Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [52]
A bookcase full of reference books about all the various products they sold to the farmers covered the back wall. Mr. Folger had been at his job so long that he remembered when they could use the really bad pesticides, like DDT and Alar.
“You want something to drink, Ray?”
Mr. Folger had his own refrigator tucked under a shelf in his office. Ray always figured it gave the guy a sense of safety knowing his food didn’t mingle with everyone else’s. Maybe it was just about control. Having a cold drink when you wanted one. A cold drink sounded good to him. “You got any Mountain Dew?”
“No, but I have diet Coke.”
“Whatever.”
Folger handed him the can of Coke. “You hear the latest news on the stolen pesticides?”
“You mean the poisonings in the park? Hey, I thought I saw you down there at the fireworks?”
“Yeah, I was there. So were half the people in the county. What have they told your father?”
Ray thought back to what his father had said this morning at breakfast. “Not much. I think he’s going in later on today to talk to them. He did say something about it being connected to that letter in the paper and those murders you talk about.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought. That’s what I’d like to know more about. Can you let me know what they tell your father?”
Ray stood up and said, “Why are you so interested? I don’t usually tell other people about my dad’s business.”
“I could tell your dad some pretty interesting things about you and that slutty girlfriend of yours.”
Ray sat back down.
Folger continued. “I worked late one night. She showed up and I saw her go into the back storage area with you. I thought I’d check on the two of you, just to make sure everything was all right.”
Ray remembered that night. Why did he let her persuade him to do that? He had not wanted to do anything with her at work, but it was like all she had to do was touch him and he was on high alert. She thought it was fun. She liked the danger. What would she think if she knew they had been watched? Knowing her, she’d probably like that too. He wasn’t sure he would even tell her.
“I might mention to your father that you let your friend come into a secured area. And I do mean come.”
There was no subtleness about this guy. The leer on Folger’s face made Ray reexamine his thoughts about him being gay. “It won’t happen again. Please don’t tell my dad.”
“No, I’m afraid that won’t be good enough, Ray. I think that I am going to need to get some information from you or I will be forced to talk to your father about your animal behavior. There are some things I want to know.”
“Like what?”
“How do they think this ties into the Schulers? Who do they suspect? I want to hear about it tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“Why are you so interested?” Ray let his full can of pop drop into Folger’s pristine wastebasket and watched dark liquid spray the insides of it. His little moment of resistance to this man’s nastiness.
“I’ve thought about what happened out on that farm a long time. I think it’s all going to come out pretty soon and I want to be one of the first ones to know about it.”
CHAPTER 16
When he saw the big headline about the poisonings emblazoned across the front of the Durand Daily, he was surprised that he wasn’t feeling more excited about how well his plans were working out. He sure had everyone’s attention. And so far no one had died. He guessed that was good. People who died never came back. He had tried once to bring them back and it hadn’t worked at all.
But as he sat there reading over the article, he felt hollow. It was a familiar sensation. He had had it since he was small. He felt as if he didn’t have a heart, as if his body were made of plastic and that he was a fake, a robot, but no one knew it. In this familiar story, the fact that he was a robot had been kept a secret even from him, but he had his deep suspicions.
Sometimes