floor, preparing for whatever Baldwin wanted.
“I have a request to continue”—Baldwin paused to put on a pair of reading glasses—“something called a mobile slaughter unit in Fort Collins, Colorado. What exactly is that?”
“It’s part of the ‘Know your farmer, know your food’ initiative. The unit travels from site to site and provides services to small regional producers at a host farm.”
“Services?”
“Yes.”
“Slaughter services.”
“That’s correct.” Mary Ellen refrained from any more details. One thing she had learned about Baldwin—and learned the hard way—was that the woman enjoyed making a game of what she believed were the agency’s “absurdities” or “foibles.” Despite Mary Ellen’s recent absence she had almost five years invested at the USDA and a loyalty to public service. She didn’t appreciate the sarcasm even if some of it was justified. Of course any agency had problems.
Baldwin came from the private sector. She had worked her way up the ranks of a large food corporation, ultimately becoming responsible for developing the research facility which was known worldwide for its cutting-edge labs. It was no secret that she was hired to bridge the communication gap between the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the private processors and distributors who provided the nation’s food supply. Her experience would give credibility to an agency that had the reputation of beating up on those same processors and distributors that it was supposed to work closely with, not just regulate to assure the safety of the nation’s food supply.
“Second question.” Baldwin pushed at the glasses that tended to slide to the end of her nose. “Why do I have a citizen’s petition from”—she paused again as she flipped pages—“a Wesley Stotter, who says these mobile slaughter units are, quote, being used for unethical and secretive government experiments, unquote?”
“I’m not familiar with that petition.”
“No?” Baldwin slid the file to Mary Ellen’s side of the desk. “Please read it. Stotter is a syndicated talk-radio guy. Looks like he has a rather significant audience, though a somewhat strange mix of antigovernment and UFO fanatics. Could be nothing. Could be a media headache waiting to explode into a migraine. Last question.”
Her curt, brisk style had Mary Ellen’s head spinning and stomach turning the first several days.
The woman pulled another file from the stack.
“What in the world is a ‘spent hen’ and why is there a pending review waiting for my confirmation?”
“Spent hens are old egg-laying birds, past their productivity. Most commercial buyers like fast-food restaurants or processed-food companies won’t buy them. The hens spend most of their lives caged while laying eggs so their bones tend to be brittle and can splinter.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a review. Brittle bones would definitely be a food-safety issue. If no one wants to buy them, why is there a review?”
“Well, actually for the last decade the USDA has bought them. Millions of pounds, in fact.”
“What on earth for?”
Mary Ellen fidgeted with the pages in her lap. There was nothing else in the folder except the document asking for confirmation from Baldwin to continue the review. Mary Ellen wanted to kick whoever had put this on her boss’s desk in the first place. She didn’t want to hear her boss’s sarcasm and judgment, even if she agreed.
“Wychulis, I have only the request. Please enlighten me. Why in the world did the USDA buy millions of pounds of brittle-boned chickens?”
“For the National School Lunch Program.”
EIGHTEEN
NEBRASKA
Maggie had slept. Hard enough that she needed to remember where she was. The scent of brewed coffee and freshly baked bread wafted up to the loft, but when she looked over the side rail she didn’t see Lucy in the kitchen.
The woman had loaned Maggie an oversized T-shirt to sleep in. It looked new and had blocks of brightly colored train cars with a logo that read RAILFEST 1999. She found her clothes, which had been soaked and stained with blood and debris, now freshly laundered and stacked neatly on an upholstered bench by the stairs. Even her shoes had been cleaned, the mud scraped off and the leather polished. She wondered if Lucy had slept at all.
Maggie opened the sliding glass door to the porch and stepped out into the morning sunlight. Blue skies—not a patch of white cloud—stretched over miles of sandhills, the yellow and burnt-orange grasses waving so that the hills looked like they were actually moving.
Directly below—what Maggie had not been able to see last night—were a patio and landscaped garden with brick-paved pathways between berms of flowers. Colorful birdhouses hung from trees. A small fountain made of watering cans trickled a stream down onto rocks. Maggie could hear wind chimes and smell pine. And in the middle of this paradise was Lucy’s tall thin figure, arms stretched above her head, the wide sleeves of her shirt and the slow, graceful movements of her arms looking like wings of a bird.
Sheriff Skylar had mentioned Lucy’s Indian heritage and Maggie wondered if this was, perhaps, part of a silent tribal dance. Lucy saw her, completed the circle her arms had started, and then shouted up, “You’re welcome to join me for a little yoga before breakfast.”
Maggie was glad she was far enough away that Lucy couldn’t see her embarrassment. Yoga. Of course, it was yoga. What was wrong with her? She was as bad as Skylar.
“No, thanks. Do I have time for a short run instead?”
“That’s fine. Help yourself to whatever you can find in the closet and the bottom drawer of the bureau.”
Maggie found shorts and a sweatshirt. Thankfully Lucy wore baggie workout clothes. Her shoes were a bit long but Maggie fixed them by putting on two pairs of socks. In minutes she made her way out the long driveway with Jake, the black shepherd, following along.
Last night she hadn’t noticed that the road to Lucy’s place was hard-packed sand with only patches of gravel mostly in the middle. The rain had left crevices that ran like veins and crumbled the edges. Maggie stayed close to the center, not risking sliding into the rain-filled ditch.
At first the shepherd seemed confused by her behavior, on alert, looking for whatever danger had made her run. But he kept pace and soon stopped looking over his shoulder. It reminded her of jogs with Harvey. She liked having the company.
