Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 2 | The Farm Read online

  Behind The Curve

  The Farm Book 2

  Boyd Craven III

  Copyright © 2020 Boyd Craven III

  Behind The Curve, The Farm Book 2

  By Boyd Craven III

  Many thanks to friends and family for keeping me writing!

  All rights reserved.

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The group had thought they’d found their little spot of heaven to bug out to; a farm in the middle of nowhere, a place where they could go if the world ever fell apart.

  But their money did not matter when the violence came after them directly, with the help of a corrupt legal system assisted by those sworn to protect and serve.

  When a second set of remains was found on their property, the sheriff’s department initiated an investigation that shed even more light on four families who only wanted to live quietly, in peace.

  It was doubtful they would ever find any.

  One

  “Mr. Little,” Sheriff Robertson said, “can you describe to me again how you found the remains?”

  Rob sighed, but nodded. Everybody wanted to give the authorities their full co-operation. The two sets of remains they had found had been old. Decades or more.

  “I was teaching my son how to sneak up on deer—”

  “Were you armed?”

  “With my pistol, but I’ve always got that same one on me that I’m wearing right now,” Rob said, noting the sheriff grinning and nodding. “We weren’t hunting. We had been walking fence lines, checking for breaks. We’ve got pigs and cattle with a couple dozen goats in the various fields, and we’re working on a spot to put some free-range chickens too. But we were in the right place at the right time, and I saw a flicker of movement. Now little Harry couldn’t see over the corn, but I could. I started showing him how to move quietly. I was teaching him how to stalk.”

  “Is that when your dog started chasing it?” Sheriff Robertson asked.

  “No sir, I got a phone call and the noise startled all of us, including the deer. I lost signal so I headed towards the opening near the woodlot. I was returning the call when the dog took off. Harry asked to follow, and I let him.”

  “And your call was to Officer Parker of the state police?”

  “Yes sir,” Rob said. “The owners of the farm had just had a will read and we’d discussed how it was interesting that some missing family members had been mentioned in the reading of the will. My wife, Angelica, did some of her own digging at the library on the old microfiche that they had the really old newspapers on. She found out folks have gone missing around here for a long time.”

  “More than you’d realize,” the sheriff told him, “but most of them are runaways or are found a week later, after they’d tried to elope with their beaus.”

  “Yeah, but I’m talking about the cases of missing girls and boys, most no older than 17. When Officer Parker stopped out for dinner one night, Angelica mentioned that—”

  “Is there a relationship with Officer Parker I should be aware of?” the sheriff interrupted.

  “Nothing inappropriate, sir. Nothing romantic if that’s what you mean, but we consider her a friend.”

  “I’m sorry, but I had to ask.”

  “Sir, have you ever been in battle before? Served in the military?”

  “Yes son, USMC,” the sheriff said with a smile.

  “You ever have a sumbitch in your unit you can barely stand, but you’re friends with them still, because you realized during some shitstorm of a firefight, that they were right next to you and had your back?”

  “Yes son,” Sheriff Robertson said. “I’ve got a few friends like that actually.”

  “Well, Sherry Parker isn’t a son of a bitch, but she probably wouldn’t be the type of person I would have gone out of my way to become friends with… But she was there when Ed Buckley went off the rails, and when they tried to firebomb us out at the farm.”

  “And the danger and life and death struggle made you friends?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I get the impression she wants to be my friend more, but my wife Angel is the one working on being more…”

  “More her friend?” Sheriff Robertson suggested.

  “Yes sir,” Rob said with some relief in his voice. “And that doesn't bother me much. My wife can be a little bit—”

  “Of hell on wheels. Oh, we have a file on your wife almost an inch thick,” Sheriff Robertson said.

  “She… huh?” Rob asked him, shocked.

  “Mostly when she was younger. She never got in big trouble or got charged with anything, but the old sheriffs liked to keep notes on folks in their area who were always in the middle of something. I’m keeping that tradition alive myself, though I find the entire farm fascinating.”

  “I can understand why,” Rob told him.

  “Now that there’s two bodies involved, the state police are going to be taking over the investigation, and I believe even the FBI will be getting involved at some point. Both bodies have a familial DNA match, and one of them has a familial match with Lyle. It’s… interesting. We’re going to be bringing in the cadaver dogs when we get our paperwork in order.”

  “I’m certain the owners are going to cooperate fully, but perhaps call their lawyers ahead of time and co-ordinate?” Rob suggested.

  “That’s their call, but I did give LeBaron and that Lucian guy, who works for the Mallorys, a heads up.”

  “Good deal.”

  The sheriff turned off the recorder and pulled the notebook to his side of the table, seeing that Rob had signed and dated his statement.

  “Do you have somebody coming to pick you up?” Sheriff Robertson asked standing, offering his hand.

  Rob took it. “My wife should be outside in my truck, waiting.”

  “That’s good. I hope we quit meeting like this, and that includes all of you folks at the farm, to be honest.”

  “Then stop out sometime for some of my momma’s cooking. She’s hell on wheels in the kitchen, to borrow your phrase.”

  “I wish I could,” the sheriff told him, “We’ll be in contact. Did you folks get your gates repaired?”

  “We sure did,” Rob said, “the same day it happened. If you folks show up, just hit the intercom. It rings in a few places now, and with ten of us there, somebody will answer it, for sure.”

  Anna was getting sore. Part of her job was to be photogenic, and that sometimes meant holding a pose in an uncomfortable position until the cameraman had the right light, the right facial e
xpression, the right thing going on in the background. It was all part of modeling, but Anna was happy she had been working on her core muscle group a lot, because otherwise she would be a sore mess.

  “And that’s good,” the photographer said.

  “I’m glad,” she said standing up straight, stretching side to side after she’d put down the rifle she’d been paid to model. “I was getting cramped.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the photographer said, “but I got some really great shots in that time, with the afternoon sunlight coming across the barn, like you were being lit up from the heavens.”

  “What?” Anna asked.

  The photographer turned the flip screen on his camera around and showed her the last half a dozen shots.

  “Wow, I thought shots like that had always been manipulated,” she admitted.

  “Sometimes they are, but as you can see right here,” he said, closing the viewer, “sometimes it’s just timing, patience and having an eye for it.”

  “You do good work,” she told him, “but with the way things have been going on, I have to get back to my farm. I really can’t be gone too long.”

  “I understand. I’ve got a security vehicle that will be mirroring you back there.”

  “Are the security guys any good?” Anna asked.

  “Can they shoot as good as you? No. Are they experienced executive security, who have been in warzones protecting embassy officials? Yes.”

  “That’s good enough for me. Thank you, and let your bosses know to give me a shout if they want to do any more. I like this location.”

  “I think I do too,” the photographer agreed.

  “Well, as soon as I get my bags packed, I’m off.”

  Two

  Andrea had been fascinated with the investigation. She had heard about the microfiche, and had been trying to do her own digging, but her way was via the internet. Ancestry and other genealogy websites were a wealth of information, and the advent of adding DNA to the mix had made tracking down family extremely easy.

  In her case, she was digging into old records showing how Dewie had ties with Lyle’s family. At the reading of the will they had found out that Dewie’s wife had been Lyle’s sister, who may or may not have committed suicide, but there were other things in the past as well. Dewayne’s dad had married a distant cousin who was related by marriage, and Dewie was the youngest of the three children they had.

  None had much in the databases, but a lot of them would have been in their nineties or older if they were still alive. A car accident had killed Dewie’s oldest brother and his family when Dewie was in elementary school, but finding out information about a cousin that was mentioned was difficult. Was the cousin from Dewie’s missing sister, or from another relative she had not found information about?

  “Are you ready to bang your head against the wall?” Curt asked her.

  “I have to be doing something. Steven’s crew is going to be done with the solar install in a couple more days,” she said.

  “You know, I didn’t realize how crazy being benched made you feel until I realized that I was being driven crazy by not having much to do.”

  “So, you’re saying I’m crazy?” Andrea asked, an eyebrow raised.

  They were laying in bed with the TV on the news, talking and settling down for bed after a long day of dealing with the police. Again.

  “I’m saying right now, we’re all a little bit crazy. So, I’m curious, did Lucian mention anything about the settlement offer he called about?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Andrea said, referencing the phone call they’d gotten right after suppertime.

  “How come?”

  “Because it didn’t start out with an apology and a statement regarding their wrongdoing and malfeasance.”

  “Malfeasance?” Curt asked. “Was that Lucian’s word?”

  “Yeah, dude gets to charge $250 an hour, he better have fancy words.”

  “I can’t believe I’m married to a doctor, who’s complaining about how much a lawyer costs, especially when we just sort of inherited back the money we invested buying the farm.”

  Andrea sighed, then something on the screen caught her attention.

  The DOW and NASDAQ have stated that Monday they are declaring a bank holiday, and no trading will be taking place. The market remains at a record low, even lower than when the president first took office. Investors fear that hyper inflation will soon become the new normal. Their fears are slightly based upon a commodities market that seems to be softening.

  That is right, Sean. With the Wuhan Flu shutting down many of the meat processing plants, think of the effect that is going to have once it trickles back to the farmers. The processing plants are closed, so the brokers and auctions cannot do their job, so the farmers can’t sell their products anywhere, even though there’s a huge demand on the consumer side.

  That is what I’ve been hearing, Lara. Grocery stores without groceries. People in a panic because there isn’t any toilet paper on the shelves—

  “Damn,” Curt said, sitting up and paying attention.

  “Do you ever wonder if the end of the world starts off so slowly, that you don’t even realize it’s happening?” Andrea asked.

  “You mean, like this year?” Curt asked.

  “Yes. An election year, civil unrest, a pandemic, multiple hurricanes, mass migration of folks from war torn countries, and all the evil that seems to be rearing its ugly head on TV. It’s like this year has been a nonstop shitshow, and that’s not even counting what we’ve all been through personally.”

  “I know what it’s felt like for me,” Curt said, “but I think it’s been worse on you and Anna, more so than anybody else.”

  “That’s because we were in the news,” Andrea almost spat. “I just mean… Do you ever wonder? Is this it?”

  Curt sighed. “Yes, I have wondered, but I was thinking more along the lines of the Bible. As in the book of Revelations. We’re not quite to that point yet, but I think you’re right. We’ve been on a slow collapse. It wasn’t any one event, just a culmination of a lot of bad things.”

  “And it won’t stop until we can literally point at where we are and say this shit sucks.”

  “We’re already at that point,” Curt said, running his knuckles on her ribs under her arm.

  “Don’t you dare tickle me,” Andrea said rolling over, letting the weight of the cast lay across his legs.

  “Tickle,” Curt told her, doing it again. “Tickle, tickle.”

  “Are you trying to start some shit?” Andrea asked, trying not to laugh out loud as he kept tickling her.

  “Always.”

  Luis and the Garcia brothers had set up cots in the fourth cabin. They appreciated a place to sleep, shower and watch TV when they were done working for the day. Having the ground prepped and the auger ran for most of the poles had saved them an enormous amount of time. They were working on putting in a steel framework that would hold the farm’s solar array. Like everything else Steven had planned, Luis knew it would be overbuilt.

  There would be about 50% more panels than they actually needed installed. For now, all of the lines ran to the battery house, but Luis had figured some of the excess panels could easily be diverted to a new one down the road if the group decided to do that. None of them minded, it was work. Good honest work.

  They would set the steel posts in the holes and cement them in while being held level. Then they would construct the framework. It was like a kid’s erector set, but much, much larger. The way the solar panels would slide on and snap in place on the framework was ingenious in their opinion. They just hoped that after they were done with this job, a new one would come up soon.

  “I wonder how much they’re going to make from the power company off this getup?” Jerald Garcia wondered aloud as they held a support in place, and bolted a cross frame to it.

  “I’m not sure this is going to be tied to the grid. They went ahead and put in a battery house. Most grid tied systems don’
t have big battery banks.”

  “Do you think they’re going to just… cut the cable?” Alajandro asked.

  “I think so, or be ready for that to happen,” Luis told him.

  “These guys… I wish we would have done something like this,” Jerald said. “I know what those little cabins cost, and with a few families pitching in funds, being able to get off the power grid is probably going to save them a ton… And they are set up for hard times here and not even knowing it.”

  “Trust me,” Alajandro said, “I think they know what hard times are. Remember the fence?”

  “And the cameras,” Jerald shot back.

  “And the motion sensors,” Luis added. “Yes, our friends are ready. In a world like we are in, can you blame them?”

  “No,” Jerald said after a second. “You know, since the last election, my wife and I have started storing more food than we grow in the garden.”

  “Si,” Alajandro said. “Maria and I have been doing much of the same. I must have dozens of food grade buckets full of dried foods.”

  “My grandmother used to store a lot of food that way in Mexico,” Luis said. “Dried out chilis, salt, rice, grains, flour…”

  “Si, we do all of that, and then some. It’s a good investment for our future,” Jerald told them, “Sorry, I just… I never told anybody because I don’t want you to think I’ve suddenly turned into a right-wing wacko who listens to Alex Jones.”