Loonies (14 page)

“The beginning is just incidentals,” he said, before stopping the film. “This is where it gets interesting.”

Simon looked jittery, rubbing his hands together.

“What were you doing up at the ridge that evening,” Steem asked, his voice stern, but flat, with no emotion.

“I was trying to stop him,” Simon said, his eyes averting the State Police captain.

“Trying to stop who?”

“He said we needed to burn the place down.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Marshall,” Simon said. “He wanted to torch the Mustard House.”

Brian looked at Noah, not believing what he was hearing. Noah just nodded at the monitor, urging him to pay attention.

“The puppet?” Steem sighed.

“He’s not a puppet.” Simon cast his eyes down at his hands.

“Marionette? Dummy?”

“Oh, he’s no dummy.” Simon looked up. “He’s very smart.”

“Intelligent enough to outsmart you?”

“He could outsmart anyone.”

“Why did you bury him?” Steem asked. “To hide any evidence?”

Simon shook his head. “I buried him because he was dead. Someone killed him.”

“Did you kill him?” Steem was playing along.

“NO!” Simon banged his fist on the table. Wickwire took a step forward, but Steem raised his hand and he backed off.

“No need to get upset,” Steem said, his voice softer. “Who killed Marshall?”

“I don’t know.” He reached his hand up and wiped something from the corner of his eye. A tear? “I guess the same person who told him to burn down the Mustard House.”

“Someone told you to do that?”

“Not me.” Simon’s voice rose. “Someone told Marshall.”

“Someone told Marshall to burn down the Wymbs Institute?”

“That’s right.”

“Who told him to do that?”

“I don’t know.” His head slowly moved back and forth. “Marshall wouldn’t tell me. He said it was on a need-to-know basis. Maybe he was protecting me.”

“Who are you protecting?”

Simon looked at the captain. “I told you I don’t know.”

Steem leaned back in his chair. “Let me get this straight. Marshall told you someone told him to burn down the institute. So the two of you got some gas and drove up to the ridge?”

Simon nodded. “I went along to try and stop him.”

“But you didn’t stop him?”

Simon slumped in his chair. It looked like he might be on the verge of tears. “No. I couldn’t.”

“You replaced one of his eyes,” Steem said. “How did he lose an eye up on the ridge?”

Brian leaned forward, in anticipation of this answer.

“We had a fight,” Simon said.

“A fight?”

Simon nodded. “I was trying to stop him, and we got in a fist fight.”

Steem glanced over to Wickwire, shaking his head. Brian couldn’t see the captain’s expression on the monitor but imagined it was one of wonderment. Wickwire was expressionless.

Steem looked back at Simon. “So you had a fight, and his eye came out.”

Simon could only nod.

“I need to hear an answer,” Steem said, his tone up a notch.

“Yes, I punched him and his eye popped out. I tried to find it, but it was dark.”

“And you never went inside the building?”

Simon leaned forward on the table. “NO! I swear.”

“And you didn’t see Dr. Wymbs?”

“No. I didn’t even think he’d be there.”

“Why is that?”

“Marshall said no one would be there.”

“Why did Marshal think no one would be there?”

“He said he was told that.”

“By whoever told him to set the fire?”

“That’s right.” Simon leaned back in his chair. The questioning seemed to drain him. His face was sweaty.

Steem stood up and stepped over to Wickwire, whispering something in his ear. The sergeant nodded and left the room. Steem sat back down. He looked at Simon, but kept silent. Wickwire returned, carrying something, and set it down on the middle of the table between the two men. It was Marshall.

Simon jumped up from his seat and stepped back, up against the wall.

“What is he doing here?” He yelled. “He’s dead! I buried him!”

“He’s not dead,” Steem said, his voice calm. “He was never alive.”

“That’s not true!”

“Who told you to burn down the Wymbs Institute?”

“Marshall told me.”

“And who told Marshall?”

“I told you! I don’t know! Marshall wouldn’t tell me! Just that it needed to be done!”

Steem rose to his feet. “Why did it need to be done?”

“Marshall said so they don’t find out.” Simon was pressed up against the back wall, as if he wanted to be far away from his ventriloquist dummy.

“Find out what?”

Simon looked directly into the video camera, knowing where it was, and Brian felt as if he were looking right at him.

“The secrets of the Mustard House!”

The video interrogation was unnerving. The experience left Brian wondering if Simon Runck was crazy. Noah suggested it could all be an act. They couldn’t be sure if the firefighter really believed Marshall was alive and talked with him. It certainly looked like he believed. Either that or he was an incredible actor.

Regardless, the county prosecutor was prepared to charge him with arson. The State Police would continue their investigation into whether he was also responsible for strangling Dr. Wymbs.

There was also no indication of whether the fire and murder had anything to do with the trunk of skeletons. But Brian thought it likely that there was a connection. He could feel it.

In the meantime, Brian had to continue with some of the routine tasks of his job, and he was on his way to visit Hester Pigott, the last of the knackers in New Hampshire.

At the end of Main Street, heading out of town, Brian hesitated. Fogg Lane was to the left, and that was where Hettie Gritton lived, the late Dr. Wymbs’ housekeeper. He had the urge to drive by her house, just to check it out, though Steem had said she hasn’t been seen.

He looked at the clock on his dashboard and realized it was almost time for his appointment with Pigott, and Beverly Crump had warned him not to be late. The Knackerman was eighty-six years old, followed his own schedule, and would have little patience with a flatlander. Bev had to explain that that meant Brian was a city boy who didn’t fit in with the country folk in Smokey Hollow.

To the right was Twistback Road, the direction Brian drove. It was an old curvy cow road. (Bev also explained to him that some of the older country roads were winding because they were formed by the trails cows made meandering from one location to the next.) The road wound its way past hilly meadows, farmlands with wide open pastures, cornfields, and meadows of goldenrod. Noah had told him locals nicknamed it the Rollercoaster Road because of its hairpin curves.

The road continued for a couple miles before Brian spotted Pigott’s house. He saw a large black mailbox with the name stenciled on it in white block letters, atop a tilted post at the end of a long dirt driveway that wound its way up a sloping field. He turned in and drove up, eyeing the Colonial farmhouse, its white paint in need of a new coat. To the right was a red barn, its coat bright and shiny in the sunlight. Brian parked between the two structures and got out.

Bev had said Pigott would be in the barn, and that was the direction he headed. He spotted half a dozen ducks, waddling from the path to the barn. The sliding door was half open, and light spilled out. Brian looked for some kind of doorbell, but not finding anything, he stepped through the opening.

The lights were bright inside the barn, and Brian wasn’t prepared for what it would reveal. Bev had tried to explain to him what a knacker was, but it was lost on him. All he understood was that it had something to do with dead animals and that Hester Pigott was the last knacker in the state, probably one of only a handful in the whole country.

The old man stood bent over a broad table in the middle of the barn beneath fluorescent lights. A half-skinned cow lay on the table. A vile odor hung in the air. Flies swarmed around the man’s head as he bent over the table, a long sharp knife in his hand, cutting the skin of the cow away from the muscle. Brian cleared his throat, almost thinking he might cough up some vomit. Pigott looked up from what he was doing and straightened.

He was tall and thin, wearing bib overalls and a white tank top stained with brown and red spots.  His face looked like an owl, long with a thin hooked nose, round eyes, and high arched eyebrows beneath a tall forehead. His jowls hung loose around his chin. Wispy white hair formed a widow’s peak beneath a dusty ball cap perched on his head, a tractor logo on its front. He opened his mouth to speak, and Brian could see lips and gums but few teeth.

“You the paper boy?” the old man asked, his voice gravelly.

“Yes,” he answered, stepping forward, about to extend his hand, but Mr. Pigott made no move to reciprocate the gesture, and Brian was glad when he saw the blood-stained bony fingers, the right hand still clutching the knife. “Brian Keays.”

“Watch yer step,” Pigott said, gesturing to a spot on the floor in front of Brian’s feet, where a small pile of what he supposed was animal fat lay.

“Thanks,” Brian said, glancing around the brightly lit barn. On one wall were pinned animal hides he recognized as bear, raccoon, possum, skunk, and fox. A counter along the opposite wall had bones spread across a portion of it. “Quite a place you have here.”

“It’s home,” the old man replied, and bent back over the table. He flicked the knife, cut off a piece of meat, and flung it over his shoulder. It landed on the floor near an old hound Brian hadn’t noticed before. The dog scooped up the meat in its jaws and lay patiently, waiting for more. “So why is the paper interested in what I do?”

“You’re retiring,” Brian said, wondering himself why he was here.

“So?” Pigott said, looking up at him.

Brian stepped around the animal fat on the floor and approached. “From what I’ve been told, there’s no one left in the state that does what you do.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed, as if to get a better look at Brian. “And what is it you’ve been told I do?”

Brian was stumped. He looked at the cow on the table and pointed. “You take care of dead animals. You do your knackering thing.” He knew he sounded stupid.

The old man flashed a gummy grin. “You have no idea, do ya?”

Brian shook his head. “Not really.”

Pigott laughed. “Then let me tell you, sonny, and you can decide if it’s worth a story. I don’t quite see the point. It’s just a job. Lots of people have jobs. Everyone has to do sumthin’.”

“But yours is supposed to be—” he fumbled for the right word, “—unique.”

“Oh, that it is.” He sliced some more with the knife. “Not many of us do this. I’ve been at it for seventy years.”

Brian scribbled it down in his notepad.

“No one today would choose a profession like this.” The old man straightened. “Not really much need for it.”

“So let me ask a dumb question.”

Pigott looked at him. “I wouldn’t expect any other kind.”

“What is the point of what you do?”

He pointed at the cow with his knife. “I take old, dead, crippled, useless farm animals, and I make use of them.”

Brian looked at the animal. “Use how?”

“Mostly they go to the rendering plant over in Grafton.”

“Rendering plant?”

“Yes. They turn the animal material into useful products. The meat, fatty tissue, bones, offal.”

“Offal?”

Pigott glared at him. “The internal organs and entrails.”

“That sounds awful,” Brian said, but Pigott didn’t crack a smile. “And what does the rendering plant do with this…stuff?”

The old man scratched the top of his head through his ball cap. “Oh, the fatty tissues get used for lard or tallow, that’s used in animal feed. The bones get turned into fertilizer.” He glanced at Brian. “Shouldn’t you be writin’ this down?”

“Oh yes,” Brian said, scribbling in his notepad. “And where do these animals come from?”

“I get calls from farmers, veterinarians, and go pick them up. Or sometimes they just get dumped here. In the old days, stray animals would end up at the Town Pound, and if they were crippled or diseased, no farmer would want them back, so I’d go collect them in my truck.”

Brian had driven by the Town Pound on Fogg Lane. It was a corral-like structure made up of four stone walls of granite blocks with a metal gate covering an opening in the front. He had asked Beverly about it when he first moved into town. She had explained it was used years ago as a place to corral loose farm animals until the owner could be contacted to come down and retrieve them. Now it was kind of a historic landmark in town.

“I prepare the dead animals for the man from the rendering plant, who comes by once a week.”

Pigott continued to slice up the cow on the table, tossing scraps of meat every now and then to the eagerly waiting hound, while Brian asked questions. Pigott talked while he cut, telling Brian of his early days trapping raccoons and foxes and how he used to butcher horses for a pet-food plant that was no longer in business. Pigott looked up at him at one point, bloody knife gripped tight.

“Don’t you need to take a picture?”

Brian had not even thought about the camera around his neck. “Oh, of course,” he said, snapping pictures he knew he could never put in the paper. He would have to get a profile photo later. For now, he watched the old man work, flicking the knife like some fancy chef in a Japanese restaurant.

“Do you ever work on unusual animals?” Brian was hoping for some kind of angle that might make the story more interesting.

Pigott stopped and straightened. “Unusual animals?” He was confused by the question. He shook his head. “Just cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and goats. Regular critters.”

“Nothing that caught you by surprise?”

Pigott rubbed his chin. “There was a time, couple decades ago, when some unfortunate carcasses showed up around town.”

“Like what?”

“Dogs. Skinned.”

Brian hesitated, pen in hand, fingers unwilling to write this bit down.