Coming Home to Roost: Chapter 10

In some respects, the farm looked more des­o­late now than it did when the charred remains of the house were still vis­i­ble.  Everything was grad­ed out, and the vault was the only thing left stand­ing, oth­er than the big old oak tree.  It was actu­al­ly humor­ous to some extent as well.  The vault stand­ing there all by itself, with noth­ing around it but grad­ed earth, looked for all the world like some­one had start­ed build­ing a bank here and quit after the vault was in place.

It had rained a bit the night before, and all the grad­ed area where the house had been was now a plain of mud through which I had to walk to get to the vault.

Son of a bitch! 

I wished I had been think­ing ahead and got­ten some boots or some­thing.  I was hav­ing to walk through the mud in a pair of brand-new shoes I had just bought, and the mud was top­ping them and threat­en­ing to dirty my pants cuffs until I stopped and rolled them up a bit.  Of course, now I would be get­ting back into the car with all the mud and mess­ing that up too!

The oth­er thing I had­n’t con­sid­ered was the fact that the house had been built over a crawl space which ele­vat­ed the floor of the house almost three feet above the ground lev­el.  Now that all the fram­ing had been cleared away, the bot­tom of the vault door, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been at floor lev­el, posed a three-foot climb just to get into the vault, not to men­tion that the key­pad which opened the door was almost sev­en feet above where I was standing.

Well, with the mud and the climb­ing that would be nec­es­sary to get into the vault, I might as well write off the shoes and pants.  I man­aged to punch in the com­bi­na­tion that unlocked the vault door and reached to turn the lever to open it.  It remind­ed me some­what of those movies depict­ing cas­tles and palaces where the doors were six­teen or twen­ty feet tall, and the knobs were always real­ly high, too.  I pulled the door open and boost­ed myself onto the door sill.  Sitting there, I removed my mud­dy shoes and set them on the sill to be retrieved when leav­ing; I did­n’t want to track mud into the vault.

Once inside, I set about col­lect­ing some addi­tion­al arma­ment.  I took the Remington 700 off the wall and opened the draw­er where the ammo was kept, tak­ing out one box of .308.  Fifty rounds should cer­tain­ly be enough.  I round­ed up a few addi­tion­al items as well, hop­ing I would­n’t have to use them, but obvi­ous­ly this was not going to be a sit­u­a­tion where I was like­ly to be using box jel­ly­fish ven­om or an acupunc­ture needle.

All the items fit com­fort­ably in a can­vas rifle bag that was kept in the vault, and I pre­pared to leave, sit­ting on the door sill, don­ning my mud­dy shoes and slid­ing to the ground, pulling the bag along as I reached up to close the door.  I heard the famil­iar click of the latch mov­ing into place and watched the light on the key­pad turn red to indi­cate the door was prop­er­ly locked.  The lock­ing device on the vault was bat­tery-pow­ered, so the lack of elec­tric­i­ty at the site for the present did­n’t dis­rupt the secu­ri­ty of the vault.

I trudged back to the car, col­lect­ing more mud as I went, but man­aged to wipe some of it from my shoes in the grass before open­ing the trunk and toss­ing in the gun bag.

I head­ed back to the rental, pon­der­ing all the while what Mr. Celik’s next move was like­ly to be, and grum­bling to myself over the fact that my trousers and shoes were cov­ered in mud.

Unpacking the rifle bag back at the rental, I care­ful­ly stowed sev­er­al of the items in out-of-reach places and placed five rounds of .308 ammo in the 700.  It would­n’t do to have explo­sive devices around too easy to get to, but I need­ed for the rifle to be some­what handy for quick access, not know­ing when or if it might be needed.

About all I could do now was wait, unless L.T. con­tact­ed me again with more infor­ma­tion about Celik, espe­cial­ly his where­abouts.  I would have much pre­ferred to go after him rather than wait for him to make anoth­er move.  There was cer­tain­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty that his next move, catch­ing me unawares, might be successful.

The next sev­er­al days passed by unevent­ful­ly.  I con­tin­ued to meet with Gibson to dis­cuss the final­iza­tion of the plans for the new house and to nar­row down a list of poten­tial con­trac­tors.  Four con­trac­tors had each been giv­en a set of the house plans and asked to sub­mit a bid for the work, after which Gibson and I would meet with them to dis­cuss sched­ul­ing and to see if any was a bet­ter fit than any other. 

Gibson seemed to know them all by rep­u­ta­tion and was on friend­ly terms with each, but I had the most rap­port with one, and review­ing both his expe­ri­ence and cost esti­mate, select­ed Harden Contracting to do the work.  Ron Harden also indi­cat­ed that he was in a posi­tion to begin work imme­di­ate­ly, which was anoth­er fac­tor in his favor as I was anx­ious to get the work under­way and to see its com­ple­tion in six months, which is the amount of time that would be writ­ten into the contract.

After meet­ing with Harden at Gibson’s office and sign­ing the nec­es­sary con­tracts, I walked back to the house, enjoy­ing a beau­ti­ful ear­ly sum­mer day while walk­ing along the tree-shad­ed South Maple Street and admir­ing the col­lec­tion of old, beau­ti­ful hous­es there.  Something that I had nev­er noticed before was that the sides of many old hous­es are as inter­est­ing as the fronts, some­times more so.

When I arrived at the rental and entered, some­thing seemed remote­ly out of place.  I could­n’t quite put my fin­ger on it, but a num­ber of the sec­ond sens­es I had built up over the years kept telling me that things were not quite right.

I tend­ed to shrug off the feel­ing, but it per­sist­ed, right up to the moment that I decid­ed to check on my weapons stash and found that the Remington was gone!