All characters represented in this work are wholly fictional, and over the age of eighteen.
Tyra sat alone at the kitchen table.
I watched her sadly, as I had many other women before.
Her world had just come crashing down, destroyed by the man who had claimed to love her since their marriage, almost two decades before.
I couldn't even imagine the pain she was going through, the anguish of knowing the truth about her husband Pete's extramarital affair.
She'd hired me to take the pictures, to find proof, to tell her which of the farmhands had been fucking her husband. But watching her look at them stone faced, I knew she wished she'd let herself remain ignorant.
It was an easy job, a quick job, and ultimately a simple one.
Jack Trask, P.I., always gets his man (or in this case, woman), but cases like these never made me feel good about the work I was doing.
I thought back to the morning, thought about whether I could've done anything differently.
I'd pulled up to the commercial farm in my old, mud-brown Pontiac Vibe in the predawn hours.
If you ask the IRS, they'll say it's for work-purposes only. If you ask my wife, she'll say it makes the occasional trip to the grocery store. Luckily, the IRS and my wife don't know each other, meaning I can take the inconspicuous sedan wherever it needs to go.
There were already twenty or so vehicles, mostly trucks, parked at the same dirt lot at which I stopped. It was abuzz with activity despite the early hour, perhaps twice as many people as cars hustling this way and that.
I was already noting down potentials, male and female alike. You can never count out a married guy deciding to cheat on his beard.
Anyone and everyone could be a suspect, it's up to the private investigator to be good enough to sniff it out.
I'd arrived incognito, and to be frank, the dukes chafed at me. I wasn't used to jeans, or flannel, or boots, and I found them all to be a little tight. At the time, I thought the case was going to take longer, so I felt assured that they would break in.
I didn't bother going up to the house, Tyra had emailed me the schedule, where her husband was "supposed to be" along with a full roster of the employees, and pictures for about half of them.
But the thing she'd emphasized was the pictures. She needed them caught in the act, surreptitiously photographed having
intercourse
, not just a blowjob or a handjob behind the barn.
That was
something a little more specific than I usually hear from jaded spouses, but her money was good, and I was going to get a bonus if I could deliver quickly.
I headed off across the farm, passing buildings full of clucking hens, snorting hogs, and braying sheep. It was one of the top three largest family-owned places in Kansas, and they did a little bit of everything.
I wrinkled my nose as I passed a sheep pen loaded a dozen deep with the critters. Make that a
lot of
everything.
I passed various esoteric pieces of equipment, trailers, and machinery on my way to a building marked on my map as "Barn H3", marveling at the size of the place. It must take a few hundred people to harvest these fields, and take this livestock to market.
I began to feel a little uneasy about my chances of figuring out who this guy was fucking, but I steadied my breathing (through my mouth) with the knowledge that I had the full schedule, times when he was going to be alone, or nearly-so, and an advance on my normal fee.
I could take as long as I needed.
I shouldered open a side door to H3. It was a prototypical hayloft above, with horse stalls below. I emerged immediately adjacent to a ladder, and made a split-second decision.
If Pete were (as his schedule suggested) feeding the horses and mucking their stalls, he would naturally tend towards remaining on the ground floor, meaning I would have a particularly good vantage point from the loft.
I quietly, but swiftly, padded up the ladder, conscious of the sounds of movement from the stall immediately to my left.
I crouched up in the hay loft, and looked down to see a farmhand I'd only
just
evaded emerging from the aforementioned stall.
She was petite, young, a pretty blonde with tight jeans, sanitary gloves, a rank pitchfork, and a shapely (from what I could tell) behind.
My keen investigative senses were hammering away as I spotted a man entering the barn from the opposite end I'd entered.
It didn't make sense for a man with the wealth and obligations of Pete Dutton to be mucking out his own horse stalls, but it was perhaps even more suspicious that he'd list himself as doing so while actively omitting a farmhand.
I snapped a few quick pictures as Dutton approached the girl, who shed her elbow-length gloves, leaning the pitchfork against the stall door she'd just left.
I strained to hear them over the generalized creaking and whispering of drafts passing through slatted siding endemic to old barn buildings, and the nickering of horses in the area below.
"-thing else in here?" Her voice was high and teasing.
His response was low, chiding, and too quiet for me to catch. The farmgirl giggled and stepped closer to him, too close to be platonic. She placed her palms flat on his chest, and tip-toed up to give him a brief, shallow peck on the lips.
His arms encircled her, pulling her close, resulting in a yelp and more giggling as he pulled her into a more forceful kiss.
I snapped a picture, feeling like I always did, an unexpected voyeur to their affair.
Dutton was tall, a strapping man of perhaps forty, fully in his prime despite what the speckling of grey in his hair might imply. His hands were massive as they trailed downwards, cupping his employee's backside with evident lust.
I snapped another picture, this wasn't the proof Tyra had asked for, but if I were any expert on human beings, I could be assured it was leading somewhere.
As if on cue, the girl broke off their kiss, her bootcut jeans dragging on the dusty floor as she sank downwards, keeping her eyes fixed to Dutton's.
"Do you want me to make you feel good?" She cooed, her hands expertly undoing his belt and fly with swift, articulate motions. This certainly wasn't her first time in the barn.
