51: The Series

51: The Beginning Chapter 10 Part 1

Lindsay was feeling everything that had happened the night before. She had bruises that she had no idea where they came from and had found many more splinters than they first thought. Thankfully, Wren had helped her take them out.

She had not gotten the three hours of sleep that Max had calculated. She had only gotten about an hour. Since Lindsay had not slept before Nim Jones called her, she was at about thirty hours with just an hour of sleep. Max had stayed at the office until she arrived and had made a pot of his special night shift coffee for her. Cat had been coming into Lindsay’s office about every fifteen minutes to top off her coffee cup. Lindsay leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She felt a sense of comfort knowing that the people she was in charge of were doing their best to take care of her.

Wren had called her about an hour earlier to let her know he would have to go out of town to handle an emergency elsewhere. She always hated it when that happened. He could never tell her where he was going or what he was doing. He often did not know when he would be home. Usually, he was only gone for about a week, but in the past, it had been as short as a couple of days or as long as three weeks.

Little Bob came into her office and sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk. He did not say anything; he just sat down and watched her.

“Can I help you, Bob?” Lindsay asked.

“No. Are you OK, though? You look rough today,” he said.

“I think so, but I will let you know if that changes,” she answered.

“Max told me what happened. Well, let me put it this way. He told me the story you and Wren gave the kid’s sister,” Little Bob said.

“What can I say? That’s our story, and we are sticking to it. But off the record, our big friends were there, and they were not happy,” Lindsay told him.

“Were you attacked again?”

“Not directly. Rocks were thrown at us, and one hit a pine tree and shattered the tree. I have the feeling I will be picking splinters out of myself for the next six months,” Lindsay told him.

“How much sleep have you had?” Little Bob asked.

Lindsay looked at her watch. “About one hour in the last thirty hours or so,” she told him.

“Is there anything that you have scheduled today or that you have to do today? If there isn’t, you need to go home. I can handle the office, and if we need you, I will call you,” Little Bob told her.

Just as she was getting ready to answer, she saw County Commissioners Bill Marks and Roy James walk in. They spoke briefly with Cat, and she led them toward Lindsay’s Office.

“Sheriff, the commissioners would like to speak with you for a moment,” Cat said as they entered Lindsay’s office.

“Of course,” Lindsay replied to the commissioners, then said to Little Bob, “Bob, would you excuse us, please?”

“Bob, if you have taken over as chief deputy, we would like you to stay and hear this too,” Roy told him just as Little Bob had started to stand.

“Lindsay, we just had an unscheduled meeting about you being the interim sheriff,” Bill said. “As you probably know, we were considering doing a special election depending on how you did.”

Roy added, “That was until this morning when we were paid a visit by the federal government and were informed that they want you to stay just where you are.”

“What are you two talking about? Did the men in black pay you a visit?” Lindsay asked.

Little Bob let out a quiet snicker.

“In a manner of speaking, yes, they did. They were not the alien or UFO kind of men in black, but they were federal agents in dark suits. They seem to think that things are happening in this county that are out of the ordinary, and they want you to stay sheriff until the next regular election,” Bill told her.

“So, unless I resign, I will be sheriff for the next just over three years?” Lindsay confirmed.

“That is what we are saying. They were very clear that you need to handle things the way you see fit and that there is to be no interference with you or this department,” Roy said.

“What did these agents say to you two?” Lindsay asked.

“We aren’t at liberty to say,” Bill told her.

“Sheriff, we need to go, but we wanted to tell you this as soon as we could,” Roy said as he stood up.

“You look like you were pulled through a knothole backward. Why don’t you go home and work from there for the rest of the day if you can?” Bill said.

Bill and Roy turned and walked out of her office and the building without even acknowledging anyone as they left.

“What was that?” Little Bob asked. “Since when does the federal government make recommendations as to who the sheriff needs to be instead of having an election?”

“I have no idea, and I can’t even ask Wren. He is out of town dealing with an emergency somewhere. Bill and Roy looked scared, didn’t they?” Lindsay asked.

“They seemed like they have been threatened with the death penalty if they say the wrong thing to someone,” Little Bob said.

“I got that feeling too.”

Lindsay pulled her cell phone out of her pocket to send a text message to Wren. “The commissioners just came in and said federal agents told them I was to remain sheriff until the next regular election because of unusual activity in the county.” She hit send and sat the phone down on her desk. When she looked up, Little Bob was watching her again.

“If you keep watching me, you are going to make me even more paranoid than I already am,” she told him.

“That is the goal,” Little Bob said with a big grin. “If I can make you so paranoid, you resign too, that means I get another promotion and a pay raise to go with it.”

“If you become sheriff, the men in black are going to come here and make you disappear. Didn’t Bill and Roy make that clear?” she teased him. “I guess we should share this with everyone. Hey Cat, come here for a minute,” Lindsay called.

“Do you need something?” Cat asked as she reached Lindsay’s office door.

“Not really. I just wanted to pass on what the commissioners had to say. They said that they were instructed to keep me as sheriff until the next regular election. They are not to have a special election like they were planning to have,” Lindsay told her.

Cat’s face lit up, and she asked, “So there is no chance, unless you have to resign for some reason, that someone will replace you as sheriff?”

“It seems that way,” Lindsay told her.

Cat began dancing with joy. Lindsay was so glad to see Cat happy about her staying sheriff that she started to laugh. Little Bob began to laugh, too. Cat continued to dance her way back out to her desk behind the front counter.

“Lindsay Gold will be our sheriff for the next three years!” Cat yelled.

To Lindsay’s surprise, she heard the deputies in the office cheer. She had doubts since the first day she had come back to work in the department. She had been questioning everything she did and told others to do. After hearing that cheer, she knew she was doing something right. That cheer, plus what the county commissioners had just told her.

Her phone, lying on the desk, beeped. She picked it up and saw that Wren had answered her message. The message was a little cryptic: “Men in black strike again. I didn’t do it. Be safe while I’m gone.” She read the message and placed the phone on her desk without replying. She would send another message to Wren later and hope he was somewhere that he had a signal.

“Lindsay, go home,” Little Bob said. “Do you need one of us to drive you?”

“No, I can get home. In fact, I think I will go now if you are sure you have this place under control.”

“We have it under control. I am going to follow you home to make sure you get there. I want to make sure some people at that end of the county see a patrol car once in a while anyway,” Little Bob told her before calling out to Cat. “Cat, the sheriff, is going home to try to sleep a little, and I am going to follow her home to make sure she gets there.”

“Good. The sheriff needs to get some sleep,” Cat answered.

Little Bob walked Lindsay to her car and opened the door for her. He would not give her an excuse not to go home and get some sleep. As they drove toward Lindsay’s home, she could see Little Bob closely following her in his patrol car. He had been her training officer when she had first started at the sheriff’s department years earlier and had always watched over her even before then. She pulled into her driveway and parked her car in the usual spot. He pulled into the driveway but did not get out of his car. He watched her as she walked onto the porch and went inside. As soon as she had gone in, he backed his car out of the driveway and continued on his way.

When Lindsay went inside, she saw that her home phone had a message. She walked over to the counter and pushed play:

“Sheriff Gold, this is Agent Cooper. I am calling to inform you that you will be the county sheriff until at least the next general election.”

That was the entire message. Lindsay thought the message was strange, but frankly, she was too tired to care at that moment. She looked at the clock. If she were able to go to sleep soon, she would be able to get almost three hours of sleep before Dillon got home from school. She did not stop to think about that very long. Lindsay walked into the bedroom, put on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and crawled into bed. Almost as soon as she lay down, she felt her dog Crook jump onto the bed and stretch out beside her. That was the last thing she remembered until she woke up when Dillon came home and slammed the front door.

“Mom, where are you?” Dillon yelled out.

“In the bedroom asleep!” she yelled back.

Dillon came into the bedroom, stopped next to the bed, and looked at his mother.

“Mom, were you attacked by Bigfoot?” Dillon blurted out.

“What are you talking about?” Lindsay asked as she propped herself up on her elbows.

“Some people from school told me you were attacked by Bigfoot, and that was how you got hurt before the old sheriff fired you,” Dillon told her.

“I was attacked by an animal. That is all. Anything else you want to know?” Lindsay asked as she looked at her son.

“What happened last night? Did something attack you and Wren?”

“Last night is simple. Nim Jones was left in the national forest by some of his so-called friends, and he called us to go and get him. That is all,” she told Dillon, hoping he would stop asking questions she could not answer.

“I know. Nim told me that, and he got hurt, and so did you. You still have a splinter in your forehead,” Dillon said.

Lindsay got out of bed, walked over to a mirror above her dresser, and leaned toward it. Dillon was right; she still had a splinter in her forehead.

“Dillon, it was dark, and I hit a tree. You have to quit listening to the wild stories that everyone tells. Everything is fine, and you don’t need to worry so much,” she told him. “You need to go ahead and get started on any chores you have so you can get it out of the way,” Lindsay told him.

Dillon looked at her and rolled his eyes as he turned around and left her room. Lindsay sat down on the bed. She hated not telling him what was going on, but she had no choice. She shook her head, wondering how Wren was able to keep so many secrets. She felt Crook walk up to her on the bed and put his nose against her neck. Lindsay turned to look at him and was immediately licked on the end of the nose as he began wagging his tail. She started laughing and hugged him. He always knew what she needed.

Lindsay continued to sit on the bed for a few minutes. She needed to try to explain to Dillon why she was not telling him things. She wanted to tell him everything, but that was not an option. This was one of the times she wished Wren was not away on assignment, but that was part of his job. She heard her cell phone beep and picked it up from the nightstand. She had just received a message from Wren.

“Have you said anything about last night to anyone outside the department?” it read.

“No. Why?” Lindsay wrote back.

Her phone rang, and she could see it was Wren.

“Hey,” she answered.

“Hey, babe. Have you told anyone anything about last night?” he asked.

“I have only repeated the story about Nim being left by his friends, and we went and picked him up to everyone except Little Bob,” she said. “Little Bob asked if I had been attacked again, and I told him not directly. A rock was thrown at a pine tree, which shattered.”

“OK, that’s fine, but did you say anything to anyone else?”

“Of course not. Dillon is even mad at me because I won’t tell him what happened. Why are you asking me this?” she questioned.

“There is a video of us in the national forest last night and a lot of speculation online about what really happened,” he told her. “On the bright side, there is no audio with it, so it just looks like we are potentially taking someone into custody.”

“What? Is it from a trail camera?” Lindsay asked.

“It looks like it. Just keep an ear out for rumors, including who it might be. I will be home as soon as I can be,” Wren said.

“Do you want me to let the Bobs and Max know to listen for who might have posted that? I can also have Cat try to track down who posted it through the user names and servers. I can use the story that by posting that video, it is interfering with an ongoing multi-agency investigation,” Lindsay told him.

“That isn’t a bad idea. I have been working on it, but I am busy, so I could use the help. Go ahead and have them start now if they can. The sooner we kill that video and the rumors, the better, and I need to have a chat with the person who posted it. I have to go. I love you,” Wren said.

“I love you too. Bye,” Lindsay told Wren.

Lindsay hung up the phone and sighed. She had hoped that she would be able to talk to Dillon and that they could have a night to watch a movie and spend some time together. Lindsay felt like she never got to see her son. She walked into his room, where he was reading a book.

“Dillon, can we talk for a minute?” Lindsay asked.

“Sure, even though you won’t tell me anything,” he said without looking up from his book.

“Dillon, part of my job is to handle things that I may not be able to tell you about. If there is an investigation that is going on, especially if it involves one of your friends, I cannot talk to you about it. That is just the way things work,” she explained to him.

“I know. I just hate that everyone asks me about everything that happens, and I don’t know anything about it. It is starting to really tick me off,” Dillon said.

“I know. It makes me mad that I can’t tell you, and it is making things hard on you. I don’t have any good advice. I would tell you everything if I could,” Lindsay said.

“I’m sorry, but I have to make a few calls and then go to the office just for a little while to talk to some people. Do you want to come with me? We can go out to eat after the meeting,” she told Dillon.

“No, thanks, Mom, I want to read my book. And after the last time I was there, I don’t want to go back for a long time. I’m afraid Cat might make me clean all the coffee pots again. They were completely gross.”

“OK,” Lindsay laughed. “I’m going to start with the phone calls. I will let you know when I’m ready to leave.”

Lindsay walked into her bedroom and started by calling the sheriff’s department. Thankfully, Cat answered, and both Bobs were there. She told Cat to stay there and pass the word on to the Bobs that she needed to speak with them. She then called Max and asked how quickly he could be at the office. He would be able to be there in a few minutes. She hung up, threw on jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed her badge and gun, and returned to Dillon’s room.

“Dillon, I’m leaving. Do you want me to pick up some food for you?” she asked him.

“No, thanks. I’ll grab a sandwich when I finish this,” he answered.

“OK, I will be back soon, hopefully. If you need anything, call my cell phone,” Lindsay said.

She shook her head as she walked down the hall on the way out to her car. She hoped they could get the video off the internet before Dillon or his friends saw it as she got in her car and started the drive to the department.