Startled, his first thought was that he’d been caught, and his initial impulse was to run, hoping that he would not be followed or recognized. But he ascertained almost immediately that the two men had no interest in confronting him about what he’d done. On the contrary, they seemed pleased with what they’d witnessed.

It wouldn’t pay to be too accommodating, however, and there was no guarantee that he was reading this situation right, so he faced the men and demanded, “What are you looking at?”

The one on the right stepped forward, hand extended. He had short neatly combed hair, a pleasant open face, and was wearing a dark blue suit with white shirt and red tie. He smiled as he introduced himself. “Julius Pickering. You can call me Jay.” Seeing that V.J. had no intention of shaking his hand, he let his arm fall, though the movement seemed smooth and natural rather than awkward.

V.J. closed his notebook. “That’s great,” he said. “But I gotta go.”

“My associate and I would like a word with you first.”

The man with him had stepped forward as well. He, too, was clean shaven and wearing a business suit, but there was a slovenly air about him, and something familiar in the way he stood.

V.J. squinted.

Was it that homeless guy?

“I would like to offer you a job,” Pickering said. “You’ll be working with Mr. Heywood here.”

“I’m Mr. Heywood,” the other man muttered.

V.J. recognized the voice. It was the homeless guy.

What’s going on here?

“The two of you will be processing loans for The First People’s Bank.”

“Processing loans? I’m not qualified—”

“You’re plenty qualified.” Pickering motioned toward the bird legs and wings in the corners of the foursquare court.

This didn’t seem right. But it was as though he was in a trance or under some sort of spell, his brain unable to connect the dots and determine why this was not normal.

“What would I be doing?”

The man smiled, and something about that smile both frightened and attracted him.

“What would you be doing? Many things,” he said softly. “Many things.”

SIX

1

“So what do we do?”

The question hung in the air, and Brad had no idea how to answer it. The final results from the autopsies had come in, and according to the M.E. the men and women they’d found in the meadow had not died from poisoning, as they’d assumed, but had died of natural causes.

All of them.

At the same time.

He did not know where to go from here. How were they supposed to investigate something like this? It was clearly not a natural event—the victims were all dressed up, for God’s sake, all former B of A employees, all lying together in a field—but getting to the bottom of what had happened was going to involve far more than the ordinary law enforcement techniques and procedures with which he was familiar.

Glen Taggart, the Bank of America manager, had most definitely not died of natural causes, not with all those stab wounds and that caved-in face. He had been murdered. The report on Taggart showed that two weapons had been used in the assault: one with a sharp blade, most likely some type of knife, the other a heavy blunt object, possibly a baseball bat. This, at least, was something they could sink their teeth into, and Brad told the assembled deputies that they were going to focus their efforts on finding the bank manager’s killer or killers as quickly as possible, which, hopefully, would lead to a solution to the deaths of the other bank employees. They would be going over Taggart’s house and the homes of the others with a fine-toothed comb, as well as interviewing friends, relatives and neighbors. He ordered both Bills to survey security cam footage from the gas station and Circle K on the north end of town, as well as any other businesses or residences that might have footage of the road that led toward the refuse transfer station, and told Mitch to rustle up a posse and start looking for weapons in the underbrush near the site.