Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 15 – Children of the Corn
Al Campbell sat upright and in a lawn lounge chair beside a phone booth on the northwest corner of a middle-of-nowhere intersection in Nebraska. His eyes went from his Rolex to the setting sun and back, as if checking his watch and the sun were in agreement. Corn stretched skyward in all directions, and the stalks rustled and chittered in the gentle breeze like disobedient children told to stand quietly until called. The western road shimmered in the last of the day’s heat, and Al sometimes cocked an ear in that direction, a cat outside a mouse hole, and squinted into the fading daylight, waiting. Behind him and facing away from the setting sun, Blanche cut up vegetables in their Winnebago.
He checked his watch and called into the RV. “Are you sure about this, Blanche. This is Friday night. You’re sure he comes by here every Friday night?”
Blanche glanced at the digital clock on the stove and sliced her right index finger. “Damn.”
“Damn we have the wrong day? Damn we got here too late? Damn what?”
“Cut my finger. Did you make the payment?”
Al stood, walked to the center of the intersection, checked the roads in all four directions, shook his head and sat back down. “Yes, I made the payment. You read the information correctly?”
“Have I made a mistake before?”
A state cruiser crested a rise on the western road.
“My apologies, dear sister. Here he comes. You ready?”
The trooper pulled up behind the RV and turned its lights on. The officer, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and a singer’s baritone voice, slid his baton into his utility belt as he exited his cruiser and walked over. “You folks okay? Breakdown or something?”
Blanche stood behind the RV’s screen door and held up her hand. “Cut my finger slicing vegetables but it’s nothing.”
The officer glanced at Blanche’s knife. She held it in a towel and blood dripped from her other hand onto the towel. “A smaller blade might make be easier to handle, Ma’am.”
Al stood up, smiled, and hooked a thumb towards the booth. “Called back home. We call from wherever we are every Friday night at seven. They must be out at a game or shopping. We’re waiting for them to call back. Is there a problem, officer?”
“Just saw you folks here, thought you might need some help. If everything’s okay, I’ll be on my way.”
Al cocked his head. “Forgive me for asking, officer, but that’s not a Nebraska accent I hear. You a transplant?”
The officer smiled. “Good ears. I’m what Stephen Vincent Benét called a New Hampshire Man. Thought I’d lost that Yankee drawl. Guess not, huh?”
The phone rang in the booth. The officer and Al stared at each other. The officer nodded towards the ringing phone. “You going to get that?”
Blanche opened the door and came down the steps. “I’ll get it.”
The officer kept his eyes on Al.
Blanche thrust her knife upwards into the officer’s back between his third and fourth ribs. She twisted the blade as it entered his heart. He fell lifeless, the knife still in his back.
“Are you sure he was one of them, Sister?”
She entered the Winnebago and came out a moment later with a green covered yearbook in her hands and a bandaid on he finger. The cover read “Little Green Class of ’73”. She flipped pages, stopped, tapped the bandaged finger on a picture, and handed him the yearbook.
Al looked at the picture. He kneeled beside the fallen officer and rolled the corpse onto its back. “Yeah, and wow, you’re good. Nobody can trace this back to us?”
“They’d have to dig through lots of public records, same as I do, and I only do one lookup in one place at a time. The money went to a General Delivery in Lincoln and came to a General Delivery in Grand Island, and everything done through library computers, blind Prodigy accounts, and those computerized phonebooks on CDs you got.” She went back into the Winnebago with the yearbook and reappeared at the door a moment later. “Dinner’ll be ready in an hour. I’m making your favorite, chicken pot pie, nice and creamy with lots of vegetables.
He smiled. “You’re too good to me, Sis.”
“We should be gone before then.”
Al glanced at the blood pooling around the dead state patrolman’s body, at the way the setting sun gave it a polished bronze color, and nodded. “Yeah, seal it up.”
Blanche secured the RV’s door. Al got in the driver’s seat. Out of habit, he turned on his directional and checked his mirror before pulling out into the road.
