For the first time, maybe ever, I wished I had a fancy iPhone. I could have learned every detail about the murders. I did the next best thing, which was to call my sister. France was seven hours ahead, and I caught Lacy on a break from painting.
“Hey, Fat-ass,” she answered.
I laughed. I’d kept Lacy well apprised of my weight gain.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Just hanging out at my farm.”
“Your farm?”
I spent the next twenty minutes bringing her up to speed. She couldn’t believe it and asked, “That farm was still in the family?”
“Apparently.”
Lacy had only met Harold a handful of times. She came back to the States for two weeks the past October, and we went to visit him several times at the nursing home. Like me, she fell in love with him and even considered moving back home with Caleb so she could spend more time with him. He was the only living relative we had left. She was crushed when she found out he died, and she nearly jumped on the first flight out. I had to convince her flying back wouldn’t do him any good. And it wouldn’t do me any good. She’d relented.
“So I fell out of a tree yesterday,” I told her.
When my sister thinks something is funny, she goes into a giggle fit, and the idea of me falling out of a tree to my near death sent her reeling. Once composed, she excitedly told me she sold one of her paintings for twenty grand and that she and Caleb were trying for a baby. “So when those days come around,” she said, “Caleb and I screw like bunnies.”
I begged her to stop telling me about her sex life, and in turn, she began describing it in graphic detail.
I said, “I’m two seconds away from climbing that tree and doing a swan dive.”
She laughed, and I told her why I really called. I asked her if she could look something up on the computer for me.
She huffed, but agreed.
“Search ‘Save-More murders.’”
“Holy shit,” she quipped a moment later. “This happened there? I didn’t think that kind of stuff happened in small towns.”
“Me neither.”
She found an article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and read it to me.
The short of it was:
October 9th, 2012, a disgruntled ex-employee went to the Save-More right before closing. The manager, who had fired the guy two weeks earlier, was checking out the last of the customers. The killer forced his six victims to the back of the store at gunpoint, all of which was caught on the surveillance cameras. He then ushered them into the back freezer bay where, unfortunately, there were no cameras. But it wasn’t hard to figure out what happened. The enraged ex-employee shot all six of them, killing five. The manhunt for the killer didn’t last long. He was found in his car on the side of the road with a hole in his temple. He’d committed suicide.
I asked Lacy if she could tell me a bit more about the killer, but she said she had a meeting she needed to get to.
I finally fell asleep an hour later.
The first time I tried to cut through the chain with the bolt cutters, the flexing of my arms sent a shockwave through my ribs so violent that I nearly vomited. I wouldn’t have tried a second time, but my first attempt cut a nice groove into both sides of the chain and it wouldn’t take much to finish the job.
I planted my feet, situated the bolt cutters in the grooves, and clasped the handles together. The chain split, then rattled against the door.
Holding my ribs with one arm, I gingerly pried the barn doors open.
A wave of musk washed over me before diffusing into the warm sunshine. I waited a few seconds, then stepped inside.
The afternoon sun shone through foggy windows high in the steepled ceiling, illuminating the dirt floor and many brittle stacks of baled hay.
“Hedwig!” I shouted. “Where are you?”
I listened for the rustle I heard the previous day but was rewarded with silence.
There was a ladder lying on the ground and I hefted it up and leaned it against the ledge of the wooden loft. If there were any owls, the loft would be where they built their nest.
I started up the ladder, climbing until my stomach was level with the hay-covered loft floor. A moment later, the rustling I heard the previous day returned. There was something moving through the hay. And whatever it was, rat, mouse, possum, or tiger, it was headed right toward me.
My body tensed.
A breath later, it wiggled its way out of the hay two inches from my chest.
I screamed.
Even worse, I leaned backward.
I could feel the ladder pull off the ledge and begin moving backward with me. I let go of the ladder and jumped. I over rotated and hit the ground. On my left side. Again.
“Oh, God.”
My eyes welled with tears.
I lay there for a long minute praying for death to take me into its warm embrace. The pain was so fierce it took my brain a couple minutes to reload the video of the creature that surprised me.
A little piglet.
“How did you even get up there?” I muttered, leaning down to pick up the ladder with a groan.
I replaced the ladder and started climbing.
Each step was a battle.
Pain vs. Piglet.
Once I reached the loft, I called out, “Come here, little piglet.”
I pulled myself up and onto the loft, which was one of the most painful experiences of my life. And remember, I was attacked by a pack of wolves. And shot. And drowned. And fell out of a fucking tree.
I stood up, the angled roof hovering just overhead, and started searching the hay for my attacker. At the far back of the barn, I noticed a large lump. I eased forward. It was
