“You’re some kinda mechanic, aren’t you?”
“I ain’t the kind who works on machines made out of piles of junk,” JT snapped.
Dan laughed, and turned back to the thing. “I’ve seen your truck,” he said, “but if you say so.” He hesitated for a moment, then turned to Homer. “You want to give me a hand with this?”
“You oughta maybe leave that for right now,” JT said. “We can get the loose stuff first.” Emmett looked up at her, along with the other two. “Might turn out to have some value,” she said.
Emmett looked back at the pile of rusty parts and bone bolted together, and back at JT. He found himself nodding, even though it didn’t make much sense. He expected Dan to object just out of contrariness, but he’d already backed away from the thing.
“Whatever,” Dan said, and grabbed a beat-up rim from a stack of them nearby. For another few hours, they worked in a tense silence, filling up one of the dumpsters, then broke for lunch. They ate in the bed of the truck—Emmett didn’t have much of an appetite to begin with, and the smell inside the house would have killed it. There was a picnic table out back, but it was covered with pipes and a snarl of cable, so the bed of the truck worked okay. Emmett just wished it wasn’t so close to the weird device Dan had found, because he kept finding himself glancing over at it.
“That all you got to eat?” Homer asked once as he looked over, making him jump.
“Huh?” he said, looking down at his handful of trail mix. “Oh. Yeah. Need to get to the store.”
“Probably ain’t eager to use the kitchen in there, huh?” Dan asked. “Them Speakman boys weren’t much for hygiene, I hear.” He took a huge bite of his sandwich. “I got a cousin that works at the Big M in town,” he said through the mouthful. “The Speakman boys would roll in once a month or so on their tractor to stock up, and they’d have to spray Lysol all over the place soon as they left, just to knock the smell down.”
“Hey,” Homer said sternly, and jerked his head at Emmett. “He’s related to ’em.”
“Yeah, no offense, whatever,” Dan said.
“None taken,” Emmett replied.
“You know them well, did you?” JT asked.
“Not really,” he said. “I just came out here now and then with my uncle. Like, once every few months.” Was that right? The visits had kind of run together, in his head. “Pace was always nice to me, whenever I showed up. He liked to recite these little songs he made up.
The gears turn behind you
The gears turn underneath
The gears have clever axles
And also they have teeth
“Pace had been big on mechanical stuff, even back then.”
“Yeah, I heard they were nice enough,” Homer said. “People were surprised by the whole murder thing.” He took a long swig from a bottle of orange soda. “Lotta folks say Amos got railroaded, like the cops pushed him into confessing something he didn’t do.”
“Ah fuck, an hour ago you were saying he strangled one of his brothers who’d hacked Uriah half to pieces,” Dan said.
“I was just saying what I heard,” Homer said. “And anyway, I was right about Uriah being all cut up—the chair was missing.”
Dan shook his head. “Whatever.”
They went back to work after eating, Dan and Homer bickering as they dragged trash around. Several times, one or another of them ran across another of the weird constructions. Two of them looked a lot like the first one they’d found, while another seemed to incorporate a piston that would have worked a set of cogs if it could have moved, or if much of the arm connecting the piston and cogs hadn’t been made from a long piece of bone. Each time, they all four gave the things a wide berth, continuing to haul armloads of loose junk metal back to the dumpsters.
By the time the sun was sinking on the horizon, they’d filled both dumpsters, and Emmett called the rental company and arranged for an early pickup the next day before counting out the money he owed everyone for the day’s work.
“See you all tomorrow?” he asked.
“Sure thing,” Dan said. “I’ll be here, anyway. Am I picking you two up again?” Homer and JT both nodded, and Emmett felt a vague sense of relief. He’d been worried everyone might bail on him. But they were nowhere near done, and he hadn’t yet found whatever the Speakman boys had been hiding.
***
Emmett spent the next few hours searching the house, but he didn’t find any secret compartments full of money or piles of jewels or gold bars. The junk piled everywhere didn’t make it easy. The first time a mouse darted out from under a pile of trash he nearly had a heart attack, but by the fourth one he barely reacted. Finally, he gave up. As it got dark it was too hard to see much anyway. Of the lamps in the house, the ones that worked were scarce and the bulbs were layered in grime. He could easily be working his way right past some evidence of a hiding place. He’d just have to keep on with the original plan, get things cleaned up outside.
It was nearly full dark when he drove into town and found a diner. He sank wearily onto a stool at the counter, feeling the day’s work now that he had a moment to think. He ordered a burger and sat, staring off into space and thinking about machinery. The burger landed in front of him what seemed like seconds later, jolting him back into the diner.
“Thanks,” he muttered, realizing he had no appetite. He picked up the burger anyway and began to chew, as the bell over the door jingled and the waitress greeted a new arrival. Emmett saw a Stetson hit the counter next to him, and turned his head just enough to take in the sheriff’s deputy uniform on the man settling on to the next stool. He took another bite of the burger, even though it tasted like plaster to him now. Law enforcement uniforms made him twitchy, these days, ike any Podunk sheriff’s deputy could see “dirty cop” written across his back.
“Anything new, Terry?” the waitress asked, setting a coffee cup in front of the deputy.
“Seems like all the lawbreakers are quiet tonight, Marge,” Terry replied as she filled the cup. “Nothing much going on all day ’cept for some work out at the Speakman place.”
Emmett carefully picked up a fry and popped it into his mouth, resisting the urge to hunker lower on his stool.
“That right?” Marge asked. “They finally wrapping that up?”
“I guess,” Terry replied. “Troopers handled all the property stuff. I only noticed ’cause JT Quinn’s out there. I like to keep an eye on her, ’cause, well, you know.”
“Oh, yeah,” Marge replied. Emmett realized he was staring off into space as he listened, and took a drink of his water. He would have dearly liked someone to explain why it was so obvious that a sheriff’s deputy was keeping an eye on JT, but of course everyone except him in the goddamn diner already knew why, so there was no need to discuss it.
“Who even owns that place now?” Marge asked. She was leaning on the counter as Terry eyed the menu.
“Someone related to Jake Parson,” Terry said without looking up.
Marge made a disgusted noise. “Parson. You oughta run them out of town, whoever it is.”
“Can’t do that, Marge,” Terry said mildly. “We’re not talking about Jake himself, after all.”
Marge snorted again. “You know as well as anyone that every member of that family either terrorized folks for Jake, or were useless layabouts.”
Emmett gritted his teeth, though he wasn’t sure why he was so mad. Most of his family had been useless, after all, content to live off Uncle Jake’s largess, and Emmett had said so to their faces often enough. That’s why they’d all packed up and followed Jake when he’d had to leave. That or they were afraid what might happen to them without Jake and Emmett to protect them, after years of strutting around like they owned the county. The fact that Jake had chosen Emmett for a more active role had always set him apart, made the rest of the family jealous.
Terry laughed. “It ain’t like the Speakmans were angels, themselves. I’ll have the meatloaf.” He tucked his menu ba
ck into its wire holder.
“So the State Troopers say, Terry,” Marge said. “The Speakmans were pushed into confessing. Amos wasn’t the sharpest guy out there—you put him a room with a detective like they did, he’ll sign whatever you put in front of him. The man could barely read, and if you said something he didn’t understand, he’d just agree with you. And Uriah, well, it just isn’t right what they did, hauling him in to the barracks when they should have rushed him to a hospital. You can tell me he signed any confession you want, but I’ll bet you any money it was written up after he’d already keeled over.”
“Far be it from me to defend the troopers from a charge of fabricating evidence, Marge, but how did Uriah get so injured, if it was all a misunderstanding?” Terry asked, sounding amused.
“He said some machine caught him,” Marge said. “Didn’t you hear that? Happens often enough, on the farm. Pace lost most of his arm in a thresher years back. And you know those boys weren’t much for doctors.”
“Uriah might have died from blood loss, but what about Amos?” Terry asked. “He was fit as a fiddle, and he just killed himself in jail. Explain that, if it wasn’t remorse.”
“None of those boys were ‘fit,’” Marge said. “They’d all been pretty much used up. And all his brothers were dead or in comas or whatever—it’s no wonder the poor man killed himself. He told them—the last thing he said was how if he couldn’t keep an eye on the farm he’d be best off dead. His brothers and that farm were all he had. They should have been keeping a better eye on him.” She turned to slide Terry’s ticket into the rail for the cook, then shook her head. “I don’t know why they all loved that farm so much, but they did.”
“Well, that farm’s the problem of some no-account relation to Jake Parson now,” Terry said. Emmett carefully chewed a fry and thought about how the deputy would react if he broke a glass on the counter and stabbed him in the neck with it. He ate another fry. Knowing the kind of glassware diners used he’d probably be stuck banging the glass on the counter until they hauled him off for making a nuisance of himself. Be smart about how you go about getting justice, that’s what Jake had always said.
Marge leaned back onto the counter and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “You going to keep an eye on the place, are you?”
Terry heaved a sigh. “Doubt it’s worth my time. Nothing worth a plug nickel out there, nothing to get the criminal element stirred up. Even if your pal Amos did dang near kill someone once over a piece of it, a few years back.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Had his brothers helping, too. That’s your innocent Speakman boys.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Marge said, moving off down the counter to fill someone’s coffee cup.
Emmett managed a few more bites of his burger, thinking. He could feel the deputy staring at him, sizing up the guy he hadn’t seen around before, as Marge slid a plate of meatloaf on to the counter. He stood and dug some money out of his jeans. Tempting as it was to pay with a credit card just to see the look on Marge’s face, now was a good time to keep his head down. He walked out to his car and sat for a few more minutes, still thinking, then pulled out his cell phone.
He still had one or two friends in the department. None of them would really stick their neck out for him, but doing a little research for him was a small enough favor.
***
Emmett pulled up near the dark, looming forms of the dumpsters and pushed open his car door. It had been getting steadily cooler as the night wore on, temperatures dropping to something more seasonal, and he hurried toward the house, smelly as it was. Not that it was really much warmer inside. The only way to heat the place was an old woodstove in the main room, and he didn’t have any firewood for it. He took a jacket from his bag on the couch and put it on before finding himself staring at the one clear spot on the floor where a chair had once been, thinking about the last time the Speakmans had been in the room.
The prospect of searching through the house again wasn’t a fun one. He could look around in likely spots outside, he supposed. The barn again, maybe. But it was cold outside, and dark—he’d need to use a flashlight. He took a deep breath, which was a mistake. But an ammonia tang under the smell of manure and rotten food and old cigarette smoke made him pause. Back in the day, there had been dozens of cats prowling around at all time—they’d been half-feral, but Pace had treated them all like pets, as best he could.
Where had they gone? He supposed the county could have taken them, but could they have gotten them all? The smell of cat piss remained, but Emmett hadn’t seen a single feline. He should have noticed the absence earlier, when it had become clear how many damn mice were running around the place.
He shook his head. Maybe if he looked at the devices scattered around he’d find some cat bones, but it wasn’t important. It was just something else that made the house unpleasant, was all—both the absence of cats keeping mice down, and the ghostly reminder of the time they’d been around hanging in the air. Sleep, that’s what he needed. He could turn in early and get up early, and do a little looking around in daylight before Dan and everyone showed up. But as achy as he was, he was in no mood to try to sleep in his bag on the couch again, to lie there listening to mice running around and envisioning machinery.
He walked slowly through the house, glancing at the little devices scattered everywhere. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see a sort of theme tying them together even when they weren’t obviously the same, as well as similarities to the larger versions outside.
He glanced out the flyspecked window toward the thing Dan had found near the barn, even though it was hard to see much by the light of a crescent moon. A flicker of motion caught his eye. One of the shadows out there moved.
The shadow disappeared, then reappeared again some ten yards away, and Emmett leaned closer, squinting out the window. He couldn’t make out any detail, couldn’t even tell if it was a person or an animal. He lost track of it again, and after staring hard for a few more seconds, he stepped away and started for the next window, immediately tripping over a toolbox on the floor. The next window with a view of the path the shadow had taken was as small and dirty as the first one he’d been looking through, one of only two stingy windows in the main room. He caught another glimpse of movement, but had no more luck figuring out who or what it was.
He stepped back, glaring around the room. There wasn’t a single working exterior light on the house or the barn. He had no idea how the Speakman boys had managed the goddamn cows in the winter, when at least one milking would have been done before sunup.
Since there was no lock on the front door, he settled for shoving a milk crate full of huge bolts in front of it. Maybe there was a coyote out there, maybe that was why all the cats had gone. And if there was, maybe it might have gotten used to hanging out in the house on cold nights—couldn’t have convinced him otherwise from the smell, anyway.
Or maybe someone else knew the Speakman boys might have something hidden. Emmett didn’t think they’d have much luck looking without a light, but it was an unsettling thought. He made his way to the couch and rooted to the bottom of his backpack for the pistol he had there—a Glock 19 he’d gotten to replace his service weapon when he was pushed out of the department. Emmett had never had to fire it except at the range, but if some hillbilly thought he was going to snag the Speakman brothers’ money out from under him they’d have a surprise coming. He tucked the pistol into his waistband and returned to the windows.
Several times, he thought he saw something—moving, always moving. The piles of junk all over the farm created a tangle of deeper shadows, and whatever or whoever it was kept sliding from view into them. The moon set after a few hours, making it even harder to see, but Emmett had a sense it was still out there. He considered going out for a look, or just shouting—a shout would probably scare off a coyote, he thought. But if it was someone from town, searching for the Speakman boys’ treasure, he didn’t want them to know that they’d been spotted. He kept
watching, moving from window to window, for a long while.
***
Emmett started awake to a metallic clanging from outside. He sat up, blinking, and for a moment he felt disconnected in time. The sun was fighting its way through the two grubby windows. Again, he could hear the clanging from the dumpsters outside, and again, his thoughts were fighting past visions of machines, gears and cogs.
But he was sitting in one of the lumpy old easy chairs in front of the TV, still wearing his jacket, not lying in his sleeping bag on the couch. He’d sat down at some point, and fallen asleep. He pushed himself up and the Glock fell onto the floor with a clunk. He winced, and picked it up before stretching his aching back. After a moment’s consideration, he tucked the pistol into the jacket pocket and shambled out the door.
The new, empty dumpsters had been dropped off, and the rental company was loading the old ones onto trucks. He signed the paperwork, and he was standing in the drive, trying to get his sludgy thoughts in order, when Dan’s pickup pulled up. Despite the cold, JT was in the bed of the truck again, although today she wore a sweatshirt that concealed her sleeve of tattoos. Apparently Homer wasn’t enough of a gentleman to offer to ride back there, though he’d probably offered to allow her to squeeze in next to him in the cab. He and Dan were bickering as they climbed out, so Emmett could see why JT had opted to slump sullenly in the open air. She clambered out as Dan and Homer approached.
“They weren’t no Satan worshipers,” Dan was saying, “no matter what Ezra got up to.”
“All I’m saying, is everyone knew Ezra did some crazy shit, back in the fifties,” Homer said. He looked up at Emmett. “Ain’t that right?”
“What?” Emmett asked. “Who’s Ezra?”
Both Homer and Dan stared at him with incredulous expressions for a moment. “The Speakman boys’ father,” Dan said at last. “You didn’t know him?”
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