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

to a halt. Randall turned and asked, “Lunhill?”

“Yeah, what do you know about them?”

“Bunch of gutless sonsofbitches.” His eyes narrowed and it felt as though he were looking through me, almost as if he were glaring at their headquarters ninety miles due east. “Remember how I told you I lost my farm?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Well, the reason I lost it was because those assholes sued me.”

“They sued you?”

He cut the engine.

“Yeah, this guy comes onto my farm, dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. Tells me he’s there to audit my seeds.”

“Audit, like the IRS?”

“Shit, I wish it had been the IRS. I would have stood a chance against them.”

I gave a slight scoff. Lunhill was scarier to these people than the IRS. “Did you let him?”

“I told him in so many words to piss off.”

Thatta boy.

“So he leaves. I didn’t think anything of it, and another month passed. It was now August and I was doing a harvest. Great year. The best year I’d ever had. Little guy comes back. Has some paperwork signed by a local judge, and get this, he’s got the police with him.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Chief Eccleston?”

“How’d you know?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Well, they said they had probable cause. That someone had turned me in.”

“Turned you in? For what?”

“For using Lunhill seeds.”

“Those Spectrum-H things?”

“Spectrum-H(R)—means they are resistant to Spectrum-H—so when you spray it, all the weeds die, but the corn, or soy, or whatever doesn’t.”

“And you weren’t using these seeds?”

He leaned back an inch, like I visibly slapped him.

“Course not. I’m all organic. I don’t spray shit, least of all, those assholes’ poison.” He lay on the word poison. I was tempted to ask him to elaborate, but I didn’t want him to lose focus.

“Sorry.”

He shook me off like a pitcher shaking off a pitch. “Don’t worry, I just get a little riled up.” He took a long breath. “Anyhow, I had to watch while this sonofabitch went through my fields taking samples of all my plants.”

“What is Eccleston doing during all this?”

“Just sitting in his car like a dumbass.”

“And then they just leave?”

“They said they were gonna run some tests and get back to me.”

“Were you worried?”

“Not really. I mean, I wasn’t using their seeds.”

“So then what happened?”

“Six months later, I got served papers. Lunhill was suing me for patent infringement. Sixty thousand dollars.”

“What’d you do?”

“I hired a lawyer, hired a bunch of independent researchers to test my seeds…” He paused, then added, “and thirty thousand dollars later, I got the same results. I was using GMOs.”

He said GMOs the way a doctor might say syphilis.

“How is that possible?” I asked.

“Cross-contamination.”

“What?”

“All the farmers around me were using Lunhill seeds. They must have blown over in the wind and cross-pollinated with my seeds.” He shook his head. “I should have known when I had such a good year. I was growing those Frankenseeds.”

“Did you still go to trial?”

“Had to. I was in too deep. Only way I would be able to recoup my lawyer fees and research costs was if I won.”

“But you couldn’t prove the cross-contamination?”

“Nope.” He sighed. “I lost at trial. The sixty thousand-dollar fine on top of the thirty grand I spent on my own and I couldn’t make the mortgage. Bank foreclosed on the property a few months later.”

“Shit.” I shook my head, then asked, “You ever find out who turned you in?”

“No.”

We switched seats, and I took over the tilling.

Randall didn’t speak the rest of the afternoon.

I could color between the lines like a pro—I had two adult coloring books to prove it—but when it came to freehand drawing, I was a five-year-old with carpal tunnel.

I looked down at the picture I’d drawn on a piece of computer paper: big round head, receding hairline, droopy jowls. I added some peeling skin to his forehead and scribbled “Chief Eccleston.” Then I taped the picture to the bedroom wall.

After what Randall had told me about Eccleston accompanying the Lunhill man to his farm, I didn’t have a shred of doubt that at some level the Chief was connected to Lunhill.

I’d drawn pictures on several more pieces of paper and taped them to the wall as well. “David Ramsey” looked like the character from Guess Who with the glasses. “Neil Felding” was a stick figure with a lab coat. He had a whistle in his mouth and was blowing it. “Lowry Barnes” was a circle face with a single arm coming out of it holding a gun. I was especially proud of that one. Then there was a picture of a big gorilla, or what I intended as a gorilla, but looked more like a huge rabbit. This was “Dolf,” the Blackwater goon.

Then there was a picture with five circle faces with X’s for eyes. On this, I wrote “Save-More Murders.” Then there was a single face with the same X’s. On this I wrote “Mike Zernan.”

These six pictures encircled a final piece of paper. On the page were two words: “Cover-up.”

I knew everything was connected. I just didn’t know what they were covering up or how the pieces fit together.

Was it something to do with Neil’s research? Had there been a dioxin spill in Tarrin, and Neil Felding uncovered it? Or had Neil uncovered that Lunhill was unfairly suing farmers like Randall? Was it specific to Tarrin or was it something bigger? Something about corruption at the state level? Federal? Presidential?

Obama had signed the Lunhill Protection Act a few years earlier. Had Neil Felding found out something about that?

How high did this go?

I stared at the wall for a long time, until the floral wallpaper pattern began to separate like one of those 3D images.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flicker and turned. Through the upstairs window, I could see flames.

“Wha—”

The barn was on fire.

I took the stairs three at a time, smashed through the front door, and hightailed it toward the blazing barn. Fifty feet away, I could feel the heat, a pulsing wall pushing