From her conversation with Curtis and Gene, the two dairy employees at the tavern, she’d become curious about the new cows and wanted to get a look at them. From the way the place was laid out, she’d guessed that at milking time the cows were herded from the barns into the metal building where she’d seen the milk transport the previous day. The only logical route was along the fence she was now looking through. In fact, down by the barns, she could see another fence parallel to this one on the inside, so the two formed a wide avenue that would contain the cows as they were moved.
Retreating so there were now two rows of corn to hide her, Holly hurried in the direction of the barns. At the tavern, Curtis had said that milking goes on almost continuously through the day. So catching some cows being herded past the fence shouldn’t be difficult. With no idea which barn was being used at this time, the best spot to observe the action would be between the first barn and the milking building. That way, she’d get a look at any animals being moved.
Upon reaching a suitable location, she pushed back through the adjacent row of corn so only one hid her from view. She then dropped to one knee and carefully removed some leaves so she’d be able to see the animals and photograph them.
There was no real plan behind any of this activity. But something was going on at this dairy that was worth killing her to hide. And she had a strong hunch the new cows were an important piece of the puzzle. Because of that, she wanted to get a look at them. The best approach would be to examine one in an agricultural laboratory to determine just what was so special about them that had made the new owners replace the entire herd. With no hope of that happening, what she was now doing and one other idea were the only things she could think of.
Now that she wasn’t moving around, her body quickly lost heat through her light jacket and the contact of her knee with the cold ground. In addition, kneeling like this would have been uncomfortable even if she weren’t bruised. After a while, she awkwardly changed position, shifting to her other knee so her slacks now had two cold wet spots on them. Sitting on the ground was out of the question.
It was now four-fifteen. It had taken her about ten minutes to get here from the road. Allowing ten to get back to the car, and five to get where she wanted to be at a quarter to five, she could only stay fifteen minutes. Why was she always facing a time problem?
Her plane back to Memphis left tomorrow at three. So if she missed the action today at the other location, she wouldn’t get another chance there. But she could come back here in the morning.
Consideration of the various options open to her was brought to an abrupt halt as two men swung open the long doors on the back of the metal building and secured them. Cows with camouflage patterns of black and white then began pouring from the opening. By the time the first animals reached her, Holly had her phone ready, correctly anticipating that individual cows would pass by so fast she’d need photographs to get the best look at them.
The fence was about fifteen feet from the first row of corn, but the animals were so big she couldn’t fit more than one at a time in the viewfinder. Doing the best she could to get a complete animal in the shot, she clicked off the first picture. The sound of the shutter was not loud, but a half-dozen cows looked in her direction. Ignoring them, she kept shooting.
Three and four abreast, the animals moved quickly along the fence. Of those she could see clearly, she managed to photograph sixteen.
All the animals were herded into the second barn. With time to spare, Holly decided to stay put, hoping another group would soon be taken to the metal building. Cooperating nicely, another group of animals spilled from the second barn a few minutes later. This time, she managed to get pictures of twenty. Satisfied with what she’d accomplished, she headed back to her car, appreciating that for once, she had ample time to get where she was going.
At four forty-two, she arrived at that destination: a small roadside quilt shop with some of its colorful wares displayed outside on stands. She pulled into the gravel parking lot beside the shop and parked with a clear view of Deadfall Road, which led to the dairy’s rear gate. Her headache was still present, but wasn’t clamoring for attention.
If dairy employee Gene was right, a transport would soon arrive to pick up the calves from the dairy’s latest birth cycle. It was possible that if she followed that transport, she might get an opportunity to at least see the offspring of the herd up close. Or even better, she might learn where they were being taken, thereby adding to her minuscule knowledge of how the dairy functioned. Thinking very optimistically, she could even see herself buying a calf . . . and taking it . . . where?
The University of Wisconsin in Madison? They had a big agricultural school. They could find out all there was to know about the animal. How much would she be willing to pay? And how would she transport it? More significantly, why would the university help her?
While her mind played with the various outcomes of what she was about to do, another car pulled into the lot. It parked beside her and two women got out. The driver was maybe forty years old; the passenger, early twenties. Despite the difference in their ages, the resemblance between them was striking. A mother and her daughter, surely. Holly put herself in the mother’s place, shopping with her daughter, all grown up now.
The two women remained outside, examining the quilts, and Holly watched them closely, imagining herself part of every little verbal exchange. What must it be like to know you’ve brought life into the world?
She was concentrating so hard on the women that she didn’t notice the big truck coming from the west until it turned onto the road leading to the dairy’s rear gate. It looked like one of those horse trailers with a curved top, but was much larger. Below, the sides were metal. The upper half, including the roof, was covered with canvas. On the cab door she could read M & J. Under the initials a smaller word was hard to read from that distance, but she thought it was TRANSPORT.
She had no idea how long it would take for the calves to be loaded, but she hoped it could be done quickly. Otherwise, she’d be trailing the truck after nightfall. Hmmm. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad . . . harder for the driver to see he was being followed.
It wasn’t dark when the truck reappeared and headed back to the west, but the sun was so low in the sky that when Holly set out after it, she had to use her car’s visor to keep from being blinded. This meant that most of the time she was following something she couldn’t even see. Occasionally, she’d peek under the visor just to be sure the truck was still in sight.
At the intersection where Dairy Road met the highway leading to town, the truck waited for an opening then crossed the highway and continued west on what was now called Robertson Road. Holly dawdled at the intersection and did not proceed until the truck had once again opened a comfortable distance between them.
About ten miles from the dairy, it occurred to Holly that the truck’s destination could be hundreds of miles away. She had no reason to think otherwise. She had nearly a full tank of gas, but what if she ran out before the truck did?
Then she saw the truck turn right onto another state road. She interpreted this as a sign that maybe this would be a local trip after all.
Six miles down this road, the truck slowed and turned left, into a wide, paved entrance to a sprawling warehouse surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. By the time she reached the spot, the truck driver was loosening a chain that secured the gate.
Maintaining her speed and looking at him only out of the corners of her eyes, Holly drove past. Even without staring, she saw that the site looked as though it had been abandoned for a long time.
Now what?
In the distance, on the right, she saw a farmhouse set well back from the road. Keeping one eye on the rearview mirror, she proceeded to the home’s driveway and turned in.
Where it began, the drive was at the same grade as the surroundi
ng cornfields, so Holly lost sight of the warehouse. But as she drew closer to the farmhouse, the land rose, lifting her above the tops of the dried corn. She stopped the car at a point where she could see over the crop, yet most of her car would be hidden to anyone looking in that direction from the warehouse. But the setting sun was beginning to paint the western sky with orange hues. Without light, her fine vantage point wouldn’t be of much use.
Then she saw a car come out of the warehouse entrance and head away from her. She waited a few minutes to see what else would happen, but nothing stirred. Unable to wait any longer, she backed down the drive and returned to the warehouse, where she pulled into the entrance and stopped at the gate, which was once more locked.
Through the chain link, she saw no cars or trucks, no activity of any kind. Strange.
She got out, approached the gate and yanked on it. The chain that was looped through the bars had enough play in it so the gate opened a little. Ducking under the chain, Holly pushed her body into the gap and got caught. She pushed harder. Ignoring the pressure of the metal bars raking her fore and aft, she pulled in everything she could and thrust herself hard sideways. Somewhat compressed and hurting in a half-dozen spots, she popped through.
The warehouse resembled an airplane hangar, though it wasn’t as tall. Everywhere, weeds pushed up through cracks in the cement apron. To her right, a cement ramp with rusted metal railings led up to a loading dock. To the left, an opening big enough for a semi to pass through was closed by a folding metal door.
It seemed clear that the transport with the calves must be inside. But why bring them here? Most likely that had been the driver who left. There were no other cars around, so the animals were in there with no one to care for them. Maybe they wouldn’t need anything until morning, when the driver would return, feed them, and take them on to their ultimate destination. But why pick them up so late if you couldn’t take them to where they were going? It would make more sense to start earlier. Or was this the final destination? Surely not. The questions swirled around her, making her headache worse.
She felt strongly that she needed to see what was going on inside. Considering that the sun was fast fading, it was a lousy time to be putzing around here, but if she came back in the morning, the animals might be gone, or the place would be crawling with people. So it had to be now.
Between the dock and the big opening where the transport had surely gone inside, there was a small cement block office with a window and a door.
She walked over and tried the door.
Locked.
She looked through the window, but it was too dark inside to see a thing. The window likewise wouldn’t open. She considered breaking it, but it had metal mullions and small panes of glass with chicken wire embedded in it. Looking around, she saw another door at the back of the loading dock.
She pulled herself onto the dock using a rusty metal railing at the near end and checked the door, which was also locked. Aware that she didn’t have much more than a few minutes of light left, she retreated down the dock’s cement ramp and stepped back for a last look before giving up.
She saw a possible answer above the metal roof over the dock, where there were several banks of small windows. They looked to be of the same impenetrable construction as the window in the office, but in the set on the far left, one whole section was missing, leaving a gaping black hole she thought she could slip through.
But how to get up there?
At the end of the dock near the ramp, the metal roof had caved in so that the corrugated sheet forming that section was dangling, twisted and torn, from one small remaining attachment. The pipe framework for the front of the damaged area had also been torn loose so part of it drooped within easy reach.
Normally, the climb wouldn’t have been much of a challenge, but in her current battered state, it taxed every resource she could muster. But eventually, there she was, twelve feet off the ground, staring over a flimsy structure that could never support her weight. But near the wall, the metal frame reinforced the roof so that it should be fairly strong.
Balancing herself with one hand against the building, she stepped onto the frame of the collapsed section and gingerly let it take some of her weight.
So far, so good.
She gave it a little more weight, then shifted fully onto it.
One foot in front of the other like a tightrope walker, she crossed the damaged section and stepped onto the part that was still intact. There, with the metal sheeting giving her feet more support, progress was easier. But she’d sure make a great target up here.
Between spates of worrying about being shot, she feared that when she reached the window she’d discover that inside it was a sheer twelve-foot drop to the floor, which would mean all her effort would have been wasted. In fact, that seemed the most likely conclusion to all this.
Three feet more . . . two feet . . .
She was there.
She ducked her head through the damaged window and her eyes strained to penetrate the gloom. Could that be . . . ?
She slid a leg inside and probed the darkness with her foot. Nothing. She shifted her balance on the frame so her foot could explore a few inches lower. Her shoe scraped something. She shifted again, lowering her foot a mere quarter of an inch, but it was enough to tell her she’d found a solid floor.
She slipped inside and paused to take stock of her surroundings, which in the deep gloom was difficult. Grateful that her phone had a flashlight app, she put it to use. In its thin beam, she saw that she was in a room littered with metal ductwork. Against the far wall she made out the vague shape of a stairway.
Moving carefully so she wouldn’t trip on anything, she made her way to the stairs and followed them down into a cavernous chamber in which the last sunlight of the day filtered weakly in through a bank of windows near the roofline. In the pale light, she saw the truck she’d followed from the dairy.
With the calves right there in front of her and no one around to stop her, she could take one. Of course it’d be stealing. But hadn’t they stolen from her? She’d have to figure out how to get a door open from inside. Maybe that’d be easy. The gate . . . there was no way she could get one through the gate, unless the animal was no thicker than she was, which certainly seemed possible.
Encouraged that she might be able to pull this off, she went down the steps and walked around to the side of the truck facing the windows. She stepped up on a fender, pulled the canvas aside and played her flashlight around the interior. She was shocked at what she saw.
17
THE TRUCK WAS empty.
How could that be? She’d seen no vehicles leave but that one car, so the animals couldn’t have been taken away. The only explanation was that there were never any animals in the truck.
Why the charade?
In medical school, there had been the occasional test question with so little information provided that it was impossible to choose the correct diagnosis. The worst of those paled compared to this. With her head aching from the exertion of her climb to the dock roof and the intractability of the puzzle confronting her, she stepped off the truck and headed for the stairs. But a faint glint of something deeper in the building caught her eye.
She moved that way, her feet sinking in greasy sludge. The object was large, with a broad surface in front that reflected light.
She drew closer.
Lord.
It was another truck . . . with a snow blade on it.
Keenly aware that she was in a viper’s nest, she hurried back to the stairs, took them to the upper room, and moved as quickly as she could through the litter to the window, her heart beating much faster than the exertion alone dictated.
Though she didn’t understand the implications of her discoveries, they filled her with excitement and nervous energy so she made the descent from the roo
f without even noticing the pain when she banged her ankle on a loose pipe.
That was the truck that had collided with her. Trace it to the owner and she’d have ’em by the scrotum. It was a discovery that cried out to be shared. But she had no friends here and the enemy wasn’t wearing uniforms.
Or were they?
She was thinking of that cop, Christianson. Logically, he would be the one to tell about the plow. But could he be trusted?
By the time she reached the Green and White, she’d concluded that she was being paranoid to suspect Christianson of complicity. She had no reason to doubt him. So it was settled. She’d call him, and they’d go back to the warehouse together before anything could be moved. But even as she went inside, she wondered if it would be wise to go back there at all.
No. Let him go by himself.
Then she froze.
Her clothing was strewn all over the room, her suitcase upended.
They’d found her.
Frightened to the core, she grabbed the suitcase, threw it on the bed, and began snatching up her things. When she had them all, she jammed them in her suitcase, latched it, and ran to the door, where she hesitated.
Were they waiting for her outside? Or, a tiny voice argued, was someone hiding in the bathroom? That possibility flushed her out of the room, and she bolted to the car.
She threw her bag across the console between the front seats and was inside practically before it hit the far door. Concentrating to control the tremor in her hand, she keyed the ignition, pulled it into drive, and headed for Madison, her tires spitting gravel.
It was him. She’d told Christianson where she was staying and they’d found her. Well, they win. She was going home, where it was safe.
The Lethal Helix Page 14
