Judy Clemens - The Grim Reaper's Dance

They rounded the corner of the first pole barn and Casey stopped abruptly, bending over, trying to catch her breath. The sight of the semi was like getting kicked in the chest.

It took the men a moment to realize she wasn’t with them. Wendell came back. “You all right?”

She filled her cheeks with air and let it out slowly. “I will be in a minute.”

Trixie ran over and snuffled up in Casey’s face, her wet nose cold against Casey’s. Casey ruffled the fur on the dog’s head. “Okay.”

The truck lay broken and battered, slumping sideways, two of its front tires flat, its remaining windows creased with spiderweb cracks. Casey was relieved to see the refrigerated trailer still attached. She’d been afraid it had been hauled away separately.

“Is the load still in there?” Casey asked.

Davey shook his head. “Company came and took it all away. Meats and stuff. Probably have to trash it all, but I guess they wanted to salvage what they could. It was still pretty cold in there, even by the time they got the rig here.”

“Cab’s not looking any too safe,” Wendell said.

Casey smiled grimly. “I don’t need the cab.”

Davey and Wendell glanced at each other.

“Well, then,” Davey said. “What is it you need?”

“A crowbar.”

Davey smiled. “I think I just might have one of those.”

In fact, he had about a dozen, and Casey picked the most heavy duty. Wendell and Davey each chose one, too.

“What are we looking for?” Wendell stood at the back of the truck, holding his crowbar over his shoulder.

Casey eyed the trim, still remarkably intact. “I’m not sure. But Evan said whatever it is was in the back trim, in the insulation, and that I shouldn’t let them have it.” At least that’s what she’d inferred. She had been, admittedly, rather shaken up at the time.

“Well, then,” Davey said. “Let’s have at it. Unless you want to look around a bit first.”

A good idea. If whatever Evan was hiding was something he’d want access to, he’d have to make himself a way to get at it. But after twenty minutes of fruitless searching, they hadn’t found anything.

Davey stepped back. “Looks like we need the crowbars, after all.”

With the screeching and wrenching of metal, the three of them tore away at the trim. It was harder than Casey had expected, and sweat soon ran down her scalp and between her shoulder blades and breasts. She stepped back, wiping her eyes, and felt something squish beneath her foot. Great. The banana, which she’d completely forgotten about.

Wendell and Davey were each pulling on a section of trim, their muscles straining with the effort. Casey took a breath and pulled back a new section, sliding out the insulation.

And she saw it.

She hollered for the other two to stop, and they hopped down from the back bumper to gather around her. Carefully she peeled back several more inches of trim and eased the insulation out from around the corner of a manila envelope. Soon she could get the entire thing out, and the three of them stood looking at it.

“What do you think’s in it?” Wendell said.

“It feels like papers.”

“Open it up,” Davey said. “Let’s have a look.”

She eased her finger under the envelope’s flap and wiggled it across, not wanting to rip anything, since this envelope’s contents were, in all likelihood, what Evan had died for.

“Come on,” Wendell said. “Let’s see it.”

Casey lifted the flap, and looked inside.

“What is it?” Wendell leaned over to peer into the envelope.

“Lots of things.” Casey was surprised how much Evan had stuffed in, and she tilted the envelope so the men could see just how many papers were there.

“Come on,” Davey said. “Let’s go back to the office so you don’t lose anything. And you can get another banana.” He looked at the ground, where Casey’s fruit had met its fate.

Trixie accompanied them back to the office, and Casey reached down to pet her. “Good girl.”

Trixie turned in a circle, chasing her tail.

Inside the trailer office, Davey cleared one of the desks with a sweep of his arm and pulled up two extra chairs before grabbing the donuts and the few pieces of fruit and plunking them on the surface. Casey peeled the last banana and took a bite before emptying the envelope onto the desk. Papers, photos, and forms slid out into a messy pile.

“Wow,” Wendell said.

Davey picked up a photo. “This is them.”

“Them who?”

“The guys who were here last night. I mean, not all of them, but a couple.” He handed the photo to Casey. She wasn’t surprised when the picture’s subjects looked familiar. The whole group of them had been at the crash, she thought, but a few in particular stood out.

“That guy messed with me.” She pointed to the guy with dirty blond hair and green eyes, the one who had frisked her. “And that one.” The man who had climbed into the cab and shoved her out, all the while yelling at Evan not to die.

Casey swallowed down a bad taste in her mouth. Davey got up, filled a cup at the water cooler in the corner, and set it down in front of her. She drank it all, then ate the rest of the banana in two big bites.

“So,” she said as she chewed. “What’s the rest of this stuff?”

“More pictures,” Wendell said. “Looks like truckers, along with these guys again. Truck stops. Highway signs. All with dates written on the back. Like Evan was making a photo journal or something.”

He was right. The photos—mostly Polaroids, which was interesting, since Casey hadn’t been sure Polaroids still existed—could be organized chronologically, with locations and names. A lot of the people were repeated, but several faces appeared only once.

“These papers,” Davey said, holding them out at arm’s length and squinting. “Some of ’em are truck manifests. Where the truck had been, where it was going, mileage, load, fuel stops, all that stuff.”

Casey took a bite of an almost-ripe apple and scanned one of the pages. “Do they say what exactly the trucks were hauling?”

Davey shuffled through the pages. “All sorts of things. Grain, office supplies, hardware, frozen broccoli. I don’t see a pattern, right off. I’d need some time with this stuff in order to figure anything out. I’m not an expert on trucking.”

“This is just notes.” Wendell held up a small, spiral-bound notebook. “Names, companies, questions. Like Evan was trying to figure something out by writing it all down.”

Trixie barked outside, the sound harsher than her happy conversational yipping. The barks ended with a loud whine, and then silence. Davey looked out the window, and Casey could see immediately that something was wrong. She scooped the papers, photos and last pieces of fruit into a wastebasket at the side of the desk and grabbed it, heading toward the door where Rachel had appeared earlier. Rachel, who sat at a table with an adding machine, looked up as Casey entered, and Casey put a finger to her lips.

Casey closed the door almost completely, still able to peer out the crack, just around the file cabinet, but from knee level, where no one would think to look.

Davey stood, plunking cups of coffee down on the desk where they’d been working, one in front of Wendell, and one at his spot. He was just sitting back down with a donut when a man came in the door—a man Casey recognized from the crash site and from the photos in the wastebasket—the man who had climbed up into the cab and yelled at Evan not to die.

“Help you?” Davey said, his voice an attempt at casual. Casey hoped the man couldn’t hear the underlying nervousness.

“Hope you can,” the man said. “I believe you met some of my friends last night, and you didn’t show them any of our famous Midwestern hospitality.”