The Brenlee Volunteer Fire Department has three full-time employees. Andy Currie pushed the paper work to the people who knew how to do it, kept the list of keys well sorted, maintained and issued the beepers and walkies, made sure the Fall and Spring pancake breakfasts made it onto the city calendar, and generally used his broad lipless smile and cheery demeanor to promote the department in the community.Most people thought ... +more+
A square cement block jutted up from the side of the canal. The box protected the metal workings of a gate that redirected water from the canal into a lateral irrigation pipe. This pipe fed the Sneed's orchard. The first dead body Hernandez had seen in Brenlee had come from under one of these gates. A teenager had gone swimming in a canal at night and, not knowing any better ... +more+
Yesterday (Tuesday, right?), he took the call out at the Sneed's place. He saw the boy's body, Gabriel Velasquez's body, murdered somewhere and then carefully arranged in the Sneed's peach orchard. Small and still. Last night, after a day of townspeople, county officials, teachers, parents, and Gabriel's frightened peers, he received a letter from an old newspaper man, written well in advance of yesterday. In ... +more+
The old man's story short circuits here. He stops talking. It is not a pause, so much as a failed connection. Mind and voice, emotions and logic cannot reconcile. The logic of an otherwise simple system fails. His lips freeze separated by the narrow width of the breath required to utter a short phrase. He stares into his story unable to look away or even take the small necessary internal ... +more+
Maria had rules for everything and for everything she had a rule. As a lifelong bachelor this caused great consternation for Bergoyan, but he also took some pleasure in seeing all the shoes lined up just inside the front door, the kitchen free of newspapers and books, and a pair of clean hand towels always neatly folded over the rack in the bathroom. After an intense arguement over whether or not ... +more+
William couldn't feel the tip of his nose anymore so he switched to coffee, no whiskey. Bergoyan looked and sounded steady. He had stopped telling Maria's story some time ago and the two had sat drinking together with the muted, yet recognizable, sounds of morning television news coming through the ceiling and a large square of sunlight moving from left to right across the kitchen tile. The old man ... +more+
Did Plaster know too much or not enough to be frightened? He parked his car on the canal bank next to the orchard surrounding the old farm house and radioed in to Winnie at the station. "You shouldn't be out there," she told him. She would know. Born and raised in Brenlee. "I won't be long." Plaster thought her concern was over the time he would lose, that he wouldn't be ... +more+
"Is Gabriel really dead?" "I'm afraid so." "Have you seen him?" "No." "Then you don't know for sure." "Sick today, huh?" "No. Not really." "Didn't go to school, though." "Am I in trouble?" "No." "It's against the law to skip school." "Not today." "Why?" Plaster didn't answer. He didn't make a sound. "Because of Gabriel. Right?" "Yep." "Did they find his body?" "Yes. Yes, they did." The tarp shifted and then something metal under it. Mac Taylor had moved away, further under the workbench. Neither of them spoke ... +more+
Dennis Plaster waited behind his desk, watching the large round clock in the small squad room tick off his 28.3 cents a minute. In the first half hour he went through all the questionnaires again. He counted 31 references to young Mac Taylor, Gabriel Velasquez's best friend. Forty references to Gabriel as a 'nice' kid or person. Two 'cutes.' 40 'really Mexicans.' 35 'small,' 'little,' or otherwise diminutive. Only one ... +more+
Perry Foltz had stretched out on the narrow stainless steel bench in the corner of the cell. They had taken his shitkickers from him and his hat. His dirty white socks had holes in the heels. A hat-shaped impression kept his hair from looking entirely unruly. He hummed a tune that didn't quite hang together. Officer Plaster approached the holding cell of the Brenlee city police station quietly, the last smile ... +more+