Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4) by Nick Pirog (best ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗

I said “If that would have gotten out, that not only did Recom 6 kill nearly every cow treated with it at the dairy, but that the milk illegally made its way into the hands of consumers and made them sick—” I was laughing. “Wow, I can’t even contemplate the fallout. It would have been devastating.”

I turned to David Ramsey and said, “No wonder you had them all murdered.”

“Murder?” Mallory gasped. “What is he talking about, David?”

I raised my eyebrows. “You didn’t know?”

“David?” the Mayor barked. “What the hell is he talking about?”

For the first time, Ramsey reacted. His brow furrowed for the briefest moment before quickly snapping back taut.

I said, “The Save-More murders.”

The Mayor and Mallory traded glances. Eccleston leaned his head back slightly.

I said, “Lowry Barnes didn’t go into the Save-More to kill his manager because he was fired. He went in there to kill Neil Felding.”

“Neil Felding?” barked Mallory. “Why?”

“Because three weeks before the Save-More murders, Neil was combing through the computers at Lunhill when he stumbled across the pictures and documents that I’m sure Chief Eccleston has shared with you.” I explained further, “You see, Neil was working on a second iteration of Terminator seeds, which were first studied in 1994, just about the time all those cows were dying. Someone involved with the Recom 6 testing buried the pictures of the dead cows and the falsified data in a Terminator seed research folder.”

Finally, finding his voice, David Ramsey said, “All those pictures and documents could easily have been faked.”

He was right. Alone, the pictures and documents wouldn’t be enough to convict anyone in court. The pictures proved nothing except that a bunch of cows died. They didn’t prove how they died or when they died. And the only person in any of the pictures was Tom Lanningham, the town vet, who could have been tending to the cows for any number of reasons. As for the documents, though I was certain they were real, they could easily have been faked.

Luckily, the burden of proof in the court of public opinion was significantly lower than a court of law, and Lunhill would have been crucified. Which, of course, was why Lord Vader was here and not sipping scotch with the Emperor.

“You might be right,” I said. “But you and I both know the pictures and documents are real and if they ever got out, they would cause a shit storm that would bankrupt Lunhill.”

No one said anything for a pause, and I resumed my narrative.

“That very day Felding discovered the Recom 6 folder, he approached Ramsey about the pictures and documents, which upset him greatly as they involved the very town where he lived most of his life. There was a small dust-up in the cafeteria and Neil resigned from Lunhill.”

“Like all employees of Lunhill,” I continued. “Neil signed his life away on a series of non-disclosures when he was first hired, and if he wanted to avoid litigation, he would stay quiet about what he uncovered. But what you might not know is that Felding was promised an extra fifty thousand dollars a month in perpetuity if he remained silent. And so he did. Or at least planned to.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Eccleston wrinkle his nose at the mention of $50,000. Apparently, he wasn’t receiving nearly the same amount.

I glanced toward Ramsey, “But Lord Vader didn’t trust that Neil wouldn’t blow the whistle on Lunhill’s almost two-decades-old secret. And he knew if it got out that Lunhill had falsified data sent to the FDA, there was nothing to stop the public from thinking they’d falsified data for every single one of their products from Spectrum-H to all their Frankenseeds.”

“So Ramsey puts his two goons,” I nodded at Dolf and Snake, “in charge of making their little problem go away.”

Dolf’s lips crawled up into a smirk.

“They could just murder Neil on his own, but coming so close to his resignation from Lunhill, it might look suspicious. And making a death look like an accident in this technological age isn’t quite as easy as it might look on television. So our friends from Blackwater—that’s right, the Blackwater—stumble on some timely information: an ex-felon had recently been fired from his job at the local Tarrin grocery store. And if there is one place in a small town where everyone is bound to go at some point, it’s the grocery store.

“They approach Lowry Barnes and give him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to kill Neil Felding and make it look like he was there retaliating against the manager who fired him two weeks earlier.”

I glanced at both the Mayor and Mallory. “And if you’re curious how I know the exact amount Lowry Barnes was paid, it’s because just last week Lowry Barnes’ widow showed me the money. I saw it with my own eyes.” I didn’t find it necessary to explain that the money was actually in the form of a $50,000 truck, $20,000 in cash, and two $90,000 college trust funds.

The Mayor looked as though she might puke.

Mallory did puke, leaning forward, letting loose a small hiccup of whatever he last ate. He wiped his mouth with the bottom of his flannel and I continued, “Lowry waited to get word from one of the Blackwater goons that Neil was headed toward the Save-More, then he followed Neil in, made a couple statements for the surveillance cameras about how he shouldn’t have been fired, then shot all six of them.” I counted on my fingers, “Odell McBride, Peggy Bertina, Will Dennel, Tom Lanningham, Neil Felding, and Victoria Page.”

It happened when I was counting. Seeing each of the victims’ faces. It was one thing for two members of the cover-up, Tom Lanningham and Neil Felding, to both be at the Save-More. But minutes earlier, I’d learned Odell was part of the conspiracy as well. For all three of them to be there at the same time…

I smiled.

Wheeler cut her eyes at me.

I always found