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.