It is November, and 5 a. Today they are going to pick up a man named Timothy Kern, age 47, who will be waiting for them in a strip-mall parking lot with all his earthly possessions. Like the three men who preceded him on this grim adventure, Tim answered an ad on Craigslist that said: We need someone to watch our farm down in southern Ohio. Live for free in a double-wide trailer, nothing in the way of duties except to take in the peacefulness of the countryside and remark on the changing of the seasons and make sure no one steals any farm equipment or perpetrates any mischief.
Rich comes lumbering across the front lawn, expelling steamy breath into the dark Akron morning, and deposits himself into the front seat. Brogan says nothing, as is his habit. Brogan is a junior of middling academic record at Stow-Munroe Falls High School, remarkable to his peers and teachers mostly for being such a giant of a human being. Six feet five inches, close to pounds, and not finished growing yet.
After all, he was the one who dug the hole yesterday out at a plot of neglected suburban scrubland near the old Rolling Acres Mallβabout yay wide and yay deep and big enough for an adult male body. Rich, not being partial to manual labor, had watched.
As they pull out onto the road, Brogan wills himself not to think about what he and Rich will be doing this morning. Richard Beasley: age 52, former convict, motorcycle enthusiast, professed man of God, known on the Akron street as Chaplain Rich. Brogan calls him his counselor.
The enterprise that will bring them to Tim Kern began in August, in the dead of summer. Rich had discovered that there was a warrant out for his arrest, the product of a twenty-month investigation into the goings-on at a halfway house he operated. If he were arrested, he could very well spend the rest of his life in prison.
