continue narrate the epic novel in the style of Theo Von and Stephen King, where town officials insisted on keeping the buffalo meat banned, for the safety of the people. Provide painstaking details about their connections to illegal buffalo trade.

I can continue with an original mix of offbeat Southern humor, small-town dread, and slow-building horror, rather than either author’s exact style.

By seven o’clock, the meeting room smelled of wet coats and the coffee Deputy Weller made strong enough to leave a brown ring in a spoon.

Mayor Hollis Vane stood beneath the town seal and announced that the ban on buffalo meat would remain in force.

“For the safety of our people,” he said.

From the back row, June Mercer watched Councilman Bell press two fingers against his tie. Beside him, Dr. Haskins examined the face of his wristwatch. Neither man looked at the mayor.

June had spent eleven days learning what their little gestures meant.

She’d begun with a freezer receipt found among her father’s belongings. He had died in January, sitting upright in his truck outside the abandoned creamery, with the engine running and the driver’s window open. The coroner had called it cardiac arrest. His lunch was still on the seat beside him: half an egg sandwich wrapped in wax paper, the other half never accounted for.

The receipt was dated three days after his death.

According to it, her father had paid eight hundred dollars to store “agricultural samples.”

“Folks have asked whether this measure is excessive,” the mayor continued. “I understand those concerns.”

June opened her folder.

The first connection was the building.

The old creamery belonged to Vane Rural Properties, a company incorporated by the mayor’s younger brother, Douglas. Its registered address was a mailbox outside a hardware store in another county. Douglas had been dead six years.

That didn’t necessarily trouble the county tax office. Around there, death mostly meant your relatives started signing things for you.

The property taxes were paid by Mercy Table Ministries.

Mercy Table had no church, no congregation, and no listed employees. It did, however, receive a municipal grant to provide emergency food storage. Mayor Vane had proposed the grant. Councilman Bell had seconded it. The meeting minutes described the vote as unanimous, although June’s father—the fifth member of the council—had written NO so hard on his copy that the pen had torn through two pages.

June had that copy, too.

“The health department’s position is unequivocal,” Dr. Haskins said.

That was the second connection.

Every buffalo sample submitted by local farmers had been declared unsafe by Haskins’s office. June had collected fourteen rejection notices. Same wording. Same signature. Three even carried the same laboratory accession number.

She had called the laboratory.

The number belonged to a water sample from a motel swimming pool.

While the farmers’ meat was condemned, refrigerated trucks continued arriving at the creamery. Haskins signed the release certificates himself, describing each outgoing load as inspected beef.

His wife’s consulting business received a payment the following morning.

June hadn’t found one large, foolish transfer. She’d found thirty-seven small ones, tucked into invoices for nutritional guidance, public outreach, and storage assessment. One invoice billed six hours for a meeting held on Christmas Day.

Dr. Haskins had spent that Christmas in Florida. His wife had posted photographs of him beside a stuffed marlin.

“Any relaxation of the ban,” Councilman Bell said, “would invite unscrupulous operators into this community.”

June almost laughed.

Bell owned the trucks.

Not directly. His trucks belonged to Crosswater Freight, which belonged to a holding company whose sole manager was his daughter, a dental hygienist in Asheville. But Bell had personally guaranteed the vehicle loans, and the creamery’s loading logs recorded the fleet numbers.

His son-in-law bought the confiscated buffalo at county disposal auctions.

His daughter’s company hauled the meat away.

The town paid both businesses.

Then Mercy Table sold it to restaurants across the state.

The ban had done something elegant and terrible: it had made honest buffalo farming impossible while giving the council a steady supply of cheap animals, public money, and official paperwork.

June stood.

“I have a question about my father.”

The mayor stopped with his mouth slightly open.

In the silence, the fluorescent light above the exit clicked twice.

“June,” he said, “this isn’t the appropriate—”

“Why did his storage account remain active after he died?”

Deputy Weller moved away from the wall.

June put a photograph on the overhead projector. The creamery loading bay appeared behind the council: concrete apron, rusted drain, a refrigerated trailer with its doors open.

Inside stood her father.

The picture had come from a truck’s reversing camera. June had checked the date against the driver’s fuel receipt, the gate log, and the weather report.

February ninth.

Twenty-three days after the funeral.

Nobody on the council asked how the photograph had been altered.

That frightened her more than anything.

Dr. Haskins lowered his head. Bell began whispering something June couldn’t hear. The mayor reached beneath the table and pressed a button.

Outside, somewhere beyond the municipal parking lot, a truck engine started.

“My father’s alive,” June said.

“No,” Haskins answered.

The mayor turned on him, but the doctor was looking at June now. His face had lost its professional blankness. He looked exhausted, and much older.

“We did test the meat,” he said. “At first.”

From the parking lot came a heavy metallic knock.

Then another.

Deputy Weller locked the meeting-room doors.