A Fragment Too Far Read online

  I noticed how the gun melded into my hand with all the familiarity of my morning coffee cup.

  I noticed that my house shoes seemed to know where I would be lowering my feet. I slipped into them, then noticed something else.

  Each time I took a step, I was anticipating the move that came next so intently that when I made it, it felt like I’d already been there. That’s when I realized that when the stakes are high, what you can end up noticing may be otherworldly.

  My bedroom door was the last door at the back end of the hallway. The opening to the kitchen was on the opposite side of the hallway about a third of the way toward the front of the house.

  I had night-lights in the hallway and in the kitchen. Thus far, my unwanted visitor had not stepped into their beams because I had seen no shadows. And I’d spotted no one in the illumination of the flashing blue light sweeping around my living room with the regularity of a lighthouse beacon.

  If I saw someone moving around, chances were high that I was going to fire my gun with deadly intent. That was something I’d always tried to avoid. So I called on my lungs to convey my resolve at being obeyed. “Sheriff’s department! Hands in the air! On your belly, now!”

  A couple of loud thuds issued from my kitchen. These were followed by a tinkling sound, then a sharp, high-pitched clink. Then another, softer clink.

  I thought I knew what the causes of those sounds were. First, one of my kitchen windows had been broken. After that, the window screen had slammed against something hard, then bounced once.

  From the start, I’d assumed the racket startling me awake had happened after my intruder had broken into my kitchen. Now, I understood that there had been no break-in in the kitchen. The invasion of my home had to have come earlier elsewhere in my house. The racket I’d heard in the kitchen was my intruder breaking out.

  You needed a key both coming and going on all my outside doors because of the double-keyed deadbolt locks. The only copy was on my pocket key ring. When I shouted, my intruder had rushed to the back door but couldn’t open it. He’d unlocked the low-slung kitchen window leading to the patio. Raised it. Broke one of the panes, likely injuring himself.

  Dived through, body-slammed the screen, and rolled onto the patio. I heard the sounds of rubber shoe soles slapping against a concrete surface. The only glimpse I caught through the kitchen window was of a shadowy figure racing around the corner of my garage. He was about as tall as the bottom of the breezeway light fixture mounted on the side of the garage — a little less than six feet.

  It was one of those split-second decisions, but I chose not to chase him. I was in my house shoes and pajamas. And it was dark outside.

  I turned on a light, glanced around my kitchen and confirmed everything I’d suspected.

  Instead of hurrying to get dressed, I called my nighttime dispatcher, Saul Peetson, on my mobile radio.

  I asked Saul to flood my neighborhood with whatever deputies could be spared. All I could tell him to look for was someone who was about six feet tall and might have lacerations on his hands. “How soon can they get here?”

  Saul was his usual efficient self. “They’re on the way.”

  “I’ve got something truly weird to show them.”

  “Can I tell them what?”

  “You can as soon as I figure out what it’s all about.”

  I’d found the source of the flashing blue light. It was one of those cheap party lights that revolves like a temporary emergency beacon placed atop a cop’s car. It sat on a black plastic base and was no more than four inches tall. I’d seen them advertised on the internet for less than five bucks plus shipping.

  The light had been placed on my living room coffee table atop a handwritten note. I was holding it as I talked to my dispatcher. When he asked what was going on, I’d almost read it to him. But I decided I didn’t want to give him, or anyone else listening to our late-night radio communications, a head start making jokes about the bone-tired sheriff’s science fiction encounter.

  They’d be making the jokes up soon enough, and I might be adding a few of my own.

  Only four words were written on the note under the flashing light, all of them in labored block letters: “DON’T MAKE ROSWELL’S MISTAKE!”

  When three of my night deputies arrived, I told them what I knew, asked them to make themselves at home, and went to my bedroom, closing the door behind me.

  For the first time in my career, I chose to ignore trigger discipline. I slid my Glock under my pillow.

  This time, despite all the excitement, I believe I went from sixty to zero in less than five seconds. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was a flashing blue light on the inside of my eyelid.

  Chapter 12

  I overslept.

  My chief deputy had apparently left word that I was not to be disturbed for anything short of the Second Coming. So I didn’t learn about the excitement at Pecan Mountain Nursing Home until I was about to leave for work.

  Jeff Brailsford, my daytime dispatcher, said the bomb threat had been received about an hour before dawn. Anonymous caller. And from all indications, a malicious one, like most kooks who call in bomb threats.

  Our hazardous devices squad had gone through the nursing home wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and found nothing amiss. Jeff said all the occupants of the home had been housed in a nearby school until the all-clear had been sounded. We were releasing audio of the call containing the bomb threat, hoping someone might recognize the voice. Detectives were listening to it too. By the time I got in, the sleepy-eyed occupants of the home had already been wheeled back to their rooms and tucked in their beds.

  Since things had returned to normal, I decided to proceed to my meeting.

  * * *

  If no more than two people plus myself are involved, I can hold meetings in my office. The rickety old round table I’d picked up at a garage sale allowed for three chairs to be placed around it, while still leaving room between the table and my desk for people to squeeze by.

  Meetings with more than three participants got assigned to a cleared-out corner of our situation room. It had a large white board and a cork board within reach. But no doors or windows and very little foot traffic. It was the closest thing I had to a conference room. So that’s what we called it. Conference Room Corner.

  I’d asked Helen Grainger, my veteran office manager, to request the presence of three people soon after eight o’clock. My chief investigator and CSI team leader, Doug Lewis. The medical examiner’s field supervisor, Evelyn Thompson. And our game warden, Johnny Filo. When I walked into our ready room, I could see that all three had found themselves a chair in the conference area.

  I started with my head forensic investigator. “Find anything in all that chaos, Doug?”

  He yawned. Wide. It embarrassed him. “Sorry, haven’t been to bed yet. We spent half the night lugging sheet rock debris out of the house.” He looked at the ME guy. “That way, our medical examiner friends could at least get to the bodies.” He scratched under an armpit without seeming to notice how awkward it looked. “Correction. What’s left of the bodies.” He handed each of us a single sheet of bullet points. And yawned again. “Stop me if there are questions.”

  He was balancing a beat-up faux leather portfolio on his knees. That’s where his own copy of the list rested. “No blood spatter on the furniture or walls, bullet holes in the ceiling, discarded cartridge casings, footprints outside the windows, nothing that looked like a weapon. None of it.”

  He was tracking the points on his list with his index finger. I noticed the rest of us were picking up the habit. “Second, and I know the sheriff and others who were first-in have already been commenting on this, but there weren’t any personal effects in the house. Nada. Nothing to tag, bag, or photograph. That we could find.”

  He glanced over the top of his reading glasses, but his eyes didn’t
fall on anyone. “Third, no usable fingerprints on water faucets, door handles, cabinet surfaces, tabletops, wood facades. No fingerprints, period, actually. They’ve been wiped, methodically. Most surfaces were coated with sheet rock dust, for that matter. Nasty stuff.”

  His finger had already moved to the next line. “Fourth, nothing of consequence was found outside the house so far. No wastebaskets or trash cans, footprints, tire marks, or signs of digging. We’re just beginning to move out from the house into the surrounding fields, but so far, zilch.”

  Doug flicked his eyes in my direction but only for a second. “Fifth, the bodies — what’s left of them. Not a lot we could do. We check for defensive wounds. See if there was anything under their nails. Photograph clothing. Search for drag marks. Note the location of wounds. Just not possible with these bodies. The putrefaction. And then the buzzards. Talk about destroying the evidence.”

  I’d never heard him so disinterested, so dismissive. Of us, of a crime scene, of himself. I attributed his laissez-faire attitude to fatigue and let it go. But I had questions.

  “The bare feet?”

  His mea culpa gesture involved tapping his forehead once with two fingers. “Oh, sorry. The feet. All the victims’ feet were bare. Shoeless. And sockless. We’d have noticed this sooner, but their footwear was covered by a large piece of the kitchen ceiling. Actually, they weren’t shoes. They were all heavy-duty construction boots. The kind that lace up through eyelets.”

  I thought his breathing changed and wondered what was coming next. “Funny thing is, we found too many shoes. Ten pairs. And we only have, you know —” like a kindergartener, he held up his hands, palms outward. With one thumb folded down. And wiggled his remaining thumb and all his fingers. “— nine bodies.”

  My mouth gaped open, but he wasn’t finished. “Oh, yeah, hot plate and fans. The hot plate was under the sheet rock in the kitchen. Don’t know if someone had knocked it to the floor or what. Had a coffee pot close to it. One of those Pyrex types. Lying on its side. Just enough coffee left for us to take a sample.”

  “And the fans.”

  “Oscillating type, like you’d sit on a tabletop or a counter. Good-sized fans. Six of them. Scattered around the house. Close to electrical outlets but none of them plugged in. Kind of a ‘now you feel them, now you don’t’ scenario. Maybe they wanted the bodies to deteriorate quicker in the heat.”

  Baby steps. The house was beginning to talk to us. But the sheer chaos at this scene was overloading my staff. And me too. It took a moment to think what my next question should be. “Any drinking cups anywhere in the house?”

  “Didn’t find any. They must have used paper cups.”

  I sighed, summoning patience. “Find any paper cups?”

  “I think a garbage dump is one of the things Chief Deputy Tanner and his guys are looking for out beyond the yard.”

  I wanted to hear next from the ME’s representative.

  Thompson said maggots had been feasting for days. “We think forensic entomologists at Texas A&M will be able to narrow the timeframe. We’re going to send them samples.”

  Her best guess was the same as mine. Five days.

  “They were way past the point of exploding from internal gases. Purge fluids had quit draining from noses and mouths, where there were noses and mouths. Skin and hair had sloughed off. And fingernails. But then, not counting bones, the buzzards didn’t leave a lot behind.”

  Fortunately, she thought her boss, the medical examiner, would be able to take bone marrow samples from all the bodies. That would help them ID the victims.

  She took a deep breath like she was finished, but I wasn’t. “Can you use those samples to test for poison?”

  Weary as Evelyn Thompson was, she could still wag her head. “We can’t. But a forensic toxicologist can. Plenty of big bones available. They work best. And sometimes, some of the hair was left too.”

  I asked my Game Warden Filo how long he thought the buzzards had been feeding. “Not long. Doesn’t take long.”

  He explained how forensic anthropologists at South-Central Texas State University had filmed a wake of American black vultures eating a donated cadaver. Took just five hours.

  “Literally stripped every shred of flesh from the body. Reduced it to bone. But I think these had been feeding at the house longer than five hours. So many bodies. The fuller they got, the slower they went. These birds thought they’d died and gone to —” His faux pas embarrassed him. “Well, you know.”

  I rolled my chair to the writing wall and removed a felt-tip pen from a suction-cup holder. Turned my back on my colleagues. Wrote one word on the board in big block letters:

  PROFESSIONAL

  I turned to face them. “I’m pretty sure these deaths weren’t accidental. And that the killer is a professional. Or killers, as it may be.”

  This thought had taken root yesterday when my three colleagues and I had put on our breathing masks and returned to the crime scene. It now seemed certain. Amateur murderers don’t leave behind scenes like this one. Only trained killers do. After planning their criminal actions down to the most minuscule detail.

  But this was in sleepy Abbot County. The sanctimonious, over-churched Sunday School capital of Texas. To paraphrase Bogart’s character in Casablanca, of all the piety-drenched counties in all the world, why show up in this one?

  Professionals?

  I was sure I’d only heard the word used around the Abbot County Sheriff’s Department a few times at best. Usually in reference to Flagler’s occasional prostitutes.

  Chapter 13

  They say when the mind gets overloaded, blessed are those who can compartmentalize.

  Sitting in my office after my conference room meeting, I wasn’t feeling very blessed. And I thought I’d been pretty good at compartmentalizing. The delegating part in particular.

  I’d delegated control of the crime scene to my chief deputy. Tanner had done some delegating himself, turning his command duties over to Detective Moody at about four o’clock this morning. He’d driven his car back to the cattle guard. Folded himself into his back seat. Rolled his windows down. And, cut a break by the nighttime drop in the heat, managed to sleep for five hours.

  He was back at the scene now, leading a mixed crowd of investigators in ever-expanding circles, searching the brush surrounding the house.

  Detective Moody had returned to the office. I’d given her another job. Keeping up with the information flooding in. But I told her to first go home and get some sleep. Knowing her, she’d be back at the office by early afternoon.

  Delegating was not the right word to describe how Special Agent Steele fit in all this. A country sheriff doesn’t give orders to an FBI special agent. Even if he knows how to reduce her to instant putty by nuzzling a certain spot on her neck behind one ear. But I knew there’d be no need to ask for her help. Knowing Angie, she was going to be an invaluable conduit between the sheriff’s department and all things federal, if the Feds turned out to be involved. That’s the advantage of having an FBI agent’s office just down the hall from yours. And having an exceptionally close relationship with its occupant.

  I fiddled with the hole in the fabric on one of the armrests in my rickety black leather office chair. Fiddled and fidgeted. And realized there was more than compartmentalizing going on.

  What had happened in Flagler in the past twenty hours was giving me a new sense of purpose. I felt like my special mix of skills could be useful to my trouble-beset county in a way I’d not experienced before. And that was good, because my piety-drenched, middle-of-nowhere community appeared to be needing investigative skills almost never found in a country sheriff.

  What had happened in Flagler in the past twenty hours felt far beyond the boundaries of everyday circumstances.

  The blue light parked on my living room table — who knew what that was about?

&n
bsp; Not to mention nine mysterious, shoeless cadavers reduced to bones by buzzards in a remote house that itself had been ravaged beyond belief.

  And there was the bizarre memory involving my father. A memory that reached out to me from beyond the grave. A memory about a chat he’d once had with a perplexing college professor whose mind was now rotting from the inside out.

  I’d had no training in law enforcement for dealing with this kind of weirdness. I’d had no training in law enforcement at all. Everything I’d learned about law enforcement had come from my sixteen years on the job. That wasn’t rare among rural Texas sheriffs. Most of my colleagues, I’d guess, had pinned on their stars without so much as a single college credit.

  That wasn’t an accurate description in my case. I had a Mercedes of a university degree on my resume. A Master of Divinity degree from Yale, no less. And that came on top of two preparatory degrees at the University of the Hills, where I’d been awarded magna cum laude. For those reasons alone, I’d always be considered an oddity among Texas sheriffs. The fact that I was the third generation of my family to do so provided more fodder for the gossip mills.

  But, day in and day out on the job, I’d always felt the advantages in my background outweighed the disadvantages.

  I still thought so.

  A divinity degree is a compartmentalizing degree. More than anything else, it prepares you to divide things between the known and the unknown and travel between the two.

  To borrow an idea from the New Testament’s St. Paul, Hebrews 11:1, it prepared you to navigate the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.

  But I was certain that the events that had unfolded in Abbot County thus far were only a foretaste, a trailer. I had the feeling we were being herded like lemmings toward some kind of abyss. And if we weren’t careful, our smug, inexperienced little community was going to find itself shoved right off a cliff.