The Road to Wrinkle Ranch

by Nick Russell

  Kenny munched on his sandwich while listening to a country music radio station out of Perry, also keeping the patrol car’s police radio on. He didn’t expect to hear much from the sheriff’s office dispatcher that time of night, but you never knew.

  With the sandwich and the chocolate cupcake Judy had added to his lunch finished and washed down with a bottle of mandarin orange-flavored water, Kenny fought to keep his eyes open. He really should take a ride by the high school. Lately, kids had been spraying graffiti on the building and the chief wanted someone to drive by every hour or so. Yeah, he really needed to do that, but damn he was tired. He felt himself nodding off and jerked awake, knowing that if a citizen reported to the chief that he had been sleeping on the job there would be hell to pay. He liked Chief Bryant. She was a good woman and a good officer, and a damn sight better than Flag Newton, her predecessor.

  Kenny had come on the job right after that alligator had eaten old Flag, and he couldn't say that he regretted not having worked with the man. Kenny had served as a reserve deputy with the sheriff’s department back when Flag was the chief deputy there, and he could not stand him. As far as Kenny was concerned, Flag got what he had coming when that gator latched onto him. Especially after what him and Emmitt Planter had done to poor Maddy Westfall!

  He decided to take a drive by the high school because if he didn't, he was going to fall asleep no matter how hard he tried not to. Pulling out of the parking lot, he was going down the side street next to the muffler shop when a movement out of his peripheral vision caught his attention. Kenny stopped and backed up, shining his spotlight on the side of the building across the street. What the hell was that? Somerton County didn't get many homeless people passing through, but apparently, they had one tonight. Kenny pulled up next to the person dressed in dark clothes draped with a blanket and stumbling through the darkness, holding onto the side of the building for support.

  "Hey there. Are you okay?"

  There was no response. Whoever it was ignored him.

  "Hold on a minute, I need to talk to you," Kenny said, getting out of his car. As he approached, the person stumbled and started to fall in his direction. Kennedy instinctively put his hand on his pistol and stepped back, but when the person crumpled onto the pavement at his feet he realized that this was not a threat. Even so, you couldn’t be too careful

  "Are you okay? Can you sit up?"

  Nothing.

  Kenny shined his flashlight on the person's blanket-covered head, seeing a wild tangle of hair that looked like some kind of muddy brown color poking out from underneath.

  “Can you talk to me?"

  When he still received no response, Kenny cursed under his breath. He didn’t like being bored, but he didn't like dealing with drunks, either,

  "You need to sit up and start talking to me right now,” he said firmly. Shaking his head when there was still no response, he nudged at the person with the toe of his boot.

  Still nothing.

  “Dammit.”

  Kenny squatted down and pulled the thin blanket off the face and felt his stomach lurch, tasting the deviled ham at the back of his throat. What the hell was this? Getting to his feet he returned to the patrol car and picked the microphone up off of its hook on the dashboard

  "Somerton County, this is Somerton P.D. I need backup on Depew Street, on the side of the dentist’s office. I'm not sure if I’ve got someone who's intoxicated or drugged up, but it looks like somebody really worked her over good.”

  ***

  Red and blue lights strobed through the night, reflecting off the side of the buildings and bathing everything in a garish light. Squatting down over the body before them, Somerton County Deputies Barry Portman and John Lee Quarrels shook their heads.

  "She's dead, John Lee. No question about that," Barry said, pulling the latex gloves off his hands after checking for a pulse.

  “Do you know her?"

  Barry shook his head and said, “I don't know. She seems familiar, but when they get this far gone it's hard to recognize who they used to be."

  A car stopped behind them and they heard the door slam. A moment later Summerton Police Chief Miranda Bryant joined them.

  "Good morning, Chief."

  "Is it morning or still the middle of the night?"

  "A bit of both," Barry replied.

  Dressed in slacks and a Police Department T-shirt, Chief Bryant moved to the other side of the body and leaned close to examine it. "What do we know so far?"

  "I saw her moving along the side of the building here," Kenny told his boss. “She was wrapped up in that blanket and I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. At first, I thought it was a street person or a drunk. I pulled over to check it out and she fell right there. That's about all I know. I took one look at her and called it in. This is way above my pay grade, Chief."

  "You did good, Kenny," Chief Bryant said, then asked, "Does anybody knew who she is?"

  "John Lee was just asking me that," Barry said. “She looks pretty rough. I can't place her, but that don't mean much anymore."

  "No, it doesn't," Chief Bryant said, shaking her head sadly. An ambulance pulled up and they stood up as the attendants approached.

  "What have we got?"

  "Nobody that you’re going to need lights and sirens for," Barry said. “She's gone."

  "No disrespect, but we've got to confirm anyway."

  "Help yourself," Barry said. “We’ve got a call in to the coroner. He should be here anytime now, and once he makes an official pronouncement you can transport her."

  It took another thirty minutes for them to photograph the body and the scene, and by then retired doctor Peter Dawson, Somerton County’s irascible coroner, had arrived.

  "How come nobody ever dies at a reasonable hour anymore?" he grumbled. The sparse hair on the man’s head was sticking up and he didn't look pleased to be pulled out of bed for something like this.

  "Y’all step back and let me do my job!”

  Two minutes later he stood up and announced what they already knew, "Yeah, she's dead. Ain’t no question ’bout that." He turned to the ambulance attendants and said "What the hell y'all standin’ there with your thumbs up your asses for? Get her out of here."

  Watching as they loaded the body onto a stretcher and then into the back of the ambulance, Chief Bryant asked, “What’s this make it now? Three? Four?"

  “Three that I know of," Barry said. "Two here in town and one outside the city limits in our jurisdiction."

  "Gentlemen, we've got a problem on our hands," the police chief said. “Somebody's killing people with bad dope. Killing them just as sure as if they shot them right between the eyes!”

  Watching the ambulance drive away, the police officers, city and county alike, knew that they had a problem. But nobody assembled there on that summer night that felt like a sauna would have believed just how bad it was going to get or how many more would die before it was over.