If you weren't looking you wouldn't even notice the difference. If anything, there's been an overall improvement to the landscaping, I'd hate to admit it. But people in the neighborhood feel better about their little lives if they just look the other way. I figure they won't feel death creeping in on them lot by lot if they ignore the issue completely.
And let me tell you, there's no use in reporting a disappearance if no one is left to miss them and mourn their may be deaths. The cops didn't care, that was obvious. Having been pulled over many, many times by these same suburb cops, I'd hesitate to call them even that. Pigs would be sufficient, but that and their being police officers was purely coincidental. They'd be plain clothed pigs if they chose a different route in life, but I'm deviating from the issue here.
After the third family, all four sons went missing one by one until eventually their decaying dream home had a "for sale" sign on their lawn. After that people stopped talking about it, even behind closed doors, in private. They'd all be safe if they just pretend it isn't happening.
There is no question that the poor families were the targets, that's my belief anyway. Is it the taste? Do the welfare checks and food stamps make the meat taste better somehow? All that processed cheese food and hormone injected beef. Dollar-a-pop TV dinners. Junk food preservatives. That's ridiculous, right? So is assuming every blue collar hillbilly in town lived on transfats and EBT cards, but let's face it, it's cheaper to eat junk.
You try to explain to an officer who hasn't looked you in the eye since you walked through the doors. Whose eye movements matched with his twitching finger tips tell you he's playing Tetris on that severely outdated computer. You try to explain to him just why, exactly, you think the Johnston's are cannibalizing the poorer folks.
The Johnston's with their white picket fence and good morning smiles for every jogger.The Johnston's who paid their paper boy on time every week. They fed the lawn boy tuna salad sandwiches and a glass of lemonade after his hard work every Saturday. They opened their doors to Jehovah's Witnesses and cleaning supplies salesmen alike. The Johnston's never turned down solicitors ever. They'd speak with them at great lengths about their products, whether it was religion they were trying to sell, or just a new way to clean dust off your TV screen.
Dale Johnston Jr, the patriarch. The leader of the den. The fact there was a Dale Sr. out there gave me the fucking creeps. He was all sweaters, pristinely knit with no snags or stains or flaws, only the collar and cuffs of his dress shirt poking out the sweater's neck and sleeves. It could get 100 degrees in the shade some days and he would still be standing there beneath the maple in their front yard beside the tire swing in his freshly ironed slacks and his pomade rich oil slick of a head he called hair. Not breaking a single microscopic sweat under the layers of clothes. He skims the business section while everyone else in the world was aiming their swamp crotch at A/C vents or at least in the shade pool side. I bet he wore an undershirt beneath those sweaters and long-sleeved button-downs. Three layers during the summer. A pure bred monster.
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