Page 44 of The Burning

I smile. “I’ll drive.”

Sweet Feed and Seed is located off County Road 68, across from a field of cut corn, the yellow stalks covered with snow and shivering in the wind. A mishmash of steel buildings lines the west side of the lot. Ahead, a beat-up elevator juts sixty feet into winter haze. The gravel parking area is populated with half a dozen pickup trucks and a semi rig parked alongside the road, the dirty snow all around crisscrossed with tire ruts.

Glock and I slog through slush to a low-slung building where a sign above the door reads OFFICE. An old Alan Jackson number oozes from a 1990s-era boom box on the counter where a woman wearing insulated coveralls pages through her phone.

“Morning.” I cross to her, thankful for the warmth, and hold up my badge. “We’re looking for Clarence Raber.”

Her bored expression transforms to startled when she notices I’m a cop. “Oh.”

“Is he around?” I ask, aware that Glock is hanging back, keeping an eye on the parking lot.

“This about that weird murder up in Painters Mill?” she asks.

“This is about me talking to Clarence Raber.” I say the words amicably, but she gets the message.

“I think he’s out in the elevator this morning.” She reaches for an old-fashioned desktop phone that is ostensibly part of a paging system. “Let me check.”

I raise my hand and stop her before she can speak. “If you could just point us in the right direction, we’ll get out of your hair.”

She hauls herself to her feet and points. “He’s greasing the bearings on the elevator this morning. Walk straight out then go left. Can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.”

Tipping his hat at her, Glock opens the door, and we go through.

“Bet the farm she’s calling him right now,” he says as we cross the short distance to the larger building.

“Bet you’re right.”

We look at each other and grin.

The elevator is a massive structure fabricated of corrugated steel that’s striped with rust. Despite the cold, the overhead door is raised about five feet. The rumble of what sounds like a generator emanates from inside. I duck under the door, and find myself in a cavernous space packed with equipment and machinery. Ahead, the elevator conveyor belt slants upward toward the ceiling at a thirty-degree angle. A young male matching Raber’s description stands on a catwalk of sorts, twenty feet up, cranking a wrench the size of a man’s arm.

“Clarence Raber?” I call out.

He stops cranking and looks down at us. “Help you?”

I hold out my badge and identify myself. “I’d like to talk to you about Milan Swanz.”

Eyes flicking from me to Glock and back to me, he tosses the wrench in an open toolbox beside him and trots down the steel-mesh stairs. “I wondered when you guys were going to come talk to me.”

He’s wearing an insulated coat over duck coveralls, which are open just enough for me to see the blue work shirt and suspenders beneath. Not exactly Amish, but close, as if he’s not quite sure himself. He’s blond haired and blue eyed with the barely-there beard of a newly married Amish man.

“Yeah?” I say pleasantly. “Why is that?”

“Milan and I used to be friends.” He shrugs as he crosses to us. “Crazy what happened to him, isn’t it? Heard it on the news this morning. I still can’t hardly believe it.”

He reaches us and the three of us exchange handshakes. “You guys figure out who did it?”

“We’re working on it.” His grip is warm, callused, and strong. “We were hoping you might be able to shed some light.”

“Sure. Whatever you need.”

I pull out my notebook. “Tell me about your relationship with Milan.”

“We knew each other since we were little kids. Practically grew up together. Used to play in that old barn out to his parents’ farm.” He offers a self-deprecating smile. “Got into plenty of trouble together as teenagers.”

“What kind of trouble?” I ask.