Hope to Die by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

It’s feeding time. That’s the reason he found them bones, feeding time, but I expect he’ll be wanting to tell you that himself.”

CHAPTER
14
     
    WE FOUND ROYAL PRITCHARD out on one of several catwalks that crossed above the industrial pigsty. There were thousands of young pigs, or shoats, jammed into a pit that was easily a football field long and a quarter again as wide. A short, stocky guy in muddy rubber boots and Carhartt work clothes, Pritchard had a lit cigar in his mouth as he worked a set of hydraulic controls bolted to the railing of the catwalk.
    Responding to the pig farmer’s manipulations, a long line of feeders crossed above the sty from left to right, dropping corn in a steady, drenching stream. The pigs were going berserk in response, all trying to follow the rain of food, squealing and grunting so loud that it changed the pounding in my head, made it like the inside of a bell that was tolling.
    Sampson got Pritchard’s attention, and the farmer shut down the feeding system, which sent the pigs into a howling, squealing rage that seemed to join with the gonging in my head, speeding it, amplifying it, until I just couldn’t take being in there any longer, and I ran blindly for the door.
    Five seconds later, I burst out of the pigsty and ran on out toward the tree line in the rain, trying to control the excruciating pain that crackled from the base of my skull up. But the pain wouldn’t stop, and I felt my stomach roll and thought I might be violently sick.
    By the time Sampson came out with the pig farmer ten minutes later, however, the rain had cooled me down. My stomach was feeling better, and the ringing in my head had softened to a distant pealing.
    “That smell takes some getting used to, even with a cigar to mask it,” Pritchard allowed, looking sympathetic. “No doubt ’bout that. But I don’t mind, you know? That’s the smell a’ money in there, sure as I’m standing right here.”
    “Pork futures are up, huh?” Sampson asked.
    “It’s the new white meat, ain’t you heard?” Pritchard replied. “Price a’ fatted shoats has doubled past three years.”
    “You found the skull and a bone?” I asked.
    The farmer nodded. “I showed your partner where. Wasn’t too far from where you was standing when you got to feeling kind of, well, piggish, what I call it.”
    “Tell him how you found the skull,” Sampson said.
    Pritchard shrugged. “One of them things. The hopper jammed out in the middle, and the corn was just pouring there, and every pig in the place wanted to be at the center. Anyway, I opened up the sides enough I could see the skull and bone there, plain as day, in the dung. Fished the skull out with a hook duct-taped to a pole. Sheriff’s deputies used a claw thing to get the bone.”
    “Nothing else? No other bones?”
    Pritchard’s cheek twitched. “Not that I seen, but hell, there’s three, maybe four inches of shit in there front to back. You’re welcome to come rake through it after the gold on the hoof’s up to weight and off.”
    “How long will that be?” I asked.
    “Twenty days.”
    I have never been the sort of man who flies off the handle, but for some reason, I thought about the possibility there were other bones in that pigsty, and I just lost it.
    “We’re not waiting fucking twenty days,” I shouted at him. “The fucker who dumped the body in there killed my goddamned wife! I’m getting a warrant and I’m getting those goddamned pigs out of there today.”
    “Christ, Detective,” Pritchard said, looking offended. “I’m sorry about your wife, Jesus knows I am. But you’re acting like I tossed a body in there.”
    “Did you?” I demanded.
    Pritchard said, “Hell no. What the—”
    I had seven inches and fifty pounds on the farmer. When I popped him in the chest with my right hand, he staggered backward and sat down hard in the gravel, shocked.
    “You know a guy named Mulch?” I demanded. “He related to you?”
    “Alex!”