I meet his gaze. “Check into hate crimes against the Amish in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana in the last two years. I want names and addresses. That gets into federal territory, so the feds will have records.”
“I’m on it.”
I turn my attention to Pickles. “Who are the biggest dealers in the area?”
Pickles knows the answer off the top of his head. “Jack Hawley got popped two years ago with a key of coke. Did eighteen months at Terre Haute. Word is he’s hanging with his old friends.”
“These guys never learn,” Glock mutters.
I jot the name on my pad. “Who else?”
“We know that goddamn Harry Oakes is selling meth. Got a network the size of New fuckin’ York. But he’s one paranoid son of a bitch. I can’t see him doing this kind of thing.”
“Who else?”
“The Krause brothers.” Pickles gives a nod. “They’re cooking shit out at their old man’s farm. House is derelict, so they moved a trailer home out there. Lights are burning in those barns half the damn night.”
“Where’s the old man?”
“Sent him to an old folks home down in Millersburg.”
“Huh.” I think about that a moment, tap my pad with my thumb. “These names are a starting point. Let’s go knock on some doors. Feel them out.”
Glock sits up in his chair. “You want me to go with you?”
I shake my head. “I’ll take Pickles.”
The former Marine looks alarmed. “Those Krause boys’ve got guns out there, Chief.”
I don’t have anything against guns in general. I have faith in our constitution, and I believe a law-abiding citizen has the right to keep and bear arms. If I hadn’t had access to a weapon seventeen years ago, I wouldn’t be here today. Still, as a cop, I know that in the wrong hands a gun can become an instrument of death in a split second. “We’re just going to rattle some cages,” I say. “See what runs out.”
“Chief, with all due respect . . .”
Pickles bristles at Glock’s concern. “We can handle it.”
I cut in before the situation escalates. “Pickles and I will take care.”
He nods, but doesn’t look happy about us going out alone.
I look at T.J. “I want you to canvass the area around the Plank farm.” Gaining useful information via canvassing is a long shot since many of the Amish farms in the area are more than a mile apart. Many will not speak openly to the English police. But with nothing to go on and the clock ticking, it’s worth the time and effort. “Ask about the family. Friends. Relatives. And see if anyone saw any strange vehicles or buggies in the area. Find out which homeowners keep firearms and what kind. Make a list.”
“You got it.”
Skid gives me a puzzled look. “What about me?”
“If I were you, I’d go home and get some sleep,” I tell him. “We’ve got a long stretch ahead and it might be a while before you get another chance.”
CHAPTER 8
Pickles and I hit the Krause place first. The farm sits on a dirt road four miles north of town. A decade earlier, Dirk Krause farmed soybeans, corn and tobacco. But as he got up in years and his capacity for physical labor dwindled, the farm fell to ruin. Instead of taking over the operation, his twin sons, Derek and Drew, let the fields go to shit. They sold the International Harvester tractor—for drug money more than likely—and leased the land to a neighbor. Talk around town is that the two sons, in their twenties now, work just enough to eke by. The brunt of their income is derived from selling crystal meth.
“You really think these losers had something to do with murdering that family?” Pickles asks as I turn the Explorer into the long gravel lane and start toward the house.
“Since we don’t have squat as far as suspects, I thought talking to them might be a good starting point.”
I park behind a rusty manure spreader surrounded by waist-high yellow grass. To my left, an ancient barn with weathered wood siding and a hail-damaged tin roof leans at a precarious angle. To my right, the house squats on a crumbling foundation like an old man in the throes of a cancerous death. Every window on the north side is broken. The back porch door dangles by a single hinge.
“Good to see they’re keeping up the place.” I slide out of the Explorer. The buzz of cicadas is deafening in the silence of the old farm.
“Place used to be nice,” Pickles grumbles as he gets out. “Looks like a goddamn junkyard now.”
“Except for that.” I point.
In stark contrast, a brand new fourteen-by-sixty trailer home with a satellite dish and living room extension perches on an old concrete foundation. A bright red barbecue grill lies on its side outside the front door, ashes and chunks of charcoal spilling onto the grass. A few feet away, four metal chairs and a brand-new cooler form a semicircle. A white Ford F-150 gleams beneath the carport. I think of a pistol in the hands of a paranoid meth freak and find myself hoping neither man is crazy enough to shoot at a cop.
“Looks like someone’s home,” Pickles says.