Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

"Oh, please. In Millers Kill? Pull the other one."

He shrugged. "There are three men dead, all of 'em killed in the same way, by a similar weapon, in the space of a year or so. All of 'em left within seven miles of each other. If that happened along the Green River instead of in Millers Kill, what would you think?"

Good Lord. Kevin Flynn is growing up into a real cop . A civilian Humvee drove past the barnyard, its woofer rattling their car windows. This has gotten way too deep . Janet has got to come clean with them .

As if he could read her mind, he said, "Are the McGeochs around?"

"In the barn," she said.

"Thanks." He strode toward the barn while she told herself it wasn't her business and she wasn't going to get involved. This didn't have anything to do with her, or her people, or her church. Except… Sister Lucia had asked her to take care of these men. And so far the only thing she had done to uphold the sister's charge was to keep her mouth shut about their location.

"Wait for me," she called. Kevin paused in the wide doorway and watched as she jogged across the dusty yard. Inside, it was cool and lofty. They alarmed a pair of barn swallows, who fluttered through the mote-hung air before arrowing out the door. The sound of wings echoed in the almost-empty haymows.

"Mr. McGeoch?" Kevin shouted. "Mrs. McGeoch?"

"In here!" The faint answer came from the small doorway set opposite the tractor-wide entrance to the barn. Clare dogged Kevin as he ducked through and they emerged into a long, low cow byre. Clare stumbled, and the young officer caught her by her arm. She looked up and down the center aisle. Cement. Drain holes. The steel-basketed lights hung, one each, at the stall entrances. Her skin went clammy. She swallowed.

"Are you okay?" Kevin let her arm go.

"Yeah," she said. "This just… looks a lot like the MacEntyres' barn." She breathed in. Manure and urine and hay, earthy and sharp and green. No copper-sweet smell of blood.

"Don't worry," Kevin said, "You're safe here." He meant to be reassuring, but all Clare heard was the perfect assurance of someone who had never had anything horrific happen to him.

"Clare?" Janet emerged from one of the stalls, pitchfork in hand. "Officer Flynn?" That last sounded genuinely surprised. She jammed her pitchfork into the manure cart squatting in the middle of the aisle. "What's up?"

"Hi, Mrs. McGeoch. Sorry to interrupt, but when I went to your house, your daughter said you were over here, and I wanted to talk to you first, because the chief said you'd talked to some local farmers about migrant workers before you hired that service to, you know, help you get your own, so I was hoping you or Mr. McGeoch could fix me up with some contacts so I can find out a little more about who's hiring migrants and if they've had workers stay year-round."

"What?"

Clare shook off the shadow of the angel of death. "Officer Flynn needs a list of farmers in the area who employ migrant workers."

Kevin looked a bit affronted. "That's what I said."

"Maybe," Clare said, "if Mike's around, he could help Officer Flynn?"

"He's cleaning the equipment. I can-"

"Because I want to talk to you-um, about Amado possibly returning to work here." She was speaking so broadly, she might as well be winking and nudging.

"O-kay." Janet walked toward the center of the byre. "You see those doors there?"

Kevin nodded.

"That's the equipment room. Go ahead and tell Mike what you want. He's better with names and numbers than I am."

"Thanks," Kevin said. He started down the central aisle. Stopped. Turned. "Big place you got here. How on earth do you two manage it by yourselves?"

"Oh, we've got help." Janet's voice was as light as air. "But it is Memorial Day, you know."

"Don't I just." He resumed walking toward the equipment room.

Clare gestured toward the narrow walkway leading to the larger barn. "Can we talk out there?"

"He won't be able to hear us. With the steam cleaning equipment on, he'll hardly be able to hear Mike."

"It's not that. This place is way too much like the MacEntyres' for my comfort. I keep expecting to see someone with a gun coming out of the abattoir at any moment."

Janet looked, frowning. "Sure." She led the way, the top of her head almost brushing against the low ceiling of the passage. Clare took a deep breath once they were in the sun-shafted expanse of the hay barn. "So," Janet said. "Let me ask you something. Do you think my brother would react in the same way? If he were in the byre?"

Clare thought about how, thirty-odd years after the need, Russ still couldn't walk through heat and green leaves without watching for the glint of a gun barrel. About the way his face would still and his words dry up when conversation wandered onto certain old cases. "Yes," she said. "I'm pretty sure he would."

Janet shoved her hands in her jeans and looked around the three-story cross-beamed space. "Okay," she said. "That helps explain some stuff. Thanks." She focused on Clare. "What did you need to speak to me about?"

"You've got to come clean about the workers you have here."

"What? Why?"

"I didn't tell you something-earlier." Clare caught a strand of free-falling hair and shoved it into her twist. "There were two more bodies discovered yesterday. Killed the same way as your John Doe. Buried in shallow graves a mile past the Muster Field. It'll probably be all over the local news tonight or tomorrow." She looked into Janet's eyes. "Kevin's asking for names of migrant workers because they're thinking this may be the work of a serial killer."

"What, a guy who comes up here from Mexico and whacks people on his day off? That's ridiculous."

"I'm not saying one of your men is responsible. I'm not saying the migrant-did-it theory even makes much sense. Russ gave the job to Kevin, so you know it's not their top priority." She opened her hands. "What I'm saying is that something terrible has happened. And your brother needs every piece of information he can get to find the person responsible."

Janet was shaking her head. "I can't. I just can't. We haven't started the application process for new workers, and we can't get these guys permits retroactively. They have to leave the country and stay out for sixty days before they can apply again. If the police show up here to question them, what do you think's going to happen? They'll scatter to the four winds. He won't get any information from them and we'll be up the creek without a paddle."

"Janet, how are you going to feel if someone else shows up dead and you didn't do anything to help stop it? For what? To save a few bucks on payroll?"

"You don't understand what a razor-thin margin we're working on. Almost everything we pay out is a fixed cost: gas, feed, vet bills, insurance. We sure as hell can't charge more for the milk. The only place where we have some flexibility is our labor. Hiring locals would cost twice what we pay the Mexicans, plus Social Security and unemployment insurance. That "few bucks" on the payroll would be thousands more. Thousands."

"You're not paying Social Security and unemployment?"

Janet had the good grace to look embarrassed. "We would have, if the original plan had held up and we had workers with permits. But now… the seven guys we have aren't supposed to be here, so how would we explain having a payroll?" She rubbed her hands on the front of her jeans. "We're doing the whole thing under the table at this point."

"Oh, good Lord." Nervous energy sent Clare pacing in a circle. "That's just dumb. Just plain dumb. Now you're going to be in trouble with ICE and the IRS."

Janet crossed her arms. "I'm not telling my brother about them. I can't." She twisted, following Clare. "You can't tell him either."