Page 77 of The Killing Plains

“Great—you get the air conditioning, I get the rotting hog?”

Colly laughed. “Fine, we’ll stick together. Garage first.”

Rounding the corner of the trailer, they were struck by an odor so foul that it seemed to have physical mass. As a homicide detective, Colly had gotten used to the smell of death, but as they neared the humming, fly-shrouded mound in the garage, Avery went pale and covered her nose and mouth.

“Breathe normally,” Colly said. “After a while, you won’t smell it.”

Their eyes watering, they edged past the carcass. Inside, Avery found the wall switch, and two banks of fluorescent bulbs winked on.

“You start at the back. We’ll meet in the middle,” Colly said.

With the furious drone of the blowflies buzzing in her ears, Colly moved slowly along the wall, surveying the shelves of tools and other equipment. Jace Hoyer seemed to have left in a hurry.The butcher table was littered with knives and cleavers, shreds of desiccated meat still clinging to their blades. Hoyer’s leather apron lay in a heap on the floor.

“Empty gun safe,” Avery called from the rear of the garage. “Big enough for six long guns. Not much else of interest. I’ll check the bathroom.”

Colly grunted and glanced into the utility sink. A stiffened shop rag and grimy bar of Lava soap suggested a hasty cleanup.

Suddenly, she heard a gagging noise. Avery emerged quickly from a door in the rear wall. “Hoyer’s not coming back—didn’t even bother to flush.”

“Thoughtful of him to leave the mess for Jolene.” Colly was examining a set of utility shelves, bare except for some bits of trash and a few dead insects. “Something big was here.” She swiped a gloved finger across the surface. “Till recently, too.”

Avery stopped rooting through a barrel of garden tools and joined her. “Truck box or storage bin, maybe?”

Colly looked up. “What do people keep in storage bins in the garage?”

“Stuff they don’t use much. Christmas decorations, things like that.”

“I can’t picture Jace getting sentimental over a box of ornaments.”

Avery reached for something on the shelf that Colly had taken for a scrap of paper. “What’s this?” She flattened the object on her palm.

It looked like a miniature sack the size of a wine cork, open at one end and made of fine, white mesh.

“Bag it up,” Colly said. “Maybe Meggs will know.”

Avery complied. “There’s nothing here. Let’s try the house.”

“Hang on.” Colly moved towards the chest freezers on the opposite wall.

“Seriously?”

“I found thirty grand and a dead chihuahua in one of these, once. Owner was a bank robber.”

“That doesn’t explain the dog.”

“It was his mother’s. The guy said he got sick of the barking.”

Three of the freezers contained nothing but packages of meat, neatly wrapped in white butcher paper and organized by date and type of cut. The packages in the fourth, however, looked as if someone had hurriedly rummaged through them. Wedged between two bundles labeled “tenderloin” was a torn manila envelope.

Colly picked it up gingerly. Empty.

“I bet that was the ‘insurance policy’ Lori Lambreth mentioned—the one Jace printed at the plant,” Avery said.

“Maybe.” Colly tucked the envelope into an evidence bag.

Back at the trailer, they found Jimmy Meggs’ squad car abandoned, its doors unlocked. “I bet that moron’s off taking a piss,” Avery muttered, locking the car. “At least he didn’t leave his gun laying on the seat.”

Colly sighed and turned towards the trailer. “How do we get in?”

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