Chapter 42: Preacher Finds a Corpse - Bonus Audiobook Episode GP723
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Here’s the next post in the weekday releases of the 24 episodes in the Preacher Finds a Corpse audiobook.
Episode GP724 - the last chapter! - will be posted Thursday morning at 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific and the other episodes each weekday thereafter.
May you find the novel intriguing and compelling, and please don’t hesitate to leave your impressions in the Comments section of the posts.
Episode GP723 Description
Bob's memorial service does not proceed as planned. It's a surprise to almost everyone, and they seem to accept that the case is closed.
GP723 Preacher Finds a Corpse - Chapter 42 (26:44 minutes)
Chapter 42
Saturday Morning
Emmett Farm
The last big storm to pass through was the blizzard on the night of Evan’s luckless effort to retrieve the tin box. On this Saturday morning, the cloudless, sunny skies would persist, and the temperature would climb into the mid-forties. Like stalling the show with a coming attraction at the movies, Nature was taunting the farm folks with a preview of the spring thaw. It was not yet to be (Evan remembered a year when snow fell, however briefly, on the first day in May), but surface water began to trickle its way toward the creeks, and the wind carried the smells of rotting vegetation and last summer’s animal dung. Easter and the resurrection of the Earth’s flora and fauna were only weeks away.
Just before dawn, two Humvee troop carriers and a command car led a convoy of two bulldozers and a skip loader on flatbeds, along with three triple-trailer, bottom-dump trucks. Riding comfortably in the back of the command car was Col. Sedgewick Pryce, a man on a mission. His job was to flatten everything in sight on the Emmett farm and haul it away by Monday morning. The road graders, cement mixers, and paving crews would be taking over then.
But as the colonel’s car pulled off SR P and onto the dirt road to the farm, he was met by a single St. Clair County Sheriff’s squad car with its emergency lights flashing. Seeing the approaching vehicles, Sheriff Chet Otis stepped out of the driver’s side, and Col. Pryce strode over to meet him. Griggs was noticeably absent.
“What are you doing here, Sheriff?” the military man demanded.
Otis delivered the speech he’d rehearsed, a series of tactics Evan had mapped out for them. The preacher was still holed up with Nick, Wiley, and Josh in the house.
“I’m afraid we’ve got an impending situation here, sir,” Otis informed him.
“I have my orders, if you need to see them,” Pryce insisted. “This site was to be vacated by now, and I’ll be setting up perimeter control with armed guards to make sure it stays that way.”
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