Bentley Little: The Store

Well, that wouldn't last. As soon as it opened, he'd go directly to town hall and He stopped walking, his stomach sinking.

The perimeter of the site was littered with the carcasses of dead animals.

He took a deep breath as he stared at the scene before him. A wall of debris from the cleared meadow had been pushed back by bulldozers to the rear of the property and formed a semicircular barrier to the land beyond. He had seen only trees and bushes at first, logs and branches, but this close he could see that there were animal parts mixed in with the rest of the cleared brush, bodies lying on the ground in front of the debris. As his gaze moved slowly from left to right, he counted four deer, three wolves, six javelina, and over a dozen raccoons, squirrels, and chipmunks.

How had this many animals been killed?

And why?

_The deer_.

The deer had been an omen, a taste of things to come. He had thought it odd at the time, eerie even, but now the animal's death seemed downright malevolent. It was as if the deer had died as a result of the erected sign. And now these other animals had died because the land had been cleared.

Their deaths seemed to be the price of construction.

It was a trade.

That was stupid, he knew, but logical or not, something about the idea felt right to him, and goose bumps arose beneath the cooling sweat on his arms as he stared at the curved line of bodies.

He began walking forward. The first deer had not been shot or injured. Had these other animals died naturally?

He strode quickly across the unevenly graded ground. Two days ago, he would have laughed had anybody suggested anything as ludicrous as what he was thinking. This was a construction site. Local workers, people he probably knew, had been hired to clear a piece of land and build a building. There was nothing strange or unnatural about that.

Only there was. He didn't know how, didn't know why, but somehow within the last twenty-four hours everything had changed. The entire world seemed different. His unshakable faith in the rational and the material had been shaken, and while he wasn't ready to believe in ghosts and goblins and little green men, he wasn't quite the skeptic he had been. It was an unnerving feeling, and it didn't sit well with him, and once again he found himself wondering if it wasn't his personal connection with this area that was coloring his viewpoint.

_Third Store Massacre in a Month_.

Then again, maybe it wasn't.

He reached the first animal, a wolf. Like the deer, its stomach was distended. Also like the deer, there was no physical sign of violence. The wolf did not even appear to have been pushed here by a bulldozer. There wasn't a mark on it. It was as if it had walked or crawled to this spot of its own free will and died.

He looked past the dead animal to the wall of cleared debris immediately beyond.

And saw an arm protruding from the tangle of rocks and brush.

Bill's heart leaped in his chest. He took a hesitant step forward to verify that what he thought he was seeing was what he really _was_ seeing.

Sticking out between the bare branches of a dead manzanita bush was a white hand and forearm, smeared with mud and blood.

He backed up, stumbled across the rutted remains of the meadow, and, as the sun rose over the mountains, ran down the highway as fast as he could toward the police station in town.

He returned with the police to the scene, answering questions and watching as they pulled the corpse out from the rubble. After the body had been loaded into an ambulance and taken away, he rode back to the station with Forest Everson. The detective took down an official statement, which Bill read and signed.

It was after ten when he was finally through with all of the forms and questions and reports. In the furor over finding the body, The Store's destruction of the meadow and its wanton disregard for local zoning ordinances had been pushed to the side, but though Bill was still disturbed by what he'd found, he had not been distracted from his original purpose, and he walked next door, to the town hall, and explained to the young acne-scarred clerk behind the counter that he wanted to talk to one of the building or code enforcement inspectors.

"Mr. Gilman's out for the week," the clerk said.

"And who is Mr. Gilman?"

"He's the code enforcement officer."

"Isn't there anyone else I could talk to?" Bill asked.

"Well, what exactly is the problem?"

"The problem is that whoever's in charge of clearing the land for The Store has totally ignored Juniper's zoning regulations. They cut down every tree on that property, they blasted a section of hillside --"

"You want to talk to Mr. Curtis. He's the Planning Director."

"Fine," Bill said. "Let me talk to him."

"Actually, he's not here right now. He's attending a seminar in Scottsdale. If you want, I can have him call you when he gets back. It's just a one-day thing. He should be in tomorrow."

"Look, all I want to do is let someone know what's happening so inspectors can be sent out there before any more damage is done."

The young man looked uneasy. "I, uh, think everything's been approved."

Bill stared at him. "What?"

"I think that was all okayed." He looked around the office, as though searching for someone higher up to help him out, but there was only a secretary seated at a desk against the far wall, typing on a computer and pointedly ignoring the exchange. "You'd have to talk to Mr. Curtis, but I think the Planning Commission gave The Store a waiver."

Bill was stunned. "How's that possible? I didn't hear anything about it."

The young man shifted his feet uncomfortably. "You'd have to talk to Mr.

Curtis."

"Mr. Curtis? I want to talk to the mayor!"

"He's not in his office, but I could leave a message to have him call you." "Is _anybody_ in their office right now?"

"There's a town council meeting tonight. Six o'clock. You might bring it up in open discussion."

Yes, Bill thought. Open discussion. A public forum. That was exactly where this needed to be brought up. There was something fishy going on here. Decisions affecting the entire town had apparently been made by the Planning Commission in closed sessions, without any input from members of the public. He didn't know whether or not there had been any bribes involved, any promises made in exchange for cash or stock options or whatever, but something wasn't right, and it needed to be brought to the attention of the public.

He'd call Ben, make sure the editor put it in the paper.

"Thank you," Bill told the clerk. "I think I will bring it up in front of the council. What time does the meeting start?"

"Six o'clock. In the council chambers next door."

"I'll be there," Bill said.

Ginny called at lunch to find out how things had gone. He'd phoned her earlier, when he'd first run to the police station, to tell her that he'd found a dead body and wouldn't be home before she left for work. Now he filled in the details, explaining that they didn't know who the man was or how he'd died but that the body was being taken up to the county coroner's office in Flagstaff.

"Was he murdered?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess we won't find out until they do an autopsy."

"That's so creepy."

You don't know the half of it, he thought. He was silent for a moment, considered telling her about the animals, but something kept him from it, and he switched the subject to The Store's desecration of the land.

"So that's what that blasting was," she said.

"They totally destroyed it. Drive by after work. You won't even recognize it."

"And that's how you found the body? When you were looking at the damage?"

"Yeah. I was walking onto the meadow -- or what used to be the meadow to check it out, and I saw an arm sticking out of the debris. I hauled back to the police station and told the cops." He leaned back in his chair, looked out the window at the forest. "There's not a tree left on that site, Gin. By the end of the week, the rocks and the hill and everything else will be gone, too. It'll just be a flat cleared space."