“Good. That’s the one we want. A little less polysemy would have been nice. It’s too early for that shit.”
“No, it’s too early for the word ‘polysemy.’”
They walked in the assailants’ footsteps through the field all the way to the peep hole.
Lynch crouched and took a look inside. It was his first glimpse of the UJ cloister since visiting the Avery gallery. The effort put into recreating the artist’s vision was recognizable but hardly valiant. The target once used for bouts of knife throwing hung in the distance, nearly hacked to bits. The remnants of the fire were still on the ground, surrounded by piles of empty pizza boxes and, no doubt, a mound of maggots. There were enough beer bottles scattered about to make a stained-glass window for Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. If these were the symbols of freedom, Lynch would take his oppressive condo and brainwashed bourgeois girlfriend thank you very much.
Carrie spoke.
“Ready to see where Jeremy was found?”
Both knees cracked as he stood.
“Lead on.”
They walked to the far side of the barn and stopped at the old plow. Lynch took a whiff.
“Piss?”
“Yup.”
Ten feet away lay a dried pool of blood and the remnants of two passes by Crime Scene.
He’d read the statements, and Carrie had gotten him up to speed on the suppositions. There was no reason to suspect that Jeremy Sokol was targeted specifically. The outnumbered assailants hid behind the plow, so they could take out the UJ one at a time. Jeremy was simply the unfortunate soul that had to pee first. Traci was the next one out. She screamed when she saw the body, but the music was too loud for the rest of the gang to hear her, so she ran inside for help.
“So, you and Reilly think the thugs ran when Traci screamed?”
“Or when she went back in, yeah.”
She pointed towards the blood.
“Now, look at the dirt. I want to show you why I don’t think the truck guys made the call. See the footprints? The assholes went in hard and close. None of them ever so much as took a step back. There’s nothing in the patterns here to indicate any kind of remorse, and a call to 911 shows remorse.”
“Devil’s advocate?”
“Go ahead.”
“What if murder wasn’t the plan? They think they’ve worked him over enough, so they go back behind the plow to wait for their next victim. They realize Jeremy’s a sack of meat, and they get scared. Maybe it wasn’t remorse so much as fear.”
“Fear? These guys? Scared? Does that seem right?”
“No, I guess not…all the more reason not to abandon the idea that there might be a cell phone around here somewhere.”
Lynch held his breath, got on all fours, and scoured the plow for the burner. No dice.
His lungs gave way.
“Dammit!…ack!”
He gagged, coughed, and stumbled to the edge of the tall grass. Once the fit passed, he threw back his shoulders and happily breathed in the piss-free air.
The field met the horizon just past the long shadow cast by the barn…real John Steinbeck stuff. Warner came up beside him with her note pad tucked under her arm.
“So, where do you want to look next?”
“I don’t know.”
He shifted his gaze from the grass to the barn and back again, hoping for a crumb of inspiration. He was woefully in need of a starting point, and nothing was jumping.
“I couldn’t find an elephant in this shit, much less a goddam call phone.”
They were officially stymied. Warner tried to get things moving again.
“They left tracks in the field and a body in the open. One thing’s for sure. These boys are not brain surgeons.”
A breeze blew across the property, causing a wave through the grass. The mad flap of tiny wings caused both detectives to look up. Two barn swallows flew in tandem over their heads and disappeared into one of the barn’s upper windows.
Something unlocked. All the information Lynch had absorbed throughout the morning got into line.
“That’s right … the barn has a loft.”
“What?”
“Wait here.”
He didn’t need a starting point; he needed a vantage point.
“No problem, bossy-pants.”
Whoever nailed up the only access ladder must have had shoulders that were half as wide as Lynch’s and legs that were twice as long. Still, he managed to reach the loft alive, which, judging by the odor, was more than he could say for some other poor creature.
He dusted himself off and took a look around. The UJ’s had set themselves up surprisingly well. There weren’t any bed frames or box-springs, but there were five queen sized mattresses, three hammocks, and a cedar cabinet filled with blankets and pillows. Everything had been mothballed.
Really? Fry your brain, hump everything in sight, and then put out mothballs?
On the far end of the loft, there was a window overlooking the old plow.
“That works.”
After a tiptoe through the mattress maze, he looked out. Three farm houses separated by acreage equal to Meadowbrook’s were visible in the distance.
Carrie called up from the ground. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m not looking; I’m waiting.”
“You really are a dick. What are you waitingfor then?”
“Another breeze.”
The breeze blew. From north to south, across the expanse of Meadowbrook Farms, the breeze blew. As Lynch had hoped, a trampled path he hadn’t seen before became exposed, only this one neither snaked back to the truck nor emptied onto the dirt. It started ten feet away from (or stopped ten feet short of) the crime scene and appeared to lead all the way to the next property. The grass in that part of the field was some of the tallest. Someone of average height could stand in it up to their chest. Someone of less-than-average height, especially at night, could likely go unseen.
Tah - dahhh!
“Guess what, Carrie.”
“What?”
“Option number three.”
Her teeth glistened in the low morning sun.
“A witness we missed?”
“Boo ya!”
6. Up a Tree
Philip awoke the same way he had the day before: In pain. He was encouraged by the fact that his current pain was only in his balls. That meant
