“Shit!” Kane wondered if the sheriff had seen him inside the post office trying to pick up on the man’s wife. It was bad enough the sheriff had a personal vendetta cruising by the apartments looking to nab someone dealing drugs, now Kane had to worry the man was going to hound him knowing Kane was interested in his wife.
He tried to think if there was anything in his truck that could land him in jail. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think so.
He reduced his speed and pulled over to the shoulder of the road. He shut off the engine, lowered the driver’s window, and put both hands on the steering wheel. Kane glanced at his side mirror. The sheriff was taking his sweet time getting out of his vehicle. Most likely he was running Kane’s license plate on his computer while the dash cam recorded the traffic stop.
Sheriff Lobo climbed out of his Tahoe. He walked alongside Kane’s Dodge Ram truck and stopped short of the driver’s window, one hand on the butt of his service weapon.
Kane kept his hands on the steering wheel. He turned his head to look up at the sheriff and said, “You know I’m a valid CCW holder,” meaning that he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and by fully disclosing there was a firearm in the vehicle he hoped to avoid any misunderstanding that could result in an altercation.
“Where?”
“On my right hip.”
“Do me a favor and keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Sure thing,” Kane said.
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Uh, no, not really.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not why I pulled you over.”
Kane looked at the sheriff but he couldn’t read his expression as the man was wearing sunglasses. “Then why did you pull me over?”
The sheriff leaned in. “Let’s just say, I’m on to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do.”
Kane flexed his fingers but knew it would be a big mistake to remove his hands from the steering wheel.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to slip up. That goes for your brother too. And when you do, I’ll be waiting.”
“Someone might call this harassment.”
“Consider it a warning.”
So this didn’t have anything to do with Lobo’s wife. In a way, Kane was relieved even though he knew they would have to be extra careful dealing drugs out of the apartment complex.
“I’d obey the speed limit if I were you,” Sheriff Lobo said. He slapped the side of the door. “You have a good day.”
Kane watched the sheriff turn his back and walk to his vehicle. Kane’s right hand dropped onto the handgrip of his revolver strapped to his side. He glanced around at the desolate terrain, not a single car on the highway.
It would be so easy.
9
RED DEVILS
Sophia was surprised the walk-in chicken coop was so big. She counted at least fifteen chickens free grazing for feed strewn about the sand inside the large area protected by heavy-duty mesh wire fencing that also included the overhead to prevent varmints from climbing inside. The plywood wall interior was roomy, about half the size of her bedroom at home. One wall comprised of twenty nesting beds, five across and four rows high of which six broody hens were nestled over their boxes.
“This is a good time to collect some eggs while most of them are out in the yard,” Camilla said and handed Sophia a small basket. “Don’t disturb the chickens sitting on their eggs.”
“Why? Won’t they just move?”
“Chickens can get a little cranky, especially when they think you’re stealing their eggs. It’s a hormonal thing.”
“What’s that?” Sophia asked.
“Something you’ll learn about when you’re older. Trust me. Go ahead and get me about a dozen so I can do some baking.”
Sophia started at one end and made her way across the bottom row of nesting boxes that were unoccupied. When she discovered her first egg, she grabbed it and held it up for her grandmother to see.
“Very nice.”
Before Sophia put the egg in the basket, she inspected it. The otherwise white shell had a few places that were covered with a black crust. “There’s something on it.”
“It’s just a little poop.”
“Ew, yuck. There’s never poop on our eggs.”
“That’s because you buy them from the store. You don’t think there’s someone that cleans them first?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Don’t worry. It comes right off. Besides, who eats the shell?”
Sophia continued gathering eggs. She made the mistake of getting too close to one of the broody hens and almost got pecked on the hand. “Stop that!” Sophia said, scolding the ornery bird, and then moving along.
With her basket nearly filled, Sophia was reaching for an egg in a nesting box on the top row when it suddenly disappeared in the straw covering the bottom. “Hey!”
“What’s wrong?” Camilla asked.
“The egg. It was right here. Now it’s gone.”
Camilla put her hands on her hips and shouted, “Astuto! Put that back!”
Sophia rose up on her tiptoes so she could see the back of the box and used her hand to clear away the straw. She saw a chewed away hole the size of an orange and Astuto’s face staring back at her. “I see him!”
“You’re in big trouble mister,” Camilla said and stormed out of the hen house.
Sophia began to rush out after her, but when she realized she was carrying a batch of fragile eggs, she slowed down so as not to break them. When she came out and walked around the side of the coop, her grandmother was nowhere to be seen. Figuring she might have doubled back to the stable, Sophia went another way and found herself in what at first appeared to be a vacant pen, and then she saw the Mexican troll.
He was standing in a small mound of overturned dirt. His two-foot tall body was completely covered in tiny red insects from head to toe.
Sophia dropped the basket. She ran over and saw red ants swarming over Astuto though he didn’t seem to mind. Her immediate reaction was to slap them off. She bent down and started brushing them off Astuto’s chest and arms. Each time she removed the ants off of the troll, some of them would cling to her hands and crawl up her arms, creating tiny pinpricks of pain. Soon it became so intense she screamed.
“What is it, child?” Camilla said, suddenly appearing. As soon as she saw the ants on Sophia, her grandmother used her bare hands and swiped them off but by then Sophia had been bitten numerous times.
Sophia’s parents raced into the pen.
“What’s happened?” her father shouted.
Camilla turned. “Fire ants. Miguel, take Sophia into the house.”
Sophia’s father rushed over and gathered her up in his arms.
“What about Astuto?” Sophia said. “Who’s going to help him?”
“They can’t hurt him,” her grandmother assured her. “His skin is so tough he can’t feel a thing.”
Everyone rushed into the house. Sophia was crying by then as her father sat her down on a bench at the table.
Camilla opened a kitchen cabinet and took out a tube of ointment. She began dabbing the cream on every welt. “This should stop the blistering. Don’t worry, the salve should take the pain away.”
It took Sophia a couple of minutes before she stopped crying. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Thank God,” Sophia’s mother said and gave her a hug.
Sophia heard tiny footsteps at the backdoor and saw Astuto standing in the threshold, still covered in ants.
“You better not bring them in here,” Camilla said. She went over and cleaned the ants off the troll, each time rubbing her palms together and grinding them up.
Sophia could see them crawling all over her grandmother’s arms. They had to be eating her alive. It took maybe a minute or two for her grandmother to rid the troll of the insects and to smash the ones creeping on her.
&
nbsp; Once all the ants were dead, her grandmother shooed Astuto out the door.
“Abuela, are you okay?” Sophia asked.
“Yes, child, I’m fine.”
“Aren’t you going to use the ointment?” Sophia looked at her grandmother’s hands and arms and saw not a single bite mark.
10
PRELIMINARY EXAM
Ben sat in the Tahoe behind the Coroner’s Office and ate the last of the chips and then crumpled up the bag. He pulled an antibacterial wipe out of the pouch in the cup holder and cleaned his hands before getting out of the truck. Instead of going around to the front, Ben chose to enter the building through the rear service door next to the dumpster.
Once inside, he walked down a short hallway that led to a small office area with two desks, some filing cabinets, and a table with a copy machine, coffee maker, and an open package of reamed paper. Off to the right was a door with the single word MORGUE stenciled on an opaque glass window.
Ben opened the door and stepped inside the examination room flooded with bright overhead fluorescent lights. It was glaring enough to make him almost want to put on his sunglasses tucked in his breast pocket. The room was about as big as a walk-in freezer in a supermarket and was just as frigid. Four stainless steel doors occupied one wall: storage lockers for human bodies. A table was tucked in the corner with a scale; the type butchers used to weigh lunchmeat.
Everything cold and stark, a metal desk and a plastic chair, human anatomy illustrations tacked on a corkboard, notes scribbled on a marred white board.
The naked corpses of Dan and Mae Willard were on the two autopsy tables situated in the center of the room. Long pipes designed to funnel bodily fluids elbowed down from the underside of the tables to the drain on the sloped floor. A gurney with the two black cadaver bags used for the deceased was parked against the wall next to a stainless steel commercial sink.
Even though he had watched the man and woman be exhumed from the sand and placed in body bags, Ben hadn’t realized the true extent of their injuries. Seeing the bodies fully exposed under the bright light and the skin rinsed off, Ben was so appalled by the carnage that he had to look away for a moment and put his hand over his mouth when the contents in his stomach went for an acid reflex ride into his mouth.
“If you have to do that, please step outside,” a voice said.
Ben turned and saw Keith Monroe. The coroner was a short, balding man in his mid-fifties and must have been returning from having a smoke outside as he was slipping his disposable lighter inside a hard pack of cigarettes in the front pocket of his white lab coat.
Not able to speak, Ben rushed over to the sink. He turned the handle on the spigot, spat into the sink, and ducked his head under the faucet to take a drink.
“Never thought of you as being the squeamish type.”
“Must have been something I ate,” Ben replied, shutting off the water. He turned around and noticed a white five-gallon plastic pail under Dan Willard’s examination table, containing the man’s severed left arm and a clear plastic bag filled with a grisly slop of internal organs collected from the crime scene.
As each victim had been attacked differently, the husband had been placed facedown as most of his lacerations were on his back whereas the wife was lying face up.
At first, Ben thought Monroe had already performed the brain autopsy on the woman where he would have to make an incision and pull the scalp down over her face before using a cranium saw to remove the cap of the skull. But then he noticed a bit of white on the top of her head and realized what he was seeing was the savagely mauled tissue of what had once been her face.
“Any idea how long they’d been out there?” Ben asked.
“Not long,” Monroe said. “Whatever blood they had left in their bodies has collected in their lower extremities causing livor mortis.”
“The purplish coloring around the midsections and legs.”
“That’s right. They were killed within the last twenty-four hours. I’ll be able to narrow it down after I do a proper autopsy.”
Ben stepped over and gazed down at the husband. He studied the stump where the right leg should have been. He was surprised to see that the kneecap was still attached, the shinbone being gnawed away just below that. He turned his attention to the deep gashes on the man’s back. “Any idea what kind of animal could have done this?”
“Well, I’ve seen plenty of animal attack victims and the extensive damage that claws can do. Big cats can get as long as two inches. Grizzlies have claws that can grow up to four inches long. They can tear through a person’s flesh like a meat cleaver right down to the bone.” Monroe reached inside his coat pocket and took out a depth gauge similar to what a mechanic might use to measure the tread depth of a tire, only lengthier. He inserted the end into the deepest cut. He removed the instrument and checked the marking. “Holy crap.”
“How deep is it?”
The coroner gave Ben a concerned look. “Nearly six inches.”
“That’s impossible. There’s nothing around here with claws like that.”
“There is now.”
“So what you’re telling me is there’s an apex predator out there somewhere with claws longer than a grizzly?” Ben said.
“That’s right, Sheriff.”
PART TWO
CAMILLA’S TALE
11
THE STORYTELLER
Camilla had Miguel, Maria, and Sophia join her out on the porch where she had a large pitcher of sun tea brewing by the front steps. Miguel and Maria sat on the swing seat, while Sophia sat in the rocker next to Camilla who made herself comfortable on the large chair covered with cowhide and a cushioned back. Astuto was off somewhere, most likely getting into some kind of trouble.
“Maria, would you like to set us up with drinks before I begin?” Camilla said.
“Sure.” Maria got up and grabbed the glass pitcher by the handle. Four tall glasses filled with ice were on a small table to the right of the screen door. She poured the sun-brewed tea and gave everyone a glass, and then sat back beside Miguel who was swaying gently in the porch swing.
Camilla took a moment to sip her drink. She placed the glass down on the deck beside her chair where it would be out of the direct sun, which was an hour away from setting. She looked at Sophia and smiled. “I have never told you this story.”
“Which story is that?” Sophia asked, eagerly waiting.
“About your great-great grandmother. Her name was Lizzy.” Camilla shot a glance over at Miguel. He grinned and gave her a nod, having heard the tale before. She knew it was one of his favorites.
“No, I have never heard it before,” Sophia said, holding her glass on her lap with both hands.
“Back in those days,” Camilla began, “the territory here was often called The Fiendish Badlands, and for good reason.”
“And why was that?” Sophia asked.
“It was very bad back then.”
“You mean outlaws?”
“Oh, there were those. No, I’m talking about things much worse. Things you wouldn’t think could be real but are. Do you have an open mind, Sophia?”
Sophia looked to her mother for the answer.
“Remember we always say never to prejudge anything until you know for sure if it’s true or not,” Maria said.
“Yes,” Sophia answered right away. “Is that keeping an open mind?”
“It sure is,” Miguel piped in, anxious for his daughter to hear the story. He smiled at his mother. “I think Sophia’s ready.”
“Well,” Camilla said, “it all began...”
12
THE NAGUALS
The saddle creaked as the bounty hunter leaned on the pommel and surveyed the ruination of the homestead. A few charred timbers were still aglow, collapsed in front of the stone chimney. Posts from the split rail fencing had been heaved from the ground and the Guernsey and the plow horse that had resided within the extirpated corral had been maliciously mutilated and sundered. Th
e marauders had even trampled the flowerbed and the small vegetable garden.
The buckskin champed on the bit and stamped a hoof on the hard clay.
“Easy, boy,” the bounty hunter said, his face shadowed under the six-inch brim of the weathered Stetson; the stampede string hanging down, touching the war rag bundled around his neck. He weaved his glove through the long shock of black mane in front of him and gently stroked the muscular shoulder to soothe the skittish horse.
Holding onto the pommel with one hand, he swung his leg over the cantle and dismounted.
Trail dust shook from his long coat as he stepped back and turned, one hand pulling back the front of his slicker to reveal the holstered .44-caliber Colt Dragoon. The dying man who the bounty hunter had appropriated the gun from had bragged it was the same revolver once owned by James Butler, otherwise known as Wild Bill.
The bounty hunter reached up, and from behind his bedroll, pulled out his Ithaca 10-gauge shotgun he had used on his short stint as a young man riding guard for the Butterfield Overland Stage. He flipped open the twin 12-inch long barrels, checked them for full loads, and snapped the coach gun shut.
The jingle bobs on the rowels of his spurs clinked as he strode over to where the bladed head of a long heaved ax was buried into a stump, next to a severed arm still wearing a tattered shirtsleeve.
The bounty hunter stepped around the stump. He saw more butchered body parts and reckoned it was the farmer, especially when he saw the man’s decapitated head upright in the dirt, facing him, looking as though he had been buried in the ground from below the neck down. Even though the face was smudged with blood and grime it was clear to see that he had been a handsome man with tanned youthful features and long brown hair.
And when the head opened his eyes, the bounty hunter saw that they were blue.
“You best not hurt them,” the head said.
“And who might you be referring?” the bounty hunter asked, not the least bit alarmed that he was conversing with someone that should rightfully be dead.
Cryptid Frontier (Cryptid Zoo Book 7) Page 4
