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  Sheriff Allen, who had never campaigned a day in his life and kept the job because no one else wanted it, arrived after everyone else, despite living a few miles away. He was in no hurry, but he was immediately inundated with requests, which did not make him happy. After ten minutes of some State Patrol asshole yelling at him about needing to be “lead on the scene” to the coroner needing him to sign something to trying to answer questions from all the damn people who had gathered, Grey Allen did something he hadn’t done while in uniform in years.

  He raised his voice.

  “Enough of this shit!”

  The guy from the State Patrol looked like he was going to start up again, but he saw that the scene and the pressure was giving Grey Allen all the stress he could handle, maybe a bit more, so he backed off. After adjusting his hat and breathing deeply like he had been told to do, Grey Allen finally arrived at the scene of the crime.

  “No good, that,” he said.

  At this point, the guy from the State Patrol could hold his tongue no longer.

  “Sheriff Allen …”

  “Grey.”

  “Grey …”

  “Grey Allen.”

  The man looked dumbstruck.

  “Sheriff Grey Allen, your most exalted majesty, that’s all you’ve got? That this is ‘no good’?”

  Grey Allen took a deep breath.

  “Well, what else you want?”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “Yep.”

  The man from the Nebraska State Patrol could contain himself no longer. He walked behind Grey Allen and spoke softly, yet quickly into his ear.

  “You are half an hour behind the ME and we had to pick up crowd control, we had to set up tape, we had to secure the scene and we had to do all that without a word from you or your department. This is the second body in your county in two days. As a professional courtesy to all these people who are here doing your job for you, would you please knock off the country bumpkin crap and tell us what you know so we can move forward. Please.”

  “Since you said please.”

  Grey Allan spit and turned around to face the young man in the slightly rumpled uniform.

  “This, here, is Byron Matzen. He’s got some land, not too far back off Rural Road 77, over there. Raises cows, plants the odd crop, but not much of a farmer. Big drinker. Never the brightest bulb, but he wasn’t likely to hurt nobody.”

  “You know that for sure?” the State Patrolman asked.

  “I know that for sure,” Grey Allan said. “I also know he was single. I know he drives a blue Dodge Durango but I’m not sure what year. I know he liked to speed on occasion but a warning would usually take care of it. I know he was at Bar a few nights back and, if I were a betting man, I’d bet he’s the guy who killed Sandra Riedel.”

  “What makes you say that?” the Patrolman said, listening very closely.

  “Makes sense. Don’t it?”

  The Patrolman kept his voice down as to not tip anything to the crowd gathered in the parking lot of the Sinclair station.

  “Not really.”

  “What don’t make sense about it?”

  “Well, Grey Allen …”

  “Sheriff Grey Allen.”

  “God damn it, Sheriff Grey Allen, you have two dead bodies in three days killed in the same way. Torn to shreds. Doesn’t it make sense that someone killed the first victim and then killed a second victim in the same way?”

  “Nope.”

  “I … what?” the Patrolman stumbled. “I … I don’t even know what to say to that.”

  “Looks like this guy killed Sandra and then some animal got at him. I don’t know. A bobcat maybe.”

  “A bobcat? You’re not serious?”

  “We get bobcats around here.”

  The Patrolman left Grey Allen to talk to someone with a better disposition. He ranted and raved to the assembled group of investigators, this time not taking the step of lowering his voice. Those gathered in the parking lot of the Sinclair station would report hearing words like “fucking idiot” “mind bending-ly stupid” and “Alzheimer’s Disease” thrown about. Grey Allen ignored it all, keeping his eyes on Byron’s body. They had really done a number on him. He thought he had this under control and now that it was clear he didn’t, there was only one thing left to do.

  Grey Allen pulled his old frame up on top of his dusty patrol car. He stood on the hood and immediately felt a rush of shame. What a stupid thing for an old man to do. It didn’t take long until all eyes were on him.

  “Everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to announce my retirement from Law Enforcement. If you’d all like to send a card, just drop it by the post office and I’ll make sure to stop by and pick them up.”

  A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 1

  Way before Grey Allen, one of the men who cracked the code of effective law enforcement in Barter County was a lawman by the name of Norbert Farber, a first generation German immigrant who served as Sheriff from 1913 – 1939. Before him, no lawman had lasted longer than a year in the area, though, to be fair, some had joined the military and others had no intention of staying in such a rural area. But others were, to put it kindly, run off.

  Immediately upon landing the job, Sheriff Farber decided to track down all those who had left and ask them if they had any advice, insight or could offer any help at all. When no one replied to his repeated letters seeking counsel, he took it upon himself to really dig into his community. He knocked on doors and introduced himself. He asked about concerns. He made his services available. By all accounts, he was the sheriff of a rural but perfectly lawful patch of land but he never stopped looking over his shoulder.

  Sheriff Farber’s first piece of trouble came in the form of dead animals, often dismembered and scattered, turning up in public places. None of the contacts he had made knew what was happening and any whispers that took place behind the scenes were too quiet for him to make out. Then Alan Caspersen’s dog wound up disemboweled but still tied to a leash in the blacksmith’s front yard. Mr. Caspersen, not one to stay quiet about any issue on his mind, made the issue the talk of the town and surrounding area. The Caspersen dog would not go unavenged.

  One night, out of frustration, Sheriff Farber visited the town bar and found blacksmith Caspersen drowning the memory of his deceased canine. The two got to talking and it wasn’t long into conversation when talk turned to devils and demons, men possessed and devoid of the Grace of God, men who ran with the devil, literally, according to Caspersen. Men who had no regard for holiness, charity, or other people’s animals.

  It didn’t matter whether or not the sheriff believed the stories. What mattered was he found the men, had a nice talk with them, and before long order had been restored. Blacksmith Caspersen never forgot the death of his dog, but before long the town moved on, the animal slaughter stopped, and time marched on. Twenty-six years later the sheriff died of a massive heart attack while on the job. In his last will and testament he instructed his wife Millicent to hand deliver to his replacement a set of letters he had written with strict instructions to not read the contents for herself. True to her word, Millicent resisted temptation and delivered the letters to newly minted Sheriff Bradley M. Godfrey who read the letters, took them to heart, and served in the position for eighteen years.

  PART 2 - THE RULES OF THE SCRATCH

  A week or so had passed between the two bloody nights in Cherry and between the crickets and the birds that don’t know what damn time it is and the distant wail of train horns, the country can be a noisy place to try to get some sleep. Add a girl screaming and running out of your house at two in the morning and Dave Rhodes Sr. was in desperate need of coffee. Plus, he had to have a word with the boy.

  Dave Jr., who everyone had called Dilly in a nickname whose origin was lost to the ages, wasn’t up yet. Josie was up, though. Dave had felt her toss and turn after they heard the girl scream, run out of their house, start up her car and drive away. Both of them
were pretty sure what had happened, as it was something they had dealt with in the past. Dave’s mind never really calmed down and the night’s sleep was restless, the clock on his bedside table particularly bright in the darkness. He woke up thoroughly unrested as he joined his wife in their kitchen.

  “Should we get him up? We need to talk to him,” Josie said. She had this conversation planned out, Dave could tell. If that woman had a chance to play things out in her head beforehand, she was hard to beat.

  “Let’s let him sleep for a bit.”

  “That girl may be hurt, Dave. She might have told her parents about it, they might be on their way over here right now.”

  “Adam and Charlotte? Not likely. He works at the John Deere, I’ve met him. He’s a levelheaded guy.”

  “But if she’s hurt …”

  “Then chances are Dilly would have made sure she’s OK. He’s a good kid. He’s not a monster.”

  “No, he’s a teenage boy and they are hardwired to make bad decisions. Besides, we don’t know what happened for sure. Go get him up, please.”

  They sat in silence for several heavy seconds. Dave took a sip of coffee and stood up.

  “Let’s get this over with.”

  Looking at his wife as the morning light beat through the window, Dave felt a pang of nostalgia. She really didn’t look all that different from when he met her in high school. She was still beautiful, still unwilling to deal with any of his bullshit. He often had thoughts that, left to his own devices, there was no way he could have carved out the life he had, no way he could have balanced it, without her hand in his life. He walked over and leaned down to kiss her, hoping the coffee would mask his morning breath.

  “It’s not going to be like you and me,” he said. “For one thing, we don’t have Willie to worry about. We’re going to do this solid.”

  “We couldn’t do much worse than Willie did,” she said pulling away and blushing.

  “No, we could not.”

  He wandered down the hall, taking a second to look at the family photos. There was the photo from Disney when Dilly was ten; there was the one with the cutouts that showed his photo from every grade, there was one of Dilly in his baseball uniform. The paint was uneven from where they did some patch work a few years ago, but didn’t get the exact right color. Dave paused for a second outside of his son’s door, listened and heard the heavy rise and fall of a teenager dead to the world. At least the boy had gotten some sleep. That was a positive.

  Dave walked into the room and started to slap Dilly’s feet.

  “Up,” he said. “I know you were up late, but we’ve got miles to go before we sleep.”

  “Miles to go before we sleep” was something Dave’s dad, Willie, had said to him every morning during his childhood. It wasn’t until Dave’s brief stint in college that he had learned it was a Robert Frost poem. Dave still had never read the entire thing but it rolled off his tongue every morning, just the same. Dilly let out a long groan, the kind Dave always hoped he would outgrow, but hadn’t yet.

  “Seriously, kid. Up. Your mom and I need to talk to you.”

  A couple minutes later, Dave D. Rhodes Jr., all 6’1 and 165 pounds of him, stumbled out of his room in a plain brown T-shirt, blue boxers and socks. He always wore socks. Dave the Senior was convinced he wore them in the shower. He took a hard right into their kitchen from the hall, and took his sweet time pouring coffee, then creamer from the fridge, then sugar, then stirring the mixture and sitting down, all while his parents clocked his every move. It was hard for Dave and Josie to figure why he was taking his time like that. He wasn’t the type for a power play. If pinned down, the adjectives his parents would use to describe Dilly would include “tall,” “straight forward,” “humble,” and, if pushed, “shy.” He was a boy without an aggressive bone in his body until you put him on the basketball court, then he was an entirely different animal. He had made varsity as a freshman and now, in his junior year, was one of the best players on the team.

  Dilly plopped down in his seat and took a sip of his coffee.

  “What’s up?” Dilly asked. His parents stared, saying nothing.

  “She’s OK,” he said after a long breath. “I mean, I suppose you heard a scream last night.”

  Josie looked at Dave, telling him to take the lead.

  “OK. First off, we like Allie. She’s a …” he paused, and looked at Josie who, most definitely, did not like Allie. “She’s a sweet girl. But this isn’t about her. It’s about you and what’s happening to you.”

  Dilly rolled his eyes, but stopped halfway through. They had talked about this and he was showing effort at not rolling his eyes, which meant his mother would not bring it up.

  “Is this ‘the talk’?” Dilly asked.

  “Not exactly,” Dave said.

  “Then what?”

  “How’d you hurt her, Dilly?” Josie asked.

  The teenager took a long drink of his coffee, realizing he was cornered.

  “I’m not sure you’d get it.”

  Dave sighed. He had prepared for this. His son wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but there were a few issues they connected on: football, movies, fitness. Josie and Dilly liked to garden, but there was a sturdy wall between the two of them that largely went unacknowledged. But Josie wasn’t the only one who could game out a conversation.

  “It started with your hands, didn’t it?

  Dilly stared.

  “I know because I’ve been there. Your hands start to tingle at the palms and then spread real quick to your fingers. It goes from tingling to fire until it’s all you can think about. You can be kissing the prettiest girl in the world, but your hands are on fire and when you sneak a look at them, they’re longer than they were. There are curves in weird places, hair where there wasn’t hair before. Then the fire spreads. Am I on base with any of this, Dilly?”

  There was a silence only teenagers and parents could understand. Then a faint “yeah, that’s how it started.”

  “You probably wanted to stop,” Dave continued. “But maybe things were … heated. Maybe you were in a position where stopping would have been difficult, so you didn’t. Then the fire spread from your arms into some place deeper. And when it hit that deeper place, that’s when you hurt her, wasn’t it?”

  Dilly nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, but, no. Not really.”

  “How was it different?” Dave asked.

  “I … damn, this is embarrassing. Could I just talk to Dad about it, or …”

  “Hon, this is a family thing,” Josie said. “I’m sorry it’s embarrassing but we’ve got a lot to go over and the quicker we get past the embarrassing stuff the better.”

  She reached out and grabbed Dilly’s hand and held it and stared at him until, after a few seconds, he met her gaze.

  “This is important,” she said.

  Dilly exhaled deeply and took a drink of coffee.

  “Allie and I were kissing and everything was fine. Nothing was … unusual, I guess. Even though I don’t know what usual is in this situation. She’s the first girl I’ve ever done anything like this with.”

  “We figured,” Dave said.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Any girl would be lucky to have you. Now quit ducking and let’s get this over with.”

  “She … she went down on me. I didn’t ask her to, but that’s when it happened. That’s when the fire thing started but it wasn’t in my hands. It didn’t start there, I mean. It was from the chest and it spread out and, and, this is going to sound like I’m holding something back, but I’m not, I don’t even remember hurting her. My hands were, like, on her head and then she’s screaming and jumping up and when I … came to, I guess, there were holes in the back of her shirt and blood. Not a lot, but you could see it.”

  “OK,” Dave said. “Is that when she ran out?”

  “No, not right away. I apologized right away and I didn�
��t know what to say so I told her she really got me excited and I lost control for a second and that’s when she felt the blood.”

  Dilly took a big drink of his coffee, his job almost done.

  “I offered to help her and I was all ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,’ and she saw the blood and saw her ripped shirt and that’s when she screamed a little bit and said she was going home and I couldn’t stop her.”

  “That sounds about right,” Dave said, tapping Josie with his foot under the table.

  “You did OK,” Josie said. “But here’s the important part, Dilly. Did you feel yourself change? Is it time for us to start exploring that?”

  “A little,” Dilly said. “You guys know the transforming part really scares me.”

  “I know,” Dave said. “It scared me too the first time.”

  “Do you think she noticed?” Josie asked, finally getting to the heart of the thing.

  “If she did, she was too polite to say anything,” Dilly said, running his hand through his sandy blond hair. “She was hurt and mad when she left but I don’t think she was freaked out or anything.”

  Suddenly, the boy’s face changed as did his posture. He sat up straighter and leaned forward in a way that suggested a shift from defense to offense.

  “Did you guys know this was going to happen?”

  The smile across Dave’s face was wide. The boy had never been a genius, but he could figure things out. People, too. He was disarming but kind and that combination made people want to talk to him, made him attractive. That was only going to help as he learned to live with this thing that their family was carrying.