Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

He smiled. “You want a beer?”

“Sounds good.”

He disappeared inside, then returned with two longnecks. He motioned toward the hot rod and said, “Let’s get away from these bugs for a while.”

We both got into the truck.

He flipped the radio to an old fifties station, then turned to me and said, “So the Cardinals? What’s your interest in them?”

“Someone told me to ask you about them.”

His lips pursed under his mustache.

I said, “I was looking into one of their games from a couple years back and I was having trouble getting any stats.”

“You’re not very good at this,” he said.

I laughed.

He said, “So you’re looking into the Save-More murders?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“Curiosity at first. Stumbled on the memorial, and old habits die hard.” I gave him a quick summation of my life in law enforcement.

“I heard about that case up in Maine,” he said. “What was the nickname they had for that guy?”

The case had been three years earlier. It garnered a lot of attention because a woman named Alex Tooms—who would later go on to shatter my heart into a million little pieces—wrote a true-crime novel detailing the murders. It had been on the bestseller list for nearly three months. Only, the murders hadn’t been solved. The killer, Tristan Grayer, had still been out there, biding his time before going on another killing spree. This time, targeting women close to me.

“The Maine-iac,” I replied.

“That’s it,” he said. “Didn’t you get shot and fall off a cliff?”

I took a deep breath. Involuntarily, I could feel my knuckles go white around the beer bottle in my hand.

“Yeah. I got lucky.”

Before he could ask any follow-up questions, I asked, “So why would the receptionist at the Tarrin Police Department tell me to talk to you?”

“I was with the TPD for fourteen years.”

“Did you head up the Save-More investigation?”

“I did,” he said solemnly, leaning his head back against the seat.

I knew he was back there, back at the crime scene, back standing over five dead bodies. Just like I’d been back on that cliff a moment earlier.

“What happened?” I asked.

“With the murders? Or the investigation?”

“More the investigation. And more why you no longer work as a police officer.”

Something told me that if it weren’t for the Save-More murders, Officer Mike Zernan would still be gainfully employed.

“Well, as you would expect, it was a real shit show. Everybody—the TPD, County, and Missouri Bureau—all jostling for jurisdiction. Eventually, the TPD won out, mostly because it wasn’t a whodunit. It wasn’t a hate crime or terrorism—it was a revenge killing. Then the shooter killed himself. It was pretty cut and dry.”

“So it seems.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“What did you find?” I asked.

He glanced outside, then turned back. “Just some inconsistencies.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Still kind of buggy in here.” He sat on the word buggy.

I nodded.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“The Humphries Farm.”

We talked farming for a couple minutes, then we talked actual baseball. When our beers were gone, we exited the car.

On my departure, Mike shook my hand, leaned in, and whispered, “Give me three days.”

Chapter Ten

Saturday’s Revival marathon tuckered me out. I met a lifetime quota of hallelujahs and the tug-of-war did a number on my ribs. So I canceled the second leg, staying home and playing with Harold and May.

I added some water to the now working pigpen, and the piglets rolled around in the mud for over an hour. Then I gave them baths. And, of course, backrubs. And yes, they still slept in bed with me.

Monday morning, as planned, Randall came by and we set up a plan to get the farm back into shape. He gave me a quick rundown on everything we needed to do: buy or rent a tractor, get rid of the overgrown brush, till the soil, fix the irrigation, decide what crops to plant, buy seed, and so forth.

I handed him my credit card and gave him carte blanche, though I knew he would exhaust himself finding the best deals on everything.

He said he had a good chicken guy, whatever that meant.

It was now a little after 2:00 p.m. and I was driving to Page Ranch. As in Victoria Page, the sole survivor of the Save-More murders.

I called my sister, aka my Google, and Lacy did a quick internet search on Victoria, then found her present address easily enough.

I continued over rolling green hills for fifteen minutes, took a few turns, then pulled onto a dirt road leading under a giant sign that read “Page Ranch.”

I expected to see a bunch of cows, but instead I saw horses. The horses were the color of chocolate: milk, dark, white, and even one that looked like that Hershey’s Cookies and Cream. Most were standing still. A few romped around.

I drove up the dirt road for a quarter mile and parked in front of a large house. There were several trucks and horse trailers. To the left of the house was a giant, red wooden stable.

A moment later, I knocked on the door of the house. No one answered, and I started toward the stable. Even from a hundred feet away, I could hear horses neighing and stomping.

I opened and closed a high steel gate, then walked through the wide entrance. A woman and two men were standing with their backs to me. I looked past them into an open stall and saw two horses. The male horse was huge. He was the Dwayne Johnson of horses. He reared up on his hind legs and thrusted what looked to be an old Soviet missile, but was actually his dick, into the girl horse.

I feared for the female horse’s life, but as quickly as it started, it was over.

The woman shook the hands of the two men. She noticed me in her peripheral and turned. She was medium height with a cowboy hat atop unnaturally red hair. She was what people would refer to as a handsome woman. I guessed her to be in her early sixties.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m looking for Victoria