Page 44 of Into This River I Drown
spooked. I don’t think I’ve seen you like this before. Not even when Big Ed—” “I told you not to mention that around me,” the sheriff snaps, cutting him off.
“Look, I don’t know how much of what he said was bullshit. Nothing has come
through the police station, and the field office in Eugene and Portland said they
haven’t sent anyone out this way.”
“Would they tell you if they had?” the smoker asks. “Seems to me if they were
investigating, they wouldn’t tell you a damn thing.”
“I’ve got a guy who owed me a few favors,” Griggs says. “He called around,
checked some stuff out. Nothing.”
“We still going to move operations?”
“I don’t know yet,” Griggs says. “I don’t want to, but if someone is poking
around, we may have to.”
“What is your timeline, then?” a new voice says. That one I recognize. Mayor
Judd Walken. My mouth goes dry.
“Give it a few weeks,” Griggs says. “If need be, we could do it on the day of the
festival, when everyone is distracted. I hate to lose our position now, though. It’s
prime fucking real estate. No one even knows about it. But it’s whatever the boss
wants.”
“This whole thing has bad mojo written all over it,” the smoker complains. “First
the guy in the river. Then that fucking meteor thing falling right near there. Jesus,
Griggs! It’s like the universe is telling you to get the fuck out, and you’re saying we
need to wait?”
“Now, now,” the mayor says over the sheriff’s angry growl. “It’s just a bunch of
random occurrences. Let’s not assign this to some higher cosmic power. I’ve already
reached out to the community to assure everyone that it was just that, a meteor that
fell and that the science department at the University of Oregon has already come to
pick it up. People seem to be excited that such a thing happened in our little town.
They won’t question it.”
“That’s great and all,” Smok
er says. “Just one thing: there was no fucking
meteor.”
