The beehive-shaped structures were brick kilns, and I wondered if they'd been used to fire the bricks used in the big house. The black-mawed furnace boxes underneath the structures were certainly big enough to have been wood-fired. Scrub trees now grew up throughout what would have been the work area around the kilns and the quarry machinery. Mounds of broken bricks surrounded the kilns, and the overgrowth on the mounds suggested these works had been silent for a very long time. Over to one side I found a line of the tiny square depressions that in the South usually indicate slave cabins. They were no bigger than chicken coops. A weirdly leaning stone chimney guarded the tumbled remains of a larger log cabin, which was now home to a mass of poison ivy, tiny birds, and at least one burrowing animal. The shepherds both stuck their snouts into the hole, and I waited for a retaliatory bite, but nothing happened. The remains of a party gazebo occupied the corner opposite the brick kilns.
We walked around to the ramp leading down into the flooded quarry. It had been cut through the raw stone, and then the cut had been lined with cobbles for some reason, possibly to give horses or mules better footing as they dragged up their loads. I saw the rusting remains of beer cans and other debris indicating that this place might be an illicit local swimming hole in the heat of summer. Both dogs ran down the ramp and jumped in. They paddled for a moment, then seemed to sense that there was no bottom within their reach and quickly came back out. I backed away from them to avoid being soaked as they shivered off the cold water.
Which is when I saw the hand.
At least it looked like a hand. It was about three feet underwater, and the fingers were splayed out as if the hand had been reaching for the light. I wasn't about to wade into that icy water, but I changed position a couple of times on the edge of the ramp just to make sure it wasn't some kind of optical illusion. It wasn't; it was definitely a human hand, connected to a darkly blurred shape under the water. I took out my cell phone and found I had exactly one bar's worth of service. I called the Rockwell County Sheriff's Office.
It took a county SUV almost twenty minutes to find us down at the quarry. The vehicle pulled up at the edge of the water, looking like it'd had an interesting time down at the ford. Sheriff Walker got out of the right front seat; a deputy exited the driver's door, and another the backseat. I had the shepherds on a long down over by the rail spur: One of the deputies asked me if the dogs were going to be all right. I told him not to worry, that they'd been fed recently. He didn't look reassured, but Walker told him the dogs were okay. We all trooped over to the ramp, and I pointed to the fluttering white image. The sheriff stared down at it for a moment and then told one of the deputies to get the floater team out.
"You didn't try to pull that out, did you?" he asked.
I shook my head. "Made sure it was what I thought it was and then called you guys."
"Because you know what usually happens, you go pullin' on a floater."
"I do. The dogs jumped in just to get wet, but then they came right back out. I thought it was the depth that scared 'em."
"Could have been," he said. "This thing's easily a hundred foot down, believe it or not. There's a ledge along two sides, stickin' out five, six foot just below where you can see into the water. We've lost three kids here since I've been sheriff, divin' in and hittin' that ledge. Got two of 'em back."
"Could this be the third?"
He shook his head. "This is recent," he said.
I waited for him to explain that comment, but he seemed preoccupied. One of the deputies spoke into his shoulder mike and then reported that the team would be here in about an hour.
"Out exploring?" Walker asked me.
"Learning the terrain," I replied. "Just in case my ghost problem comes out here to play games."
"Good idea," he said, but once again he seemed distracted. "Deputy Baynes will take your statement now."
Sheriff Walker called me at the cottage that evening as I was finishing up a truly uninspiring TV dinner.
"We got an ID," he said. "Low-level gangbanger from Danville. We had some intel that somebody clipped a barrio capo and threw the body in the river three weeks ago. Apparently they chose the quarry instead."
"Which gangs?" I asked.
"The Salvadorians and some Crip wannabes here in town. At least that's the rumor."
"Crips? Out here?"
"Gangs are everywhere, Lieutenant. Even out here."
"How'd they do him?'
"The body was anchored to a piece of quarry stone with some fence wire. Divers said it looked like they slid the stone far enough down the ramp so that his head just went under. He went in alive, according to the ME prelim. Not a mark on him."
"Sweet," I said. "So they got to watch."
"As did he."
"All for what, some really bitchin' tennis shoes?"
"Or a sideways look at someone's special bitch."
We remained silent for a moment, each of us marveling at the human wastage that was the gang life these days.
"Lemme ask you something," he said finally.
"Shoot."
"Anyone ever called you a shit magnet?"
"What, three dead guys in as many weeks, and you think there's a pattern?"
He chuckled. "Look," he said, "you're reportedly not hurting for money. You might want to invest in a chain-link fence around that quarry as part of your long-range plan. Attractive nuisance, the lawyers call it."
"That thought had crossed my mind," I said. "Of course, it would help if they just stayed off my place."
"Seven hundred acres out in the country has a gravity all of its own," he said. "They know you can't patrol all of it. I'm talking now about the deer hunters, sex-crazed teenagers, hell, you probably even have a marijuana patch or three somewhere out there. And did they tell you about the abandoned coal mine?"
I groaned. "Abandoned coal mine?"
He chuckled again. "Oh, yeah, the coal mine. Back in the early 1900s, somebody thought there was low-grade coal under those ridges out there along the Dan. There was this cave, halfway up the ridge from that quarry. The Lees let some wildcatters come in and dynamite their way back into the cave, see what they could see."
"They find coal?"
"Nope," he said, "but they left an unstable tunnel going about six, seven hundred feet sideways back into that ridge. It's still there, although the entrance supposedly was covered by a rock slide. You might want to locate that and do something to seal it properly."
"Great. Any other little treasures I should know about?"
"Well, lemme see," he said. "The Lees lost all their slaves to cholera the last year of the war. There's a mass grave out there somewhere, nobody knows where for sure, but certainly someplace you do not want to put your veggie garden. Then, of course, there's your candlestick ghost in the big house. There's quicksand in the mouth of Bad Whiskey Creek. And did I mention that there's rumored to be a pack of wolves running that place? And-"
"Sheriff?" I said.
"Lieutenant?"
"Say good night now."
"Good night now, Lieutenant."
I hung up with my bad news bear and went to look for Carol Pollard's card. I called her at home.
"I think I'm getting cold feet," I told her.
"Oh, no-what's happened?"
I recounted my recent discovery at the quarry and then threw in the sheriff's joyous intelligence about a whole host of dangerous features at Glory's End. She was not impressed.
"I mean, it's terrible to find a body on your place, but that's hardly your fault. As to the rest, just about every big place out here has abandoned graveyards, brick and stone workings, and swamps where prudent people don't go walkabout."