The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)
Nicholas Petrie
Caminante, no hay camino.
Se hace el camino por andar.
—ANTONIO MACHADO
Traveler, there is no path.
The path is made by walking.
PROLOGUE
The Man in the Black Canvas Chore Coat
He walked into Harder’s Grange, announced by a chrome-plated bell mounted to the doorjamb. The faded black barn coat made him look bulky. It was mostly the coat. He wore a John Deere hat pulled down low, but there were no cameras. It was a farm-supply store in the middle of nowhere, like they all were.
He saw a chipped Formica service counter, a pot of overcooked coffee, and a few chairs for waiting customers and old-timers looking for company. He understood that most of these places served as a kind of social center for local farmers, whose lives were pretty solitary. He’d grown up on a farm himself, although not in this state.
Behind the counter was a weather-beaten sixtysomething guy in a red plaid dress shirt. He looked up at his only customer, then tucked the USDA brochure he was using as a bookmark into his paperback vampire novel.
The man in the coat set a pleasant expression on his face. “Morning,” he said.
“It definitely is,” said the counterman, a wide, cheerful smile stretching his wrinkles into a new topography. “And not a bad one at that. What can I do you for?”
“My mom just bought some property this side of Monroe,” said the man in the coat. “Off Highway Eleven. And she needs some fertilizer for her garden.”
“Son, you come to the right place. We got all kinds. What do you need?”
“I’ve been trying to get her to use manure, but she says she can’t stand the smell. She’s looking to plant a half-acre.”
The counterman whistled. “A half-acre? That’s some garden.”
“Well, she and my dad had six hundred acres of soybeans and corn in Bureau County, Illinois, so a half-acre isn’t much to her.” He shrugged. “She likes to keep busy since my dad died.”
The counterman nodded in sympathy.
“Anyway, with the farm she was using Prairie King, the 64-0-0. I believe two sacks would cover a half-acre, right?”
The counterman looked at him. He was on the far side of sixty, but his brown eyes were clear and focused.
This was always the moment, thought the man in the coat.
He’d told a good story.
He looked right. He sounded right.
But farming and the farm-supply business was local, and the counterman didn’t know his face, which counted for a lot.
Especially since 1995. And again since 2001.
Finally the counterman spoke. “Son, that’s ammonium nitrate,” he said. “I cain’t sell to just anyone, even if it is only a hundred pounds. We got rules about that kind of stuff. You got your yellow card?”
“Oh, yeah,” said the man in the coat, putting a sheepish look on his face. “Hang on, I got it right here.” He pulled out his wallet, a worn-down ballistic nylon item with a camouflage pattern. Even the wallet had been carefully assembled to make a certain impression.
He pulled out a driver’s license and a laminated yellow ID showing that he was registered with the state to buy certain kinds of fertilizers and pesticides. The form was a single page. The application fee was $44. The counterfeit driver’s license had cost a lot more than that.
The counterman scrutinized both cards, looking from one to the other and back again.
“Looks good,” he said. “Nothing personal. And you’re only getting a hundred pounds, I know. But the state’s dead serious about it.” He pushed the cards across the counter to the man in the coat, then flashed a grin. “Wouldn’t want any of them goddamned socialists to get hold of this stuff.”
The man in the coat smiled.
“No, sir,” he said. “We surely wouldn’t.”
The counterman pecked the order into an antique computer and took payment in cash. He directed his customer around to the loading dock to pick up his fertilizer.
Ten minutes later, the man in the black canvas chore coat turned the old blue Ford pickup onto the county highway, headed northeast.
It was his second stop that day.
Three more before nightfall.
Right on schedule.
PART 1
1
There was a pit bull under the front porch and it didn’t want to come out.
Young Charlie Johnson said, “That dang dog’s been there for weeks, sir. It already ate up all the cats and dogs around here. I can’t even let my dang little brother out the front door no more.”
The hundred-year-old house sat on a narrow lot on the edge of a battered Milwaukee neighborhood that, like the house, had seen better days. It was early November, not warm, not even by Wisconsin standards. The leaves had already fallen from the skeletal trees that towered overhead.
But the sun was out, which counted for something. And the sky was a high, pale morning blue. Not a morning for static. Not at all.
Peter Ash said, “Just how big is this dog?”
Charlie shook his head. “Never seen it up close, sir, and never in daylight. But it’s awfully dang big, I can tell you that.”