“Yes,” he said, agreeably. “I’m up here alone,” he said to Thorne. “Fishing, and checking out some property for a project I have planned. I’ve got my eye on thirty acres just up the shore a bit, planning to put in a big resort for sport fishermen that will-”
“Yeah, whatever,” Thorne said, holding up his hand as if he were halting a car in traffic. “So, that’s everyone.”
“Yup,” said Bob. “I’ve been up here for three weeks now, gotten to know everyone who’s up.”
“And no one was expecting any visitors?”
Everyone muttered no under their breath. “Well, that’s a puzzler,” said the chief.
“What about up there?” I said, pointing up the road, where the farmhouse, hidden by trees from where we stood, sat beyond the gate with all the warning signs.
“I don’t think it would be anyone from up there,” said Thorne.
I thought, Huh? But I said, “How can you know that? Twenty minutes ago, we thought this was my father.”
“I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s anyone from up there,” said Thorne. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”
This was a baffler. A cop who didn’t want to make every effort, consider every possibility to learn the identity of a guy who’d been mauled to death? I kept pressing. “At least you should go up there and talk to whoever lives there.”
“Orville,” Bob said softly, “you’re going to at least have to ask them a few questions.”
“What’s the deal?” I asked. “I don’t understand. Why can’t you go up there and talk to them?”
Bob smiled sympathetically. “Last time Orville talked to those folks, they hid his hat on him.”
“They did not!” Chief Thorne said, putting his hand up to the top of his hat and shoving it down more firmly onto his head. “We were just horsing around, that’s all, no harm done.”
“Orville, no one blames you. They’re a weird crew. Listen, I find them kind of intimidating, too. We can go up there with you. They won’t take your hat if there’s a bunch of us there.” Bob tried to say this without a hint of condescension, but it still came off as a bit patronizing.
Even so, Thorne was mulling it over. It was clear that he didn’t want to go up there alone.
“Okay, Bob,” he said. “Why don’t you come along, too.”
“I want to come,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s really necessary, Mr. Walker,” Thorne said, glancing at me, and there was something in his eyes then, just for a second, that looked familiar to me. It was the second time since I’d arrived that I felt I knew him from someplace.
I wanted to ask him if, by some chance, we’d met before, maybe when I’d been up to see Dad here before, but instead said, “This body’s on my father’s property, and in his absence, I think it’s appropriate for me to know what’s going on.”
This was, of course, bullshit. Thorne was the law, and he could take, and leave behind, anyone he damn well pleased. But, evidently, he wasn’t aware of that.
“Okay, fine then,” he said. The three of us started walking up the lane. No one spoke for a while, until Thorne said to me, in a tone that bordered on the accusatory. “So, you’re from the city.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Thorne made a snorting noise, as if that explained everything. Bob Spooner gently laid a hand on my back, then took it away. “Your father’s told me a lot about you,” he said.
“Really?” I said.
“Says you’ve written some books, whaddya call it, that science fiction stuff. Spacemen, that kind of thing.”
“Some,” I said. “But not so much these days; I’m a feature writer for The Metropolitan.”
Bob nodded. “Yeah, he told me that, too. Good paper. Don’t see it all the time, but when I do, there’s lots to read in there.”
We were coming round the bend now, approaching the gate decorated with its numerous warnings for trespassers.
“I guess they don’t like visitors,” I said.
“They don’t like much of anything,” Thorne said.
The three of us stood at the gate, Bob resting his arms atop it. About fifty yards away stood the two-story farmhouse, and it didn’t look much the way I’d remembered it from when my father first purchased the property. Back then, the shutters hung straight, there wasn’t litter scattered about the front porch, there weren’t half a dozen old cars in various states of disrepair, the lawn out front of the house was cut, the garden maintained. Now, none of that was the case. There was an old white van up near the barn, a couple of run-down pickups and a rusting compact out front of the house. There was an abandoned refrigerator shoved up against one side of the building, a rusted metal spring bed leaned up against it, a collection of hubcaps hanging on nails that had been driven into the wall, half a dozen five-gallon red metal gas cans scattered about.
“Has my dad seen all this?” I asked of either Thorne or Bob. “The place is a dump.”
“It is a bit of a concern to him,” Bob said. “And by ‘a bit’ I mean huge. But he doesn’t exactly know what to do about it.”
“How many live here?” I asked.
Thorne said, “It depends on the day, I think. But right now, I think there’s the old man, well, he’s not that old, but he runs the family. Timmy Wickens.”
“Timmy?” I said.
“And Timmy’s wife, Charlene, and they’ve got a couple of boys, early twenties. Arlen tells me they’re her boys, from some other marriage. I think their last name is Dunbar. And there’s a daughter, Timmy’s actual daughter, she must be about thirty, thirty-two or so. Her name’s May. She’s got a boy of her own, he must be about ten, he lives here, too. I think she’s got a boyfriend, lives here with the bunch of them, but I’m not sure. And they all got their like-minded friends, dropping in now and then.”
“What do you mean, like-minded?” I asked.
Thorne shrugged. “They just don’t like mixing with everybody else. I mean, look at the signs.” He pointed to the ones we were leaning up against. “They think the world’s out to get ’em, I guess. And they’re not what you’d call fans of the government, large or small. They’ve had a few run-ins with other locals over things. Pissed so many people off the last place they moved that they had to come here. Sometimes, it’s just easier to leave them alone out here than have to deal with them.”
“Why would my father have rented to them if they’re a bunch of whackos?”
Bob said, “I don’t think he had any idea. Timmy came to see him when he saw the house was up for rent, all cleaned up, looking respectable. Wasn’t till afterwards that your dad saw what he’d got himself into.”
“Oh man,” I said, still surveying the landscape. I spotted an old washing machine beyond the fridge. “So, are we going in?”
“Why don’t we just try calling them,” Thorne said. He straightened up, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Hello!” He waited a few seconds, then again, at the top of his voice: “Hello? Mr. Wickens? Hello?”
The house remained quiet.
“Can’t you just go up to the door?” I suggested to Thorne.
He pointed to the “Beware of Dogs” sign. “Can you read?”
“I don’t see any dogs,” I said. “And I know you’ve got a gun. Can’t you defend yourself against some puppies?”
Thorne said, “Let me try calling again.” He took a breath. “Hello!”
Still no sign of action at the house. No one at a window peeking out. Nothing.
“If you’re not going to go, I guess I will,” I said. I had my foot on the bottom board of the gate, the other foot on the board above it, then a leg over the top in a couple of seconds. “I’ll go knock on the door,” I said. I was feeling a bit wired still. The discovery of the body, the drive up, the mistaken identity, it all had me a bit rattled, and I was eager to get some answers. Also, there was a part of me that was enjoying showing up Chief Thorne in a way I found hard to explain.