Lori Handeland - Blue Moon

I’ll never be able to prove if I imagined the change in Karen Larson or if it was real, because her head snapped back as a bullet took out her brain.

Thank God the kid was unconscious. Considering the mess, I wish I had been.

Before you get the wrong impression, I didn’t shoot her.

I spun around, coming face-to-face with my boss, Sheriff Clyde Johnston.

"Were you gonna shoot that pistol or whistle Dixie?" he grumbled.

If Clyde wasn’t three-quarters Indian, he’d be a good old boy to rival them all. As it was, his belly stretched his sheriff’s shirt to bursting, the chew in his mouth garbled his speech, and the size of his gun made me remember old jokes about large weapons and small male equipment. His habit of parroting lines from Clint Eastwood movies in normal conversation frayed the patience of better men than me.

His Clint fixation also explained why we carried .44 Magnums in Miniwa when a lot of other departments had moved into the world of semiautomatic weapons. But I agreed with Clyde that revolvers were more reliable than the newfangled automatics, which required a higher quality of ammunition and had a habit of misfiring. When dealing with guns, I vote for reliability over speed any day.

My ears ringing from the volume of the blast, I ran across the room and picked up the little boy. He was still unconscious. A quick glance at the other body, principal from the cut of the suit, revealed he was as dead as Karen Larson, though not from the same cause. Her head sported a large hole. The principal’s neck did.

"Guess .44 Magnum is the most powerful handgun in the world," Clyde observed. "Nearly blew her head clean off."

This was a bit much, even for me. I headed for the door with the kid and left Clyde to clean up after himself for a change. He took one glance at my face and didn’t stop me.

The EMTs were in the hall. I handed the boy to the nearest one. "This is the only known injury. The others are fatalities."

The woman gave a quick, capable nod as she checked him over. "What’s his name?"

"Don’t know. He was unconscious when I got here. He might not even be hurt. That’s not his blood or—" I broke off. No need to detail what else wasn’t his.

"Right," she said. "We’ll take it from here."

They whisked him off to points unknown, and though I didn’t want to, I returned to the crime scene.

Clyde had everything under control. He might look like a fool, but he wasn’t. That’s how he’d stayed sheriff of Miniwa for thirty years. The Indians trusted him, and the white folks held him up as their token native. That he was smart as a shiny new shoe and had never allowed a crime to go unpunished on his watch didn’t hurt, either.

He hovered near the scene, intent on preserving it until the techs and the medical examiner arrived. Miniwa being such a small community, we shared both with Clearwater, across the lake, and several other tiny towns.

As I entered the room, Clyde glanced up, then quirked a dark, bushy brow. "Tell me, Jessie, how is it I find little ol‘ you in the middle of this great big mess?"

Only a man the size of Clyde would consider me little. I’d be fond of him for that alone, if I were capable of it.

"I was following up on a case."

He frowned. "Which case?"

Since he’d just come on duty and I’d just gone off, Clyde wouldn’t have seen my report yet, even if I had filed one.

"Minor traffic accident. Miss Larson hit a wolf."

"Who?"

I waved my hand in the direction of body number two.

"Oh. So?"

Quickly I filled him in on the details. Wham, bam, down goes the wolf. Nip the hand, chase through the night, no sign of the animal. Then Miss Larson nixing the rabies shots and her subsequent need for them. I left out the naked Indian part. Clyde wouldn’t be interested.

"Huh," he muttered. "Papers are gonna have a field day."

I groaned. Small towns had little to do but gossip. The incidents of the past twelve hours were going to turn into a major media event and quite possibly a serious problem. There’d be gunmen in the woods searching for a rabid wolf—DNR orders be damned. We’d have panic-stricken citizens shooting stray dogs and maybe even stray people.

"Exactly." Clyde spit a brown stream into a nearby garbage can. Hadn’t anyone informed him of the horrors of tongue cancer? "Maybe you oughta just keep the wolf story to yourself, hmm?"

"But—"

"No buts. You know what’ll happen. Once we take care of the wolf, we’ll tell the truth. Where’s the harm in that?"

True. However—

"I’ll have to talk to Brad and Zee," I said. "But they shouldn’t be a problem."

Clyde grunted. "Good. Do that."

"There’s also a doctor at the clinic—"

"I’ll talk to him."

"Okay." I stood there, uncertain. I wanted to ask Clyde a question, but I wasn’t sure how.

"You gotta be draggin‘, Jessie. Go home. Sleep. I can handle this."

"Not much left to handle," I muttered, eyes on the bodies.

I felt his sharp glare. "You got somethin‘ else to say? Say it."

He knew as well as I did that I couldn’t leave until reinforcements arrived. Clyde had just shot a civilian. There were procedures to follow, not the least of which was taking his gun and giving my statement as a witness. I really shouldn’t have left him in the room alone, but what choice did I have with an unconscious child in my arms?

Clyde was a good cop. He’d already bagged his gun. The pistol lay on one of the desks, an obscene reminder of too many other guns in schools.

"Jessie?" Clyde prompted.

I continued to hesitate. Clyde had been sheriff since before I was born; who was I to question his methods? Still I couldn’t go home and sleep without asking. My curiosity wouldn’t let me.

"Did you have to hit her in the head, Clyde? I mean—" I shrugged, spread my hands. "Wouldn’t the leg have worked just as well?"

"I’ve seen perps keep comin‘ with bullets in their leg, gut, chest, back. But I’ve never seen any get up after I put one between their eyes."

"But—"

"She was stark ravin‘ loony. She’d already killed one man and she had a kid in her hands. You wanna argue head or leg with that boy’s mama?"

"No, sir."

"I didn’t think you would."

Clyde stared at me for a moment, as if taking my measure. Before he could say anything else, the crime scene techs and two of our officers arrived and got to work. I gave my statement and was released.

The medical examiner had not yet arrived to pronounce the victims. Nothing new there. Dr. Prescott Bozeman was a fuckup if ever there was one.

I glanced at Clyde and received a sharp nod. "We know where to find you if we need you, Jessie Mc-Quade."

All the way home I wondered why his words sounded like a threat when I knew that they weren’t.

I managed to sleep a few hours, but something in my subconscious kept pricking at me.

A jumble of memories tumbled through my dreams, conversations, medical jargon, a swinging golden earring, and a wolf totem.

I awoke with the midafternoon sun shining hot across my bed. I’d forgotten to pull the heavy curtains I’d purchased so I could sleep in the daytime and work all night. I had to have been exhausted to forget, equally exhausted to sleep through the brightest part of the day.

But now I was awake, and a question kept pounding in my head like the ache pounding behind my eyes.

What was wrong with this picture ?

I crawled into the kitchen, turned on the coffeemaker, shoved my mug onto the hot plate until it was full, then slammed the carafe into place.

The totem bothered me. If it had been on the road before Karen hit the wolf, it should have been dust. If she’d been wearing it, then why had I found the thing so far from the car?