Bone Harvest (4 page)

CHAPTER 4

The boy was growing out of his body. Claire watched him come into the sheriff’s department and then stood to let him know she saw him. Ray Sorenson. He was his father’s son—taller than his father, over six feet, hair like dried wheat, big hands, sunburned nose. Not a handsome kid, but one with potential. He just wasn’t put together right yet. Time would tell.

As he walked toward her, he hunched his shoulders and dragged his feet. If he stood up straight and tall, he would be closer to being a man, Claire thought. Maybe he wasn’t ready for that yet.

“My dad said you wanted to talk to me.” His eyes were on the floor.

“Thanks for coming by, Ray. I’m a deputy sheriff for the county. Claire Watkins, but you can just call me Claire. I assume you know what happened at the cooperative?”

He nodded, standing with his weight on one side of his body and then shifting it to the other side. His cutoff jeans hung loose and low on him; she imagined them caught on his hipbones. A big black T-shirt covered the top of the jeans so nothing inappropriate showed. Nike tennis shoes with the shoelaces trailing and the tongues hanging out completed the ensemble. But he looked clean.

“Sit down.” She pushed a chair his way and he sat. “Can I get you a Coke?”

Ray raised his head at the suggestion and she saw that his eyes were like his father’s—light blue, like cornflowers. A Scandinavian blue. They seemed to draw light to his face. “Yeah, a Coke would be great.”

“Hot out there, isn’t it?”

She walked to the vending machine and got them both a Coke. She didn’t usually drink colas, but decided to make an exception on this hot summer day. Also, it would be good to join him in a drink—he might talk easier.

She handed him the Coke and he popped the tab and drank half the can in one swallow. “Thirsty?” she asked.

“Yeah, I just got up,” he told her. “Didn’t have time to eat anything. This is breakfast.”

“Ray, please sit down. I need to ask you some questions.”

He folded himself into the chair next to her desk.

“Where were you Friday night?”

She could see his face fall in on itself. “Just out.”

“I’m not your parents. You don’t need to worry about what you tell me. I’m not going to give you a scolding. This is serious. I do need to know where you were and what you were doing. Were you with your friends?”

“Yeah.”

“All night?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you give me their names?”

He lifted his head and looked out from under straw-colored eyebrows. “Do I have to?”

“Is there any reason you wouldn’t want to?” she asked him, surprised at his reticence. She was just looking for an alibi.

His face tinged red. “Well, one of them might get in trouble.”

Claire thought she knew what was going on. “You have a girlfriend?”

Ray looked at her like she had just guessed the right answer on a quiz show, mouth slightly ajar. She would wait him out on this question.

She took a sip of her Coke. Not a bad drink, but a little too sweet for her. It needed ice and a lemon slice floating in it.

“Are you going to have to talk to her?” he asked.

“How late were you out together?”

He ducked his head and then came up for air. “Her parents don’t know. They don’t know she was out with me Friday night.”

“Where do they think she was?”

“At a friend’s.”

“But she was with you?”

He nodded.

“All night long?”

He slumped in his chair, not denying the statement.

“Where did you hang out?”

“There’s an old deserted church up on Double N. You can get in through one of the windows. We spent part of the night there.”

Claire knew the church. They must be in love to put up with that place for a night. She would have thought an open field would be better, but the mosquitoes could be bad. “Does your father know?”

Ray shook his head.

“You might want to tell him.”

“Are you going to talk to her?” he asked.

“What’s her name?” Claire asked back.

“Tiffany. Tiffany Black.”

Claire thought,
I should have guessed.
Half the girls in the county were named Tiffany. “I will talk to her, but I don’t need to say anything to her parents.”

“Cool,” he said.

“I hope you’re being careful.” She was surprised when the words came out of her mouth. She couldn’t help it. She was a mother.

Ray stared at her, then finished the Coke in another swallow. This time he looked right at Claire. “Thanks for the Coke.”

Charles Folger was glad that Sorenson had warned him that the deputy was a woman. He had heard about this one from the big city. Too big for her britches—and she was wearing britches. Getting ahead of men who had been working for the sheriff for years. She had made some enemies.

Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins was sitting across the desk from him. He was ready for her.

“So you are the agronomist for the cooperative, Mr. Folger?” she said, referring to a notebook she opened.

She probably didn’t even know what that meant. Folger had his spiel down pat. “I am a specialist in the art and science of crop production.”

She smiled at him and wrote something down. She had good teeth, he noticed. Large and white. She looked like a very healthy woman. But he did not approve of women working as police officers or deputies or whatever name you wanted to give them in law enforcement.

“How long have you been working for the cooperative?”

“Why? Do you want to know how old I am?”

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Have you been working here since you were born?”

So she thought she could be funny. “I’m seventy-one years old. No mandatory retirement. I’ve been working here since I was twenty-seven. That’s probably longer than you’ve been around.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She gave him a look and then continued, “Have you had a chance to examine the plant that Ron Sorenson took from the garden that was destroyed in front of the sheriff’s department?”

“Yes,” he answered. Make her work.

“And what did you find?”

“It was, as suspected, Parazone.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?”

He would do his job. Just because she was a woman didn’t mean he would thwart the investigation. It was not his way. “Yes. Whoever did this has probably used this product before.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He added a nonionic surfactant to the spray.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to continue. He said nothing more.

“And what is that, please?”

“It is an agent we recommend adding to Parazone because it gives it a better spread. In layman’s terms, or in this case laywoman’s, it makes the Parazone stick to the plants better. It makes the pesticide much more effective.”

Watkins wrote some more things down in her notebook. She took her time about her work. He assumed she was thorough. He understood because he was very thorough. He often did his tests two or three times just to make sure they gave the same results each time. He never guessed about anything. As much as possible he believed in taking the guesswork out of his job. He was a scientist, not an artist.

“That is very helpful. So what I gather from what you’re telling me is that we are probably looking for a farmer?”

“I would venture to say that, but let us assume that it is someone who has used these pesticides before, or who has watched them be used.”

“Do you know how many farmers there are in Pepin County?”

“Out of a total population of close to eight thousand, I think the last census showed that less than a quarter of the adult men were farmers. Since there are around two thousand adult men, I think that puts the number of farmers at around five hundred.”

“Narrows down the search slightly—assuming that our guy lives in Pepin County.” She tapped her pencil on her front teeth, a disturbing habit. “What I need to understand here, Mr. Folger, is how dangerous these products are. I’ve read the labels. I understand that they are both restricted-use pesticides. But what precisely does that mean?”

“It means that both products have the ability to injure people.”

She sighed and then said slowly, “Yes, I understand that. But how do they do it and how much does it take? Is it easily accomplished or does it require a megadose? Let’s say, rolling in the product, bathing in it, swallowing a gallon of it.”

“Let’s not get carried away, Mrs. Watkins.”

“You can just call me Deputy Watkins.”

“Are you not a Mrs.? My mistake.”

She let his comment pass. He was sure that he had heard that she had been married and had kept her married name. Apparently she didn’t want to be known by that name. Another strike against her.

“Let us start here. Is one more dangerous to humans than the other?”

“Between Caridon and Parazone?”

“Yes.”

“That’s hard to say.”

“Give it a go.”

“Which would you think?” he asked her. Let’s see what she’d do with this. Would she even give it a try?

Deputy Watkins thought for a moment, then ventured, “I guess I’d say Caridon, since it’s an insecticide. We’re closer to bugs than to plants. That would be my guess.”

“And you would be wrong.” It felt good to be able to say that to this cocky woman who thought she knew everything. “Parazone is deadly if swallowed or inhaled, and can be extremely injurious if it is absorbed through the skin. Caridon is most dangerous when inhaled. This effect only lasts a short time after the product has been sprayed on the fields.”

“How does it work?”

“Caridon causes cholinesterase inhibition. Parazone causes mucosal damage. Again, more simply: Caridon will knock you out; Parazone will cause you great pain. Either way you will die if you have ingested enough of the product.”

“Have you ever heard of this happening?”

“Only once in all my years of work here have I known anyone to run into trouble with one of these products. A young boy was working with his father and stayed in the field too long after it had been sprayed. He had some serious nosebleeds, but he recovered.”

Her head came up. “Who was that?”

“Why?”

“I might like to speak with him.”

“This was years ago.”

“His name?”

Reluctantly, Charles gave her the farmer’s name: Hal Swenson. He couldn’t think of any good reason not to. Then he snapped, “Why are you asking me all these questions? What do you imagine is going to happen?”

Deputy Watkins put down her notebook and pen and leaned toward him. She then began to talk slowly and clearly. “It is my job to be prepared for what could happen. I need to understand the destructive potential of these two agents. I protect the welfare of the people of Pepin County. Any help you can give us will be appreciated both by the sheriff and by the county.”

“Just don’t go getting huffy and hysterical on us,” he advised her, even though she looked like she would do neither.

She stood up and looked down at him. “I’ll do my job. You do yours. We’ll get along.”

“How’s Rachel?” Leaning back in her chair in the quiet office, Claire asked the required question. After first calling the pharmacy where Bridget worked, she had then tracked her sister down at home.

Claire had found in talking to Bridget these days that she might as well make an immediate inquiry about her niece and get it out of the way. Otherwise Bridget would find some way to mention Rachel in the first minute or two. Not that hearing updates on Rachel was a hardship. Bridget’s enthusiasm for her young daughter was infectious, although sometimes Claire worried that Bridget’s vocabulary was suffering since she was spending so much time with Rachel. “She’s fine. I think she’s starting to talk.”

Claire had recognized early on that this child of her sister’s was going to be a genius. At least if she believed half of what Bridget told her. And for the most part she went along with it all. But there were times when Claire had to object.

“I don’t think that’s possible, Bridget. She’s only nine months old.”

“You should hear her. She’s hardly ever quiet.”

“That’s called babbling. She’s practicing talking. It’s not the same thing. She is saying sounds to say sounds, not to communicate.”

“Well, when she does start to talk, she’s going to be a master at it.”

“I’ve no doubt. Hey, I’d love to chat, but I’m actually at work. I have some questions for you about pesticides.”

“Pesticides. Not exactly my area of expertise.”

“I’d like to understand better what they can do to a human if ingested or inhaled.” Claire explained the theft at the cooperative and the massacre of the flower garden. She concluded with the thought that was uppermost in her mind. “It wouldn’t have taken very much of the pesticides to kill the flower garden. This guy probably still has a lot of the stuff left.”

“You sound worried. Do you really think he’s going to do more with the pesticides? Like what?”

“That’s where you come in. I need to understand what kind of harm could be rendered with these substances. I talked to the agronomist who works at the cooperative and he was barely helpful. Made me feel like an idiot because I didn’t know what cholinesterase inhibition was.”

Bridget giggled. “Well, at least you can say it. Do you understand what it is now?”

“Not really.”

“I doubt the agronomist did either. I’m not sure
I
remember completely. Pharmacy school was a few years ago. But basically what it means is the body stops functioning.”

“That sounds bad.”

“Yeah, deadly. Arsenic acts by causing this inhibition. The body slowly starts to shut down. Or it can happen fast. Depending on the dosing.”

“Okay, that helps. I know it’s your day off, Bridget, but I really do need help with this. We need to be ready in case this guy gets crazy on us.”

“What do you need?”

“Could you look up what Caridon and Parazone can do, what amounts are needed, and what the antidotes are? I need all the particulars. The agronomist acted as if it were some state secret and I was a KGB agent. I want to disseminate this information to all the deputies by tomorrow so we can be prepared. I don’t want to be taken by surprise.”