Hidden Heritage

by Charlotte Hinger

I was on edge. I thought it was due to family dynamics, but before we left for the parade, I couldn’t resist the urge to radio Sam. “You doing okay? Keith and I are bringing extra sheets and coolers if you need them.”

  “We’re just fine. Marvin and the other reserve deputies are all we need.”

  “Okay. But call if anything comes up.”

  ***

  By the time we drove to town the temperature was heading up, but at least no rain would spoil the crepe paper stuffed into the wire foundations of floats. The weather station predicted that we would hit one hundred three by late afternoon.

  Joshua shouted, “Here they come. Real horses.”

  Keith’s eyes were moist as he observed the little boys respectfully standing at attention with their hands over their hearts when an honor guard led off with the Stars and Stripes. “The Star Spangled Banner” blasted from a boom box.

  Then we were all drawn into the giggling wonderment of small boys. Balloons drifted off into the heat-wavering haze of the cloudless sky. The Carlton County high school band had sensibly decided not to wear their wool uniforms and strutted down Main Street dressed in white T-shirts and black knee-length shorts.

  The boys dashed out into the street and grabbed candy flung by service organizations.

  “They’ll be sick by evening,” Bettina sighed.

  “Probably.”

  But they weren’t. Seemingly impervious to the heat, after the parade, we went to the fairgrounds and they ran us all to death.

  The boys made a beeline for the merry-go-round. “Can we ride our special horse, Grandma? Can we? Can we?”

  I glanced at my husband’s carefully neutral face. Our carnival was owned by the community. “Our horse” had been painted by Regina. It was turquoise with exquisite roses trailing down its sides.

  The ruined metal horses had been salvaged from a bankrupt carnival and hauled back to Gateway City. Their bodies had been straightened, patched, and welded, then sandblasted at a local car body shop. Professional sanding and base paint was supplied by another business. Then local artists finished them up. There was Princess Di, Desert Storm, The Arabian Knight, Dolly Parton—others vying for the honor of being the most spectacular horse.

  Regina’s was the only unicorn.

  Her daughters watched Kent and Zack go round and round. Bettina wiped away a tear as she watched her sons perched on her mother’s creation. The boys shrieked and waved as they passed by. If they wanted off, they couldn’t be heard over the calliope and the crush of people strolling around.

  When they finished, Jimmy and Keith volunteered to go on other rides with the boys, while we women looked over the booths and handwork. The top 4-H booth was easy to pick out. Josie and I watched with bewilderment as my stepdaughters commented on all the food displays of canned and baked goods. I couldn’t tell why one jar of canned pears was superior to another, but I had the sense to keep my mouth shut.

  Then Zola went off to the livestock barn and Josie and Tom said they were going to get snow cones.

  I went outside the exhibit hall and checked in with Sam.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Okay. Until Dimon called that is. He wants us to call a meeting of all the local sheriffs for next Wednesday.”

  “But why? Their counties wouldn’t be involved in solving the Diaz murder.”

  “Didn’t say why. Just wanted us to call a meeting.” He hung up.

  Tom and Josie came back laughing.

  “We’ve just had a couple encounters of the third kind.”

  “Not me. Just Josie.”

  “I suppose someone thought you were me.”

  “Yes. But I’ll start with the one who didn’t think I was you. Hint, hint. An old, old man.”

  “Old Man Snyder, of course.”

  “He knew me right off. Said ‘how do, Miss Josie,’ then tipped his hat.”

  “And the other one?”

  “I didn’t like the sound of it,” Tom said. “I was standing right next to her. But I thought she knew him, so I didn’t want to barge in.”

  “Oh, you’re making too much of it,” Josie scolded. “Really, you are. But the message clearly was intended for you, Lottie. A man came up to me and told me I should mind my own business and he was warning me for my own good to stay away from the Diaz family.”

  “You look shocked,” Tom said. He turned to Josie. “See I told you she wouldn’t take that lightly.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was tall. About Dad’s height and had blue eyes and sideburns. Curly hair. At first I thought he was sort of pleasant. There was a long line at the snow cone booth. He was right behind us. He made small talk about the weather, of course, like everyone does out here. Then he delivered his little warning as casually as he had talked about the rain.”

  “I’ll have to report this to Sam.”

  “See I told you she wouldn’t take that lightly.”

  “Do you remember what he was wearing?”

  “Jeans. And a western shirt. Blue and tan.”

  “Could be anyone out here.”

  “Tom made me come and tell you this,” She smiled up at him. “For my own good. Now, we’re off to track down the boys. We bought some coupons so they can ride the merry-go-round again.”

  “Okay. I’ll see if the girls are through dissecting all the 4-H entries. We’ll catch up with you later.”

  I watched them snake through the crowds, then sat down on the nearest cast iron bench. Who? I wondered. Someone in the Diaz family? Zola had told me to leave them alone. Dimon insisted that Sam and I were over our heads. Now a rank stranger at a county fair had warned me to stay away from the Diaz family. That made warning number three even if it was delivered to my sister by mistake.

  But all of the warnings were given for different reasons.

  The burnt-sugar odor of cotton candy blended with wet dust under a leaky vendor’s camper. It was hard to think blanketed under strange smells, this mob of people. I was probably making three mountains out of one little mole hill.

  Zola was just giving friendly advice. It wasn’t a real warning. Dimon didn’t want me near the Diaz family because he was afraid Sam and I would botch his investigation.

  Only this last one from a blue-eyed stranger had the feel of the real deal to me. It was “for my own good.”

  Or was it a stranger? If the warning had been delivered to me instead of Josie, would I have known who it was?

  Chapter Nine

  Wednesday evening I walked into the crowded gathering in the commissioner’s room. Keith and Sam were already there and the room was filled with law enforcement personnel from around the region.

  Agent Dimon had driven out especially to conduct the meeting. There were four men from Topeka present besides himself and my favorite agent, Nancy Brooks, and Jim Gilderhaus, our regional agent.

  I glanced at Keith, who was sitting with arms crossed, eyebrows raised. Sam stood to one side at the front of the room. Since the meeting was in Carlton County, he felt like he should be an unofficial host and “introduce the bastard” he’d said earlier.

  When everyone quieted, he walked over to a podium. “Guess you wonder why we’re all here tonight. Matter of fact, I’m kinda wondering that myself. But we’re about to find out. This here is Frank Dimon who wants to have a few words with us. He’s from the KBI and so are all the other strangers sitting around tonight. Frank, I’ll turn this over to you.”

  “Gentlemen,” Dimon began, “I don’t need to tell you that the death rate in this area is beginning to attract attention.”

  I wished he hadn’t worn a suit.

  “The number of murders per capita is extraordinary.”

  I had to keep myself from leaping to my feet to contradict him. Crime statistics for sparse populations could distort reality.


  “The state KBI has concluded that we have to work out law enforcement arrangements for Western Kansas that will consolidate resources and employ the strategic use of manpower.” A fly buzzed around Dimon’s head. The window air-conditioning unit kicked on and his papers scattered. He bent to retrieve them. By himself. Not a soul offered to help. Keith and I included.

  “Now then,” he said awkwardly, after aligning his material again, “of course we have to square this legally. There are processes we need to follow to put this in place, but for now, our temporary arrangement will allow a great deal of latitude to determine what will actually work.”

  We waited. Something was coming down, and I suspected we wouldn’t like it.

  Dimon switched on a projector and walked to the screen centered on the north wall. “Here’s what we have devised. I might add that a presentation this sophisticated was not whipped up as a result of the incidents occurring this past week.”

  The first screen of his slide show came into view. “As you can see, we’ve been working on these ideas for several months.”

  I gaped at the words, with a perky voiceover reading them to us in case none of us had the ability. “Northwest Kansas Regional Law Enforcement: A Triumph in Effectiveness and Responsibility.”

  A fully equipped sheriff appeared on the screen and earnestly informed us that small counties were poorly equipped to cope with challenges in changing populations. By the time the fifth slide appeared, showing men around a conference table discussing problems, I was aghast.

  It concluded with an architect showing a finished sketch of a regional jail and a criminalist lab to process information.

  By that time, I was seething. Dimon finished to thunderous silence. “We are quite proud of this. Our system is being considered as a prototype for instituting a regional law-enforcement center in sparsely populated regions all over the country. Are there any questions?”

  I glanced at Nancy who sat with a lowered head pinching the bridge of her nose. She didn’t look up.

  “Yes, I have a question.” I reached for a glass of water and took a sip before I continued. “Who was that first man? The sheriff in the first slide? I didn’t recognize him as a Western Kansas law enforcement officer.”

  “Well, no. Actually, he was a professional actor. Naturally, we want to have the most effective video possible.”

  “And all the others? They, too, were actors?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the discussions were fake? You didn’t film a real meeting?”

  “No,” he said, his voice crisp.

  “I have a question.” Everyone looks at Keith when he speaks. He carries natural authority. Not only because of his size and the timbre of his voice, but by his inherent wisdom. “Did you consult with any single person who actually lives out here?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  His stark admission didn’t surprise me. I had come to appreciate Dimon’s honesty and dedication—if not his humorless ways.

  A deputy from Copeland County spoke up. “Why the hell not?”

  “Frankly, we wanted people who were more objective and detached to devise the best possible plan that is realistically obtainable in today’s economy. We intended and still intend to discuss it with the general population later and make any necessary adjustments it might take to get it up and running.”

  “Good luck with that,” I mumbled. It would be impolite, self-defeating, stupid actually, to laugh out loud.

  Last spring, the construction and dedication of Saint Helena’s, our tiny little Episcopal church shared by four counties, had nearly revived the old range wars. Half of the counties in Kansas had had county-seat fights, many of them ending in bloodshed. In the early 1920s Goodland had hired a rainmaker and then sued the neighboring town of Colby when it rained there instead of the expected area.

  And this man actually expected the people in any given county to give up their sheriff? Their jail? For a regional system?

  “Any discussion?” Dimon asked.

  “I thought we were coming here today for a briefing about the murder in our feedyard,” Keith said. “The murder, remember?”

  Dimon’s lips thinned. “No questions? No discussion about the regional center? All right. I understand that. I understand you, too, Keith. We have a murder to solve. Maybe connected to something bigger than just local. I know that’s why you came here. But hear this,” he pointed to the last slide again. “This regional center is coming. It’s going to happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  Maybe. Other things, other developments had come whether we liked it or not. School consolidation, county consolidation, medical facility consolidation. Consolidation had been as unstoppable as the railroads pushing across the plains. Iron pushing through thousands of acres of sod. Iron pushing the buffalo ahead of it. Iron pushing Indians away, away.

  Consolidation as relentless and unstoppable as the wind farms dotting the prairies with their sleek towering structures dwarfing the aging old wooden structures. Corporate giants racing across the plains. The prairie was helpless to stop the onslaught.

  I looked at Keith sitting there, faking impassivity, and smiled. I knew what that look meant even if Dimon didn’t.

  “The murder,” Keith said. “Carlton County called in the KBI to figure out who murdered Victor Diaz. Have you made any progress yet? Do you think there is a problem that reaches beyond Carlton County?”

  Dimon frowned. He wasn’t through with his lecture yet. He gazed steadily at Keith. His mouth lipped into a little gesture that passed as a smile for him. Then laying one finger aside his lips, the others cradling his chin, he studied my husband as though he were a scientist peering at a new species.

  “Actually, we don’t have any evidence to support that. But, yes, we think so. The murder was too simply too suspicious to dismiss it all as happenstance.”

  “Drugs?”

  I recognized the speaker as the undersheriff of Copeland County. He was supposed to be the interim sheriff after the death of Sheriff Irwin Deal whose death had been viewed as a blessing by most of the county.

  “There’s no evidence of drug activity here.”

  “They wouldn’t dare in Sam’s county,” someone said from the back of the room. There was a murmur of appreciation. Sam brushed the brim of his hat and smiled.

  “I do admit Sheriff Abbot has been quite efficient at handling problems in the past, whenever they came up. But times are changing. Methods have to change with the times.” There were enough nuances in Dimon’s voice to script a Shakespearian plot.

  I had told Keith about the proxy marriage debacle. He stared at Dimon. If he had had any doubts before that the agent intended to get rid of Sam, he didn’t now.

  “Do you mean to tell me that we come over here tonight to have you tell us you hope you will agree to getting rid of our jobs?”

  Oh boy. I swiveled to look at the speaker. Justin Harold is a tall, slim man whose big sunburned ears jutting from the side of his head make him look like a giant mouse. He was part-time law enforcement as were most of the men in the room. Part-time and overworked.

  Harold was the sole support of his aging mother and desperate to keep up his land payments. A fair man, he employed several Mexicans every year to help with the wheat harvest. Years ago, his uncle had married a Mexican woman, but nationality wouldn’t have mattered to Justin’s family. The question was—could they work? Ability to work was the biggest issue. Probably the most prized trait in Western Kansas.

  “And you’re telling us that you think the murder of a fine man should take second place to bringing in some Hollywood sheriffs to take the place of men who know what they are doing? We give people jobs out here. Real work.”

  “Gentlemen, it’s not like we aren’t doing anything at all about the Diaz murder. It’s just that, right now, we’re coming out here too often.
This has involved a special task force, which we don’t usually form unless there’s organized crime involved. Like illegal drugs. Illegal immigration. Border crossing. That sort of thing.”

  “Well now ain’t that a shame?” Harold said softly. “We’re not bad enough.”

  Condemnation of the government was so thick you could feel judgment flap into the room like an attacking falcon. A massive force of condemnation. I could feel it, taste it. Dimon had aroused the whacky Kansas sense of unity against outsiders. The zeal for justice.

  We were the state that had the strongest network of underground railroad organizations that helped runaway slaves make it to Canada before the Civil War. We were the state that later attracted African American immigrants and offered them free land through the Homestead Act. We were the state that just purely admired women like Carry Nation who smashed saloons with an axe. We didn’t hold with people who drank. Unless it was us.

  I stared at Dimon with wonderment. He had achieved a miracle. United the room against him in just a few sentences. He knew that. He was no dummy. That didn’t mean they all agreed with one another, of course. The simply didn’t like him.

  Justin put his hands on his hips and addressed the room. “This man has already said there’s no drug gangs here in this county. He’s not interested in a little murder unless drug lords are involved. And there’s no border to cross into Kansas. He just wants to take away our jobs.”

  “Ah Christ, Justin, ain’t no drug lords out here anyway. That’s in Eye-rack and Afghanistan. A few gangs back in Eastern Kansas, maybe.”

  “Point is, we do a pretty good job of solving our own problems out here.”

  “Like, hell.” I didn’t recognize the speaker. “The KBI wouldn’t have been called in if we didn’t need extra help.”

  “So you think maybe we should form a little committee to help this little operation along? A welcome wagon maybe, with homemade cookies and free tickets to the movie when Topeka sends out men hellbent on telling us what to do?”

  “It’s time to vote,” Harold said. “Who is in favor of Dimon’s bullshit?”