The sheriff shrugged. “I know most. But who can know everyone? I know the people I know,” he said simply. “This home is far from any city limits, so whenever Ned had an issue, he called us at the county.”
“Issue? Who’d Ned have problems with?” Mercy asked. She understood the politics and social behaviors of small towns and rural communities. She’d spent the first eighteen years of her life in a small town. The residents tried to make everyone’s business their own. Now she lived in a large, urban condo complex where she knew two of her neighbors’ names. First names.
She liked it that way.
“Someone broke into a couple of Ned’s outbuildings one time. Stole his quad and a bunch of fuel. He was pretty steamed about that. We never did find it. Other calls have been complaints of people hunting or trespassing on his property. He’s got a good ten acres here, and the borders aren’t marked very well. Ned posted some Keep Out signs, but you can only cover so much ground with those. He used to fire a shotgun to scare people off. After that happened a few times, we asked him to call us first. Scared the crap out of a backpacking family one time.”
“No dogs?”
“I told him to get a few. He said they eat too much.”
Mercy nodded. Fewer mouths to feed.
“Income?” she asked.
“Social Security.” Sheriff Rhodes twisted his lips.
Mercy understood. It was common for the antigovernment types to raise hell about paying their taxes or buying licenses, but don’t dare touch their Social Security.
“Anything missing?” asked Eddie. “Is there anyone who would even know what’s missing?”
“As far as I know, Toby Cox was the only person to step foot in this house in the last ten years. We can ask him, but I’ll warn you he’s not the most observant type.” Rhodes cleared his throat, a sheepish look on his face. “I can’t take it too seriously, but I’ll tell you Toby was terrified and rambling that the cave man had killed Ned.”
“What?” asked Eddie. “A caveman? Like prehistoric?”
Mercy simply stared at the sheriff. Communities had their rumors and legends, but this was one she’d never heard of.
“No, I gathered from my talk with Toby that it was more like a mountain man. But like I said, he gets confused easily. The boy’s not all there. I can’t give it any weight.”
“Did he see this cave man?” Mercy asked.
“No. My impression was that Ned had told Toby the story to scare the crap out of him. Seemed to work.”
“Got it.”
“But we do have one interesting thing,” said the sheriff. “Someone broke into a storage unit outside. Follow me.”
Mercy sucked in deep breaths of fresh air as she followed the sheriff down the porch stairs. He led them through the junk-lined funnel and fifty feet down the dirt road before veering off on a path. She smugly noted her toes were dry in her cheery rain boots. She’d warned Eddie to dress appropriately, but he’d brushed it off. This wasn’t rain on concrete sidewalks in downtown Portland; this was a rainstorm in the Cascades. Mud, heavy brush, wandering streams, and more mud. She glanced back and saw Eddie wipe the rain off his forehead, and he gave a wry smile with a pointed look at his mud-caked shoes.
Yep.
They ducked under a yellow ribbon of police tape that surrounded a small shed. “The crime scene techs have already processed the scene,” Sheriff Rhodes advised. “But try to watch where you step.”
Mercy studied the mess of crisscrossing boot prints and didn’t see a clear place to step. The sheriff simply walked through, so she followed. The shed was about fifteen by twenty feet and hidden by tall rhododendrons. From the outside it looked as if a strong wind would flatten the tiny outbuilding, but inside Mercy noticed the walls had been heavily reinforced and the room was lined with sandbags along the dirt floor.
“Chain on the door was cut. I should say all three chains on the door were cut,” the sheriff corrected himself. He gestured toward a big hole in the ground near the back wall of the shed. The lid to an ancient deep freezer opened out of the hole.
Bodies?
Mercy peered into the buried freezer. Empty. She sniffed the air, catching the minty odor of a weapon lubricant she knew some gun enthusiasts swore by, and a hint of gunpowder smell. Ned had hidden an arsenal in the ground.
“Weapons,” she stated flatly. Fahey had had three guns registered in his name. He wouldn’t have worked this hard to hide three guns. He could have easily stored a few dozen in the huge freezer. Mercy wondered how Ned had controlled the humidity for the guns. As far as weapons storage went, this wasn’t ideal.
“There was one of those little cordless humidifiers in there,” Rhodes stated as if he’d read her mind. “But someone had to know where to dig to find the freezer.” He gestured at the piles of fresh dirt. “I wonder how well camouflaged the freezer was. This isn’t a place I’d come looking for weapons.”
“Anyone know how many weapons he actually had?” Mercy asked.