The Wrong Man

46

Traffic was nonexistent on Thanksgiving afternoon. We got off the interstate and followed the local roads. The housing was sparse and modest, and there wasn’t much for commerce besides gas stations, bait shops, and an occasional diner. Nothing was open today.

We found the street we were looking for, aided by a small sign that said SUMMERSET FARMS with an arrow pointing to the right. I turned right and drove down a paved road.

We pulled up to a long metal gate blocking the road. On the gate was a sign reading SUMMERSET FARMS IS CLOSED.

We got out of the SUV, if for no other reason than to stretch our legs after more than two hours in the car, and walked up to the gate. Down the road, there was a long ranch-style house and a gigantic barn, all painted red. And behind that housing was farmland as far as the eye could see. Shauna had mentioned that when Global Harvest purchased the farm, it bought up neighboring farmland.

“You didn’t expect it to be open, did you?” Tori asked me. She looked like a fish out of water, a well-dressed, cosmopolitan woman in farm country. I suppose I didn’t look much like the town, either.

And no, I didn’t expect Summerset Farms to be open on Thanksgiving.

“Why the gate?” I asked.

“Who knows? Maybe vandals or robbers.”

“Yeah, maybe.” The gate was fastened to a post. It didn’t appear to be hydraulic. I pushed on it, and it moved. So I kept pushing, and it kept moving, until I had cleared a path for my vehicle.

“I’m not the lawyer,” said Tori, “but I do believe this would be trespassing.”

“Hardball, not softball,” I reminded her. “You don’t have to be a part of it. You want to go for a drive and come back in an hour?”

She thought that was amusing. “I’ll stick. It wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

With the gate out of the way, we returned to the SUV and drove up to the small parking lot. We got out and walked up to the ranch house. The front door was locked, as expected. There was a window, and I peered into the place. Not much to see for my purposes. It was a reception area with what appeared to be standard office space behind it. I guess they didn’t sell their products to walk-up customers, or if they did, it didn’t happen here.

We walked over to the barn. The main door, which was taller than me, had a gigantic padlock securing it. There were no other windows.

“Okay, that’s what I figured,” I said.

Tori peered up at me, squinting into the sunlight. “We came all this way just for this? You discover that the place is closed for Thanksgiving, try the door, peer into a window, and that’s-”

“That’s not it,” I said. “That’s just it for here.”

We returned to the SUV and retraced our steps past the gate. I closed it back up and drove down the road, following the fence line of the property. On the other side of the fence was a pretty weak-looking set of wheat crops, stubbly things, but I knew as much about wheat crops as I did astrophysics, so for all I knew the crop was doing quite well.

The land was pretty flat around here. I finally came upon a hill to my left. I followed a dirt path, which I was pretty sure was a road, up the hill and then stopped the SUV.

“Glove compartment,” I said to Tori.

She opened it and removed a fancy camera that I’d taken from Joel Lightner. She handed it to me.

I got out of the vehicle and climbed onto the hood. I helped Tori up, then helped her climb to the roof. Then I joined her.

“This is… unusual,” she noted.

The camera was something a good P. I. like Lightner would use, a high-powered lens attached to the camera that could get a decent image from over a mile away.

Through the camera, I looked out over the Summerset Farms acreage. The crops were sparse, stubbly, and brownish-green, like a neglected summer lawn. As I moved beyond the borders of the property line, the crops became even more sporadic and then nonexistent, just a bunch of dirt as far as the eye, assisted with this high-powered device, could see.

“That’s a lot of acreage Global Harvest bought that they aren’t using for wheat,” I said.

“Let me look,” said Tori.

“Hang on.” There was a large metal structure with a domed top. I didn’t know what it was. Some kind of a warehouse or silo.

Then I saw something that didn’t look like farming at all.

It looked like a bunch of guys shooting assault rifles at targets. The distance was such that I could barely register the sound of gunfire, but my eyes didn’t lie.

“Check this out.” I kept the camera in position and motioned for Tori to take it. It moved a little when she grabbed it, but it didn’t take her long to find the same thing I found.

“Oh my God,” she said. “What are they doing? I mean, I know what they’re doing. But…”

In my peripheral vision I saw a pickup truck barreling down the road toward us with a yellow siren flashing on top. The truck skidded to a stop down the hill from us. The truck’s side panel was emblazoned with SUMMERSET FARMS

SECURITY.

The man who got out was wearing a green uniform with a brown leather jacket over it. A firearm hung from his hip holster.

“Can I ask what you folks are doing?” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

He stared at me. I stared at him. We stared at each other.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“None of your business.”

“It’s our business, all right.”

“I’m exercising my First Amendment rights,” I said. Just like, apparently, they were exercising their Second Amendment rights, but I didn’t say that.

He didn’t think I was funny. He was built like a tank, plus he had a weapon.

“I want to see some identification,” he said.

“And I want to see peace in the Middle East, but neither one is going to happen today.”

“Get down, sir, and get into my vehicle.”

“As tempting as that sounds, I’m gonna pass,” I said.

The guard ably removed his sidearm and trained it on me.

“God, Jason,” Tori said to me under her breath. “Let’s get down.”

That made sense. The guy with the gun aimed at us wanted us to get down, so we got down. We climbed down to the hood, then I jumped off and helped Tori do the same.

“Get behind the wheel,” I whispered to her.

“Now get into my vehicle, both of you.” With the hand that wasn’t holding a gun, the guard snapped a photograph of us with his cell phone.

I walked toward him, showing the palm of my right hand (the camera was in the left) to indicate I was no threat. I put myself approximately between the sight line of his gun and Tori. I heard the SUV’s door open and close. Good. Tori had gotten in. The car was still running, so all she had to do was put the car in drive and take off if she were so inclined. If I were her, I might be tempted to do just that.

“She’s not going anywhere,” the guard said. “Neither of you are.”

“Take it easy, Deputy Fife,” I said. “Before you hurt somebody with that gun.”

“Hand over that camera and get in my vehicle.” The guard was beginning to understand that I wasn’t in a compliant mood.

“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I’m an officer of the court trying to serve a subpoena. It’s against the law for you to interfere with me.”

“That’s a helluva way to serve a subpoena, on the roof of a car.”

“I’m creative.” I turned so that my back was to the man. “I’m getting into my car,” I said. “You’re going to have to shoot me in the back to stop me.”

I moved slowly but without pause. They were ten of the longest steps I’d ever taken. But what could this guy do? How could he explain putting a bullet in my back?

“You’re not driving away!” he called out. “You’re not leaving with that camera.”

If only he knew what I knew. I’d screwed up. I hadn’t snapped any photos. I’d handed the camera over to Tori, and then Deputy Dawg here showed up. That was a miss on my part. A big miss. Lack of sleep = mistakes.

But at least I got into my car.

“Drive,” I told Tori.

And she did. She’d had time to adjust the seat so that she could reach the pedals. The gas pedal definitely worked. We took off over the hill in a burst. Smart move by Tori. She didn’t retrace our steps and risk passing the guy. She drove up over the hill and out of sight.

“He seemed like a nice guy,” I said to Tori as we headed back to the interstate.

Tori looked behind us through the rearview mirror. I shifted in my seat and turned around. Nobody followed us. Once we were on the interstate, Tori stopped looking behind us.

“You picked today because you thought you’d have some freedom to look around the place,” she gathered. “And because you thought if something illegal was going on here, today might be one of the days those illegal things would be happening.”

“Plus, it seemed like a nice day for a drive,” I said. “No, you’re right. Maybe now we know why Randall Manning is so sensitive about his sales records with Summerset Farms. Maybe fertilizer isn’t the only thing being transferred from Global Harvest International to Summerset. Maybe they’re running guns.”

“Is that all they were doing?” she asked. “Then why were they shooting them, too?”

“Maybe checking the merchandise. Making sure the weapons work okay.”

She looked at me. “Is that what you really think?”

I was trying to downplay what I’d just seen. But it wasn’t going to work. Tori saw it for what it was.

“No,” I admitted. “It looks like they’re training for something.”