Black Cat Weekly #64

Chapter 5

byTheir names were Jose and Phillipa Rivera. Home was a place named Newark, New York, in the region called upstate, but they were relocating cross country to Seattle where an aunt said the fields were greener. They hadn’t been heard from in a week, according to Phillipa’s sister. And now, as luck would have it, they were Sheriff Frank Calhoun’s problem.

The good news, if you could put it that way, was at least he had something to go on thanks to modern technology. When Calhoun started his career four decades earlier, people left far fewer tracks when they disappeared. Vanishing from the face of the earth wasn’t just hyperbole. But these days the digital world was fighting back. Ones and zeroes were leaving clues as useful as boot treads in dried mud or blood streaks on a wall—or better, sometimes.

Case in point, the text messages Phillipa exchanged with Rosa—the sister—seven days ago. Phillipa was nervous—she texted—because they were almost out of gas. They had miscalculated the distance between highway exits once they left Minnesota, and watched the needle inch toward empty as mile after mile passed. Finally, according to the sister, salvation seemed to come in the form of the exit for Vessey, the county seat. What they couldn’t have known as they headed north toward the small city was that the lone gas station between the highway and Vessey, a single-pump operation run by Haddie Johnson and a rotating cast of her cousins, was closed for two weeks because of a broken pump motor. After that, someplace along State Road 59A, the couple’s trail ran cold. Rosa and the rest of the family hadn’t heard a word in days.

Calhoun leaned forward at his desk and examined the thin file he’d compiled since first hearing from Rosa. Jose and Phillipa’s cell phone numbers, both dialed without success. No luck pinging the phones; the state Forensic Lab in Sioux Falls had somebody working on it but, surprise, surprise, it wasn’t like TV. That kind of thing took time. Next, photos of the Riveras—young looking, kids really, though both were in their mid-twenties—emailed by Rosa. An accompanying physical description, including the tattoo of a fox on Phillipa’s left ankle—their high school mascot. A record of their credit card expenses that Calhoun received after half a day’s negotiation with the couple’s bank. The items matched the sister’s account: gas purchases every three hundred miles or so, the last one at a Shell in Blue Earth, three hundred and fifty miles east. About the range of their 2009 Ford Escort on a full tank of gas. Calhoun had to admit, the scenario fit perfectly. It looked as if the Riveras had run out of fuel right here in Sheldon County thanks to Haddie Johnson’s refusal to perform an ounce of preventative maintenance even once in her life. And now the couple was nowhere to be found.

A knock on the doorframe of Calhoun’s office. He nodded at Lorelei, taking in the uncertainty written on the deputy’s face.

“Anything?”

She shook her head. “I followed the road up again from 90, took it slow, checked ditches and lanes on both sides. Nothing.”

“Phones?”

“I asked Shari. She said it’ll be at least another day. I downloaded this program that’s supposed to track phones’ last location even if they’re off, but so far no luck.” She colored slightly. “I hope that was okay, Sheriff.”

“It’s fine.” He appreciated Lorelei’s diligence, even though the effort—hers and the Forensic Lab’s—seemed just shy of a fool’s errand at this point. They’d already spoken to cashiers and managers at the county’s two other service stations just in case, pulled security video at the one place that had it, posted fliers around town, and put the couple’s photos and information on the department’s f*******: page. All for naught, at least so far.

“I still don’t understand it,” the deputy said. “How could they just disappear? Somebody had to have seen something.”

“That’s assuming they ended up here. It’s also assuming they didn’t choose to go off the grid. Weirder things have happened.” Over the years Calhoun had seen his fair share of wanderers hoping to change the channel of life out on the prairie. Some obsessed with the idea of native American spirituality, others who read too many Laura Ingalls Wilder books as kids. Either way, they generally didn’t last much past the first November blizzard.

“But wasn’t it all worked out? About Seattle, I mean?”

“Yeah. It was.” He knew he was grasping at straws. Nothing in the Riveras’ background fit the scenario of people who wanted to disappear. Jose had a clean slate at the paste jewelry factory where he worked; Phillipa was a well-regarded LPN at the local hospital. The aunt’s story, about them wanting to see the world and boost their salaries at the same time, checked out. A Newark police detective who was apparently the world’s leading expert on South Dakota because he’d been to Wall d**g and served in the Marines with “this Sioux guy” from Pine Ridge vouched for the fact the couple was unknown to law enforcement.

What was left to do? They were short-handed as it was. Calhoun wasn’t about to pull COs away from the jail to search for ghosts, lost innocents or not. Clyde Stahl, the deputy he’d have preferred to assign the search despite his recent issues, was out of commission, gone to Sturgis for the annual bike rally. The patrol had troopers on the look-out but that wasn’t going to do them much good up here off the interstate. Lorelei—Deputy Lorelei Hines—seemed up to the task but she also had all of one month on the job. More than one person in town—starting with Clyde—had commented on her youth and inexperience. That had Calhoun wondering how forthcoming people were being with her.

The bike incident hadn’t helped. Clyde showing off his new hog on the girl’s third day—the one he was taking to Sturgis, a monster with the 131 engine—egging her on to mount it in front of some off-duty guards. Poor girl, maybe five three with shoes on, hair in a perpetual ponytail, spray of freckles making her look even younger than she was, fell off to everyone’s amusement. Calhoun chalked it up to trial by fire, choosing to ignore how bright the young deputy’s eyes were afterward. Knowing how to download phone tracking programs was all well and good. But if she couldn’t handle Clyde, how the hell would she manage the first red-faced rancher she pulled over for weaving back and forth after a Saturday night at the Vessey Tavern?

“Sheriff?”

“Sorry.” He brushed his hand through what was left of his graying hair, bringing himself back to the moment. “We’ll just keep searching, best we can.”

After Lorelei left, Calhoun stepped to the county map on the cinderblock wall and traced his finger up 59A. From I-90 to Vessey it was twenty miles of scrub grass, ranchland, prairie dog farms, and not much else. You had the mobile home park a mile south of Vessey, half the units occupied anymore. Farther south the Willamette brothers and their junkyard and scrap operation. Bobby a certified asshole, Tommy one step above simpleton status, but both harmless enough in the long run, he figured. South of there, old man Narmy and what was left of his ranch, now just a herd of twenty Angus he paid the Willamettes to wrangle.

Calhoun paused his finger approximately on Narmy’s house. He considered the string of “No trespassing” and “I don’t call 911” signs that Narmy erected over the past few years along his property. The huge “Trump 2024” sign he put up the year before. His anger at the government’s treatment of the US Capitol breachers, doled out with healthy side servings of expletives over morning coffee at the cafe; all that hot air about wishing he’d gone himself. And then there was the fact that neither Calhoun nor the coroner ever quite bought Narmy’s story about his wife’s “accidental” fatal fall down the stairs.

Calhoun envisioned Jose and Phillipa, young and dark-complected, stumbling across Hank Narmy at the wrong time. An encounter that might have been further aggravated if, God forbid, Narmy mistook them for Lakota. The sheriff shook his head at the thought. Narmy doing something bad to the couple was hard to imagine, especially at his age, but who knew what anyone was capable of anymore? Maybe it was time to take a trip out there.

“So, you’re the girl who fell off the bike,” Narmy said.

The first words out of his mouth when he stepped onto his porch as Calhoun and Lorelei shut the doors of the sheriff’s cruiser the next morning and approached. His dog, a foul-tempered German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix that Narmy imaginatively called “Dog,” materialized at his side. Calhoun had fielded more than one complaint from other farmers about the beast’s far-reaching forays that always seemed to end with dead farm cats. Narmy blamed the attacks on coyotes and refused to tie the animal up.

“Word gets around, I guess,” she said. Calhoun could tell by her tone that the jab hurt but she was doing her best to keep things light.

“You bet it does,” Narmy said. “Makes you wonder how you ended up here in the first place.” Before either she or Calhoun could reply, he said, “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

You try hiring a certified cop to patrol Sheldon County, Calhoun wanted to say. The Walmart in Pierre had more shoppers on a slow Sunday than the county had young people anymore; big draw for outsiders. They’d been lucky as hell to find Lorelei, despite how green she was.

Instead, he bit his tongue and said, “Just asking around about that missing couple. Guessing you saw the fliers we put up.”

“What about them?”

“We’re sort of at a dead end. Wondered if you might have seen anything. We’re pretty sure they ended up someplace out here.” He pointed toward the two-lane state road.

“Anything like what?”

“Like maybe them driving by. Or broke down, possibly, out of gas.”

“Serves ’em right if they did. Pair of dumbass Mexicans out where they don’t belong.”

Calhoun debated correcting the old man and decided against it. Trying to explain that the Riveras were US citizens of Puerto Rican heritage from a small city in upstate New York seemed a no-win proposition. He was sure Narmy would have plenty to say no matter the facts.

Too late: Lorelei spoke his exact thoughts, defiance in her green eyes as she corrected Narmy.

“Dumbass is dumbass,” he said when she was done. “Mexicans is Mexicans.”

“I just said—”

“Either way, it’s kind of a mystery,” Calhoun interrupted. Between the look of contempt on Narmy’s face and the hint of fang he spied in the slavering dog’s mouth, he wasn’t sure which of them might spring first and he didn’t want to find out.

“Not my problem.”

“So, did you?”

“Did I what?” Narmy said.

“Did you see them or not.”

“I didn’t see s**t, Sheriff,” Narmy said, and a moment later he and the dog were gone, screen door slamming behind them.

“Sorry about that,” Calhoun said when they were safely in the cruiser and headed back toward town.

“It’s all right,” Lorelei said. “Good to know what I’m up against, I guess.” She glanced out the window at the sere landscape, brightened here and there by patches of purple coneflowers blooming from ditches. “You think he’s lying?”

“About seeing them? I can’t tell. Hank talks big, but I’m not sure he’s off his couch enough to really know what’s going on anymore.”

“He talks big, all right,” she said in a quiet voice. “For a dumbass.”

Any relief the sheriff felt at putting the interview with Narmy behind them evaporated the next day. Calhoun was in his office late morning, video chatting with his daughter and the baby in Rapid, when the call came from Shari down in dispatch.

“Haddie Johnson hit Hank Narmy’s dog and he’s out there mad as hell. Caller said he had a gun.”

“Lord. By his house?”

“Mile north. Up by the Willamettes, I guess.”

“All right. I’ll head out there.” He silently cursed Clyde Stahl and his time off in Sturgis. He’d have been perfect to send on a call like this; he tolerated Narmy better than most, even more so since Clyde’s tax troubles. They could b***h about the government to their hearts’ content. But Clyde had been adamant he was going to the rally and he had the days off to make it happen. Calhoun had to give the green light. The last thing Calhoun needed now was an excuse for the deputy to up and quit.

“Nothing from Sioux Falls yet?” he said, before he let Shari go. “On the phones?”

“Not yet, Sheriff. I’ll let you know pronto.”

The scene was as bad as Calhoun anticipated. Cruiser windows down on the warm August morning, he could hear the yelling long before he pulled over.

“That’s enough,” he said loudly, interrupting Haddie and Narmy’s shouting match. “And put that damn thing away,” he said, nodding at the revolver Narmy held by his side. “Like that’s helping anything.”

“It’s keeping her from leaving the scene of a crime.”

“Hitting a dog out where it don’t belong isn’t a crime,” Haddie said.

“It is if you’re not watching where the hell you’re going.”

“I said, that’s enough,” Calhoun said. “Where is it?”

Haddie, red-faced and breathing hard, gestured at the opposite side of the road. Calhoun walked to where the dog lay, its head caved in and hind quarters twisted cruelly out of place. The sheriff knelt and checked for signs of life but the light in its eyes was gone. Not a huge loss, in the end.

“So, what happened?” he said, rising.

“What happened is she killed my dog—”

Calhoun waved at the old man to shut him up. He nodded at Haddie.

“I was headed to the garage, seeing how the pump repair was going. Dog came out of nowhere, just jumped into the road, something in its mouth. I didn’t even have time to brake.”

“Something in its mouth?”

“Rabbit or prairie dog, I’m guessing. Who knows what it gets up to, roaming free like that.” She glared at Narmy.

Calhoun walked up the road a few yards. He peered into the ditch. Nothing there. Possible that the unfortunate prey had still been alive and limped away. He walked the opposite direction, a dozen feet from where the dog collapsed. Nothing. What a waste. Cutting short a call with his daughter for this—

“Oh, crap.”

Calhoun bent over, not quite sure he believed what he was seeing.

But, yes. He’d found what the dog had in its mouth when Haddie hit it with her truck. The puncture marks from the dog’s teeth unmistakable. Tucked against the base of a yucca plant where it flew after the impact of the collision was a human foot.

And distinguishable on what was left of the ankle was a small fox tattoo.

Calhoun glanced up and took in the tops of the outbuildings over at the Willamette brothers’ place, not two hundred yards away.

“Oh, crap,” he repeated, seeing what he overlooked the dozen times he drove up and down the road in the past week trying to find any signs of Jose and Phillipa Rivera.

Rising above the chaos of the junkyard was the brothers’ elevated gas storage tank, the bright red letters of “Esso” surrounded by a blue oval. The structure visible half a mile in either direction.

A sight so familiar to him that it blended as naturally into the landscape as an old silo.

But to a lost couple about to run out of gas? Maybe a beacon of hope.

As luck would have it, Lorelei was just pulling into the station to finish paperwork on a car-antelope north of Vessey when Calhoun raised her on the radio. She acknowledged the emergency and was there, lights flashing, in under ten minutes.

“I need you to maintain this scene until the coroner and the crime scene folks get here. It’s going to be two hours, easy. Don’t let anyone near it.” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word “foot.” Just as well: he thought the deputy was going to lose her breakfast when he showed it to her. Maybe Narmy, the old bastard, had a point about Lorelei and whether she was up to the job.

“Where are you going?”

“Have a little chat with the Willamettes. That dog was closer to their place than any other.”

“Alone?”

“It’ll be fine,” Calhoun said. Though for just a moment he wondered, catching the same concern in the young deputy’s eyes he saw sometimes in his daughter’s expression when she lectured him on retirement and taking her up on the offer to move to Rapid. He remembered that the two weren’t all that far apart in age.

“Sure?”

“Not thinking we have another choice at this point.”

Calhoun bumped his way down the Willamettes’ driveway toward the brothers’ double-wide, coffee spilling from his travel cup as a washboard of hardened gravel ridges jostled his SUV. Behind the barn and Esso tank stretched a ten-acre pasture where the brothers tended their scrap business’s fleet of rusted-out cars and trucks. Between the vehicles and the house sat a gray, prefab aluminum warehouse with a single door and window. New looking; Calhoun wasn’t sure he’d seen it before. Not visible from the road, come to think of it. Cardboard covered the window from the inside and the door was shut. Parked beside the warehouse was a large—a very large—Harley hog.

Calhoun was barely done processing this sight when the door to the trailer flew open and Bobby Willamette stepped out. His eyes never leaving Calhoun, he made his way slowly but deliberately down the plywood ramp leftover from the boys’ mom’s final days in the wheelchair. Too lazy to haul it away afterward; typical. At the bottom of the ramp Bobby stopped, flicked his eyes to the warehouse and back, and spoke.

“Help you with something, Sheriff?”

“Maybe.”

“Happy to oblige.”

Right. Calhoun looked up at the state road. “Haddie Johnson just ran over old man Narmy’s dog. An accident,” he added quickly.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I’m not. Dog was a pain in the a*s. But that’s not why I’m here.” He explained what the dog found and stated the obvious; how close the animal, with a tattooed foot in its mouth, had been to the Willamettes’ spread when it was hit.

“What’s your point?”

“Point is, that missing lady had a similar tattoo on her foot. Which makes me think I’ve got some bad news for her sister. But it also makes me wonder whether you might have seen them?” Calhoun’s suspicions were growing, largely thanks to the Esso sign, but he had to be careful how he proceeded. “Maybe they ended up over here?”

“And why would they do that?”

Calhoun took a step back and pointed at the fuel tank. “Any chance they came your way, thinking there might be gas available?”

“We didn’t see nothing like that, Sheriff. Been real quiet, past few days,” Willamette said, glancing just a bit too fast at the hog in the yard.

“You’re sure about that?”

“Sure as Shinola.”

“Mind if I look around a little?”

“No offense, but on what grounds would you be doing that?”

“Just to satisfy my curiosity.”

“I’m kinda busy right now, tell the truth.”

Bobby was a derelict to the bone and a gold-plated bullshitter to boot, as far as the sheriff was concerned, but he wasn’t stupid. They’d reached a stand-off Calhoun knew he couldn’t win. He had no standing to do much more than talk without a warrant. And he had no basis for one at the moment, despite the dog’s grisly discovery.

“All right then. You’ll let me know if you remember something?”

“There was nothing to forget.”

Calhoun frowned and was turning to leave when his cell phone sounded with a text. Loud enough for both of them to hear. He retrieved it and examined the message. From Shari. They’d finally heard back about the phones and their last location.

Oh, crap.

“Sheriff? If you don’t mind?”

“Well, now, Bobby,” he said, reading the message a second time before pocketing the phone. According to the report Shari received from Sioux Falls, cell phone pings placed the Riveras’ phones within a 200-yard radius of the Willamettes’ property. “Seems like things just changed.”

“Changed how?”

Calhoun lowered his hand and rested it on his holstered Glock. “I need to conduct a little search, Bobby. I don’t think a judge is going to argue the point.”

Bobby folded his arms across his chest, tattoos running up his forearms and continuing up his thick biceps, but didn’t speak right away. Calhoun thought he might be in the clear, but then a sound from behind interrupted. He turned and saw a big man with a long beard forked at the bottom charging out of the prefab warehouse with a shotgun trained on the sheriff. Behind him, Tommy Willamette, a cat-ate-the-canary grin on his face. And bringing up the rear, just as Calhoun feared the moment he parked, was Clyde Stahl.

“Jesus Christ, Clyde,” he said, staring down the deputy. “What the hell is going on? I thought you were in Sturgis.”

“Get him inside,” Bobby said, before the deputy could reply.

“Don’t be stupider than you already are,” Calhoun said. He was sitting on a kitchen chair, hands zip-tied behind him. “The whole county knows I’m here.”

“Shut up.”

The first man. He was standing on the far side of the living room, dressed head to foot in leather, shotgun cradled in his arms. Clyde stood behind him, trying unsuccessfully for a show of bravado. All he managed, Calhoun thought bitterly, was looking like a guy who needed to take a dump.

“Seriously,” the sheriff said. “You boys need to get real. You especially, Clyde.” Stalling for time he wasn’t sure he had. If he didn’t know how much trouble he was in when they marched him inside, he understood now, eying the diorama on the folding table that took up the remaining space in the living room not filled with cases of beer, cartons of cigarettes, and a pile of assault rifles.

Despite the display’s rough, cardboard construction, there was no mistaking the state capitol building in Pierre or the surrounding grounds. It also wasn’t hard to figure out why someone had strategically positioned a bunch of green Army men around the building. If Jose and Phillipa Rivera had stumbled onto this plot, or gotten even the slightest whiff, it was no wonder they disappeared. It wasn’t a secret you could survive.

“Narmy put you up to this?” he said to Clyde. “All that malarky about Jan. 6?”

“Somebody has to take a stand,” Clyde said.

“A stand against what? The government? That’s you, in case you’d forgotten.”

“Maybe not anymore. The way that state tax inspector treated—”

“Shut up, Clyde,” the big man said.

“Government needs a wake-up call, is what he’s trying to tell you,” Bobby said, nodding at the cardboard capitol.

“They’ll never stop hunting you.”

“That there’s a two-way street,” the big man said, face blank as the prairie at dawn.

There didn’t seem much need to reply. In Calhoun’s experience, there were men you could reason with, and there were men with dioramas of state capitols in living rooms crowded with beer and cigarettes and assault rifles. Just to pass the next few seconds, which he figured might also be his last, he summoned an image of his daughter and grandson. As a result, he didn’t register the roar of the hog right away, but only reacted to the big man’s cry of dismay as the sound intensified.

In fact, the sheriff only had time to look toward the front door when he saw the motorcycle barreling straight toward the double-wide and up the wheelchair ramp, the rider someone who appeared to be a shotgun-wielding banshee straight out of a child’s nightmare. Until he realized it wasn’t a banshee at all but deputy Lorelei Hines, who a second later crashed through the trailer door and right into the big guy, who for all his size went down hard and fast, like an old shed in a stiff wind.

“g*n!” Calhoun yelled, watching Bobby reach for one of the rifles.

“Drop your weapon!” Lorelei said.

But it was too late—for the Willamette brother. As Bobby ignored the deputy and swung the rifle up, Lorelei’s shotgun roared, the blast deafening the sheriff as Bobby staggered backward, red blooming across what was left of his chest. Calhoun sensed rather than saw Tommy Willamette in motion behind him and he threw himself back with as much force as he could muster, gasping in pain as he met the man’s legs and tripped him up.

“On the floor.”

Lying on the carpet, dazed from the impact and half-concussed from the blast of the shotgun, Calhoun couldn’t tell what was happening. Then the command from Lorelei came again.

“I said, get on the floor.”

He watched as Clyde Stahl, now looking as if he might burst into tears, lowered himself to his knees and then lay down like a child consigned to the nap he doesn’t want to take.

Though in truth Clyde seemed most amazed not at his predicament but at the sight of Lorelei still straddling the hog in the middle of the living room.

“I told you to keep the foot secure,” the sheriff said. He and the deputy stood on the wrong side of the crime scene tape, stuck up near the state road. The compound crawling with feds—FBI, DEA, ATF, and a couple more Calhoun didn’t recognize.

“Yeah. You did.”

“You disobeyed a direct order.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Soon as you took off, Narmy walked toward his truck and made a call. Staring at the Willamettes’ place the whole time. I asked him what he was doing. Who he called. He told me to mind my own business. In a manner of speaking. I figured something was up.”

What was he supposed to do, Calhoun thought: ding her for saving his life? They didn’t teach that kind of quick thinking at the academy. Instead, he said, “I thought you couldn’t handle a hog.”

“I was just nervous that day, is all. The whole station watching and everything. ‘The new girl,’” she said with a frown. “I’ve ridden for years.”

“Guess I should be grateful.”

“Just glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks to you.”

Understatement of the year. Once inside the double-wide, the brothers, the big guy and Clyde had been too busy with the sheriff to notice Lorelei approach the trailer, peek through the window, and realize her options had narrowed to an extremely big entrance.

He guessed a bunch of people at the state capitol in Pierre would be grateful, too.

“So, what now?” Lorelei said.

“Now we wait,” Calhoun said, nodding at the arrival of yet another black SUV with tinted windows and whip antennas bumping its way toward the compound. “These boys’ll be at it for hours. Days, probably.”

“What about the Riveras?”

“We’ll have to wait for that too, I guess.” The coroner and the Sioux Falls’ Forensic Lab team were out in the junkyard excavating a depression near the back that one of their cadaver-sniffing dogs had found inside of three minutes.

“I feel so bad for their families.”

“It’s a real shame,” Calhoun said. “Only consolation is, if they hadn’t run out of gas at this precise spot…” He trailed off, thinking about the boxes of ammunition and bags of fertilizer he glimpsed inside the warehouse before the troops showed up en masse. “And then of course…”

“Sheriff?”

“Then there’s Clyde. I didn’t see that one coming.”

“Hank Narmy did, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the only thing he got right yesterday. When we went out there. He just described the wrong people, is all.”

“Meaning?”

“Dumbass is dumbass,” she said. “Simple as that.”

Andrew Welsh-Huggins, an Associated Press reporter and freelance writer, is the author of the Andy Hayes private eye series, including the Shamus Award-nominated An Empty Grave, and the editor of Columbus Noir. His short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, the anthology Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties, and other magazines and anthologies.