The Fates Read online

  ‘No problem.’ The Chief smiled broadly. ‘I hate to run, Martin, but I promised my boy I’d hit some flies to him tonight You know, Sunday is opening day of the Little League and he’s trying to get as much practice in as he can.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Lasker replied. ‘I’ll be there myself.’

  ‘Good, are you covering it for the News?’

  ‘That’s right’

  ‘My boy is number eleven on the Giants. Plays shortstop.’

  ‘I’ll watch for him.’

  The two men now stood in the front lobby of the police station.

  ‘Well you’re going to be quite an all-round reporter, if you cover everything from police news to sports.’

  Lasker didn’t like the patronising tone in the Chiefs voice but he smiled politely. ‘Thanks again, Chief Sturdevent’

  ‘My pleasure, son.’

  As Martin Lasker turned to leave, the front door flew open and banged against the wall as a tall, thin, red-faced man wearing blue coveralls and a dirty tee-shirt rushed in, bumping the reporter out of his way.

  ‘Chief Sturdevent?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you come out to my place right away? Something terrible has happened. Somebody —’

  ‘Hold on, hold on.’ Sturdevent held up his stop-sign hand again. ‘Who are you? Don’t I know you?’

  ‘Name’s Cy Bondarevsky. I have a farm out on —’

  ‘Jersey Road,’ the Chief finished the sentence for the farmer. ‘I bought some of your sweetcorn last year. Mighty good it was, too.’

  The scene was growing stranger and stranger for Martin Lasker. Bondarevsky was obviously very upset and sweat flowed from his face. Sturdevent, on the other hand, was a veritable lagoon of placidity.

  ‘Somebody’s butchered one of my best cows,’ the elderly man moaned loudly. ‘Butchered her to pieces. You got to come out and take a look. I want the ones who did it caught.’

  Lasker’s eyes widened. This could be news.

  ‘Hold on, now,’ Sturdevent murmured quietly. ‘Just tell me what happened. Exactly.’

  ‘I just told you,’ the farmer shot back quickly, anger colouring his distress. They hacked her up. I come straight in here to get a policeman.’

  ‘Why didn’t you phone up?’ Lasker asked. Both Bondarevsky and Chief Sturdevent looked at him sharply: the Chief with annoyance for the interruption, and the farmer with sheer incredulity, as if Lasker were insane.

  ‘I come right in here, I didn’t hang around. I was just in from the lower pasture and how was I to know but those nuts might still be around the farm somewhere? I wasn’t taking no chances. Are you a detective?’

  ‘No, I’m Martin Lasker, of the Millville News.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bondarevsky turned back to the Chief. ‘Are you coming? My help’s gone home for the day and I’m alone there.’

  ‘All right, I’m coming,’ Sturdevent replied unhappily. ‘You’re only about ten minutes down Jersey Road, aren’t you?’ he asked still hoping to get away quickly.

  ‘That’s right, foller me, my car’s out front.’

  ‘Okay.’ Bondarevsky turned and went out the front door.

  ‘Chief.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Sturdevent started walking away to the back of the station.

  ‘Mind if I ride along with you? I’d like to see this myself.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Sturdevent called back. ‘But I’m not driving you back here. I’m going home after this, and that’s over near Dayton’s Brook.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll walk from there.’ Lasker hurried after the portly policeman.

  ‘I suppose you’re the agriculture correspondent for the paper too,’ Sturdevent said as they got into the police car.

  ‘I don’t think we have an agriculture correspondent,’ Lasker replied with a chuckle. ‘And I don’t know much about farms.’

  ‘Neither do I. There’s our man.’

  Sturdevent had pulled around to the front of the station house. Bondarevsky leaned out the window of a battered old station-wagon and waved. Then he drove off with the police car right behind. It was supper time in Millville and there weren’t many vehicles on the roads.

  ‘This sounds unusual,’ Lasker offered after a few moments of silence. ‘Ever heard of anything like this happening before?’

  ‘Hell, no. The worst kind of thing happens here is a brawl down to Gino’s Bar every now and again. Or somebody borrowing somebody else’s car for a joyride. If you want to be a crime reporter you sure picked a bad place to get a start, son.’

  ‘I don’t particularly want to be a crime reporter. What do you think of that guy’s story?’

  ‘We’ll see when we get there. I expect he’s too upset to make real sense. Cows cost quite a bit these days.’

  ‘It’s hard to be mistaken about a butchering.’

  ‘Maybe. And then again, maybe one of the hands left some hunk of farm machinery running and that cow just walked into it. Cows are dumb animals, I do know that much.’

  ‘What do you know about this guy Bondarevsky?’

  ‘Not much. His family used to own quite a bit of land. He still has a good-sized farm but he’s been selling it off piece by piece lately. Too much for him, I guess.’

  ‘Who’s he selling to?’

  ‘People slinging up raised ranch houses. And one group of New York boys are planning to put up a complex of apartment houses. You know, like the Heritage House Apartments.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lasker said.

  ‘It’ll make quite a change.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  They drove out past School Street, which marked the northern limit of the town’s residential neighbourhoods, and swung onto the old Springfield Road, a back-country turnpike dating from colonial times. Jersey Road was a right turn-off a couple of miles further along.

  ‘He’s travelling at a fair pace,’ Sturdevent said. ‘I’d give him a ticket for it, but it wouldn’t hardly seem fair.’

  Lasker smiled but said nothing.

  ‘You from Millville originally, Martin?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘What’s your father do?’

  ‘Works out at the Gunntown factory. Getting ready to retire.’

  ‘Gunntown. Makes bullets?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I guess that’s the place that made this town. The rest of the business is pretty small stuff by comparison.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I guess most of this area used to be called Gunntown back in the real early days before they got around to incorporating legal townships and so on. There’s a Gunntown cemetery over near Naugatuck, at least that’s what they call it.’ Sturdevent paused and then added, ‘My wife reads a lot about early New England history.’

  ‘This looks like the place,’ Lasker said, leaning forward in the front seat. Bondarevsky had driven into the yard of a ramshackle farmhouse. A heavily dented pickup truck stood nearby. The lawn was badly rutted and dug up from being used as a parking lot. Sturdevent pulled the police car in alongside the farmer.

  ‘House needs a good paint job,’ the Chief muttered to Lasker as he braked to a stop.

  ‘This way, this way,’ Bondarevsky shouted, walking quickly backwards away from Sturdevent and Lasker.

  ‘He’s still very upset,’ the reporter commented.

  ‘He sure is. I didn’t smell any drink off him back at the station.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘We’re coming,’ Sturdevent hollered to the farmer.

  They followed Bondarevsky around the side of the house to a grey, weather-beaten bam that had a garage tacked on to the near side. A few chickens strutted around nervously. As they passed the garage Lasker noticed that it was full of farm equipment, some old and rusty, some new, sacks of seed and fertilizer and various other items. That explains why Bondarevsky parks out front, Lasker thought.

  ‘Around here,’ the farmer called.

  ‘Cowshit,’ Lasker thought he heard Chief Sturdeven
t mutter.

  A small shed sagged against the far side of the bam. As soon as they turned the corner to face it the policeman and the reporter noticed the smell — heavy, dose and foul. Bondarevsky stood at the door of the shed, pointing inside.

  ‘Why was the cow out here?’ Sturdevent asked, his face wrinkled and his voice hollow from trying not to use his nose.

  ‘She was due to calve soon,’ the farmer replied, ‘and I could tell she wasn’t happy in with the others, so I moved her in here.’

  Sturdevent grunted and stepped into the shed. Lasker followed dose behind, and Bondarevsky lingered at the door. A single light-bulb at the end of an extension cord dangled from the low ceiling. The air was very hot and the stench was almost unbearable. Flies buzzed thickly.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ the Chief said.

  Martin Lasker felt his throat seizing up.

  ‘I told you it was horrible,’ Bondarevsky whined in the background. He sounded sad and self-pitying, but calmer now that he had witnesses to the disaster that had befallen him.

  Lasker leaned back against the thin board wall of the shed and closed his eyes. He felt sick and dizzy, and he was sweating freely. Sturdevent took another tentative step forward into the shed and stopped. He didn’t know what to do.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ the Chief said finally.

  Lasker opened his eyes. He tried breathing through his mouth but the smell was inescapable and there was an ugly taste to the air.

  The dirt floor of the shed had been covered with a layer of hay, which was now heavily splattered with blood. Bondarevsky’s cow — most of it — was in one corner. The head and two forelegs lay about three feet away from the fat, mutilated torso. One of the hind legs stretched out away from the body at an unnatural angle. Lasker thought it stretched very far. The other hind leg was not in sight, presumably hidden beneath the body. Now Lasker saw that there was blood everywhere, blood and tufts of coarse hair. Bondarevsky was still whining in the doorway but neither Sturdevent nor Lasker took any notice of him.

  ‘This animal wasn’t cut up,’ the Chief suddenly said, and the calm, ordinary tone of his voice startled the reporter. ‘This animal was not cut up.’ Sturdevent had been studying the cow’s head and he now stepped gingerly over to the torso.

  Bondarevsky fell silent.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lasker asked.

  ‘Well look here. This leg looks as if it was pulled right out of its socket. The hide is stretched and part tom away, but it doesn’t look like it was cut with a knife. Same goes for the head — like it was yanked right off.’

  Lasker took one step forward and peered down at the dismembered animal. The blood and flies were too much. He couldn’t tell if Sturdevent was right. It didn’t make sense.

  ‘Look at the way the blood splattered,’ Sturdevent continued. It looks like about eight strong guys came in here and tore this cow to pieces with their bare hands. Or else —’

  ‘Or else what?’ Bondarevsky spoke up.

  ‘Or else the cow exploded. All by itself.’

  ‘Cows don’t explode,’ Lasker said.

  ‘You don’t know for sure.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Bondarevsky said. ‘Cows don’t explode. I’ve been a farmer all my life and I never heard of such a thing. That cow was hacked up by somebody with a sick, sick mind.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Sturdevent sighed. ‘But it doesn’t look like a cut-up job to me. Look here along the belly.’ The cow’s underside was split open and part of the foetus had slid out, in a congealing pool of blood and entrails. ‘The calf isn’t cut, the organs aren’t cut, the cow’s skin has this jagged tear from the throat to the ass. Get an animal doctor in if you want to, I’m not going to start mucking around with this mess, but it doesn’t look like knife-work to me. That’s all I’m saying.’ He stood up and wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘Christ, what a sight. I’m getting out of here.’

  Sturdevent hopped across the scattered remains of Bondarevsky’s cow and stepped out of the shed. Lasker followed quickly, glad to leave.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Bondarevsky asked.

  Sturdevent was patting perspiration off his face with a folded handkerchief. ‘Tonight, nothing. Tomorrow morning I want you to send your field hands in to see me. Maybe one of them knows something.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to do anything now?’

  ‘I told you, it doesn’t look like a crime to me. It looks strange, I’ll say that. But I can’t send the coroner out on this kind of job, and we don’t have a vet on the town payroll. If you want to pay for it I’d suggest you get a vet out here to give you his opinion. The state and county agriculture offices will all be closed now anyway, but we’ll give them a call in the morning and see what they can do.’

  ‘I don’t know… I pay taxes… what for? …it’s too late for a vet now…’ the farmer moaned on, mostly to himself, walking around in small half-circles, his hands hanging uselessly by his sides.

  ‘I’ll take a look around the back and in the bam,’ Sturdevent said to Lasker. ‘You wait here with Mr Bondarevsky. Ask him anything you can think of.’ The Chief shrugged and walked away. When his back was turned to the young reporter he smiled briefly to himself. It was a gruesome, sickening business, but for Sturdevent the whole thing was offset by Bondarevsky’s perpetual cry-baby act. Sturdevent thought farmers were supposed to be a tough, hardy band, unafraid of a little blood and dirt. Well, there was a lot of blood here, but he had had it with the old man. The police chief was more interested in exactly what had happened to the cow. He was sure it hadn’t been carved, though he realised he could be wrong. He was no expert in knife-work, but he had seen enough of it to recognise certain signs. The tears looked wrong, and the undamaged entrails. No puncture marks. No signs that the cow had been killed quickly first — such as a bashed-in skull. Who would try to dismember a live and struggling cow? And the hind leg, torn and stretched from its joint, but the skin not completely broken. It was a puzzle, all right. Cows didn’t explode.

  Sturdevent pushed the tall grass behind the bam around with his foot. He didn’t have the slightest idea of what he should be looking for.

  Martin Lasker decided that a few quiet, straightforward questions might help soothe the farmer somewhat.

  ‘Have you noticed anything unusual around here lately?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the same as always, until today.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might want to do this kind of thing to you, Mr Bondarevsky?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. We’re all friends out here. Who would do something like this? A sick, sick person. I don’t know any sick persons. Someone from the city maybe.’

  ‘But why would someone come all the way out from the city to kill a cow?’

  ‘Sick, I tell you, sick.’

  ‘Have you seen any strangers around here lately?’

  ‘Nobody… I don’t know. That’s a road out there. Cars go by. Maybe somebody. I don’t pay any attention.’ Bondarevsky looked profoundly unhappy. He wanted someone arrested immediately.

  ‘Well, you’re sure you haven’t noticed anything strange or unusual around the farm lately?’

  ‘Like what thing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lasker replied helplessly. ‘Anything that struck you as out of the ordinary. Anything at all.’

  ‘Only that the swamp-fire was back.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Lasker asked, although he had an idea to what the farmer was referring.

  ‘The swamp down the bottom of Hollow Road. It lights up sometimes at night. Phosphorescence from the swamp gas.’

  ‘Oh yeah? But is that unusual?’

  ‘I saw it about two weeks back. First time since 1955. Probably been there every year in between, but a couple of weeks back was the first time I saw it since. Had a lot of it back then. I only saw it once this time. From the loft in the bam. It looks pretty, sort of.’

  Bondarevsky was now a bit calmer and Lasker was pleased that it was going we
ll. ‘Anything else besides the swamp-fire?’ Where was Sturdevent?

  ‘Not enough rain. We can use some more rain.’

  ‘Uh-hunh.’

  ‘Usually June’s all right for rain. July’s worse, but June’s usually all right.’

  ‘Everything seems okay,’ Sturdevent hollered from the bam doorway. ‘You coming, Martin?’

  ‘Right, Chief. Are you okay?’ Lasker asked the farmer.

  ‘Okay. Goodbye,’ Bondarevsky replied flatly and turned to the shed. Now he stepped unhesitatingly inside.

  Lasker stood several yards away for a few moments. He thought he could hear the farmer talking to himself. A cool breeze in the gathering dusk carried away most of the grisly smell. The police car honked in the distance and Martin suddenly broke into a run. He didn’t want to be left out at this place.

  ‘Maybe it was a knife job,’ Sturdevent said before Lasker had closed the car door. ‘I could be wrong, could be wrong about the old man, too.’

  The car roared down the bumpy country road. The Chief was in a hurry to get home.

  ‘What do you mean? Did you find something?’

  ‘Two jugs of gin in the milk cooler.’

  ‘But the old man wouldn’t have had time to do a job like that on the cow, clean himself up and come into town. The hired help would be around. Besides, he’s too old.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. He seemed spry enough to me.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t tie up with the way he was carrying on. For a while there I thought he was going to break down completely.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sturdevent said disgustedly. ‘But that was a bit much, if you ask me. An old geezer like that, he shouldn’t be acting like a kid who’s dropped his ice-cream in the sand.’

  ‘What do you think then?’

  ‘I don’t know how to figure it at all I don’t see how it could be done. It doesn’t look like a knife job but what else could it be? He say anything to you?’

  ‘Only that it’s a dry June.’

  ‘Shit’

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  *

  The next morning, Lasker spent two hours playing back the tape of his interview with Chief Sturdevent, editing it and trying to cast it into some kind of workable shape. He cut out several large passages where he thought the Chief was simply playing the good PR man, and then a few more sections that struck him as thinly-veiled politics. Then he realised he had very little left with which to work, so he started over again. If Sturdevent didn’t mind coming across as a blowhard, why should he, Lasker, worry about it?