Brock places the hanky over his mouth, his Adam’s apple working as fiendishly as mine is.
“What do we do?” I ask. “Start digging?”
“Man,” Brock says. “I don’t want to find what we’re going to find.”
“Neither do I,” Dale says.
“Maybe we do bring Uncle Joe in on this,” I say.
Brock speaks then. “Guys? I’m kind of afraid to bring Dad in on this.”
“You don’t think your father—”
“God, no. He didn’t kill anyone. And he certainly didn’t bring anyone here. But he’ll go ballistic if he finds out what’s going on.”
“Maybe we need him to go ballistic,” I say.
Dale speaks then. “Don, I’m pretty ballistic myself right now. Once I can breathe without wanting to gag, I’m going to figure out what to do here.”
“That may take a while,” I say dryly.
Brock gulps. “No shit.”
We swiftly leave the barn, and I hold back more dry heaves.
“This is fucked up,” Brock says. “What if we start digging? What if we find shit we don’t want to find? And what if we get blamed for it?”
“We can’t get blamed for it,” Dale says. “We didn’t do anything.”
“Right, but it’s on our property. Whatever evidence is here, we’re disturbing it.”
I lift my eyebrows. “That’s a good point. One I should have thought of as an attorney. Of course, I’m not exactly thinking clearly right now through the stench of dead bodies.”
“What if we say we didn’t know the evidence was here?” Dale asks.
“You and I both know what we’re smelling,” I say.
“Whatever it is, it’s buried. Or we’d see it, right?”
I lift my eyebrows again. He raises a good point. If it were buried—buried so deep that there’s no evidence of it on the ground—would we still be smelling this shit? I mean, graveyards don’t smell like this, right? Of course, those bodies are embalmed and buried inside airtight caskets.
Something doesn’t sit right with me. “Why are we smelling this so strongly?”
Dale shakes his head. “I don’t know, man.”
“We need to bring in an expert,” Brock says.
“I’m afraid I don’t know any experts on how we’re smelling decayed human flesh.” This time Dale speaks dryly.
“I’m not sure we have a choice,” I say. “I think we bring in your dad, Brock.”
“Guys…”
“What?”
“I’m honestly…afraid to. No, I don’t think he has anything to do with this, but it’s like I said before. He’ll go off all half-cocked, and before we know it…”
My heart is racing. I’ve never had a panic attack before, but I think I may be having one now. I breathe in deeply. Let it out slowly. Again. Again.