Hard Wired

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  Pearline looked around quickly then gave Fifth a wink. “Well,” she said in close to a whisper, putting the pitcher of soda down on the edge of their table, “if you ask me, I’d say it has something to do with those ‘devotees’ at The Ranch.”

  Since the waitress was glad to offer up her insights, likely due to Fifth’s infectious happy mood, Dent took advantage.

  “The Ranch?” he asked.

  “Yep. That’s what they call the place up north. Back in the day it used to be government owned. Think my dad said something about war-time bunkers or such. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but I can tell you that many people from town have been packing up and moving out there.”

  “Big place?”

  “Acres upon acres, I think,” Pearline was all too eager to answer.

  Fifth wanted to get her questions in as well and asked their suddenly informative waitress, “What do they do there?”

  Pearline shrugged her meaty shoulders and said, “Who knows? People there don’t much associate with outsiders. A few come to town to shop and the like, but overall they’re pretty hush-hush.”

  She’d spoken as if she had some firsthand knowledge on the subject, so Dent pressed, “You sound like you know a bit about a place that’s reputedly so secretive.”

  She waved her arms to her sides and whispered, “I hear things, here and there. People come in for the pie, stay for the chat.”

  He didn’t quite get her meaning, so he clarified, “You mean you listen to and overhear people talking?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t call it that,” Pearline said with a wink. “I’d call it being attentive to my customers’ needs.”

  From Fifth came, “Have you ever been up there, to The Ranch?”

  “No, sweetie, no time. Got a baby girl at home who keeps me from running around.”

  The girl nodded and Dent obediently thanked the waitress for her help.

  “No problem, sugar. And,” she pulled their bill from the front pocket of her apron, “I’ll leave this here for you, whenever you’re ready.” She walked away after another wink and wide smile.

  When she had gone far enough, Fifth looked to Dent and declared, “I am good, huh?”

  He shrugged.

  “Come on, Dent. I had her so happy to be around me she would have paid for the bill herself if you didn’t thank her so quickly and send her away.”

  He opened his mouth to tell the girl that he had his wallet on him this time, that there was no need to force the waitress’s emotions and get a free meal when an idea hit him.

  “What?” Fifth said, leaning in. “You have that look in your eye.”

  He dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table and said, “I definitely need to check out The Ranch.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re right. You probably could have gotten our meal for free.”

  XVII

  It was an hour drive from where Dent had left Fifth at Sheriff Bobseyn’s house up to The Ranch. It had been a circuitous two-way road through gentle hills of grain fields, horse ranches, and wooded plots of land. And when he made the entrance to the compound, he determined that Pearline the waitress’s father may have been correct. The Ranch was a wide open pasture land that surrounded a huge utilitarian concrete building, so plain in its design that it had to be government property.

  The fact that Fifth could have easily talked — or coerced — Pearline into paying for their lunch triggered something for him. If The Ranch had eTech in employ, they could do much the same, coercing people to hand over their wealth. Making others pay for The Ranch’s free lunch, as it were.

  He saw old farmhouses and silos in the distance, tended and unkempt plots alike, and stray cattle roaming throughout. The entire compound was surrounded by wooden fences wrapped here and there with barbed wire, and from what he could see from where he’d parked and approached the locked metal gate leading into the compound and the building off in the distance, the perimeter could be easily breached. Whatever this compound was, the owners were not overly concerned with keeping people out.

  As he walked to the flimsy metal-and-wood gate in the dirt road, a contingent of people began making their way toward him on their side of the perimeter fence.

  He waited.

  Eventually more than half a dozen men and women stood on the other side of the locked gate while twice as many stood further back. Two things came to Dent at the sight.

  One: these people looked relatively normal. And two: he saw no sign of children, though that did not mean none were present inside the large, four-storied rectangular building that dominated the view from the front gate.

  The ages and races seemed to represent the demographics of Graftsprings, an hour’s drive south from The Ranch. Men, women, young, old, black, brown, Asian, white. Whatever The Ranch was, it was apparently a place of equal opportunities.

  A middle aged, sun-darkened white man stepped up to the gate, eyes crinkling, white teeth flashing. “Help ya?” he asked through the flimsy barrier.

  Out of all things Dent had expected, an open invitation to chat wasn’t one of them. Not being able to fabricate a reason to explain his presence, Dent went with the honest answer of, “I just wanted to check this place out.”

  “Oh?” the tanned man said. “What was ya lookin’ fer?”

  Dent’s mind froze. “Well, just looking to see what goes on up here.”

  “That’s easy enough. Jus’ a bunch of good people lookin’ to be around other good people.” A few of the closer observers stepped forward and formed a loose semicircle behind the tanned man. “Ya lookin’ to be around good people yerself?”

  “Good people aren’t really my people,” Dent told him.

  This drew a frown from many of the observers, tanned man included.

  “Then it’s best ya be off then.” The man’s smile was nonexistent. His shoulders tightened, feet spread out just a touch, fingers curled in noticeably. Body language was so loud that even Dent knew what was going on.

  “I was hoping to get a tour,” he said, “see what goes on inside.”

  “No chance, mister. Like I said, best ya be off. We’re not lookin’ fer trouble.”

  Dent could almost hear the unspoken words that came after … But we’re ready to handle any trouble if it comes looking for us.

  “Never said I was trouble,” Dent told the man.

  “People who ain’t good people are always trouble,” the tanned man hissed through the gate. “And trouble ain’t welcome here.”

  A commotion from behind the crowd resolved itself to be an African-American man wearing a crisp T-shirt over dark blue jeans with pressed creases in the legs. He stood a stone’s throw up the dirt road leading to the compound, one hand on his hip, the other held above his eyes, shading his vision as he stared Dent’s way.

  More than a few of the observers made their way back to the black man and Dent watched as they all seemed to start talking at the same time. Raising his other hand sharply, the group seemed to go quiet, and the man addressed one woman from the group. Fingers being pointed his way more than once told Dent that the conversation was about him. The man listened attentively and then patted the woman on the shoulder and gently pushed her back Dent’s way.

  Kicking up small clouds of dust as she ran, the woman reached the tanned man Dent had been conversing with and spoke to him in hushed tones. She finished and stepped back, letting the tanned man address Dent once more.

  “Jeffery wants to know why you’re here.”

  Dent went to his tiptoes and made a show of looking back at the man, Jeffery, who seemed to be in charge. He settled back down and told the tanned man, “I was wondering what it takes to become part of this compound.”

  A strange smile crept across the man’s face. “To become a devotee, a man simply needs to want to fit in with others jus’ like him. We’re loving people who jus’ got tired of life out there, found meanin’ in here, with others jus’ like us.”

  Fifth’s earlie
r assessment of the compound came to Dent’s mind and he repeated her observation. “A cult,” he said.

  “If carin’ fer the collective is being a cult, then go ahead and label us a cult. Makes no difference to us.”

  “Collective?” Dent wondered aloud.

  Now the woman who’d come from Jeffery spoke up. She explained, “We all bring something to the whole. There’s no need for need if you give what you’ve been given.”

  That last line seemed too practiced to Dent. He rarely came across people who seemed so ready to part with their material possessions as this woman claimed to be.

  At that moment, Jeffery began to wander closer, the flock of people around him keeping pace and obscuring him from Dent’s vantage point. When the group closed to about fifteen feet from the gate, Jeffery nodded to the woman, who in turn said something to the tanned man.

  Spreading his arms to his sides, the tanned man stepped up to the gate and intoned, “We would like to officially invite ya to join us, to become a devotee.”

  That was a complete reversal, Dent thought.

  A bit more than half a dozen pairs of eyes focused on Dent, and gauging by the way most of the devotees leaned forward, he surmised they expected something from him, some form of answer. So, he obliged.

  “I’ll pass.”

  Like a sudden rush of wind, dozens of breaths were audibly sucked in or let out. A few people on the other side of the locked gate shook their heads and one woman put the back of her hand against her forehead. It seemed his answer was not what they had been expecting.

  “Are ya sure ’bout that, mister?” the tanned man asked. His smile must have been blown away with the gasps just a moment ago.

  “I’m sure.”

  Murmurs spread through the crowd of devotees like wildfire. Several conversations sprang up amongst the people inside the compound and abruptly stopped when Jeffery stepped forward. Devotees parted before him until he stood less than ten feet from the gate.

  “You have no desire to join us,” the man asked through the gate, “to help create a better life for us?” He narrowed his eyes as if he were looking at Dent from a much farther distance.

  Dent didn’t answer. He simply stared, but not at Jeffery, the leader of this cult. No, Dent was staring at what he hadn’t been able to see earlier — the young boy standing close to Jeffery’s side, a blank look on his face.

  When Dent was not quick to reply, Jeffery said through clenched teeth, “It’s time you leave us then.”

  Letting the implications of the young boy, who looked to be of a mixed heritage, sink in, Dent replied, “I think you’re right.”

  He turned, throwing one more surveying glance back to the building in the distance, and hopped in the SUV. This was what they had been looking for. The missing link.

  The boy.

  XVIII

  Dent listened as Sheriff Bobseyn carried on about how there was no need for Dent to have gone up to The Ranch yet. The man claimed that there was not sufficient enough information linking the devotees and their compound to the murders in Graftsprings, and if Dent had to hazard a guess, he’d say the sheriff was upset with him.

  He, the sheriff, and Fifth were sitting around the sheriff’s kitchen table once again, two nearly empty pizza boxes in the middle of the round table, a testament to their hunger and, in Dent’s opinion, the sheriff’s laziness to cook a proper meal for dinner.

  “I just want to cover all our bases before we go accusing anyone of the murders,” Bobseyn was saying, his tone slightly clipped.

  Fifth came to Dent’s rescue, although he did not need, nor did he ask for her help in the matter, saying, “There’s something going on up there, Sheriff, and Dent proved it. They have that kid up there with them.”

  Letting his eyes settle on Dent, like he was the one who had spoken, Bobseyn stated, “Just because they have children up there, doesn’t prove a thing.” He turned. “Heck, young miss, you’re a kid traveling with Dent. Does that mean you two should be suspects in a string of violent murders?”

  Dent looked to the girl, making sure she kept her mouth shut. Though the sheriff was only stating what he believed to be a total falsehood, the truth of both Dent’s and Fifth’s recent past was precisely as he’d just stated.

  But that wasn’t what the girl responded to. Instead she puffed out her chest and proclaimed, “I’m not a kid.” Her pouty lower lip begged to differ, though.

  “I only meant it as a point, young miss,” the sheriff came back to her. “Apologies?”

  After some internal deliberation, Fifth replied, “Accepted.”

  “Besides,” Bobseyn said with a wink, “you eat like two adults put together.”

  She took this as a compliment, apparently, and she inclined her head his way.

  This was going nowhere, so Dent brought them to the matter of the discussion. “Any leads on your end, Bobseyn?”

  Rummaging through recent printouts brought home from the station, Bobseyn said, “More confirmation that the victims were indeed shut-ins. They weren’t antisocial or such, but none really kept up with friends or family over the years. By all accounts, they were happy on their own. No hints of depression, no evidence that they went out of their way to avoid others. They simply liked to keep to themselves.”

  Dent nodded. That, he could understand. The need for people to be surrounded by others never made sense to him. Unless one could benefit from being around another, he saw no logical point in being social.

  “And the finances of the victims?” he asked.

  This time Bobseyn didn’t bother looking at the printouts before him. “All over the board. Some were well-off, some were living paycheck to paycheck. As a motive, I don’t see how it would tie in. Definitely not enough to kill for.”

  Something the tanned man mentioned up at The Ranch tugged at Dent’s mind. “What about collectively?”

  Bobseyn narrowed his eyes, not understanding where Dent was going.

  “The victims, their finances. Maybe individually they weren’t worth killing over, but together?”

  Now Bobseyn consulted the papers, pulling out the appropriate pages. He mumbled to himself, reading off this or that.

  After a long minute he looked up, saying, “Not a fortune, but together, with bank balances and properties, they had quite a bit.”

  “Did the killers take any of it?” Fifth asked.

  Dent answered. “It’s all on paper and digital record. Not something the killers could walk away with claiming as their own.”

  “Dent’s right,” Bobseyn added. “Without going through the proper channels, the victims’ properties would be untouchable by the killers.”

  But Fifth wouldn’t give up. “But what if the killers made the victims give them their stuff, like signing it all over them? That’s a thing, right? Signing stuff over? Giving the killers their bank accounts and stuff?”

  Dent knew the girl was intelligent, and this proved it.

  And it seemed Bobseyn came to the same conclusion as he said, “You may have something there, Kasumi. If,” he looked to Dent, “the killers were after the victims accounts and property, they would have to have had them signed over in some form of legal transfer.”

  “But killing them before they did so seems counterproductive, doesn’t it?” mused Dent.

  “So something went wrong,” the girl said. “The victims refused or something and they were killed because they didn’t want their stuff going to strangers.”

  Bobseyn put his hand on his chin. “Could be, could be,” he allowed.

  “It’s highly likely then that The Ranch is indeed behind it somehow,” Dent stated, reaffirming his visit to the compound. “They spoke of the collective, of giving up their possessions for the whole of the compound.”

  “It’s a stretch, Dent.”

  “It’s a lead, Bobseyn. A solid lead.”

  The two men alternated between looking each other in the eye and leafing through the papers on the table. The sheriff di
dn’t want to accuse someone, or a group of someones, of foul play without proper evidence, and Dent didn’t need evidence to know that whatever was going on in the compound was tied to some form of eTech. The thing was, he couldn’t tell the sheriff that some mystery man named Otto had as much as confirmed it when he had sent Dent and Fifth out here in the first place.

  Fifth hopped up on her knees and leaned forward. “Is there a way to check if the people at The Ranch gave up their money to whoever runs the place?”

  It was a good place to start, but the sheriff said, “We can’t go poking around people’s financials. It’s against the law.”

  “But there are ways around that, right?”

  The sheriff chuckled. “Not if I want any of the charges I bring to them to stick.”

  Fifth slumped back in her chair, shoulders sagging and chin dropping.

  Dent thought the girl was on the right track. It would be an easy matter of hacking into the bank’s system, pulling up records for current devotees at The Ranch. If they could get a message to Otto, he could likely do it, but as of yet the mysterious man had left no way for Dent or Fifth to contact him. It was always a one-way contact and conversation. But, he realized, they didn’t need to hack into private accounts. The paperwork laid out on the table proved that.

  “How did you get these records?” he asked the sheriff, pointing to piles before them.

  Bobseyn gave him an odd look. “Public records. Once someone dies, financials become open to authorities to ensure their wills are executed properly.” The way he said it, like he was explaining water was wet, gave Dent the impression that the sheriff expected this to be common knowledge.

  “Then we may have a way in,” Dent reasoned. “We go to the bank, tell them we’re investigating the murders and want to see if there is a connection to the victims and The Ranch.”

  Bobseyn rapped his knuckles on the table and added, “And while we’re there, we see if The Ranch has any ties to anyone in the community. Covering our bases. We don’t need specific account information, just an inquiry into whether or not the victims had given any money to The Ranch.”