by Jeff Carson
“Who is that behind the door? Are you parents here?”
“Umm, yeah, my parents are here.”
“Oh,” Wolf said. Apparently they weren’t behind the door, though.
In answer of Wolf’s curiosity, just then a man came behind Sarah and placed a hand on the small of her back. She looked down and stepped out of the way. He was dressed in sweat pants and a tee shirt as well.
“Hi, how you doing? My name is Mark.” The man extended a long arm over Sarah. “Mark Wilson.”
“Hey. Nice to meet you.” Wolf shook his hand.
“Dad!” Jack burst out of the door.
Mark stepped aside and ducked back in the door, as if to respect their distance. Wolf watched as Mark persuaded Sarah to shut the door to leave them alone.
Wolf gave him a hug and ruffled his hair. “Hey bud. What’s happening?”
“Not much.” He stayed latched tight to Wolf. “Just watching toons and having breakfast.”
“Cool. Hey I’ve gotta leave town for a little bit, so—“
“Where? Where you going?”
Wolf paused. “I’m actually going to Italy.”
“What? Are you serious? Are you going to see John?”
“Yeah, I am buddy.” Wolf nodded.
“Tell him he needs to call me. When is he coming back?”
“Listen, buddy. We’ll talk more when I get back. I think I’ll be gone a week. Are grandma and grandpa here?”
Jack nodded. “Yeah, you want to talk to them?”
“No, don’t worry about it. Never mind.” Wolf relaxed a little bit, his worry about the strange man inside diminishing. Sarah’s father had guns, and a concern for his grandson matched by no one but Wolf. “So how’s your mom doing?”
Jack nodded. “She’s actually doing well.”
Wolf nodded, trying to ignore the hopeful expression on his son’s face. She had better be doing well. This kid deserved a good mother.
“Listen, buddy,” Wolf said with a deep breath. “John’s not doing …”
Jack frowned in confusion.
Wolf didn’t have the heart to tell him what was going on. But he had no choice. It had to come from him. Right now. Otherwise he would know from some other person in town before the morning was through. It was just how it worked in Rocky Points.
“John died this weekend, buddy.”
Jack’s face fell. He stared at Wolf with glassy eyes, and his lip started to quiver. “What?”
Wolf nodded and hugged Jack. “Sorry buddy. I have to go get him, and bring him back home. That’s where I’m going.”
Jack hugged Wolf again and shook softly with sobs.
“I know buddy.” It was all Wolf could think to say. “I know.” They hugged and cried, Wolf letting the emotional floodgates go. He finally pushed Jack back and knelt down. “All right bud. Be good. Go back inside. Tell your Mom I need to speak to her again real quick, all right?” Jack wiped his eyes and stared at the ground. Wolf wiped his own face and pulled Jack’s chin up. “Hey buddy, I love you. You know that, right?”
Jack nodded.
“All right. I’ll see you soon okay?”
Sarah opened the door. She looked at Jack wiping his tears and shot a questioning look at Wolf, which turned quickly to an accusing one.
“Bye, Dad.” Jack turned and walked inside.
Wolf stood straight. “So, how are you doing, Sarah?” This time Wolf put the full weight behind the question.
“Fine, David. I’m doing just fine,” she said sincerely. Wolf had to admit. She looked fine. Wolf felt a stab of jealousy for the new guy now skulking somewhere behind the door.
She crossed her arms and watched Jack walk inside. “What was that all about?”
“I have to go out of town. I’ll be gone all week, all right?”
She shrugged her shoulders and looked down.
Wolf saw the shadow in the door window. “Hey Mark, come here for a second?”
Sarah glared at Wolf.
Mark stepped around Sarah out onto the front porch.
“Can I talk to you for just a second?”
“Of course, David. Of course.” Mark nodded his head to Sarah, who stepped in and closed the door quietly.
Wolf turned and walked a ways down the massive front deck, and Mark followed next to him. Wolf stopped and placed his hands on the railing, and then looked out into the pines, now brightening as the sun threatened to crest the peaks.
“What do you do, Mark?”
“I’m a builder. Custom homes,” he said blowing into his hands and rubbing them together. “Man, starting to get cold overnight already.”
Wolf nodded. “And, do you know what I do, Mark?”
“Yep. You’re a cop in town. Up for appointment to sheriff from what I hear.”
“And you’re shacking up with my ex-wife, who’s one day fresh out of rehab, at her parents’ house, where my son happens to live.”
Mark exhaled uncomfortably and scratched his head.
Wolf looked at him in silence.
“Yeah, I guess that’s exactly what is going on,” Mark said with a little laugh. “Look, I met Sarah in rehab. I’m . . . I wasn’t in the rehab myself. Well, not this time around. I was before. I’m an addict, but I’m clean, and I have been for over six years. I spend a lot of time helping out at the center as a counselor. Sarah and I met, and we’ve become close.”
“Okay,” said Wolf, feeling another jolt of jealousy. “How’s she doing? Did she kick it this time, or what?”
Mark crossed his arms and shivered a little. “She’s doing very well, David. Now is a critical time of the process, but she made some serious breakthroughs this time, and I’m confident she has more than enough momentum to keep clean this time. For good.”
Wolf nodded thoughtfully. “And this isn’t the beginning of a toxic relationship between you two, where one of you falls back into the drugs, and the other follows, and you end up huffing meth in a shack in the woods?”
Mark’s hearty laugh echoed back from the forest. “No, David.” He looked at Wolf’s expression and sobered his own. “No, David. This isn’t one of those relationships. In fact, she wants to help out at the clinic for the foreseeable future. She has loving parents to support her, her loving son …” he looked at Wolf and looked at the ground.
“And she has you,” Wolf completed his sentence.
Mark pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah.”
Wolf looked into the forest again, then back to Mark. “Look, I don’t want to threaten you with violence if you end up hurting her or my son, so I won’t. You seem like a good guy.”
Mark laughed again.
Wolf couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he shook his hand.
They walked back to the door and Sarah cracked it open and let Mark inside.
“Sarah, can I talk to you?” Wolf asked.
Sarah stepped out and Mark closed the door softly behind him.
Wolf nodded at the tall shadow behind the door’s frosted glass. “He seems like a good guy.”
Sarah nodded, avoiding eye contact with Wolf. “Yeah, he really is a good man.”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know … John died.”
“What?” Sarah’s eyes went wide and met Wolf’s.
Wolf nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be going to Italy for at least a week, I think. I just wanted to let you know. You know, before you heard it from someone else.”
Sarah nodded and opened and closed her mouth, like she wanted to say something but couldn’t get it out.
“You guys will have to take Jack for the week. You have keys if you need to get into the ranch house for anything of his.”
She nodded, unable to disguise her shock.
Wolf turned and stepped off the porch. The gravel under his boots scratched with each step until he reached the truck. As he got in, he glanced back to the front porch and couldn’t help but notice a tall man hugging a sobbing beautiful woman against his chest.
The sun had fully risen over the peaks of the continental divide, and was blasting a glare off his windshield as he headed east down the hill. When he reached the highway, he hung a right and headed into town.
There were a few officers already at the station, and a few that had been there all night, so the parking lot was almost half full.
He parked his truck, leaving his travel bags in the back seat, and walked to the main entrance. The front doors of steel and glass were warm to the touch.
Tammy, the receptionist, call operator, radio dispatcher, and general ass-kicking-motherly-figure of the station, sat still behind the reception desk looking down at an open file. She raised her eyebrows over her red plastic frames and smirked. “Sergeant Wolf. You have been a naughty boy I hear.” She dropped her voice to a whisper and leaned forward. “About time that piece of shit got what was coming to him.” Then she sat down and resumed perusing the file in her hands.
Wolf rolled his eyes and scanned his card to enter.
The loud chatter in the Squad Room was snuffed to silence with the clack of the door shutting behind him. Every officer in the room looked in his direction, then awkwardly to files, or computer screens, or a dirty fingernail.
Wolf stood still and scanned the room. With somewhat of a relief, he didn’t see Connell. With everything on his mind, he would be just fine if his short stop-in would be without a confrontation.
He ignored the stares, and one hearty pat on the back, and walked over to Burton’s office. He gave the heavy wood door three solid knocks.
“Come,” called Burton, barely audible from outside the door.
Sheriff Burton didn’t look up as Wolf entered. He was filling out a 10-04-D form. The “D” was for disciplinary, Wolf knew, though he hadn’t filled one out before.
Wolf kept his eyes averted from what was being written, or which officer, or sergeant, the form was for, and sat down. When Burton didn’t acknowledge his presence, Wolf stared out the window at a few birds chasing each other through the pine trees.
Burton slapped his pen down and scraped the form into a manila folder, then creaked back in his chair. He spent a long few moments bouncing and swiveling, pondering Wolf with a disappointed grimace, then stood and looked out the window, leaving his chair spinning for a few seconds.
“I don’t know what the hell happened between you two yesterday,” Burton said. “But I know you. And I know Derek. And I know you probably won’t tell me that Derek started whatever the hell happened up there, so I won’t ask.” Burton turned and pointed at Wolf. “You have to keep yourself under control. You need to play nice with Derek if you see him this morning. In fact, you need to play nice for the rest of your career here.”
Whether or not that was an admission that Wolf had the job, he still couldn’t tell.
Burton sat back in the seat with a heavy sigh.
Wolf knew the sheriff’s old bones were ready to call it quits. He didn’t need any of this so late in the game. Wolf felt almost sorry for the old man.
Sheriff Burton held out his hands. “Well?” he said, leaving forward on his elbows. “You wanna tell me what happened?”
Wolf smiled and looked behind the sheriff again, this time focusing on the ski resort with its dormant ski lifts. Wolf considered it, then fixed his gaze on Burton and shook his head.
Burton sat back, wheezed through his walrus mustache and crossed his legs. A faint satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. “All right. All right. But I hope this little scuffle doesn’t hurt your chances with the town council.”
“Me neither sir.” Wolf said.
“And now you have to go?”
“I need to go over there to get John.”
Burton put his elbows back on the desk and buried his face in his hands for a second. “I was so sorry to hear about your brother, son.” He had a look of deep sorrow. “If you need anything, keep in touch. I don’t see how my old ass could help, but if you need anything, just holler. I’ll try to keep you in good standing with the town council while you are gone, but … it would be much easier if you were here.”
“I know, sir. But something isn’t right over there. The John I knew would not consider suicide an option, much less the answer. If he truly did this, I need to be convinced, and that won’t happen if I stay here. I can’t take a half-way-around-the-world-stranger’s word on something this big.”
Burton nodded and stood up. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about the Wheatman case when you’re gone. You’ll have enough to worry about over there as it is.”
Wolf stood and stared at Burton. “What do you mean?”
Burton mirrored his stare. “What do you mean, what do I mean?”
“The Wheatman case? What do you mean I don’t have to worry about it?”
Burton stared at the wall for a few seconds then popped his eyes open. “You didn’t hear about Julie Mulroy and Chris Wakefield?”
“No. What the hell are you talking about?”
Burton’s chair squeaked as he sat back down. He motioned Wolf to take his seat again. “I thought Officer Rachette gave you a call yesterday to fill you in on the whole thing.”
Wolf remembered the missed call from Rachette along with the three missed calls from his mother. “Well, yeah. I think he called, but I never did talk to him. He didn’t leave a message, and I forgot to call him back with all the–“ Wolf interrupted himself and sat forward. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Julie Mulroy and Chris Wakefield showed up yesterday. They were scared shitless, talking about how they were with Jerry Wheatman when he fell.”
Wolf sat back. “Chris Wakefield? He was with Julie and Jerry?”
Burton just nodded. They both knew Chris Wakefield well. He was sixteen-year-old son of the Rocky Points mayor. Whereas the mayor was a good man in every sense of the word, Chris was regarded as a bit of a rebel. He was the kind of kid that would avoid eye contact if you passed him on the street. For a couple of years, he dressed in all black, wearing headphones and shutting out the world. Save for a couple friends he had had in town, he spoke to no one.
Recently, however, Chris Wakefield appeared to integrate himself back into society. Over the past year, he had changed his attire to “fit in”, and he seemed to lose some of his animosity toward the town and for life in general. Wolf had theorized it was no coincidence the kid’s metamorphosis had coincided with his father’s run for mayor a year ago.
“Okay,” Wolf said. “So according to them, Jerry fell. How? Why wait so long to report it? What angle are we taking on these two?”
“We’re not taking any angle,” Burton said.
“All right.” Wolf stared at Burton who didn’t budge. “So what’s their explanation of what happened?”
Burton shrugged. “They say Jerry was dickin’ around up top and fell. End of story.”
Wolf was unconvinced. “Details, Sheriff. Details.”
Burton took a deep breath. “Apparently Julie and Jerry go up top together. Alone. Jerry shows off to Julie on top of the cliff, messing around near the edge and slips off. Julie watches him plummet to his death, freaks out, and freezes up on top. Now she can either call the police, or her friend. She opts for the friend, thinking we’ll think she pushed Wheatman off. So she calls Wakefield. Wakefield drives out to the trailhead, walks to the top of the trail, and helps her down the mountain.
“Wakefield says Julie was catatonic on top of the mountain. Puking everywhere. In bad shape. He pushes her to go to the cops, but she’s having none of it, freaking out, thinking we are going to lock her up and throw away the key. Wakefield takes her to his house, and finally succeeds in convincing her to come to us. So they showed up yesterday.” Burton held up his hands like he’d just finished tying a rope on a steer.
“So they don’t check if Jerry is okay? They just leave him to die?” Wolf was incredulous.
Burton held up a hand. “Chris says he ran down to the body. Checked Wheatman’s pul
se, and he was dead.”
Wolf stared for a few seconds, just shaking his head. “Julie drove to the trail.”
Burton nodded. “Julie drove to the trail. And Wakefield drove to pick her up. Then they both drove back to Chris’s house.”
“And Julie was okay to drive to Chris’s house, despite having just been catatonic. That’s quite a story.” Wolf got up and paced. “What about the Mayor? Did you talk to him? What does he say about all this? He just lets his sixteen-year-old son bring home a girl to spend a couple nights at the house?”
Burton’s face went red, whether out of anger or embarrassment, Wolf couldn’t tell.
“Of course I talked to the Mayor,” Burton said in an even voice. “He says he didn’t suspect a thing out of the ordinary. He says Chris told him that Julie needed a place to stay on account of her drug-addict parents, and he believed his son. And of course, I believe the Mayor. As you should, too.”
Wolf waved a hand. “Okay. Okay. But this just doesn’t add up. These kids are hiding something, and you know it.”
“Sit down,” Burton said. “Sit.”
Wolf did.
“We don’t have any evidence to contradict these kids’ stories. Nothin’ on Wheatman’s body, no defensive wounds, nothin’. What do you suppose we do? Accuse the girl of murder? Which would make the Mayor’s son an accomplice to murder, without any evidence to back it up? Personally, I’m real attached to the prospect of getting my pension. And I’m sure you’re real attached to the prospect of becoming sheriff next week.”
“I understand,” Wolf said, standing. He didn’t need further explanation. Getting on the bad side of the Mayor was professional suicide, but Wolf still didn’t like any of it. It would have to wait, though. There were more pressing issues Wolf needed to take care of.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Burton said.
Officer Rachette poked his head in and did a double take at the sight of Wolf. “Sirs. I was actually going to just let you know, Sheriff, that I was going to be taking Sergeant Wolf to the airport this morning down in Denver.”
Burton stood up and squeezed Wolf’s shoulder. “Son. Again, I’m sorry, and let me know if I can help in any way.”
