“Real estate speculation,” Laurel said blandly. “As you can see, it isn’t much of a farm, but combined with some other purchases we’ve made in the area, we may be able to make some money selling residential lots.”
“Well, maybe that’s what I’m planning to do myself,” Emmett said. “Clean the place up and build a few houses.”
For the first time, Laurel’s smile faded. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said. “Cleaning up this place could be very unpleasant. And I think we both know you don’t have the assets to start building spec houses. Even if you did, it wouldn’t be as lucrative as it would in Peekskill. Land speculation around here is best left to the locals.”
Emmett came down off the porch. “I was a local, once,” he said.
“Ah. Of course,” Laurel replied, smiling again. “You were related to the Speakman brothers. Third cousin, was it?”
“Second cousin once removed.”
“Of course,” Laurel said, his expression communicating what he thought of the familial ties between second cousins once removed. Maybe he thought it was a relationship not worth inheritance.
“Funny you don’t know that already, what with you knowing about my finances,” Emmett said. “Or that I work out of Peekskill. I live in Newark, after all—that’s where you sent the offer.”
Laurel’s smile faded again. “Due diligence, Mr. Parson. I research business deals I’m involved in. I assumed it would be uncomfortable for you to work as a private investigator in Newark. You’d constantly be running into former colleagues in the police department, after all.”
Emmett walked closer, trying to back Laurel up, but the smaller man refused to be intimidated. “You really have been nosing around,” Emmett said.
“I prefer to call it ‘due diligence,’ as I said.”
Emmett eyed the smaller man for a moment. It wasn’t good, the fact that someone could check into him without his noticing. “Maybe I should do my own due diligence,” he said at last. “See what’s up with you.”
Laurel chuckled. “I’m sure you’re better at it than I am. But not much to find, I’m afraid. I’m just a local fellow, with roots in the area. Hence my interest in the land.”
“Land’s not for sale.”
Laurel shrugged. “Contact me if you change your mind.”
Emmett stood in the driveway, watching him leave. He shivered in the cold breeze, realizing he’d just made up his mind. Someone—Laurel or someone he worked for—wanted the farm bad. Emmett didn’t buy the story about real estate speculation for a minute. Which meant that Uncle Jake had been right. There was something valuable somewhere on the Speakman farm.
He turned to look at the house he’d inherited. A hundred years with only the occasional half-assed repainting had left it, like the barn, a mottled gray-brown that blended into the autumn landscape like it was trying to hide among the piles of junk. It would take months to search the place alone. Roots in the area, Laurel had said. Well, he had some roots himself, and maybe they could help him out.
***
Emmett couldn’t decide if he was proud of how fast he found Dan Ryan, or disappointed by how predictable his old friend was. After all, last time he’d actually seen him they’d both been sixteen, and done their drinking in parking lots or snowplow turnarounds on back roads. That had been when he’d lived not far away, and spent all his time with Uncle Jake. But Dan had stuck around, even without Jake to keep him busy, which was the first part of Emmett’s prediction. And he was the kind of guy who spent Wednesday nights in a crummy bar like Murphy’s on US 20—that was the second guess that had paid off, and Emmett hadn’t even had to check more than one bar.
It wasn’t hard to spot Dan, either—he was a little thicker around the middle, and his hair was a little longer, but that was about it. Emmett slid onto the stool next to him at the bar.
“How you doing, Dan?” he said.
Dan turned and stared for a long few seconds, his eyes just slightly glassy. “Emmett?” he said at last. “Emmett Parson? Holy shit, what are you doing back in town?” Emmett didn’t reply—just watched as the gears turned in Dan’s head. “Hang on, it’s the Speakman farm, ain’t it?”
Emmett nodded, and looked up as the bartender wandered over. “Bud.”
“Your uncle Jake up here too?” Dan asked.
“He died three years ago,” Emmett said. Just one more piece of unfairness. Jake had been a big bear of a man, someone without a gray hair even into his fifties, who looked like he could snap most men in half without trying. All four of the Speakman boys had looked eighty by the time they hit fifty, like they were used up before their time. But every one of them had outlived Jake, and apparently the only thing that could kill any of them was each other. Went to show the benefits of not giving a damn, Emmett supposed—it was a wonder Jake hadn’t been hit with a heart attack like the one that finally killed him a lot earlier, during one of the times he was yelling at the brothers who just grinned vacantly at him until it was time to wander off and milk a cow or something.
“Hey, I’m sorry to hear that,” Dan said. He took a drink of his beer. “It wasn’t right, him having to leave town, anyway. No one ever proved anything, right?”
Emmett shook his head.
“But he did better for himself out east anyway, right?” Dan said, and leaned in conspiratorially. “Easier to move weed, right?”
“He switched to cigarettes, mostly,” Emmett replied. At Dan’s blank look, he added, “Running them up to Canada.”
“Oh,” Dan said, and nodded sagely. “That makes sense. Taxes, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“You take over the business, did you?” Dan asked. “After he died?”
Emmett shook his head. Some asshole from Detroit had moved in to take over, as it happened, though he was happy to keep Emmett on the payroll. Maybe if they’d found the Speakmans’ hidden money, Jake’s operation wouldn’t have been so tenuous when he died.
“I’m a PI now,” Emmett said. Dan stared for a moment, then laughed. “What?” Emmett asked.
“Nothing,” Dan said. “Nothing. Hell, you always were ready to do some regulating, I guess.” He laughed again. “Remember when Jake had us teach that drunk driver out in Stockbridge a lesson? I thought we were going to just bust up his headlights, and then you set that fucking Chevy on fire.” He shook his head. “I guess you always were one for law and order. In a way.”
“Yeah,” Emmett said. He was just as glad that Dan hadn’t heard that he’d been a cop for a while. Anyway, all his “clients” since the internal affairs investigation were the same people Uncle Jake had worked with. He was just more under their thumb now than he had been as a cop.
“You planning on doing some investigating?” Dan asked. “Look into what happened?”
“Seems like the troopers already figured it out.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dan replied. “Lotta folks seem to think there are still some questions.”
The bartender returned with Emmett’s beer, and he took a pull. “Not sure it makes much difference now, who killed who. Since they’re all dead.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Dan replied. “But good to see you back.” He stared down at the bar. “I miss those days, raising hell with you.” He looked up. “You planning on selling that farm, or what?”
“Maybe, but I want to clean it up first, go through the stuff there.”
Dan barked out a laugh. “That’ll take a while.”
“You’ve seen the place?”
Dan took a swig of his beer. “Me and everyone else around here. Swung by after they hauled Orson’s body out.”
Emmett grunted. “Well, that’s why I was looking for you, actually. Wondered if you wanted to help me go through the junk.”
Dan drained his bottle. “Maybe.”
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
Dan flagged down the bartender. “I’ll want some help. That’s a hell of a job.”
Emmett frowned. He did
n’t like the idea of people he didn’t know poking around. But Dan was right—it was a huge job. “Only if you know someone reliable.”
“Jesus, Emmett, you need someone to haul trash around for a couple days. You ain’t gonna get the cream of the crop.”
Emmett sighed. “Fine. But no meth-heads.”
“Sure,” Dan replied. “I’ll find you someone real trustworthy.”
***
The rented dumpsters arrived first, the big engines and clanging metal outside jolting Emmett out of an uneasy sleep on the couch. He stumbled out to sign the rental agreements provided by the driver, who was staring around at the yard in awe. As the trucks left and Emmett headed back to the kitchen he noticed that it had at least warmed up since the day before, and felt almost like spring again. He’d had the foresight to bring his own coffeemaker and coffee so he didn’t need to use the percolator encrusted with old coffee, but it took ten minutes to find an outlet in the kitchen that actually worked. There were more scraps of metal and junk covering all available counter space, and it looked like one of the Speakman brothers had been working on quite a project on the table with its sticky vinyl tablecloth—something that rolled around on wheels salvaged from a shopping cart.
He found himself staring at it as the coffee brewed. His sleep had been constantly interrupted, and every time he’d woken up he’d realized he’d been dreaming of machinery. Tedious, unsettling dreams that had him trying to fit together disparate pieces of junk that didn’t want to fit together, somehow turn them into working machines. Obviously, he’d been looking at what the Speakmans had been working on too much.
He jumped at the sound of an engine outside, and took a sip of the coffee that had appeared in his hand at some point. It was cold, though he didn’t remember even pouring it, and he frowned as he made his way back through the front room and onto the porch.
Dan was climbing out of an old Chevy pickup, wearing camo fatigue pants and a greasy ball cap. Another man, both tall and fat, was easing his way out of the passenger seat, making the truck rock on its springs. He spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground before he’d even touched down. Emmett wasn’t too happy about that, but it seemed silly to object, with months-old spit cups scattered like landmines around the farm.
Dan strode across the dead, matted grass, his shoulders held too high in a way Emmett remembered from the old days, like he was heading for a fight. He was smiling, though, as he gestured to the big man trailing behind him. “Emmett, you remember Homer Fields?”
“Name’s familiar,” Emmett said, and it was, sort of.
“Well, he was a few years behind us in school,” Dan said. “Knows how to work, though.”
Homer nodded to Emmett before turning his head to spit again. Dan gestured to a woman still sitting in the bed of the truck, glaring at all the junk like it had insulted her. She hadn’t wanted to be squeezed in up front between Dan and Homer, Emmett figured, and he couldn’t blame her. Homer had probably taken up most of the cab, and Dan wasn’t above copping a feel if the opportunity presented itself. “That’s JT Quinn,” Dan said. “My fuckin’ truck started acting up last night and I had to take it to her. She fixes cars, see, but she works construction for old Mickey Randall, too, sometimes. You remember him?”
Emmett shook his head.
“Well, anyway,” Dan said as JT vaulted out of the truck and approached. “She said she was looking for work, so I told her to come along. Since she knows construction and shit.”
She was lean, with short blonde hair, and a full sleeve of tattoos running up her left arm—various tats that looked to have been laid on over years with no theme. As she approached, Emmett saw she also had a stud in her nose, and an eyebrow ring. Dan had found quite a crew, he thought, as Homer turned and spat another stream of brown liquid. At least they both seemed a bit too calm to be tweakers.
“So you just want us to get all this—” Dan gestured around the yard, then jerked his head at the dumpsters “—into those?”
“Basically,” Emmett replied.
Dan looked around again, hiking up his trousers. “You want us to keep out anything that looks valuable, if we run across it?”
“I’ll be working with you,” Emmett said.
Dan nodded, a funny smirk on his face.
“How about the barn?” Homer asked.
“Lotta stuff in there,” Emmett said. “We can get to it after we clean up the yard.” He’d taken a look the night before, hoping against hope that he’d find the valuables there, but there was too much junk inside to even move around easily, all dominated by an old Buick with its hood open and most of the engine gone in pieces. And anyway, it would have been a terrible place to hide anything, back when the farm had been active and it had been full of cows.
“What about the house?” Homer asked. “You gonna need us to clean up the blood in the house? I think you oughta pay us extra for that.”
“Ain’t no blood,” Dan said, a disgusted look on his face. “Amos and Uriah suffocated Orson and Pace.”
“I heard Pace attacked Uriah with a sickle,” Homer said. “Cut him up something awful, that’s why Amos beat him up. That’s why he died right after, too. Blood loss.”
Dan snorted. “How do you explain Orson? He was the only one dead when that salesman came knocking. And Pace wasn’t beat up—he was just in a coma there, next to Orson in the bed. Neither of them were that bad off, is what I heard. Just one of them dead and the other on the way.”
“Not what I heard,” Homer said. “I heard Uriah was bleeding something awful.”
“Him and Orson was sitting in there watching Law & Order,” Dan said, gesturing toward the house. His voice was rising, his shoulders coming up as he spoke. “How the fuck is anyone gonna do that if they’s all cut up?”
“I heard Futurama,” Homer growled. He wasn’t backing away from Dan like most people would have, and Emmett had the feeling he was watching a ritual the two men had performed many times—he only wished he knew whether they usually came to blows, or just liked squabbling.
“I heard Nova,” JT said from where she leaned against one of the rusted tractors. “Who the fuck cares?”
Emmett had heard Wheel of Fortune, himself, but he was inclined to agree with her. Dan rounded on JT, still looking pissed off like he might just go after her instead of Homer. JT met his eye with the bored expression of a mountain lion who isn’t all that hungry at the moment, and after a few seconds, Dan turned back to Homer, relaxing slightly. “Yeah, who the fuck cares,” he said. “Point is, Amos and Uriah was just out there watching TV while their brothers were in the next room. Fucking creepy, but they wasn’t bleeding all over the place.”
Homer looked over at Emmett. “That so?”
“Uriah’s chair is missing,” Emmett said. “Could be they took it because it had blood on it, I don’t know.”
“There you go,” Homer said, triumphantly.
Dan stepped closer to him. “That don’t prove—”
“Jesus Christ,” JT said, as she stooped to pick up a massive old spring from where it lay near the tractor. She flung it at one of the dumpsters, a nice toss from where she stood, and it clanged out of sight.
“Yeah,” Emmett said loudly, as Dan turned toward her, “let’s just get moving on this. Weather’s too nice to waste time arguing about those guys.”
Dan turned with a scowl. “Whatever you say, boss.”
***
The cleanup went uneventfully for a few hours, all of them sweating in the unseasonable heat, until Emmett noticed Dan standing still, staring at one of the piles of junk. As he walked over, Emmett realized that it wasn’t just scrap—it was… organized. Something built from junk, like all the little things in the bedroom, but bigger. The main piece was an old axle from something small, a riding mower maybe—in the bedroom, the smaller versions had been made with long bolts or small pieces of rebar. One end of the axle had been burned off with a torch and replaced with a collection of cogs, and wher
e inside the bedroom the pieces had wire, this used some rusty lengths of chain. Emmett couldn’t quite figure out how it would do anything, but somehow he could see it turning, spinning a flail of rusty links that would do… something.
“What the hell is this?” Dan said quietly.
“Is that bone?” Homer asked, coming up behind them. “Where’d it come from?”
It was a piece of bone, Emmett was pretty sure of that, held to one of the cogs with a few screws. If the device did manage to spin somehow, the chains would slap against the bone with every rotation.
Emmett glanced off toward the collapsing barn, recalling a time when Amos strode past him as he sorted through a pile of galvanized pipe. ”Got some business in the barn, young Emmett,” he’d said on the way past. “Come along if you want to watch.” Then he was off, his long beard streaming behind him, he was walking so fast. One of the pigs had started screaming a few moments later, inside the barn—a noise Emmett hadn’t even known a pig could make. Uncle Jake had appeared and hustled him into the truck about then, but Emmett had seen Amos in the rear view mirror as they rolled out, standing in the barnyard, grinning and waving a blood-covered hand.
“It’s a farm,” Emmett said. “They had lots of livestock around here.”
“What happened to all the cows and stuff, anyway?” Dan asked.
“They were getting kind of low on cows even back when I was visiting,” Emmett said. “Years back.” It was one of the things that had convinced Uncle Jake that the Speakman boys had to have money socked away somewhere—he’d mutter about how they didn’t have enough of a herd left to make a living, especially when he’d been busy doing his own accounts, totting up how much he’d made on weed and fencing things here and there.
“Huh,” Dan said, still staring at the device. “What would this thing do, anyway?” He turned. “What’s this for, JT?” he said over his shoulder.
“The fuck should I know?” JT asked. She was leaning against one of the dumpsters, showing no desire to get closer to the device.
Redneck Eldritch Page 25
