Page 54 of Forever Dead

A chill moved through the trees and slipped beneath Selena’s jacket.

She hoped Connor caught whoever had done it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Curtis Halle had known the interview was over before the man across the desk finished speaking.

The slaughterhouse sat twenty miles outside Harlan County, a low concrete building surrounded by holding pens and mud. Curtis had been there less than forty minutes. He had answered every question properly, kept his voice steady and remembered to say sir when it seemed appropriate.

Then another supervisor had walked past the office door.

The man stopped.

Curtis recognized him at the same moment.

Jerry Cole.

They had worked together years earlier at a meatpacking plant near Knoxville. Curtis had lasted eight months before management let him go.

Jerry leaned into the office and stared at him.

“You hiring this guy?”

The interviewer glanced between them. “You know him?”

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “I know him.”

That had been the end of it.

Now Curtis drove home toward Kilbrane, the old mining town outside Elmsview. A purple dusk was settling over the hills, and his old Buick shook whenever he pushed it past fifty-five.

“They’re animals,” he muttered.

The road curved through woodland, headlights beginning to matter beneath the trees.

“What do they know? That’s what they’re there for.”

Jerry had told the interviewer Curtis was unnecessarily inhumane.

The phrase still irritated him.

Unnecessarily.

As if there was a necessary way to kill something and Curtis had somehow broken the rules by not pretending it mattered.

He tightened both hands around the steering wheel.

“They’re just animals.”

A pickup passed in the opposite direction. Curtis caught a glimpse of the driver and wondered whether the man had ever been fired because someone decided he did not handle cattle gently enough at a place designed to turn them into meat.

Probably not.

People liked rules when rules let them feel better about ugly things.

Curtis had learned that a long time ago.

The Buick coughed as he climbed the next rise.