running the story on your Chupacabra, but I have a pretty sizeable Hispanic readership, and everyone around here is interested in what affects the cattle trade. Sykes losing his prize Brahma bull is big news."
"So where do I come in? You've already got my only lead on this thing."
"Ramirez?" Jeremy laughed. "I paid the fine on his truck this morning, got it out of the impound. He's probably already halfway back to Dallas on his way to Mexico even as we speak."
"You did what?” Jacobs gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes at the puny editor.
"Easy there, deputy. Don't blow a gasket. I got information for you, right here." Borjon passed him an artist's rendition of the creature, along with the description he got from the migrant worker. Roth was relieved that he got something out of the deal, but preferred to have asked the questions himself.
"So, what do you want from me?" Jacobs asked, fearing the worst.
"An exclusive. I pass along what I learn in exchange for what you find out. Deal?"
Jacobs thought the arrangement was definitely one-sided, but what choice did he have? It was better to have the investigation published to keep the public informed than misinformation and outright sensationalism just to sell papers. The downside, if he refused, was spinning the acceptable white lie out of the unacceptable truth.
"Deal," Jacobs said reluctantly. There was no time to work out any details and he didn't want to explain his presence at the county coroner's office. He was relieved but confused when he heard a call come in from his squad car and the publisher's vehicle at the same time.
"Police scanner," Borjon said sheepishly. The Jefferson deputy shook his head and reached in for his car mike.
"Jacobs here. Go ahead, Bill."
"Roth? Roth, hold on a second." The sound of people yelling to be heard over one another came to a sudden halt as James yelled at them to be quiet. "That's better. Now, form a single file line or get out. I got business here, urgent business!"
The deputy back at the office returned his attentions to Jacobs. Roth made Borjon turn off his scanner so that he didn't hear his own delayed voice in the conversation. "Roth, I don't know how to tell you this, especially with all these people here."
Jacobs instructed the junior deputy to step into Sheriff Crawley's office and shut the door before continuing. He listened as the door closed and the chair was scooted up to the only other radio in the sheriff's department.
"The details are kind of sketchy, but I received a couple of calls back to back. I didn't know what to make of them. One was an animal control report but the other, well; it was a hit and run. The mother and little girl didn't stop after they hit a big-eyed something that lurched out on the road. It was down by Sutter's Crossing, three miles south of town on 17."
Roth was perplexed but intrigued. "What about the animal report, was it another mutilation?"
"No," James replied. A couple of boys stumbled on a nest of some kind, with a big lizard sleeping in it. It smelled to high heaven and it hissed at them. When they grabbed some rocks and threw at it, the thing jumped up and hopped away. Right onto the highway at 17. As far as I know, it's still there."
"I'm on it!" Jacobs replied, signing off before Bill could ask for any more advice.
THE CAPTURE
Try as he might, Jacobs had no luck shaking the 'Observer' publisher en route to the scene of the Chupacabra sighting and accident. He could only assume that the two were related, from the description and artist’s rendering Borjon supplied. Roth asked to borrow it, and Jeremy reluctantly agreed, under the conditions of their arrangement. How far did it actually go, and where would the sheriff's department draw the line on access?
It all depended on how beneficial or detrimental a specific report might be to the case.
Who was he kidding? With the local magistrate in the paper's back pocket, the only hope he had was outrunning or hiding whatever he found from the persistent reporter. Between the agreement to share information and the blasted scanner in the late model sedan in hot pursuit, it would be hard to do either.
Highway 17 ran southwest of town into open country. Because it did not lead to a destination of any consequence, it was cracked in places with intermittent potholes that the deputy seemed incapable or uninterested in avoiding. If this thing was still alive, it would flee. If it was dead, the last thing Jacobs wanted was to have a small crowd of people gathered around it. Sirens blaring, he attracted more attention than he wanted, anyway. Borjon used it like a police escort as he followed after.
Fortunately, once he was out of town and bumping along the stretch of two-lane highway fallen into disrepair, there was no need to alarm motorists or bring the owners of the few houses that lined the road onto their porches. He scanned the road ahead and saw a mother clutching her daughter, standing behind a Ford station wagon with oxidized blue paint and rusted chrome.
He was waved over unnecessarily by the girl's mother, who looked distraught and anxious as the nine-year-old child refused to loosen her grip about the woman's waist. Roth pulled onto the narrow shoulder of the road, with Jeremy Borjon following close behind. The deputy got out, donned his hat and club for good measure and approached the two females.
"Everyone all right, here?" He asked, casting his eyes along the asphalt road from the twenty-yard skid to where the car rested at the edge of a draw. Had they not managed to stop, mother and daughter could have been seriously hurt. He approached them with the reporter close behind. Jacobs spun on his heel and stood looking down at the smaller Borjon.
"I need a few minutes with these two. Wait here and I'll let you know when or if you can speak to them. Okay?"
Jeremy nodded uncertainly, about to invoke the terms of their shaky alliance, but thought better of it. He realized and hoped Roth didn't that, although he couldn't be stopped from printing what he wished, the townsfolk would not tolerate irresponsibility if he was to unnecessarily upset the family. He knew the little girl as Jessica Sommers, a local pageant staple and her mother, Naomi. Her husband, as he recalled, was an insurance salesman. Borjon could always ask for an interview later at their home.
Jacobs saw that the Sommers were shaken, but unharmed. The mother had a bruise on her forearm where she had rested her elbow on the window ledge. Jessica had been buckled in the back seat and was shaken, but otherwise unharmed. They had apparently not yet contacted Mr. Sommers, as prevalent as cell telephones were in most other parts of the country. The husband kept the only one in the family for use in his business.
"Mrs. Sommers, Naomi, can you tell me what happened?" Jacobs asked, consolingly.
The thirty-four year old nodded, stifling tears for the sake of her daughter.
"We'd just dropped Bud off at work and were heading home. Jessica is going to a birthday party later today so we were going home to get her ready. We were just talking, and I looked back in the mirror to ask her what we should get her little friend, when she pointed out over the seat and screamed for me to look out." The former high school cheerleader apologized and fought back her overwhelmed emotions.
Jacobs allowed her a few moments to compose herself before continuing.
"By the time I looked up, all I saw was this hideous face. It was horrible. The nose, mouth and ears were nothing more than tiny specks on its head, but those eyes. They were enormous! I thought it was my tires squealing, but I didn't have time to break until after I hit it and it rolled up and over my windshield. I barely got the car back under control and pulled off the road before I realized it screamed at me."
"I didn't mean to hit it, poor thing. It must have crawled out onto the highway. I thought it was some kind of animal, but before I knew it, it got up on two legs, hissed at us and limped onto the far side of the road, through those bushes over there."
Jacobs wasn't certain which side it might have come from until he felt himself being watched. It wasn't alien, or even unnerving. With a half turn, he spied a pair of young boys who had been spying on him and now rose up to run. "Wait! Come back
here, you two! I just want to ask you some questions!"
It was too late. The youths were already heading back down through the saw grass along a tractor path by the time Roth leaped the ditch. "Jeremy, keep an eye on the Sommers until I get back!" The deputy scarcely saw the fox in the hen house smile cross Borjon's lips as he hurried along the trail. The overgrown dirt track crossed back and forth over itself and he quickly lost them in the undergrowth.
By now, it was almost a game with the children, who squealed with laughter whenever he would draw close or stopped and found them again somewhere off in the distance. The chase would begin again and the boys knew the forest better than he did. After several minutes, he realized that he had crossed several times from three directions at an intersection beside a fallen giant white oak now rotten and full of insects.
Jacobs jumped over the trunk and knelt behind it until he heard the muffled pad of sneakers on the talcum-fine sand. When he heard their labored breathing and wheezing conversation as to whether they had finally lost the deputy, Jacobs hurdled from his hiding place and caught the boys by their skinny shoulders.
"Gotcha!" He yelled as the youths, no more than ten or eleven, screamed in unison.
“We didn’t do nothin', deputy. Honest! Please let us go. Our folks will be worried…”
They couldn’t have been more than ten years