Pendergast turned toward him. “FBI,” he said over the noise, flapping his identification wallet in the youth’s face.
“Right, sir. But no one is allowed in the plant without authorization. At least, that’s what they told me. It’s the rules—” He broke off fearfully.
Of course,” said Pendergast, slipping the wallet back into his suit. “I’m here to interview Mr. James Breen.”
“Jimmy? He used to take the graveyard shift but after the, the killing, he asked for a transfer to days.”
“So I’ve been told. Where does he work?”
“On the line. Look, you have to put on a hardhat and coat, and I have to tell the boss—”
“The line?”
“The line.” The youth looked confused. “You know, the belt.” He pointed upward at the row of dangling, writhing turkeys.
“In that case, we’ll simply follow the line until we reach him.”
“But, sir, it isn’t allowed—” He glanced at Corrie as if beseeching her for help. Corrie knew him: Bart Bledsoe. Dingleberry Bart. Graduated high school last year, D average, and here he was. A real Medicine Creek success story.
Pendergast set off across the slick cement floor, his suit coat flapping behind him. Bledsoe followed, still protesting, and together they disappeared through a small doorway in the far wall. Corrie ducked quickly in behind them, holding her nose, careful to avoid the turkey shit that was dropping like rain from the conveyor belt overhead.
The room beyond was small, and housed only a long, shallow trough of water. Several yellow signs were placed above it, warning of electrical hazard. The turkeys moved slowly through a fine spray until they reached the trough. Corrie watched from a safe distance as their heads slid helplessly below the level of the water. There was a buzz, then a brief crackling sound. The turkeys stopped struggling, and emerged limp from the water.
“Stunned, I see,” Pendergast said. “Humane. Very humane.”
Corrie swallowed again. She could guess what came next.
The line now proceeded through a narrow port in the far wall, flanked by two thick windows. Pendergast approached one of these windows and peered in. Corrie walked up to the other and gazed through it with trepidation.
The chamber beyond was large and circular. As the now-motionless turkeys moved slowly across it, a machine came forward and precisely nicked their necks with a small blade. Immediately, jets of blood shot out in pulsing streams, spraying the walls, which angled down toward what looked to Corrie like a lake of blood. A man with a machete-like weapon sat to one side, ready to administer the coup de grace to any turkey the machine missed. She looked away.
“What is the name of this chamber?” Pendergast asked.
“The Blood Room,” Bledsoe replied. He had stopped protesting, and his shoulders hung with a defeated air.
“Appropriate. What happens to the blood?”
“Gets siphoned off into tanks. Trucks take it away, I don’t know where.”
“To be converted into blood meal, no doubt. That blood on the floor looks rather deep.”
“Two feet deep, maybe, this time of day. It gets backed up some as the shift goes on.”
Corrie winced. This was almost as bad as Stott in the cornfield.
And where do the turkeys go next?”
“To the Scalder.”
“Ah. And what’s your name?”
“Bart Bledsoe, sir.”
Pendergast patted the bewildered youth on the back. “Very well, Mr. Bledsoe. Lead on, if you please.”
They took a catwalk around the Blood Room—the smell of fresh blood was sickening—and went through a partition. All of a sudden, the building opened up around them and Corrie found herself in a cavernous space, a single enormous room with the conveyor belt and its hanging turkeys going this way and that, up and down, disappearing in and out of oversized steel boxes. It resembled some infernal Rube Goldberg contraption. The noise was unbearable, and the humidity was beyond saturation: Corrie felt droplets condensing on her arms, her nose, her chin. The place smelled of wet turkey feathers, shit, and something even less pleasant she couldn’t identify. She began to wish she had waited in the car.
The dead, drained birds emerged from the far end of the Blood Room, disappearing again into a huge stainless steel box from which issued a tremendous hissing noise.
“What happens there?” Pendergast asked above the roar, pointing at the steel box.
“That’s the Scalder. The birds get blasted with steam.”
At the far end of the Scalder the endless conveyor belt reemerged, now hung with steaming, dripping birds that were clean and white and partly defeathered.
“And from there?” Pendergast asked.
“They go to the Plucker.”
“Naturally. The Plucker.”
