Part Two
The air around the old farm house had Wyatt Douglass feeling very uneasy. It had nothing to do with the amounts of nitrogen, oxygen, or carbon dioxide stirring in the chilly breezes of the wintery afternoon. It had nothing to do with any kind of barometric pressure or anomaly within the local climate. It was nothing physically or chemically tangible. What Wyatt found disturbing was the looks on the faces of those around him. As he approached an open doorway on the side of the damaged home, the sparse collection of federal personnel and local authorities began to condense and swell into a sea of people. He caught pieces of idle chatter near the doorway. It was a group of strangers, their hands stuffed tightly in their pockets as they tried to keep warm. Their faces were like billboards for the boredom they should have at least been trying to hide.
The flash of a camera from inside the scarred home caught Wyatt’s attention, suddenly tearing his gaze away from the disinterested and jaded faces. He noticed the star field of bullet holes covering the cracked wall directly in front of him. He quickly took note of the broken windows, the glass completely absent from the seared and splintered sills. He saw more bullet holes that had pierced the think planks of the door standing ajar and slightly off its hinges. There was blood here, too. It was dry, the color darkened to a sickly crimson brown and smeared by fingers belonging to a body that had slumped lifelessly to the ground. Above the smear, a the dried stain lightly dotted the battle-damaged entry way. It was caked into a few of the dozens of small holes spread over part of the door and doorframe. Wyatt knew instantly it was the spray from the farmer’s shot gun.
“Where’s the body that fell here,” Wyatt asked to no one specific. His voice suddenly boomed above the even, idle din of the meandering conversations. “According to the report, one of the agents fell right here.”
“It’s already been taken away,” answered Gordon Parks hurriedly. He glanced at the narrowed stares pointed in their direction.
“Why,” questioned Wyatt with loud annoyance. “The investigation at this crime scene has not been concluded.” He wasn’t talking to Gordon Parks alone and both of them knew it. The chit chat around the scene had begun to taper off. “I’d like to know why a body-this body-was removed from the scene!”
“Sir, who are you,” asked a gruff, slightly drawled voice behind Wyatt.
Wyatt spun around to find himself face to face to face with two similar looking men. One was wearing the uniform of the local sheriff’s department. The other was dressed in a suit and tie under a heavy, black pea coat, much like many of the other figures collected in and around the house. “Wyatt Douglass,” he answered promptly, adding, “from the EPA. These were our agents that were gunned down here.”
Wyatt watched the two men. Their golden brown eyes shifted, glancing quickly at one another before looking back at the younger man standing before them. “Of course,” said the sheriff’s officer.
The second man put his hands on his hips, stepping a little closer to Wyatt before he spoke. “Agent...Douglass, we’re going to need you to try to keep your calm.”
Wyatt blinked, trying for a moment to figure out if any of this were read or if it was just some kind of dream. “I don’t believe I’ve lost my clam,” Wyatt finally said, his voice mostly even. As if my calm was a cereal box prize I’d set down somewhere, he thought to himself.
The two men with round, fatty cheeks and bushy, chestnut and tobacco-colored mustaches glanced at each other again. “We disagree,” the federal half of the two-man authority band said.
“The body was well documented and photographed per procedures, sir,” the second man said. His brown eyes remained locked on Wyatt’s face. “It was removed, along with the others, to a secure morgue in Ardmore.”
“Others? What others?” Wyatt tried to move past them. He managed to squeeze by, but only just barely and not without effort. He saw a covered corpse in the living room beyond the kitchen where they were standing. Bits of furniture were turned over or blasted by gunfire. Wyatt looked back at the two men. He surmised they were brothers. They have to be, he thought. How strangely lucky to get assigned to the same case. “What bodies were removed?”
The federal brother stepped toward him, his head cocking to one side. Whatever he was about to say, Wyatt knew it was going to be tinged with dripping condescension. “Didn’t you receive a report or briefing of some kind on your way here?”
“Yes,” Wyatt said simply. He looked back and forth at the two brothers. They stood motionless, like chubby rocks in a dried riverbed. The sheriff’s officer was a blank slate, his small eyes hardly blinking, his sun-reddened face showing no emotion. His brother, only two feet away from Wyatt, seemed strangely expectant, as if he doubted Wyatt’s claim of having read a report on the matter.
“Four EPA Enforcement agents, along with one of the two local sheriff’s deputies serving as escorts, were killed while attempting to arrest Walker Parrish and his wife for a slew of federal environmental violations pertaining to Interior Directive 101.” Wyatt stared deep into the apathetic eyes of his opponent. For a moment there had been a flicker of hope in the man’s eyes. He had thought, if just for a fleeting moment, that he had the advantage over Wyatt. Wyatt Douglass had a habit of stomping on his opponents in just such a way. “So where are the other bodies? How many were moved? And, why were they moved?”
There came no immediate answer from either man. Wyatt glanced over his shoulder, spotting the bewildered looking figure of Gordon Parks. Wyatt let himself grin as he turned his head to face the twins again. They continued to stare back at him, unmoved by his aggressive and authoritative tone or the glare of his eyes. Wyatt took a deep breath. They were going to answer. And if they wouldn’t, someone on that farm was. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
* * * * * * * * * *
“At least they left the coffee machines alone,” Zach Goyer had said when they were examining the smashed and vandalized remains of the inside of their bakery. Mark LeVine had barely managed a smirk and even that was forced.
They spent the next few hours moving about their tattered business, sweeping and cleaning away the surprising volume of debris. The smell of hot coffee near the end of its brew cycle permeated the air. Outside, the first hints of a crisp, clear dawn were breaking over the trees and rooftops of the small suburban city. Mark didn’t realize he was staring into the golden band of sunlight piercing the soft purple and vivid crimson of the early morning sky until it was suddenly eclipsed. He blinked, taking in the silhouetted form of their first customer of the day.
It was his voice that broke the hours-long vacuum of conversation. “Are you guys open-Whoa! What happened?”
Zach appeared from around a corner behind the long counter and display case. His green eyes took in the thin figure in the bright, clean sunlight expanding gradually in the open cavity of the smashed window. After a moment, the man’s questions lingering in the air without an answer, Zach glanced at Mark. His partner looked strangely stunned. For a man filled with to the brim with an infinite repertoire of wit and charm, Mark appeared strangely and disconcertingly speechless.
Zach smiled warmly at the silhouetted man. “Yes, we’re open.” He walked past the counter toward the door. As he turned the knob of the thick deadbolt, freeing the metal frame from the wall, Zach suddenly felt a little silly. It wasn’t as if the man couldn’t just walk through the open space where a dense glass pane had been only the night before.
The customer took a cautious look around as he stepped over the threshold. The bakery was a familiar stop in his daily routine. Today, however, it was depressingly alien to him, a dying world that had violently collapsed on top of the sweet smelling shop he once brought his recently deceased daughter into. He looked at the motionless Mark, a man obviously wracked with pain and anxiety, to the bright face of Zach. There was pain in the gentle, emerald eyes beaming pleasantly at him. Zach was simply doing the only thing he knew how to do: keep going.
“What’s on the menu today?”
The blackboard on the wall behind the counter had not yet been wiped clean of the filth written and scraped across the columns and rows of the bakery’s various goods and specials. Zach gasped, realizing they hadn’t fixed it yet. “Umm...sorry,” he said, embarrassed.
The customer shook his head reassuringly. “It’s all right. It smells like the coffee is ready.”
“Yes,” Zach smiled. “We do have coffee.”
“I’ll take some,” the customer said cheerfully. “Make it two, in fact.”
Mark watched the customer shuffle past as Zach led him toward the broken display cases. He stared wordlessly, his body numb and his mind reeling. The anger and the fear he had felt like a massive, earthshaking tidal surge hours before had burned away the feelings inside of himself. It was like his heart had exploded in an emotional supernova only to collapse in on itself. Nothing, except the dead mass of his anxiety, a black hole inside his chest, remained.
Mark blinked, suddenly taking his weary eyes away from Zach and the man at the counter to a sound of glass crunching under footsteps outside. Two more customers stood uneasily near the door. They weren’t sure what to do. A terrible thought struck Mark all at once, almost taking the wind out of him. The two women beyond the wounded window and door looked so helpless. All of a sudden, they were lost and the true power and impact of the attack on the bakery was revealed.
“You can come in,” Mark heard himself say. His voice was flat and not far from a course whisper. “It’s okay,” he added, speaking a little louder. He watched the two women look cautiously at one another and then back at the shop. The taller of the two ladies smiled at length as she reached for the door handle. Even they did not seem to think of just walking through the open cavity between the thick aluminum frame.
“Are you all right,” the second woman asked when she entered the store. She stood just below Mark’s shoulder. She was grinning warmly, grandmother-like.
Mark swallowed. He glanced up as the first customer moved out of the way of another walking into the store. The man nodded at him before walking through the open doorway, the hollowed door rattling as it shut behind him. “Yes,” Mark said to the older woman. “Yes.”
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