The Clovis Incident by Pari Noskin

Author:Pari Noskin [Noskin, Pari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Crime
ISBN: 978-1-61138-454-3
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2014-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

31

Life at a computer isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

My fingers felt as brittle as last year’s dried aspen leaves. I yawned, stretched, and made some calls. By ten, I’d set up lunch with Connie Womack and an afternoon appointment with retired Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Gustafssen.

The more I thought about Mike Cho, the more worried I became. I decided to fight the victim mentality, to take action. First on the agenda: find Mae’s farm and scope out the lair Charlene guarded like a Doberman.

“King Enterprises? Follow the highway out of Clovis back toward Fort Sumner. Right past the Putt Putt turn left onto the dirt road. Cross the tracks and go until you see the sign. You can’t miss it,” said Carlos at the front desk.

“So, it’s like, what? A half-hour from here?” I said.

“More like five minutes. Really, it’s five, six miles at the most.”

My smile shattered.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

If I’d known how easy it was to find, I would have gone to see Mae days ago. I could have seen her before she’d been hauled off.

Troubadours would have written songs about this spring day. The land burgeoned with life, sea-green fields of emerging wheat, alfalfa, and millet. Cows and calves, horses and colts, sheep and lambs, the whole world around Clovis had reproduced. The place teemed with newness, expectation and innocence. Difficult to believe how cold it had been, how the snow had hit the ground less than a week before.

I rolled down the window, breathed in the cool, healthy air. No scent of trains for the moment. Sun on my skin, birds singing. I felt like I was in a Disney flick—traipsing around with talking animals in the minutes preceding the bad moment when the music turns discordant and Evil makes his entrance.

And then there was the turnoff, minutes after I’d started my drive.

Over the bumpity bump of the train tracks, I rode through oceans of sweet-smelling crops. If Clovis could bottle and market this, it’d be wealthy. The Chamber should bus in loads of city folk, stick them in the middle of all this non-human life, and watch them blossom. Of course, some people might get lost in all the openness.

A weathered wooden sign announced King Enterprises. I drove past and strained to see if I could find the place where Mae had turned off the road the other night. Why had that journey seemed so long if the farm was so close? Nothing looked familiar.

As I continued, I began to grasp the size of Mae’s holdings. A wire fence delineating her land ran from the train tracks past the farm entrance, and miles beyond, before cutting to the west. Where were the cows? I smelled them. But all I saw were long, white, plastic bags resembling mammoth worms, sleeping in clusters, lumpy and shining in the morning sun.

I turned the car around and pulled into the farm’s driveway. Two structures stood in front, a large construction site trailer and a house. Dogs barked, heard not seen.

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