door off.”
“Anything else?”
“Skid marks of differing widths. More than one vehicle was involved in the hijacking.”
Having wrapped his preliminary investigation, Newbarr said, “Nobody’s certain this was a hijacking. For it to be a hijacking, something has to have been taken.” He threw an apprehensive glance at the overturned trailer. “Let’s hope it’s been ransacked and everything’s gone. At least that would make some sense.”
As bad as the driver had gotten it, his trailer got it worse.
It had broken free of the rig and skidded across a field wet with morning dew. The undercarriage had dug a twisting scar into the earth, now filling with groundwater.
We stepped over snapped fence posts and snarls of barbed wire. Garvey had a shotgun; Newbarr and I carried flashlights.
The trailer rested on its side; one of its cargo doors lay open like a drawbridge. Sunlight slanted through low-lying clouds to highlight the patina of blood on the door, the weeds and grass, still soaking into the dirt. Feathers—white, brown, yellow, most bloody—dotted the scene.
The head of some animal, a goat or sika deer, lay where it had been hurled in a thatch of cockleburs. The ragged neck wound indicated its head had not been cleanly sliced but rather wrenched and partly torn off. Its hide was stuck with burrs and its eyes gone filmy: they looked like marbles rubbed with sandpaper.
Coming from inside, their origin obscured by darkness: rustling sounds, scrabbling sounds, the odd peep. I pulled my revolver from its shoulder rig. It felt ungainly in my pinkie-less hand.
The second cargo door hung down like a flap of skin. I bent underneath it, easing myself into the trailer. The stink hit me like a closed fist: not decay, as not enough time had passed—just the high, giddy smell of death.
My flashlight beam was joined by Newbarr’s. They illuminated wholesale slaughter.
It looked as though a wind of razor blades had blown through the trailer. The compartment was crammed full of animals. Goats, deer, rabbits, guinea pigs, birds of many species. Most had been caged but some had obviously been roped to the walls; when the trailer flipped on its side these ones—goats, a few llamas—were strangled on their leads: they hung in the muggy darkness like heavy bags for boxing.
The cages had been forced open, steel rods bent and mangled, the animals plucked out and subjected to far worse than the goats got.
Someone had fed rabbits into the trailer’s cooling fan—it had remained operational even after the crash, judging by the red spray on the walls. The whicker birdcages had been stomped to splinters, birds and all. The hanging deer had been gutted and their chest cavities stuffed with dead guinea pigs.
A bluebottle bounced against my head, rendered sluggish by this bounty. Thousands of them created a maddening buzz. Below the buzzing, other noises: confused and pitiful.
“Who?” Garvey was seething. “Who would commit such sacrilege?”
He snatched Newbarr’s flashlight and stalked deeper into the trailer. I staggered back and heard a brittle, jaw-clenching crack. Training my flashlight down, I saw I’d stepped on the skull of a pale blue budgie. I blessed myself and inspected the ground for footprints, finding not a single one—how was that possible?
A fresh realization stung me. These animals hadn’t been killed outright: most had only been mutilated. Birds with wings torn off, rabbits with their feet snipped off, all left to bleed out and die. The mutilations were careful, meticulous; it must have taken hours. A wingless dove lay in a pile with several others, still horribly alive. Biting back a sob, I stepped on its head, too.
“How much more do you need to see?” Newbarr said softly. “This all seems nothing so much as . . .”
“Some sort of a message,” I finished for him.
Garvey let loose a scream. His shotgun blew a ragged hole into the death-box, and another, and another. He stormed the
“Anything else?”
“Skid marks of differing widths. More than one vehicle was involved in the hijacking.”
Having wrapped his preliminary investigation, Newbarr said, “Nobody’s certain this was a hijacking. For it to be a hijacking, something has to have been taken.” He threw an apprehensive glance at the overturned trailer. “Let’s hope it’s been ransacked and everything’s gone. At least that would make some sense.”
As bad as the driver had gotten it, his trailer got it worse.
It had broken free of the rig and skidded across a field wet with morning dew. The undercarriage had dug a twisting scar into the earth, now filling with groundwater.
We stepped over snapped fence posts and snarls of barbed wire. Garvey had a shotgun; Newbarr and I carried flashlights.
The trailer rested on its side; one of its cargo doors lay open like a drawbridge. Sunlight slanted through low-lying clouds to highlight the patina of blood on the door, the weeds and grass, still soaking into the dirt. Feathers—white, brown, yellow, most bloody—dotted the scene.
The head of some animal, a goat or sika deer, lay where it had been hurled in a thatch of cockleburs. The ragged neck wound indicated its head had not been cleanly sliced but rather wrenched and partly torn off. Its hide was stuck with burrs and its eyes gone filmy: they looked like marbles rubbed with sandpaper.
Coming from inside, their origin obscured by darkness: rustling sounds, scrabbling sounds, the odd peep. I pulled my revolver from its shoulder rig. It felt ungainly in my pinkie-less hand.
The second cargo door hung down like a flap of skin. I bent underneath it, easing myself into the trailer. The stink hit me like a closed fist: not decay, as not enough time had passed—just the high, giddy smell of death.
My flashlight beam was joined by Newbarr’s. They illuminated wholesale slaughter.
It looked as though a wind of razor blades had blown through the trailer. The compartment was crammed full of animals. Goats, deer, rabbits, guinea pigs, birds of many species. Most had been caged but some had obviously been roped to the walls; when the trailer flipped on its side these ones—goats, a few llamas—were strangled on their leads: they hung in the muggy darkness like heavy bags for boxing.
The cages had been forced open, steel rods bent and mangled, the animals plucked out and subjected to far worse than the goats got.
Someone had fed rabbits into the trailer’s cooling fan—it had remained operational even after the crash, judging by the red spray on the walls. The whicker birdcages had been stomped to splinters, birds and all. The hanging deer had been gutted and their chest cavities stuffed with dead guinea pigs.
A bluebottle bounced against my head, rendered sluggish by this bounty. Thousands of them created a maddening buzz. Below the buzzing, other noises: confused and pitiful.
“Who?” Garvey was seething. “Who would commit such sacrilege?”
He snatched Newbarr’s flashlight and stalked deeper into the trailer. I staggered back and heard a brittle, jaw-clenching crack. Training my flashlight down, I saw I’d stepped on the skull of a pale blue budgie. I blessed myself and inspected the ground for footprints, finding not a single one—how was that possible?
A fresh realization stung me. These animals hadn’t been killed outright: most had only been mutilated. Birds with wings torn off, rabbits with their feet snipped off, all left to bleed out and die. The mutilations were careful, meticulous; it must have taken hours. A wingless dove lay in a pile with several others, still horribly alive. Biting back a sob, I stepped on its head, too.
“How much more do you need to see?” Newbarr said softly. “This all seems nothing so much as . . .”
“Some sort of a message,” I finished for him.
Garvey let loose a scream. His shotgun blew a ragged hole into the death-box, and another, and another. He stormed the
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