Gone(18)

So many pieces, he thought, looking over the contents of the table. So much paperwork, so many details.

The big, drafty home creaked and groaned around him. The radiators wafted brittle heat. Upstairs, the bed springs squeaked as Millard rolled over.

Jurisdiction played its usual meddling role in a case like this. Luckily, he’d been the one to file the missing family report, and the Kemps’ home fell in county, as well as state, jurisdiction. No one had fought him on it, which was a good thing. He’d done his due diligence and promptly notified the state police. They, in turn, offered their services. If, at any time, he should wish to contact Detective Dana Gates, he was encouraged to do so. Gates had been involved in a high profile case just last year, the same case that wound up landing Connie Leifson a position at the college.

But there was no confirmed abduction. It was still perfectly possible that the Kemp family had left of their own volition. While the records showed they didn’t own a second vehicle, they could have walked off somewhere. There had been a red tricycle in the garage, but no stroller. A family with two young children almost always had a stroller. The search party launched from Incident Command tomorrow would scour the woods surrounding their property, and beyond.

They also could’ve been picked up, maybe by a friend. Rondeau wouldn’t know enough to make the call on how plausible that was until he had a full profile on Hutch Kemp, each of his friends and his co-workers. Lily, too. But there was no unequivocal sign of foul play in the house. Things left undone, yes. Dirty dishes, food left out, and empty suitcases — that was enough to alert suspicion, but not confirm anything. He reiterated to himself: They could have left, freely, for any number of reasons. It could have been related to the documentary film, for all he knew.

He reached to the middle of the table and picked up the small flash drive which Addie had given him.

Rondeau bounced it in his palm for a moment. He considered getting another cup of apple cider from the fridge.

What are you doing, Jay? Are you stalling?

It occurred to him that he was, in fact, procrastinating. Not his style, not at all. Of course he wanted to know what was on the drive.

So? Why are you just standing there?

He didn’t know. He decided to stop putting it off, quit telling himself the family was okay, and he walked into the living room.

The glass-faced woodstove was dark inside, and the room was cool. It was that time of year when the sun warmed the house during the day, but the nights grew chilly. The first frost was maybe a week, maybe only days away. If the family was out in the woods somewhere, they wouldn’t last long.

He sat on the couch and opened up his laptop on the coffee table. He waited for it to boot up, and stuck in the drive. There were two files on it, both of them called “.mov” files. The first was named Rushes - Scn 14. The second, Bday Misc.

Addie hadn’t told him there were two files. He didn’t know what “Rushes” meant, but clicked on it since it was first on the list.

He sat back on the couch to watch, and realized he was scratching himself on the shoulder so hard it was starting to hurt. He took his hands and gripped his knees.

The video played:

Black screen. Then, a voice: “If by your words or actions you threaten corporate profits, you are at the top of the list for domestic terrorism.”

An image faded in. An aerial shot, sweeping over rows of vegetables. A barn in the distance. This was a farm. The shot cut to cows grazing, then chickens pecking the dirt.

“We had chickens,” a second voice said. A man appeared, leaning against the barn beside a henhouse. Rondeau recognized him — the farmer in the picture from Kemp’s office. “We had eight. My wife named them. She called one Carol. Can you imagine that? A chicken named Carol.” He laughed, and then the shot went aerial again. Rondeau thought it was the type of footage captured by a drone — or, what Addie had said, a quadcopter with a camera.

But no signs of trash, or waste.

This is the new documentary?

The narrator’s voice — Rondeau guessed it was Hutch Kemp’s voice — resumed. “You can speak up and you can tell the truth. But you will be guilty. Because if you cause a disruption in the profits of industry, you are guilty under the Patriot Act. Animal rights and environmental activists are the number one domestic terrorism threats according to FBI . . .”

The image cut to more cows, only they weren’t grazing in an open field, but squished together in a factory farm. The next few shots were brutal, showing cows knocked on the head, their throats cut, standing udder-deep in their own feces.

“Today, the number one cause of deforestation, global warming, water and air pollution, and human disease is not fossil fuels. It’s the meat industry. Yet small, sustainable working farms are finding it difficult to gain a foothold in the food delivery system. Not because the market doesn’t demand it — it does. But because the market is rigged.”

The screen went black, with the words SCENE MISSING. The voice continued. “The agricultural industry is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut with proponents seated in the legislature. Environmental groups are patronized by leading meat industry corporations. Scientific research is bought and paid for. While animal agriculture destroys our planet — and us — it is protected by our very government.”

The video abruptly stopped. Rondeau looked and saw it had come to the end — only two and a half minutes in length. That was it. He clicked on it and watched it through again. It hadn’t been a glitch, the hundred and fifty seconds composed the entirety of the clip. He sat back for a moment, thinking. That was not the most current film. That clip had been from the previous film, Citizen Farmer. Had to be.