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Empty silos are not difficult to find in Iowa.
Empty, of course, as in "not containing corn or feed". Nature abhors a vacuum, especially when that vacuum cuts the wind and keeps out the snow, so the silo Valentine had chosen a week ago contained a good many creepers, spiders who ate the creepers, mice who ate the spiders, and barn owls who ate the mice.
And bats. Their guano added a fragrant decoupage atop the rusting chute gear and old feed sacks at the base of the silo.
F. A. James hung upside down by a single line of nylon cord, dangling from rigging far above in the black top of the silo. His slightest movement caused him to swing extravagantly, like the pendulum in a grandfather clock.
Valentine squatted atop the rusty mechanical rubbish, sharpening a short, thick, curved blade with a sturdy handle.
The security man's features were hidden under a white pillowcase, tightened about his head with a bit of the same nylon cord. Inked-in eyes and mouth made him look as though he were wearing an abbreviated Halloween costume. The effect was more for those who would find the body than for the benefit of the pair in the silo.
"Gate codes", F. A. James said, his voice stressed and cracking. "Is that what you want?"
Valentine kept sharpening the knife.
"There's a spare back-door key..."
"I don't want access to Weathercut", Valentine said, deciding the knife was sharp enough. "I wanted you out of it, Franklin".
"But I'm nobody important", F. A. James squeaked. "I don't even have my own room".
"That's the problem with being a Nobody Important. Someone might decide you're disposable. Kind of like that teenage girl back in Arkansas. The one you, Bernardo Guittierez, Tom Cray, and Sergeant Heath Hopkins raped and then killed".
Valentine smelled urine leaking.
"No! I mean, you've got the wrong guy".
Valentine was a little relieved that F. A. James kept talking. He hated the ones who just blubbered at the end. Cray had spent the last five minutes screaming for his mother.
"Her name was Mary Carlson. Ever catch her name? Bother to remember it? You must remember her face. What did it look like at the end? Now, I figure four guys, maybe ten minutes each - that was a long forty minutes at the end of her life. About as long as the next forty minutes are going to be for you".
James was panting now, and the pillowcase went in and out of his mouth like a flutter valve.
"Mary was into horses. Loved them to death - good at taking care of them too, once she learned what was expected".
Valentine drew the blade across the whetstone. The sound echoed off the cobweb-strung walls of the silo like a cat spitting. "This is a hoof knife", Valentine explained. "Horse hooves are tough to cut, and you need a short, strong blade to get through them. Hoof is way tougher than, say ... the cartilage in your nose and ears, Franklin".
James spoke again from beneath the ghost mask: "Captain Coltrane over in Yaseda, he's got a whole jar full of ring fingers off of girls he collected for the Reapers. You should be going after him".
"I never knew the owners of those fingers".
"I didn't even come. I just did it 'cause the others did, and Hop killed her before I knew he'd drawn his pistol".
F. A. James' story didn't quite jibe with what the others had said. According to Guittierez, the corporal had demanded that the girl be "flipped over" to escape the indignity of "sloppy seconds", then made her...
But Valentine didn't care about the details anymore. The investigation and hunt were over. Now there was just duty to Mary Carlson.
"You see a white collar? The time to confess passed with the investigation. I read the documents. Consul Solon, for all his faults, didn't like civilians mistreated. You could have admitted it. You would have gone to prison, probably, but you wouldn't be hanging here now".
Valentine selected a spot for the first knife cut.
"This is just to scare me, right? You're done... I'm scared. What do you want? What do you want?"
Valentine never remembered much else that F. A. James said during his final moments, cut short, as they always were, because the screaming got to him. Part of him was distracted, puzzled by that last question.
Hobarth's Truckstart and Trading Post, Missouri, February, the fifty-third year of the Kurian Order: The days of long-haul trucking are all but over.
Nevertheless a few overland "runs" still exist. The Atlanta-Chattanooga -Nashville artery still trickles, as does the old interstate between Baltimore and Boston. The Vegas-Phoenix-Los Angeles triangle is the scene of the yearly "Diamondbacks Run", where supercharged muscle cars roar from the coast to Vegas, where the crews switch to off-road vehicles for a trip to Phoenix, then make a final leg in tractor-trailers running loads back to Los Angeles, something of an indulgence for certain wealthy or engine-obsessed Quislings.
