Slaughterhouse - Part 15 - The beginnings of a new alliance

Charles made sure everyone was informed about a very special meeting at the police station the day after he had found out the partial truth behind Clara and Bob Braveheart. He sent out dozens of emails, text messages, even called his secretary to help him call everyone and inform them of the next day's 8 am meeting.

He arrived at work at 7:30 AM to his speech one last time, but when he got out of the car and picked up the box with the papers about the Braveheart case - that included a flash drive with the surveillance tapes, he dropped it.

Already panicking, he started picking everything up as fast as he could and noticed he couldn't find the flash drive with the surveillance tapes on them. He got down to his knees to try and check if anything got under the car.

“No, no, no, no, no, no it has to be here somewhere, come on, come on, come on! I didn’t pick it up already, did I?”

Charles then began to search through the contents of the box like a madman on fire, but didn’t manage to find the flash drive.

“Fuck!” He shouted out loud and kicked his truck’s tire in an attempt to blow off some steem^*;). “Now what? Without this I’ve got nothing. No one is going to believe me if I tell them about a flying cow without solid evidence. Even then they probably wouldn’t, but fuck! Where could it be, where could it be? Think Charles, think!”

Walking up and down nervously, it suddenly hit him. He had the most important security footage stored on his laptop also.

He rushed inside and into his office to make sure it was still there.

But when he opened the file, instead of the original recording of the surveillance camera number 5, the animated movie called “Chicken run” started playing.

“What?! No. No, no, no! Where is it?” He kept clicking furiously on the mouse, trying to locate the file, but to no avail.

“Charle-…”

“Not now, Rebecca!”

“It’s 8 O’clock, Charles.”

“What? Are you kidding me? I’m no ready! I’m far from ready!” Charles kept shouting at his secretary.

“I’ll tell them you’ll… come shortly,” she replied and closed the door behind her.

Charles collapsed back into his chair and stared at the ceiling. What was he going to do? What was he going to say? There were 22 police officers in the conference room waiting for him to unveil the reason behind the meeting he had called on such short notice.

“I guess I’ll just… tell them the truth, as stupid as that may be,” he said to himself before getting up and leaving his office.

His forehead covered in small droplets of sweat, he entered the conference room. The police officers were far from satisfied he had kept them waiting, and were anxious to get in on Charles’ newest discovery.

“First of all, I would like to apologize for being late. Second, I would like to apologize for calling this meeting on such short notice, and thank you all for coming. Frank, you especially, since I know you had this week off. Thirdly, I would like to apologize, because-…” Charles paused and swallowed. The following was very hard for him to say – especially in front of such a large crowd. “Because I cannot discuss with you what I wanted to. I no longer have the case files in my possession.”

Loud grunting ensued and police officers were growing restless.

“You made us come here for nothing?” One of the officers asked out loud.

“Not initially, no. But we still have a case to pursue. There has been a security breach. All the files on the new case had been stolen. So instead of the initial case I had for you, I present you with the new one. Find out who had access to my office. My computer, especially. I know this place is not under any surveillance because we used to trust each other as police officers, but apparently someone took advantage of that and erased all the crucial files. Meeting dismissed.”

Charles made sure to leave as soon as possible to not get any follow up questions. He wasn’t ready to answer any. Not about the case, not about the missing files, not even if he wanted coffee. He just barricaded himself in his office and tried to think of who could’ve skewed up the files. With flying cows being real, there was no knowing the true scope of this issue.

Garnet on the other hand, was everything but in trouble. He had found his father Jim a lawyer and his father held his end of the word. After a whole lot of legal mumbo jumbo and roughly 50 signatures later the Smith farm then legally belonged to Garnet Smith.

He had a plan ready ever since he and his father first talked on the phone after all those years. First, he stopped the milking and slaughtering machines and triple checked they were completely turned off. Second, he made sure the cows got as much time outside as they wanted by opening the doors of all barns. Lastly, he ordered a higher quality feed and got rid of all the old – already smelling of fungi – hay.

After these initial steps were taken care of, he took a few moments for himself before going on to completely overhaul the existing Smith farm from an automated slaughterhouse to an animal loving shelter.

Sitting in the control room, his thoughts kept wandering to John Svashta, both because of what his father did to him, and because of his farm, that he now sold. He was mostly interested in John Svashta because his father Jim had told him about how he had treated his cattle. Garnet found it sad that John had no more cows of his own, and that there was nobody to keep him company once he fully recovers.

It was then that Garnet decided to do some research on the new owners of John’s cows, find out how they were treated there and possibly donate a couple of his own cows to John when he gets released from the hospital. All Garnet knew of the Bravehearts was that they treated the animals well, which is why he was all the more interested in finding out as much as possible about them. With their help he could even film another documentary, this time about treating cattle.

But, even to Garnet, the whole situation felt a little off for some reason. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but he felt it in his gut. There were just too many questions left unanswered.

Why did the Bravehearts only buy Svashta’s cows? Why didn’t they try and buy his father’s also? Or first for that matter, since the conditions on the Smith farm were far worse than on the Svashta farm to begin with. Where did these two even come from all of a sudden? How come they possess so much land, and money? How are they so influential if no one has heard of them prior to about a week ago? And most certainly one of the biggest questions; How did John's cows get to the Braveheart farm? There were no trucks. Not one. The cows just appeared at a different location overnight.

Unknowingly, Garnet was asking himself the very same questions Charles has back at his office. It was only a matter of time until the two of them met and Garnet joined in on the whole Braveheart investigation.