Embedded Files
Looking Ahead to Future Projects
Novels:
I am currently doing research for a series of mystery novels that will feature a woman sheriff working in a large rural county in the 21st Century American West.
Drinkwater County, where the novels are set, is a fictional place based on a county in Idaho that is larger than the state of Massachusetts and has fewer than 15,000 residents. Sheriffs working in these large, underpopulated areas have all the problems that other law enforcement officials deal with, plus some problems unique to their jurisdictions such as modern-day cattle rustling, water theft, grave robbing of prehistoric sites, poachers (sometimes with international connections) hunting endangered species to complete their collections, etc. etc. What's more, sheriffs in these areas are elected by locals who often expect that "their sheriff" will take care of them, meaning they will ignore or not enforce locally unpopular federal laws, something that could put the sheriff, herself, in legal jeopardy. Not to mention the fact that such jurisdictions have very limited manpower and budgets.
As part of my research, I flew with a sheriff who patrols his county by air. During the flight, we happened on some wealthy Japanese poachers hunting endangered big horn sheep. That resulted in a few moments of unexpected excitement. He worried out loud about how low he dared fly over their plane, sitting on the ground. He wanted to read the numbers off the wing. The hunters, who happened to be close by, were waving high-powered guns at us. His concern, I realized, was whether or not he should risk putting me in danger. Who says research is boring!
The first two novels, Rainbow Horses and Spotted Spirit Dog, are complete as first drafts.
The next three novels Green Men and Pink Snails, A Ghost of Dinosaur Bones and Never Trust A Hoop Snake are outlined.
Likely the last books in the Series will be titled Crow Gathers.
Each novel stands alone and contains a mystery/murder that is solved. However, the whole series also includes material about an individual (wealthy and politically powerful) that the sheriff never quite brings to justice--her Big Fish (the one that always gets away). I haven't decided yet whether or not she will land her Big Fish in the last novel.
Opening Section of Rainbow Horses:
Seven rainbow horses guard the seven directions . . .
The YELLOW horse guards the West
Where sunsets gather, thunderheads build,
And dust devils dance.
Riding the yellow horse requires skill.
It is quick as lightning, fickle as luck.
PART 1
Sheriff Samantha (Sam) Nielsen was driving along the bottom of a deep canyon on a narrow dirt road, listening to her dead husband’s music when seven wild horses crashed through the brush and jumped in front of her. Her first thought was to wonder if her husband had been distracted like that—off on a wave of song—when he drove into a concrete barrier dividing one of Los Angeles’ many freeways. Her second thought was that she might also die.
She swerved, barely missing a big gray—the stallion. With him were five or six duns and a black colt, or, maybe, two colts. She couldn’t be sure. The swerve had sent her patrol car into a skid. Steering furiously, she fought to keep herself from going into the storm-swollen stream on her right. It didn’t help that on her left were huge boulders. Even worse, the morning light skimming the canyon’s uneven ridge had created alternating patches of bright sunlight and deep shadow, both equally blinding. Most of the time, she had no idea how close she was to the edge of the water or anything else. Finally, her vehicle fishtailed and banged to a halt against one of the big rocks.
The horses, unhurt, ran along the road ahead of her to where the stream widened. Then they splashed into the water, churning up enough spray to sprinkle the sunshine with rainbow. That unexpected beauty took what breath she had left.
Local Indians believed that White Bead Woman, a goddess, made the horse. It was to be the medicine animal that completed the world. Knowing that, White Bead Woman took great care with her work. She used red stone for the heart, small cloud for the mane, and black cloud for the tail. She caught distant thunder for the hooves . . .
Sam shook her head. She couldn’t recall when she’d first heard that myth. What was it about horses? Every Indian she knew believed horses were magical. Not just Indians. The Greeks claimed their god Poseidon created the horse, and, to this day, the white-capped breakers that roll in from the sea are known as “the white horses.” In Ireland, O’Donohue’s legendary white horses supposedly reappeared every seventh year to carry the hero over the lakes of Killarney—an event accompanied by hordes of fairies and unearthly music. Not to be forgotten, were horned unicorns, winged Pegasus, and the Biblical Horsemen of the Apocalypse who supposedly rode steeds of white, red, black, and pale.
Personally, she preferred her patrol car—a mostly white SUV. When it didn’t run right, she could get it fixed at the local garage. At least that’s what she liked to tell herself in her down-to-earth role as the Sheriff of Drinkwater County. She lied. Even in her practical-sheriff moments, she understood the fascination. Riding a horse across an open expanse was like sliding along the seam between heaven and earth. Nothing quite like it.
She shook her head. Spin a story. Say a prayer. Sing a chant. Take what comfort you can. One moment you are on the rough road to somewhere. The next moment, wild horses jump in front of you. Or people die—her husband—without rhyme or reason. Unless, of course, you choose to believe the made-up stories. In the case of her husband’s death, some of those made-up stories were being whispered behind her back.
She sat a moment longer, watching the horses, reminding herself that she’d already survived an end-of-the-world-as-she-knew-it crisis. She could do it again if she had to. On the other side of the stream, the horses fanned out. Then disappeared, one by one, around a turn in the canyon. At that same moment, her husband’s music rose on a swell of percussion that hinted at horses’ hooves. Then just when it should have crested, the music slipped into an achingly beautiful lyrical melody.
Perfect, she breathed.
The music wasn’t real. It was something only she heard, like a catchy jingle you can’t stop humming only fuller, richer. Her dead husband had composed enough music for enough movies that she could recall bits that fit almost any circumstance. And, since she spent a lot of hours, alone driving the backcountry of Drinkwater, she’d gotten into the habit of indulging herself with the remembered bits of his music that she could hold onto. And, yes, there had been moments in her grief when she was tempted to follow the music into oblivion . . . but the music wouldn’t go there. The music was his. He was the dreamer—the one who lived light, always laughing, never caring for tomorrow. She was the one who moved in to make sure his bills got paid. When she gave birth to their daughter, he asked her to marry him, an act so responsible, so completely out of character, she’d laughed, thinking he couldn’t be serious. She didn’t trust happiness. She was always waiting for the crash.
This one wasn’t too bad. She rubbed a sore spot where her shoulder knocked against her side door. His crash had left her in far worse shape. If not for their daughter . . . she paused to reshape that thought. For their daughter’s sake, she’d figured out a new life. She was the Sheriff of Drinkwater County, Idaho. In fact, she’d been the sheriff long enough to be up for re-election in a few weeks. Hard to believe.
It was her job that had brought her out here, all by herself, driving this rough, rock-strewn canyon. Rain, not horses, was the usual worry. If she got caught in a flash flood, she’d have no place to run. For that reason, she hadn’t been entirely inattentive. Even as she listened to the music, she’d kept an eye on the weather and rising stream as well as the road. In the catalog of possible catastrophes, she hadn’t given wild horses a thought.
She rotated her arm. It was sore but not injured. Airbags might have helped, but, out here, in the middle of America’s nowhere, everybody disabled their airbags. In a place where the nearest tow truck was half-a-day away, deployed airbags only complicated getting back on the road, which was what she needed to do.
She opened the door and climbed out to assess the damage. She noted a new dent in the bumper and a crease along the back rear panel. Neither were the first scars her official ride had acquired in the line of duty. Then she climbed onto the dented bumper to check her antennae. She had three. None picked up anything down in this canyon. Likewise, her cell phone had been out of service for at least an hour. She was “down a dirt highway,” the local expression for being out of contact and miles and miles from anywhere.
When her husband crashed, she packed a few mementos and brought her daughter back to this place she called “home.” Never mind that “home” happened to be one of the most desolate places in America—desolate and dying. It was one of the ironies of the Twenty-First Century that the wide-open spaces of the American West were not disappearing. They were growing. Huge areas outside cities like Denver, Santa Fe, Boise, and Phoenix were losing population at the rate of two per cent a year. At that rate, in a few decades, there would be nothing left in a county like Drinkwater but ghost towns and state highways. Even in Idaho, most people had never heard of Drinkwater County. That was remarkable considering her county—the jurisdiction she sheriffed—was larger than the state of Massachusetts.
To make a long story short, there weren’t many jobs in a place like Drinkwater. The old sheriff was retiring; she ran for the office and won. The night she won, she celebrated at the Stagecoach Saloon, a local hang-out. She was happy and confused and not sure she was up to the job. Worse, her husband’s epic themes kept playing over and over in the back of her head. She knew the idea of her becoming the Sheriff of Drinkwater County would amuse him, but she didn’t need his epic, over-sized music playing over and over, like a joke, or a bad recording. She was tempted to step outside the Stagecoach Saloon and shout at him—wherever he was—and tell him to stop it. Truth be told, she was never quite sure if she remembered his music, or he haunted her with it.
The afternoon when she first met him, he talked about opera. He never asked if she liked opera; he assumed everyone did. Later, when her love for him deepened, she realized that loving opera wasn’t about “being sophisticated” it was about understanding human emotions in a way she only wished she could master. She fell for him completely when she realized that he listened to her as carefully as he listened to opera. She’d never experienced anything like that.
When Sam was sure everything was OK up on top of her car, she jumped down and looked underneath, checking for leaks. She didn’t see any. So far, so good, she told herself. She really-really didn’t want to get stranded down in this canyon. If that happened, she’d have to walk for miles or figure out how to climb one of the steep canyon walls before she could call for help. And then it would be hours before help came.
She turned her head, catching the sound of an approaching vehicle, normally a good sign. However, in this case, she recognized the low, diesel rumble echoing off the canyon walls. Only one rancher on this end of Drinkwater County made that much noise, and she wasn’t necessarily referring to his loud, oversized pickup truck.
On a good day, Sam managed to make-nice to Bill Willoughby. She wasn’t sure this was a good enough day. On the other hand, she didn’t really have a choice. She was the sheriff. He was one of Drinkwater’s three county commissioners. That meant he voted on her budget. More like he seemed to think counting pennies was a good use of her time. More like, she knew Willoughby’s money issues had nothing to do with her budget. He wasn’t sure she was up to the job. Had never thought so. He and everybody else in Drinkwater knew that she’d been elected mostly because she was a third generation “Nielsen woman.” The real question was whether she was enough of a “Nielsen woman” to match her mother and grandmother’s reputations. Willoughby doubted it. To be fair, there were days when she doubted it. The difference was that Bill Willoughby didn’t pain himself to pretend otherwise. Maybe that made him honest. Maybe wild horses never looked back—another local myth.
Sam started her engine and backed away from the rock. Her old, trusty, official ride seemed to be running fine. Having established that fact, she was tempted to put it in gear and keep going, but good sense got the better of her. She cut the engine and waited.
When he arrived, Willoughby immediately rolled down his side window and shouted, “Good thing I came along.”
Sam was leaning against her car. She slapped the hood, saying, “No problem. Everything’s fine.”
“What happened?”
“I spooked some horses. Or they spooked me. While trying not to hit them, I fishtailed, but there’s no real damage.”
He climbed out of his pickup truck and circled her patrol car. An older lanky rancher, Willoughby had worked around trucks and cattle all his life, for that reason, he clearly thought it was up to him to decide the depth of the damage. He noted the scratches and the new dent. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and looked under for leaks. Checking for leaks wasn’t a bad thing. She’d done it herself, but, Willoughby, she realized, was mostly showing off for his passenger, a younger man who had also stepped out of Willoughby’s pickup truck to take a look at the situation. He taller and thinner than Willoughby. He was also wearing brand-new, high-end outdoor clothing like he thought he was on an expedition. In other words, he was too fancy to be local.
“You’re a long way from your ranch. What brings you out here?” she asks Willoughby, a routine question.
“Him,” he answers, gesturing over his shoulder at his passenger while he hopped up top to check her antennae. “Meet Miles Gurwitz. I’m giving him the grand tour. It’s been a while since Hollywood took an interest in our part of the world, but his uncle is thinking of making another movie here. This one would feature a ranch family at the turn of the century—the turn of the last century. Plans are to mostly shoot it in Drinkwater.”
Sam had recognized Miles the moment she saw him. She knew the Gurwitz family, mostly by reputation. They were old Hollywood, dating back to when Hollywood was “Hollywood”—a term not much in current use. Her dead husband had introduced her to Miles and his uncle, a big producer, at a party, maybe, a year before he died. “The whole family are cheats and crooks,” her husband had added as an aside. “The uncle still owes me for something I did for him seven years ago.”
No reason, Miles would remember her. Her California life had been so different and so seemingly long ago, she wasn’t sure that she would recognize herself from back then. She was, however, quite certain that nobody seriously wanted to film another western in Drinkwater, never mind that it was sometimes called “The American Serengeti.” Everything western, from clothes to rodeos, wasn’t currently in style.
Miles cleared his throat. “Sorry about the crash.”
Sam was momentarily startled wondering which “crash” he meant. Her husband’s or . . .?
Then, gesturing towards Willoughby, Miles added, “He scared the horses and made them run for me. I’d never seen wild horses before, except in documentaries. And they were amazing, but, again, sorry if we made you slam into that rock.”
Sam thought that’s exactly what Willoughby would do, while trying to impress someone from “Hollywood.”
“Do you see wild horses often?” the younger Gurwitz continued.
“Not spooked like that,” she said, tossing the words in Willoughby’s direction.
Willoughby offered no response. After checking her antennae, he’d lifted the hood of her car and was looking around under there. She wasn’t sure what he expected to find.
When she turned back, she caught Miles giving her a quick once-over.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was expecting someone . . ..”
“Different,” she said, finishing his sentence. His reaction wasn’t unexpected. Sam was short, slight (she preferred “wiry,”), blond, and blue-eyed—not the usual sheriff-stereotype.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean . . ..” He stopped.
Sam shifted her attention to him: What was he doing here?
“I’m sure you’re very good at what you do,” he continued. “It’s just that I’m a little overwhelmed by this place.” He made a wide gesture. “It’s nothing like what I expected.” He paused as if searching for the right word. “Everything here is so unordinary.”
Unordinary, she wanted to laugh. He was from Los Angeles where the air was solid, and the earth moved.
Miles drew a deep breath. He knew he was making a fool of himself, but she’d thrown him off his usual steady demeanor. Willoughby wasn’t hard to figure. The old guy’s view of the world was decades out-of-date and clearly didn’t include lady sheriffs. Miles sensed instantly that she bothered him. Willoughby wasn’t sure how to act around her, which was the real reason he was spending so much time with his head under her hood. That’s not to say Miles couldn’t appreciate the old guy’s dilemma. His own stereotype of a gun-toting lawwoman was a lot more butch. Not that he was inclined to underestimate her. She was clearly all business. She’d tucked her hair under a baseball cap. Her uniform, a tan shirt, with a couple of insignias stitched on the sleeve, was tucked into blue jeans and sinched with a well-worn utility belt. Everything about her was no-nonsense, and yet . . ..
Miles looked away, trying not to stare. Willoughby was boring. Sheriff Sam Nielsen, on the other hand, was someone he thought he’d like to know, not because she’d caught his attention but because she’d caught his interest, which was a whole different thing.
While Willoughby continued checking out her car, Miles tried again. “Who do you think I should talk to about doing a movie here? Besides Bill Willoughby, of course.”
She took a moment. “What are you really doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody is going to make another western movie here. Not the current vibe. So, what’s up?”
That caught him off guard. And then, because he doesn’t have an answer, he tried to laugh it off. “Wow, that’s a sheriff question if I ever heard one.”
Not deterred, she added, “Even family ranch sagas are pretty much a thing of the past.”
He knows what she means. Recently the big screen had been taken over by superheroes who originated in comic books. History was out. Although, truth be told, he suspected the myth of the American West was its own fantasy. That, however, was more than he wanted to get into. So, he shrugs. “OK, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why I’m here. My uncle, a big-time producer, asked me to come here and talk to him (he nods in Willoughby’s direction) about the possibility of a movie. So here I am. Whether or not anything develops from the discussion is another question.”
“You’re telling me that you got on a plane and flew to this corner of Idaho, and you aren’t sure why?” she continued.
He nods. “There was also a helicopter flight from Boise. I don’t really enjoy helicopter flights.” He gestures again towards Willoughby. “My uncle seems to think he might be onto something, but so far, it’s just talk.”
She clearly doesn’t believe him.
He hurries to add, “My uncle is the only person likely to finance my next film. My last two movies lost money, and so . . ..” He stopped. He was making things worse. “I don’t know what else I can say.”
“You don’t need to say anything,” Willoughby grumbled. “Our sheriff here has more important things to worry about, like finding the cattle rustlers who are stealing my cows.”
“Cattle Rustlers? You have cattle rustlers here?” Miles now asked.
Sam gave Willoughby a quick glance, and then turned to Miles. “Nothing like what you’ve seen in the movies, but, yes, we still have cattle rustlers out here.”
That, however, was the wrong thing to say. It set Willoughby off. He slammed the hood of her car shut. “If you ask me, everything that’s wrong with the whole damned country is related to our current lack of big-screen westerns, and I’m not talking about ranch family sagas,” Willoughby complained in a voice loud enough to be a shout. “I’m talking about the kind of movie that once defined America. Heroic stories with good guys and bad guys. You know, the kind of movie where when things go wrong somebody does something about it. That’s the kind of movie I challenged his uncle to make—to have the courage to make—bucking all the trends and everything. You never know when something old will become new again, I say. And about time, too.”
Sam glanced at Miles to see how he was taking in Willoughby’s rant. He seemed puzzled. Her dead husband had warned her that the whole Gurwitz family were “cheats and crooks,” but Miles wasn’t acting like one. Rather than being puzzled, a con artist would have quickly zeroed in on his mark’s hopes and dreams—something Willoughby had just spilled.
So, what was Miles doing here?
Meanwhile, Willoughby pushed his hat back, cowboy style, as if daring anyone to disagree with him.
She was willing to give Willoughby credit for trying. Everyone in Drinkwater was grasping at straws—hoping for an act of Congress, if not an act of God, to save this place from becoming just another forgotten patch of dust. Trying to enlist “Hollywood” was, at least, original.
“So, what about my missing cows?” Willoughby asked her directly.
“I am looking into it. I have two deputies out checking notebooks.”
“Nobody’s checked mine,” he complained.
“You’re a busy man. Makes you hard to find,” she said putting out her hand.
He pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. She flipped it open and began paging through it.”
“Notebooks? Checking notebooks?” Miles asked.
“Cowboy CCTV,” Willoughby growled, “only older, better.”
Sam was expecting Willoughby to explain more. When he didn’t, she looked up and caught Miles’ puzzled expression.
“Over a hundred years ago,” she began, “when catching cattle rustlers was largely left to local vigilantes, the ranchers around here began keeping notebooks. They wrote down everything and everyone they saw while making their usual rounds—that included neighbors, friends, and family as well as strangers. Once a month, they met, drank beer, and mapped out all the comings and goings of the whole area by comparing those notebook entries. If something looked odd, or someone seemed to be in a place they had no business being, they assumed they were up to no good and checked it out—meaning that person had better have a good explanation. The local people in Drinkwater County still make regular entries in their notebooks. Only now I and my deputies are the ones who collect and cross-references them, but usually only when there’s a problem, like someone’s cows have gone missing.”
Miles seemed to consider that a moment. “OK, so, you’re saying that out here, in the middle of nowhere, multiple people are making a record of every place I’ve been the last two days.”
Her dead husband’s warning, repeated like a musical refrain--they’re all cheats and crooks. Sam gave Miles a quick glance. “Is that going to be a problem?”
He shook his head. He had nothing to hide except his growing confusion as to what his uncle expected him to do here. At the same time, he couldn’t help wondering if she was ever NOT the sheriff of Drinkwater County.
She returned to paging through Willoughby’s notebook. Miles studied her while she flipped through the pages, stopping occasionally to study a certain entry. When she finished, she handed the notebook back to him and asked if Willoughby had found anything of concern under the hood of her car.
Willoughby shook his head.
Then it was time to go.
Miles expressed the usual “glad to meet you” and got back into Willoughby’s truck. They waited a moment for the sheriff to start her engine and get rolling. Then Willoughby announced that they’ve seen enough of Drinkwater’s canyons. He had other things to show Miles—more interesting places. With that, he turned around and started back the way they came.
Miles shrugged. He’s along for the ride, never mind that he had yet to figure out why. And something else is troubling him—the sheriff.
Something about her was familiar. Miles had taught himself to remember everyone he’d ever met. He made it a point to file that information in the back of his head along with when and where he’d met them and who else that person might know. In his industry, networking was key to getting projects green-lighted, and he liked to believe he was good at it—the networking part. Which was why he couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling that he knew Sam from someplace. He’d met her somewhere, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t remember when or where. The feeling was naggingly annoying.
“Has she been the sheriff long?” he asked Willoughby.
Willoughby chuckled. “I’d say not much longer.”
“Oh-h-h,” Miles said and then not knowing exactly how to respond, he let that information settle a moment.
“I’m backing someone else in the upcoming election,” Willoughby continued. “Someone who knows more about being a sheriff. She’s not fit for the job, never was.”
“Then how did she get elected?”
“Family.”
Miles knew about family. Family was the reason he was here. “Her family has some clout, I take it?”
“She the daughter of Congressman Jay Evers.”
“Evers . . . Evers isn’t that’s the long-time Idaho Republican?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Solid guy.”
“So, what? He encouraged her, endorsed her, campaigned for her?”
“No, not exactly,” Willoughby said. “It’s more like she thought she could run for sheriff because politics runs in her blood or something.” Willoughby paused. “Also, her grandmother owns the biggest ranch in the county. Biggest, not the best. The movies, that your uncle and your father filmed here, were all shot on my spread. It’s more scenic. Her grandmother supplied some of the horses for the project. She’s also one of the Drinkwater County Commissioners. You’ll need her to approve permits and stuff. But that’s not a problem. Everybody’s going to be behind this new project. Trust me about that. Things around here could use a boost.”
No doubt, Miles thought. The whole place had a worn feeling—almost a worn-out feeling. That included Willoughby. He was a big man, tall, broad-shouldered but not fleshy. Comfortable, Miles thought. Willoughby’s clothes were worn to a comfortable stage. He moved the same way, sort of comfortably cowboy-slow. He seemed to know where he was going, he just wasn’t in any hurry to get there. Miles figured Willoughby could handle himself in most situations as long as they weren’t too far from the ranch, so to speak. That said, calling Morrie Gurwitz, Miles’ uncle, was a long way from the ranch. So, what, Miles wondered, had Willoughby told his uncle. What was going on between the two of them?
That’s about the time that the old cowboy shifted to a lower gear as he started up a steep incline, climbing out of the canyon. “I’ll admit she catches the eye, but you don’t want to get involved,” Willoughby added.
“With the sheriff?”
“Yeah, I saw you looking her over. I don’t suppose you heard what happened to her husband?”
“Her husband?”
“He drove himself into a wall.”
“A wall?”
“One of those concrete highway barriers. That was four, five years ago, now,” Willoughby paused and then added. “All the Nielsen women have that effect on men.”
Miles couldn’t believe what he was hearing. There were women in Drinkwater County who bewitched men? Made them drive into walls? He had no idea he’d wandered that far out into the boonies. “You’re saying that the women in her family drive men crazy?”
“More like not one of them can keep a man around for long. Something always happens.”
“I’ll considered myself warned.,” Miles added with amusement.
Willoughby didn’t seem to notice the amusement. He was busy changing gears, negotiating the steep road out of the canyon.
While he was busy doing that, Miles studied his side mirror, watching the dust roil out from under Willoughby’s truck, forming a cloud that followed them down the road. “What did she do before she became the sheriff,” he asked when the ride had settled into a straight stretch.
“Don’t know. She was living in California, married someone down there. He died when he drove into a barrier, like I said.”
California!! Miles allows himself an inward smile. His instincts were true. He had met her someplace. Now, he just needed to figure out when and where.
As soon as she was out of the canyon, Sam radioed her dispatcher, Debra Ruth.
“What’s up?” Debra Ruth asked in a voice that was jarringly high-pitched.
Sam had spent four years trying to instill a sense of professional pride into her team. Debra Ruth was a lost cause. Besides always answering like an aging teenager, she was constantly making excuses about why she couldn’t wear the Drinkwater County Sheriff’s Department uniform, which was just a tan shirt. But she was full of excuses. It didn’t fit, it was made of scratchy material, she was allergic to the fibers—more like it was too plain for her. Debra Ruth had never met a color she didn’t like. Her skirts and shirts were a cacophony of plaids, stripes, and bright hues. That said, everyone, who knew her, liked Debra Ruth. They told her everything, confided in her, asked her advice, even shared medical concerns and family secrets. Since becoming her boss, Sam had come to understand that in a short-handed, under-funded, backcountry sheriff’s office, Debra Ruth and her gossip network were worth at least two regular deputies—something her dispatcher also understood, although she pretended to be humble about it. Oh, and she knew her way around computers, which also added to her indispensability.
“What are you hearing about the guy Bill Willoughby is showing around?” Sam asks her.
“I hear he’s a hunk.” Her dispatcher returned.
Sam allowed herself an inward smile—that was soooo Debra Ruth. “He’s not too bad,” Sam offered because she knew that would please her dispatcher.
“So, you’ve seen him?” Debra Ruth swooned.
Her dispatcher was always looking for the “gorgeous guy” who would sweep her off her feet. Sometimes Sam thought it would help if she wasn’t quite so eager. “Yes, like I said, Willoughby is showing him off—when he’s not complaining about his lost cows, of course. What else are folks saying besides the fact that he’s good-looking?” Sam continued.
“Most people aren’t THAT impressed. They think it’s just Willoughby being Willoughby. When doesn’t he have some overly grand idea that he’s chasing?”
True that, but something about the situation had Sam worried.
“Oh,” Debra Ruth came back, “You’ve been out of radio range so long all morning, so I forgot to ask: where are you going today?”
“Accra, Ghana.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s big city in Africa.”
“If you say so . . .”
Sam shook her head. By now half of Drinkwater knew that she randomly picked a place to go every morning from a scrapbook of post cards and travel brochures she had collected when she was thirteen years old. Wishful thinking, an odd quirk, she knew, but she was also half serious. One day, she was going to honor her thirteen-year-old self and go see the world, but right now she had a daughter to raise and a job to do.
She paused. Picking a place every morning, other than Drinkwater, wasn’t just an odd quirk. It was her sanity saver. When things weren’t going well, she reminded herself that she could be Accra or Dublin or Jakarta. If she wasn’t re-elected, in another month, maybe . . ..
Then one of her deputies came on the radio saying that he hadn’t found anyone who had seen any signs of cattle rustling. Another deputy, the one everybody called “Tractor,” because he liked to tinker with old farm machinery, came on the radio next, saying the same thing.
“Willoughby’s neighbors agree that he is missing some cows—more than a few—but they haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary. They honestly don’t know what’s going on,” Tractor added.
“Yeah,” the first deputy, Paul, agreed. “Everybody’s more interested in why he’s hanging out with that guy from California instead of tending to his own business, like setting up an extra camera or something.”
“Everybody?” Sam asked, wondering why she was the last to know about Willoughby and the guy from California.
“Yeah, that’s the main buzz,” Tractor agreed. “People are wondering what’s going on.”
“What do you think is going on,” Sam asked.
The radio went silent for a couple of beats.
“Nobody thinks they’re going to start making movies here again,” Debra Ruth offered, mainly because she hated silence.
“Yeah, there’s some bad karma left over from that last movie. Somebody died while they were filming it,” Paul added. “A young woman, the lead actress, I think.”
“Ok, yeah, I heard something like that, too,” Tractor broke in. “The old sheriff tried to investigate but . . .”
“But what?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know. Ask Henry, he might remember.”
Henry was the deputy who’d been on the job the longest. He had worked for the old sheriff before Sam was elected. “When did Henry last check-in,” she asked Debra Ruth.
“Couple of hours ago,” her dispatcher answered.
Although he denied it, everybody knew that Henry regularly turned off his radio because he didn’t like being annoyed with exactly this kind of chit-chat. He was a loner. Good deputy but his own man most of the time.
Sam continued, “Could that death have something to do with the nephew being here now?”
“Not likely, it’s just something I remembered hearing about. More likely it’s another one of Willoughby’s schemes,” Tractor said. “Or a con job.”
“Yeah, it’s a con job,” the other deputy agreed. “Has to be, what else?”
That had been Sam’s first thought—a con job. But she also knew what it cost to make a movie. By Drinkwater standards, Willoughby was a big man, but when it came to making a movie, he wasn’t worth conning. Like most ranchers, his accounts ran in the red every month except the one month when he took his cows to market. So, why would Miles Gurwitz, of the famous or infamous Gurwitz family, think hanging out with Willoughby was worthwhile? He could run the slickest con in the world and not come up with the cash. It just wasn’t there.
Her next thought was to wonder if being the Sheriff of Drinkwater meant she needed to save Willoughby from his own stupidity, if he was, indeed, being conned. She thought about that for a moment. She was the sheriff, at least until the next election. And, she wasn’t going Accra today, so, she probably needed to investigate, or at least try to figure out what was going on. Problem was, she knew how to buy a plane ticket to Accra. She even knew that the flight would likely connect through Washington Dulles airport. On the other hand, she had no idea how she was going expose a slick, smooth talker from the “family of crooks” her dead husband had once warned her about.
While Sam was worrying about cattle rustlers, smooth talkers, and getting re-elected, Eric Mitchell, the local junk dealer, was sitting on the bleachers behind the Drinkwater County School watching Sam’s daughter, Amy, play softball while he ate his lunch. Amy was supposed to be covering center field, but he saw her take out her phone, and send a message—the modern equivalent of passing notes in school. There was no texting when he was going to that same school years ago. He never passed notes either. A loner, he’d never really hung out with anyone. Only person he ever cared about was Sam. Back when he was going to school, some of his same-age guys had accused him of being, her “groupie,” always hanging around hoping to get her attention, but never quite succeeding. . ..
His father was the foreman of Sam’s grandmother’s ranch, so sometimes when they were away from school, hanging out at the ranch, Sam talked to him. He used to live for those moments.
“You like the word ‘groupie?’” he asked his lunch companion.
“A baby frog,” she said.
“Groupie, not guppy,” he repeated with a shake of his head. Most of the time, it was hard to get Mrs. Roser to understand much, but, in her day, she had been all proper English and multiplication tables.
“Baby frogs don’t look like frogs. They are a surprise when they grow up,” she continued.
He shook his head. There had been a time when he was completely intimidated by Mrs. Roser. That was in the third grade, when she was his teacher. Now, long retired, she mostly wandered around town, often walking in circles, forgetting where she was. He understood the confusion. Smelling Sam’s daughter had done something similar to the order of his memories. He was leaving the Bone Dry Café—the only decent eating place in town—when Amy and a couple of her friends came in. The entrance was narrow. She brushed against him, and that’s when he realized she smelled just like Sam when Sam was her age. The scent had left him feeling dizzy. After that, it had become a regular thing for him to watch her play softball during her noon recess.
He set his lunch box on the bleacher next to him, opened it, and took out a sandwich. Peanut Butter. He liked peanut butter. As a kid he’d traded for peanut butter whenever his father made tuna fish. He never had a mother, at least not one he remembered, and his father only knew how to make two kinds of sandwiches—peanut butter and tuna fish. Eric would have been happy if his father hadn’t been even that versatile. Peanut butter was all he needed.
Amy’s hair was long, the way Sam’s used to be. Sam was the sheriff now. When she spoke to him, it was in her sheriff voice. Always keeping her distance. Like she’d never really come back from California. He didn’t like that.
“Same lunch?” Mrs. Roser asked.
He nodded and spread a napkin over the lap of his former teacher. Then he handed her half of his sandwich. He didn’t like Sam’s sheriff voice.
“Roast beef?” Mrs. Roser muttered.
He paid her no attention because this was how their lunches always went.
“Bacon and lettuce and tomato?” she continued.
He opened a carton of milk for her.
“Liverwurst and chopped onion?”
Eric wasn’t crazy. He knew he couldn’t show up day after day at the schoolyard to watch Amy without an excuse. He knew what that would look like. That’s why he invited Mrs. Roser to sit with him and share his lunch. She never had other plans.
Drinkwater was not the place to be if you had plans. He’d found that out the hard way. Nothing changed here, at least nothing changed for the better. The old school was in need of paint. Otherwise, it was just the same as when he and Sam went there—twelve grades and a library under one roof. Students from outlying areas boarded during the week with town families. The others rode school buses. He couldn’t count the hours he’d spent on a school bus. Sam sat in the back talking with her friends or doing her homework. He sat in the front by himself. They talked when it was time to walk the long lane leading to the ranch—half a mile each way, each day.
As usual, high school football games were still the biggest social event in the county. Filled the bleachers, where he was sitting now, every home game. More than filled the bleachers. Some folks had gotten into the habit of bringing extra lawn chairs. Girls’ softball, on the other hand, was a recess activity. Nobody watched. Eric hoped seeing him with Mrs. Roser would be considered a good thing—a gesture of kindness and good will towards his old teacher. Otherwise of no note.
“Corn beef on rye?” Mrs. Roser asked.
He shook his head.
“Ham and cheese?” she went on.
He didn’t care what he ate. The important thing was that for forty minutes every day, he was a groupie again. He had a focus. He knew every move Sam’s daughter made. His reward for that careful attention was getting to smell her when she ran past on her way back to her classroom. Sometimes, as a bonus, she’d flip her hair over her shoulder, a gesture so reminiscent of her mother at that age, it almost made time stop.
“You always wanted that one, didn’t you?” Mrs. Roser said, her voice taking a different tone.
“Which one?”
“She had one of those common names. It’ll come to me. I just need a minute.”
It would take more than a minute, Eric knew. He nudged her hand—the one holding the sandwich—to remind her to eat. She took a bite.
“This isn’t egg salad.”
He shook his head again.
“I like egg salad. I never liked any of those Nielsen women,” she rambled on.
“Why’s that?” he asked. Mrs. Roser could have moments of clarity, but they quickly passed.
“They don’t need anybody, do they? Didn’t need you, did she? Too bad. I always thought those Nielsen women could use a spring tonic every season of the year. Then maybe they’d shit like the rest of us.”
Eric shot her a glance. He’d never heard her say “shit.” He’d also never heard her express an opinion on the Nielsen women of Drinkwater, Idaho, although he would have been more surprised if she didn’t have one. Nielsen Women were Drinkwater’s version of celebrity, the reason he’d come to think of himself as a “groupie.” Maddy, Sam’s grandmother, was the county commissioner and owned the biggest ranch around, Xan, (short for Alexandra) Sam’s mother, was the famous western artist who painted huge, colorful canvases and signed them with an “X.” Sam was the sheriff. Amy, her daughter, had just made an out, putting her team in position to win the game. In other words, they were not the kind who went unnoticed.
“Mrs. Roser, you surprise me,” he said. “A spring tonic every season?”
“And they’re bad luck, you know. Hard on their men,” she continued in a softer voice, as if sharing a secret. “You know what they say about the sheriff’s husband—how he drove himself into that concrete wall.”
“Her husband’s death had been ruled an accident,” Eric knew, because he’d bothered to look it up. Rumor never needed fact. He shook his head. He was the local junk dealer. He knew more than Mrs. Roser could imagine. Sooner or later, everyone’s secrets ended up in his hands, but he shrugged, “No, what do they say?” he asked Mrs. Roser.
She paused and stared at him for a moment. Then blankness overtook her gaze. “Left-over lamb and mint jelly,” she answered. “That makes a good sandwich.”
On those long walks down the lane to and from the ranch, Eric had shared his childhood secrets with Sam, including his elaborate strategies for finding his missing mother. None of which ever worked and then one night, his father showed him her death certificate. She’d been dead all the time. That was the same night . . ..
“Pastrami on rye,” Mrs. Roser continued.
“Too salty,” he answered.
“Cucumber with the crusts cut off,” Mrs. Roser said.
“Too fancy.”
“Chicken salad,” she suggested.
“Not for me.”
That was the same night when Sam finally helped him, not with his mother, but with his father. That was when then he knew Sam cared about him or cared about what might happen to him. That was when he decided that must mean she loved him. Why else would she have done what she did? From that moment on, he was sure that when they grew up, they were going to get married and . . ..
“Sweet pickle on brown bread,” Mrs. Roser continued.
Instead, Sam went away. And when she came back, she wasn’t the same. Worse, people were saying bad things about how her husband died and that she was just another Nielsen woman who had no use for men. He didn’t know what to think. Her sheriff voice made him cringe like when his father was telling him that he was no good and was about to hit him—again.
He looked up and saw Amy running, her hair blowing behind her. He swallowed hard. Amy was more like Sam than Sam. He wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. That’s why he came here almost every noon to watch and think and wait while he figured it out.
“Many, many kinds of sandwiches,” Mrs. Roser said.
“I know,” he said, while again nudging her arm, “but you need to eat this one. It’s almost time to go. Noon recess is over.”
As soon as Sam got back into town—Drinkwater City, population 550, known locally as “the other D.C,” she drove straight to Gus Beesley’s Texaco. Gus-Gus, his son, was minding the front. He was selling a can of oil to the captain of the high school football team. She’d spotted his motorcycle outside. Being captain of the team and riding a bike, meant he was leaning against the counter like he owned the place, if not the whole world. Meanwhile, Gus-Gus, who was the same age, but had likely never been on a date, was counting change with a nervous twitch. High school, especially in a small town, Sam remembered, was a drama that defined lives, or took a long time to overcome. She knew didn’t envy either of them.
“Is your dad in?” she asked Gus-Gus. He looked up at Sam with wide eyes, like he hoped she could save him from his current situation, but he settled for wordlessly pointing her towards the back.
Gus, the father, was a large man who always wore the same style green coveralls, stretched over his widening paunch. When she found him, he was putting new tires on an old pickup truck. He paused long enough to finish chewing a couple of Tums before asking, “What can I do for you?”
“I slammed into a big rock. I’m hoping you can fix the dent because I don’t really have the budget for a whole new back panel.”
He wiped his hands and followed her outside. Like Willoughby, he walked around her vehicle and looked underneath for leaks. He straightened up, chewed more Tums, and said, “I can smooth out the dent and match the paint, but . . ..”
She stopped him before he could continue. “I know, I know, the old sheriff, the one who was sheriff of Drinkwater for thirty-six years, wouldn’t have bothered,” she said. “I’m a little tired of hearing how far he could stretch a dollar, mostly by ignoring anything that wasn’t falling apart.”
“I was going to say that it might take me a week to get the paint.”
“Sorry, but I know that’s what people are saying.”
Gus shrugged. “Most folks are too worried about their own problems to care one way or another about yours.”
“Sorry, I happened to see Willoughby this morning,” she added. “Puts me in a mood.”
Gus let a smile slide across his face. “I hear he’s giving some Californian the grand tour of our hidden paradise.”
“And I thought we weren’t sharing that secret with outsiders,” she told him.
He tossed his empty Tums bottle into a trash barrel at the side of his garage. “What secret?”
“That this is a paradise,” she said.
“It ain’t,” he told her. “That’s why Willoughby’s running all over the place, working way too hard to make it seem like something it ain’t.”
“Yeah, but what do you think is really going on?” she asked.
“No idea, but I hope he fails. We don’t need the trouble of another film crew stirring things up.”
Sam was about to ask him if he remembered anything about a young woman dying during that last movie made in Drinkwater, but she then she suddenly heard Gus-Gus, the son, yell from the front office, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
Sam turned and saw Mrs. Roser, her old third-grade teacher. She was shuffling through the door, into the garage, breathing hard, her hands waving in a fit of frustration.
Gus-Gus was following behind, trying to get her to stop and turn around. “You need to go back that other way,” he said, but she wasn’t listening.
“Every lunchtime, it’s little girl sandwiches,” Mrs. Roser said, grabbing Sam’s arm. “Never ham and cheese. No bacon and tomato. He won’t try egg salad.”
Sam looked from Gus to Gus-Gus wondering what they were making of this. Gus-Gus rolled his eyes. Gus shrugged. Then, because he could never let anything go without comment, he said, “If you ask me, that’s the one person around here with no worries. Must be nice when you can’t remember enough to worry.”
That was no help. Sam turned to Mrs. Roser. “Who won’t try egg salad?”
“Yes, yes,” she said with renewed enthusiasm. “You have to guess his name, or he gets your first born. That’s how the story goes. Rumplestiltskin, Rumplestiltskin, Rumplestiltskin,” she began to chant, the tone of her voice rising with each repeat. “Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin, Rumplestiltskin . . .”
At the same time, her dead husband’s music (the tunes that occupied the back of her head) suddenly became discordant and loud. When his music was melodic, it was easier to ignore. His real talent (the thing that had made him perfect for scoring films) was his range. He could go from something symphonic to something that sounded like a late-night bar band with an ease that startled. She just didn’t need any of it right now.
Mrs. Roser stopped talking and sat on a pile of old tires that Gus had stacked near the front of his garage. She fussed with some strings on the frayed edge of her shirt and swung her feet back and forth like a child.
Sam squatted next to her. “Tell me again who won’t try egg salad?” But Mrs. Roser had stopped paying attention. She swung her feet and began singing while she twisted and tied the loose ends of her shirt. “Fairytales can come true. It can happen to you,” she sang softly as though Gus was right and she hadn’t a care in the world, which wasn’t true. She no had family and fewer and fewer lucid moments.
Meanwhile the tune in the back of Sam’s head had become a medley, picking up phrases from Mrs. Roser’s song and then blending them into other tunes, which only confused things. In moments like this, Sam wondered if her dead husband was trying to make her listen. Like Mrs. Roser, he was trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t figure it out.
One night, years ago, they were having dinner at a nice restaurant, when he spotted the director of Whispers in Berlin sitting across the room. He’d been trying to get a meeting with her for months. He got up, paid the piano player to take a break, sat down, and started playing the piano himself.
At first, no one noticed, except Sam, and she was feeling increasingly embarrassed. Then the room began to hush because he wasn’t playing the usual schmaltzy standards. It was as if he and his music was weaving a story, only there wasn’t really a story to tell in the middle of that restaurant. It was more like, listening to him, you thought you remembered a story. She looked around, seemingly that was what everyone was doing—listening and trying to remember. He held the room, like that, for ten minutes, no more. Then he walked over to the director and put his card on her table.
“What do you think about when you play like that?” she’d asked him, when he returned to their table.
“Us,” he’d answered.
He could be full of bullshit—something she needed to remember when she couldn’t make sense of why he was haunting her now.
Gus broke the silence. “The time’s coming,” he added, “when she’s going to have to go into a home where someone can really take care of her.”
“A place where nobody knows her, you mean.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Gus started to say.
Sam stopped him with a gesture. He was right, but that was not the problem of the moment. Sam sat on the pile of tires next to the woman who had taught the multiplication table to almost every adult in Drinkwater. “What’s eight times eight?” she asked.
Mrs. Rose brightened. “Sixty-four.”
“Nine times nine?”
“Eight-one.”
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.
“Peanut butter every day,” she said. “I don’t like eating peanut butter sandwiches every day.”
Opening Pages of Spotted Spirit Dog:
She sees the bullet coming straight at her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she also notes a flurry of blackbirds flying up from the thicket of trees where the bullet seems to be coming from. Ravens? Then something hits her knees. Hard. She falls sideways. Thankfully, her training kicks in. She rolls into the fall, hitting the ground with the back of her shoulder, minimizing the damage to her body. Simultaneously she draws her sidearm. Then quickly pulling herself into a sitting position, knees tucked into her chest, she scoots sideways, putting her patrol car between her and the shooter. Without thinking, she also grabs the collar of the dog that knocked her down.
Sheriff Samantha “Sam” Nielsen gives herself a chance to catch her breath while she listens for a second shot or any other sound that might tell her where the shooter is or what’s going on. She hears nothing but the buzzing of a couple of mosquitos and the whisper of a slight breeze rustling the willow trees behind her. A long moment later, a ping from her car’s engine makes her jump. The dog whimpers. She tightens her grip on its collar. More mosquitos, maybe a bee. The breeze again. Nothing else.
Dragging the dog with her, she slides sideways over uneven, slightly damp ground, stopping only when she was sure she’s sitting squarely behind her car’s engine block. She’s alone, no backup. Or to be more precise, her backup was at least forty minutes away. She and her five deputies were responsible for area larger than the state of Massachusetts. They patrolled deep canyons, wide salt flats, and seemingly endless stretches of sage and scrub brush, sometimes romantically dubbed the “American Serengeti.” More like it was America’s forgotten place—Drinkwater County, Idaho, population under 20,000 and dropping. Drinkwater was not a place where the young saw a future. Most left. She had returned. The first time she ran for sheriff, winning was a surprise.
Not like this. Not as surprising as seeing a bullet coming at you. Total surprise.
She looks around, making a quick assessment. She should be safe. The engine block is the only part of her vehicle that can stop a bullet. Everything else might deflect it or slow it down, but not . . .
Stay focused, she tells herself. Listen!
If someone is working their way around hoping to take another shot, she’ll hear something. Given the dense scrub brush next to the refuge lakes, she can’t imagine the shooter making a move without also making a noise. The undergrowth next to the lakes was thick. Not even the best tracker could . . .
Just listen, keep listening, she tells herself.
She hears nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. The buzzing of those pesky mosquitos continues. She also notes the screech of a distant hawk and the steady breathing of the dog that has momentarily stopped struggling. She loosens her grip slightly. The dog turns its head and tries to lick her hand. Not her dog. Never saw it before it hit her knees and took her down.
Sam leans her back against her patrol car, feeling a growing soreness in the shoulder that hit the ground. Still listening, she draws several slow, deep breaths while she reminds herself that you never see the bullet that kills you. Seeing a bullet is a good thing. Means it missed you already. Your brain can’t process what your eyes are seeing. Not that fast. By the time you know you’re seeing a bullet, it’s past being a danger. Her current danger is the next bullet, the one she doesn’t see.
Stay focused, she tells herself again while she tries to figure out what’s going on here. She was on her way to The Royal Hotel, a refurbished birder hangout on the edge of a local ghost town. The proprietors had called her because of a fist fight between a couple of seventy-year-old birders, both of whom wanted to press charges. So, she was on her way to the hotel, driving along the edge of the refuge’s larger lake, when she spotted some car tracks leading into a part of the bird refuge that was supposedly off limits to everyone. She stopped, got out of her car, followed the tracks a few steps and then from out of nowhere . . ..
She shakes her head.
Her patrol car has “sheriff” written on all four sides. Whoever fired that shot had to know they were firing at the Sheriff of Drinkwater County, Idaho, unless they were so inept with a gun that they’d let a shot go wild. She dismisses that possibility. The people in her county know how to handle a gun almost from the time they are old enough to hold one.
She takes out her phone. No service. No surprise. The bird refuge, situated near the eastern side of her jurisdiction, was notorious for having little or no cell phone service. She thinks about reaching round for the radio inside her patrol car, but quickly dismisses that idea. Sticking her head up long enough to grab the radio might be the move the shooter is waiting for—a scenario she considers more likely given the fact that the shooter obviously isn’t tramping through the brush hoping to line-up a shot from another, better angle.
Letting her dispatcher know that she was pinned down, wasn’t going to help. Sam returns to her only best option, which was to wait this out, let the shooter grow impatient and make the first wrong move. Meanwhile, she had become so alert, listening so intently, that the hair on the back of her neck was beginning to feel like pinpricks.
If she hears something, suggesting that the shooter is coming round, looking for a clean shot, she plans to roll under her vehicle, forcing her stalker to come within range of her side arm. Her rifles, of course, were also in her car along with her radio.
Five minutes tick by and she still hasn’t heard anything out of the ordinary. Come to think of it, she hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary either—except that bullet and the dog. No longer struggling against her grip, the dog lays quietly beside Sam giving her a wide-eyed look, every time she glances in its direction.
She will deal with the dog when the danger is past, she tells herself. Sooner or later, the shooter will need to move. Wait, listen, she reminds herself yet again.
Sam Nielsen grew up in this dusty corner of America. At nineteen, she left to go to school in California, and like most young people who fled this long-forgotten, futureless place, she never thought she’d come back. Then, years later, when her husband died suddenly in a car crash, she couldn’t imagine raising her daughter alone in California, not when she had family living here. When she got elected sheriff, six months later, no one was more surprised than she was. She’d been sheriff for five years now, re-elected once, but, in moments like this one, sitting behind her car, waiting for someone to take another shot at her, she still couldn’t quite believe the direction her life had taken. She wasn’t naïve; she knew her election had a lot to do with the fact that her family had deep roots in this place, generations deep, and a family reputation for “not sitting still” a phase that meant something quite different than Sam’s current circumstances.
Actually, Sam thought the phrase “not sitting still” mostly applied to her grandmother, Maddy, who still ran the family ranch and was one of Drinkwater’s three county commissioners—had been for years and years. “Not sitting still” meant grandma, now in her seventies was still considered a go-getter. Sam’s mother was the famous artist Xan (Alexandra Nielsen), who signed her paintings with an “X.” She upheld the family reputation by never-never doing the expected or the ordinary. Being sheriff, didn’t mean that Sam was trying to uphold the family reputation. Quite the contrary. Her idea was to keep Drinkwater County running as smoothly as possible. No drama. No drama that could be avoided. She preferred to think of herself as a “peace officer.” Keeping the peace was how she measured her job. If things were running smoothly, she was doing a good job.
With that in mind, she made it a point to personally know most of the people in her county. She attended local football games, graduations, weddings, funerals. In other words, without making it a stated goal, she’d also learned to do the politician part of her job. In short, she was hard-pressed to think why anyone would want to shoot her.
Of course, the shooter didn’t have to be local. It is fall—bird season--meaning her job was currently complicated by the 10,000 or more birders who descended on her county, twice a year, every fall and spring. Strangers who didn’t know her, came from as far away as Australia, Brussels, and Patagonia. The map at The Royal Hotel showed pins from people who'd stayed at that hotel coming from every state in the US and half the world. Drinkwater County was considered a world-class birding site—one of the places every serious birder want to brag about having been. And yes, some of those birders could be annoying and city-stupid, meaning they got lost or got into fist fights or trespassed onto private property. Nevertheless, they were birders. They carried scopes, not guns. No reason to think one of them wanted to kill her.
A couple more minutes tick by.
Having not heard another shot or any other unusual sound, Sam releases her grip on the dog. It stands up and shakes itself. To her surprise, the dog is huge—a Great Dane. A spotted black and white Great Dane with a missing one back leg. The leg had been amputated some time ago; it was cleanly healed.
Whoa! she tells herself, a dog with a history.
Then she catches that thought as she suddenly realizes she remembered everything backwards. The black birds flying skyward had caught her attention. Then the dog knocked against her and, as she was falling, she saw the bullet. Did that mean . . .
Had this dog saved her life?
She shakes her head slowly. The bigger question was the dog itself. How had this enormous, three-legged, black and white dog come to be here at the right moment or any moment? It made no sense. Drinkwater County, Idaho, is rural. The only dogs people owned here were working dogs, ranch dogs, herding dogs. A three-legged Great Dane fit none of those categories. Most likely it had been dumped because it was too big or too crippled or just too much trouble to someone. Maybe that explained the tracks she saw. Someone had pulled off the road to dump the dog, leaving it to slowly starve or be killed and eaten by coyotes.
People like that . . . she grits her teeth. Then she reminds herself that she still needs to keep focused, keep listening.
She watches the dog. Like her, it seems alert, listening. In the distance, there is the gurgling cries of sandhill cranes. The dog turns in that direction and tests the air with its nose, no doubt smelling the water. Not too far in that direction are two lakes with a combined size slightly larger than Lake Tahoe, but unlike Lake Tahoe, they are only inches deep. Twice a year, every year, some 320 migratory species of birds used those lakes as a stopover. Scientists had found evidence that some species, like the sandhill cranes, had been stopping at these lakes for over a million years. A million years made the long minutes she’d been sitting behind her patrol car seem silly short, but she isn’t under the impression that any of this is silly.
The dog relaxes, it stretches its nose in her direction and nuzzles her arm—the one holding her sidearm. She brushes it away, not wanting to be distracted. The dog steps back, eyes her a moment, and then lies down, rolling onto one side as if it doesn’t have a care in the world. She thinks that’s a good sign, but waits, still listening.
A couple of minutes later, she hears it—the thing she’s been waiting for. Someone is tramping through the underbrush. However, they aren’t trying to be quiet and they’re coming from the lake side—her unprotected side, the opposite direction from the expected danger. The bullet had come from behind her. There are thick willows and a bank of cattails in front of her. She glances at the dog. It has rolled up, head cocked, listening with interest. Sam is taking no chances. Side arm still drawn, she gets onto her feet in a crouching position, braces her arm and waits.
Half a minute later, a middle-aged, slightly rotund woman, dressed in what looks like a white lab coat, pushes aside some of the willow branches and emerges into the clearing where Sam stopped to check the strange tracks. She exclaims, “Oh, here’s the road.” Then seeing Sam, she suddenly throws her arms into the air and shouts, “Don’t shoot.”
For a moment, Sam thinks this is so surreal she wonders if she has fallen into a Murakami short story or a Magritte painting. But, again, her training kicks in. She quickly shakes off her surprise, and, because it’s her job to protect people, she pops up, grabs the woman and pulls her down behind the truck. The woman lands with a decided thump and an audible groan.
“There’s an active shooter in the area,” Sam says. “Didn’t you hear the gunshot?”
The woman shakes her head. “What gunshot?”
Then Sam asks if she saw the flurry of blackbirds—probably ravens.
“Ravens,” the woman repeats and then adds, “No, no ravens.”
The woman rubs her arm where Sam grabbed her. The dog whimpers. Then, all of a sudden, the woman stops rubbing her arm and starts complaining about the dog. “It’s against the law to have a dog on the bird refuge, leashed or unleashed.”
“Not my dog,” Sam starts to tell her. Then it occurs to Sam that the real mystery is the woman.
“Who are you?” she asks.
The woman straightens slightly and answers, “I could ask the same. I mean, I’m not used to having a gun pulled on me. I’m even less used to being roughly pulled to the ground.”
Sam thumbs over her shoulder to the identifying insignia painted on the side of her vehicle.
The woman twists around. Then she leans away from the patrol car, as though she’s having trouble reading the sign. When she turns around again, she looks Sam over and says, “You’re the sheriff of Drinkwater?”
Sam is short, slight (she prefers “wiry”) and blond, meaning this lab-coated woman isn’t the first person to have asked that question.
Sam leans forward, looking pass the woman, to check the dog. It is sitting up, interested in what was going on, but not exhibiting any anxiety. If a shooter is still in the area, Sam would expect the dog to be more anxious. . .. Sam stops that thought. More likely, the dog is an overgrown house pet, lacking all the usual dog instincts. She gives herself a little shake. Things aren’t always what they seem, but this was getting weirder and weirder by the moment, meaning it was time to get a few things explained.
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