The Dark Hunger by Joelle Sterling

Author:Joelle Sterling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Strebor Books

In the morning, doused with more than a generous amount of Old Spice aftershave, his face thickly coated with his wife’s honey-beige foundation, and with his stomach filled with last night’s kill, the farmer, Walter Sutton greeted the two homicide detectives and a Hispanic woman as they stepped out of a dusty black Chevy Tahoe. He noticed two men sitting in the SUV—Ricardo and Cesar, two of his workers that had been taken in for questioning.

Seeing his men filled Walter with relief. Their presence could only mean that the detectives were satisfied and it was back to business as usual for his workers in the fields.

Dark sunglasses concealed Walter’s eyes as he shook hands with the policemen, muttering it was a pity that the foreman had gone bonkers on one of his best workers.

“I’m the lead detective on this case…I’m Detective Caldwell. What time do your people usually turn up for work?” Detective Caldwell was a thin man, short too—only about five-foot-four, but he maintained a stern expression, as if looking mean and snarly could compensate for his lack of height and bulk. The other detective, whose name Walter didn’t catch, was the complete opposite: tall, husky, and broad-shouldered. The other detective was the strong and silent type with deep set eyes that were fixated on Walter’s sunglasses…like he could see past the dark lens and was staring into the windows of Walter’s soul.

Nervously, Walter pulled off his cap. Scratching his head, his eyes zigzagged right and left. “They should be here by now. Hey, Willie!” Walter yelled to his supervisor.

Shielding his face from the glare of the sun, Willie looked up the path where the truck filled with migrant workers should have been rolling along. Willie shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe they got spooked and ran off to work at another farm. That’s what migrant workers do…they migrate from one place to another.”

“They don’t run off before payday? You’re dopier than you look!” Walter gazed at Willie with disdain, as if Willie himself were the cause of the workers sudden disappearance. Willie looked unfazed by his boss’s slurs. In fact, it appeared to Walter that Willie looked almost jubilant over the fact that there may not be any work today.

Willie was a good for nothing, lazy so and so. Happy as a lark to be getting out of doing a day’s work. Providing that the detectives cut down the yellow tape, Willie was supposed to be rolling up his sleeves and filling in for the foreman instead of lounging around and pretending to look busy in the air-conditioned office inside the onsite trailer.

Yeah, Willie looked mighty relieved at the idea of hiding behind a computer or a stack of paperwork, but Walter had news for him.

“I want you to get yourself a pair of gloves and a pair of scissors, and get to digging them onions out the ground along with those two,” Walter barked, nudging his head toward the two migrant workers inside the Tahoe.

“This is a crime scene, Mr.

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