Trash Inspection 9

“Jeez, who eats this much Spam anyway?” Agent Bushel tore open another garbage sack.

“Keep your voice down.” Agent Furlong pushed something brown and glistening aside with the tip of a pen. “We don’t want to wake him ‘til we got something solid.”

“There’s nothing solid in these sacks,” Bushel said. “Look at what he eats. This guy must look like one of those hairless Egyptian cats that yawned and accidentally swallowed a hippopotamus.”

“Quit whining, we haven’t got all night.”

“Okay, what about this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s some kind of note. It’s hard to read, the grease has made the ink run; let’s see… Dear Mrs. V., we’re out of Spam, I had to use Slim Jims in my sandwiches again.

“We’re dealing with a monster here.”

Furlong took the note and slipped it into an evidence pouch. “Good work. That’s gotta at least be enough to hold him for questioning. Before long we’ll have so much on him he’ll be singing like a canary that studied four years at Juilliard and received a standing ovation for singing lead tenor in Beethoven’s Choral Symphony (No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125) in Beethoven’s home city of Bonn.”

“My thoughts exact-- Whoa, what’s this?” Bushel held something up; Furlong shone his torch on it. “It’s an Italian loafer. And -- there’s something inside it.”

“What? What’s inside?”

“It’s a foot. I think I’ve found a body!”

The porch light came on and Evil Editor, a silk dressing gown covering his extra-large Hello Kitty PJ’s, stormed out. “What the hell’s going on out here? Who the fu--”

“FBI. Evil Editor, you’re under arrest! I hope you got yourself a talented lawyer.”

EE composed himself and smiled. “Oh, I most certainly did,” he said, glancing toward Grisham’s lifeless corpse.

--ril