Chapter 7
The sound of the door opening woke me. Another brown-uniformed large man entered through the door. He wasn’t as big in height or weight as Deputy Powell, but he was definitely cast from a similar physically intimidating mold. He was probably in his sixties, more leanly muscular than the Deputy, with a creased and darkly tanned face. Deputy Powell said I would be chatting with the Sheriff. This must be him.
Neither age nor the job had put a stoop in his shoulders. He stood tall and had a confident manner. However, when he looked toward me, there was sadness in his gaze, as if he was far away, rather than here. Then it was gone, and he had returned to this time and place.
From the open door, he tossed his hat neatly onto the counter in front of the desk with a practiced flick of his wrist. He had a knap sack over his shoulder and dropped that on the counter next to the hat. He glanced at me quickly with a brief tight-lipped grin, and then joined the Deputy in the cubicle.
They talked back and forth, and there were some more phone calls. Deputy Powell seemed to be the agitated one. The Sheriff appeared to be trying to calm him down. Finally they emerged. Our chat was about to begin.
“Nathan Parker, I’m Sheriff Tyler,” he said through the bars of the cell. He pulled a chair up close and relaxed into it. Deputy Powell remained standing. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, and rings of perspiration dampened the shirt near his armpits. While he didn’t seem to break a sweat when he wrestled me in the National Forest, his checking up on me or arguing with the Sheriff had evidently taxed him, at least emotionally.
The Sheriff continued. “It sounds like you had an interesting day. Why don’t you take me through it.” He said it as a statement, not a question.
“Sheriff, am I under arrest or under suspicion of a crime?”
“No,” he said. “Let’s say that you are our guest until we can feel comfortable about what happened today. We don’t have any video camera running, no tape recorder, no stenographer. It’s just us talking. Call it off the record. So, tell me what happened.”
I had to admire his style. It was authoritative, yet reassuring. Perhaps the Sheriff was inclined to let all this go away. I could clam up and ask for a lawyer. But I wanted this over. Just stick to the facts.
“I was hiking in the National Forest. I found a body. I called 9-1-1 and was transferred to Deputy Powell. The guy appeared to be Hispanic. I took some pictures of the body, force of habit.” Stick to the facts.
“I sat in the shade waiting for Deputy Powell. That was maybe thirty yards from the body. But I couldn’t see the body from there. Just before your Deputy arrived, I walked back over toward the body. It was gone. I followed a trail of boot prints, which ended where vehicle tracks started. Then your Deputy showed up.” I stopped there. If I said anything more, about the flies, about the vulture, about my suspicions of a body snatcher, I would be adding fuel to the fire. I would let him bring those up if he chose to. Surely his Deputy or the 9-1-1 Operator had told it all to him already anyway.
And I couldn’t mention my trek up the hill and the guy with the rifle. I hadn’t shared that with the Deputy, so I wasn’t going to share it now. I knew this was not the wisest course of action, since lying to the police is a messy game.
When I didn’t say any more, Sheriff Tyler eventually took the lead. “I’ve seen the pictures on your cell phone. No doubt, there is someone lying on the ground. I can’t tell if he’s dead or simply lying there injured. In your call you said it was a body, no doubt. You chose not to call for medical help. Why?”
“As I told your Deputy, I thought he was dead.” I decided to share information that I had mentioned to the 9-1-1 Operator since that was already part of the record. “He was covered in flies, his eyes were open, and he was unresponsive. He was dead.”
At this, Deputy Powell interrupted accusingly, “You didn’t mention that to me before!”
I pressed on calmly without responding to his outrage. “And I checked for a pulse. There was none.”
“Sheriff, he’s making this stuff up.” He sounded like a hurt child. Then directing his attention toward me, he blurted out, “Why didn’t you mention those before?”
I felt it was time for an appropriate quip, like how could I talk with your flabby ass pinning me to the ground? But the Sheriff straightened up a bit in his chair and raised an open hand slowly as if it were a stop sign, gently signaling for silence from both of us. “OK, so you checked for a pulse and forgot to mention those before?”
“Yes, I did check for a pulse. No, I didn’t forget to mention it. I told all this to the 9-1-1 Operator. Your Deputy had me in cuffs before I could finish telling him.”
Enid Powell scowled at me, but didn’t speak. He was boiling inside, but respecting the Sheriff’s wish for peace.
“Where did you check for a pulse?”
“On his wrist,” I said a bit weakly.
“You do know that a pulse should be checked on the neck, on the carotid artery. A lot more reliable as an indicator,” the Sheriff offered.
“Yes,” I said sheepishly. “I screwed up.”
He stared at me for several seconds before continuing. “You thought he was dead and made the call to 9-1-1.”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause before the Sheriff spoke again. “I took a ride out to the spot where you said you found him. I saw the blood on the ground. We now have samples that can be used for analysis.”
I glanced toward the knap sack he had dumped on the counter when he came in. I wanted to shout, Finally you’re doing something. But I remained silent, gazing at him. I hoped he would continue, describing a more thorough investigation.
As if reading my mind, he asked, “You were expecting more?”
Was he asking for my advice? Did he want me to tell him what to do? Perhaps here was my invitation to offer what else might be done. I said, “I suppose there are some things that might be done. For example, plaster replicas of the boot prints, measurements on the length of the strides, dimensions on the vehicle tires and tire-to-tire distance?”
He looked at me for a few seconds. Rather than responding, he asked me something else. “Did you know this man, this Hispanic?”
“No, never met him before.”
“Was there any reason you wanted him dead?”
Wanted him dead? Was he probing for a motive? I could envision the Sheriff thinking I had hit the guy and called 9-1-1 to report an accidental death. Then maybe I changed my mind, panicked, and decided to hide the body. So I had to make up a story about a body snatcher to cover it up. I felt like a trap was closing on me. I felt anger rising in me. I wanted to lash out.
“No!” I said too forcefully.
“Did you move the body?”
He really was probing for a reason to keep me locked up.
“No,” I said less forcefully, but with as much conviction as I could put into that one short word.
The Sheriff stared unblinking at me for a long time. He breathed in deeply as if to continue, then changed direction. “When did you arrive in Willow Run?”
I hesitated before answering, “Yesterday.”
“Where are you staying and for how long?”
“At the Willow Run Inn on Route 287. I have the room for a week.”
“And you’re here just to do some hiking?”
“Yes.”
“You’re an ex-cop, unemployed?”
“Yes.”
“Any career plans after hiking?”
Yes, I thought to myself. I hope to get my old job back. And I want to be a writer. But I simply said, “I’m working on plans. And I have enough money to pay my bills. I’m not a vagrant.”
The Sheriff sat silent and unmoving, gazing at me intently for what seemed an eternity. Then for a second, or maybe it was a fraction of a second, one corner of his mouth ticked upward ever so slightly in a quarter grin. Then it was gone
. He leaned forward in his chair, spreading his hands wide on his knees.
“Well, Nathan Parker. We checked you out. You seem to be OK, although I must say you had a bad day, calling in a false report about a dead body. It must be a false report since there was no body and no evidence of a body. Just a bloodstain and some footprints leading to where a vehicle was parked. To answer your previous questions, no, I did not collect all the evidence you suggested. This is not CSI or NCIS. This is Willow Run, Montana. We don’t have a crime lab. And there is no need to gather all that evidence when there is no hint of a crime.”
He continued. “It seems there was an injured man, perhaps a Hispanic man from what you say. He was out there, got hurt, and then just walked away. No body, no crime. We’ll let the false report thing pass. Call it a professional courtesy. You are lucky the guy was able to walk away. If he had been more seriously hurt and not given medical attention, he might not have survived. Then you would be in some hot water for failing to aid him.”
He paused for that message to sink in. He was saying I had screwed up, and warning me not to screw up again in his town.
“So, Mr. Parker, enjoy your hiking vacation. Remember to stay on the marked trails. It’s a big country out there, and people do get lost.”
The Deputy didn’t seem to share this outcome. His tight-faced expression said he wanted me to suffer some consequence. But he remained silent. I simply nodded gratefully, and the Sheriff continued. “We did save the pictures from your cell phone. We will look into finding the guy to see if he needs medical attention. He may be a migrant worker. Maybe got a bit lost out there. Not too many of them out here, but they do come and go from time to time. Probably we’ll never find him.” He paused then continued. “Anyway, we deleted the pictures from your phone. We don’t want them falling into the wrong hands and ending up posted on the Internet. Everything else, you can have back.”
I simply nodded.
“OK then,” Sheriff Tyler said. “Deputy Powell will take you to your car. Then I suggest you drive it back to your motel room, get a good night’s sleep, and forget this day ever happened. Start fresh tomorrow on your vacation. It’s Sunday night. Supposed to be my day off. So I’m heading home for supper.” With that, the Sheriff rose from his chair, grabbed his hat, and headed out into the fading heat of the evening.
On the drive back to my car, I again rode in the back seat of the Deputy’s SUV, this time uncuffed, but intentionally still not wearing my seat belt. The Deputy scowled the whole trip. When we arrived, he simply said, “This is your lucky day,” as he yanked the door open and waved me out of his vehicle.
He stayed to watch me get into my car and drive away. Then he followed, probably to ensure I headed toward the motel. The Sheriff had advised me to forget this day had ever happened. That seemed like good advice. Yet I thought there was better advice to follow. I had to tread lightly since I didn’t have a badge to protect me, but I wasn’t going to forget this day. I was a cop at heart, and had to know what happened. Besides, I came out here to become a writer. I sensed there was a story to find in this dead Hispanic on the trail.