Chapter 4

Sheriff Leroy Patterson had just taken over the position after the previous sheriff retired. Sheriff Patterson was a tall, angular man, standing almost six and a half feet tall. He was rather skinny, weighing only one-eighty soaking wet.

He wore a white cowboy hat anytime outdoors, so the one on his balding head was not worn for show. The sheriff had the two top buttons of his dark shirt open, revealing a mass of hair sticking out that could easily cover the baldness.

The sheriff was in another room, just off the one Michael Hunt was looking in. Sheriff Patterson had just walked to the back of the room and found the motherlode, a collection of dirty magazines that were in two stacks and almost reached his waist.

A smile formed on his wrinkled face. These weren’t the fluffy magazines available in the local convenience stores, but the hardcore stuff, the kind he liked. He grabbed the top one off the cover and pointed his flashlight at it.

BIG MOMMA’S! was the name of the magazine. He glanced inside and realized that was an accurate description. Now the sheriff didn’t have anything against plump women, but it just wasn’t his cup of tea. He tossed that one aside and was about to pick up another one.

“Sheriff!” came the call from the other room.

“What?” he said in an irritated mood. Whatever the newspaper guy had found could wait. The sheriff had hours of fun waiting here.

“You better come here.”

The sheriff sighed heavily and walked out of the room, making sure he remembered which one had the goodies inside. He stuck his head in a couple of rooms before seeing Michael just inside the doorway, staring at something at the other end of the room.

“Look there,” Michael said.

“Hang on, check this out,” the sheriff said and thrust the magazine out.

Michael wasn't positive, but thought the sheriff was breathing awful heavy. He turned his attention away for a second to see what the sheriff wanted. It was a magazine entitled BLUE-HAIRED BABES! Michael looked at the magazine and back at the sheriff.

“So?” he said.

The sheriff opened up the magazine to the centerfold. “Now that’s a hot filly right there, eh?”

Michael couldn’t make out much of the woman, not that he really wanted to see her. “There he is.”

He pointed toward the far side of the room. Aaron Sanders was lying on top of the desk that he had once hid behind. There was an open wound in the middle of his forehead. His mouth was wide open. What used to be his tongue was cut out and placed in the middle of his chest.

Aaron’s throat had been slashed from one ear to the other. The blood had formed a large puddle on the desk and was dripping off the side and to the floor. Several rats were scouting out the body. One had walked through the blood and left little foot prints on Aaron’s shirt.

“Bummer,” the sheriff said and turned his attention back to the magazine. “Whoo!”

Michael looked at the body, back at the sheriff and toward Aaron Sanders. “Shouldn’t you do anything with him?”

“Aw, he ain’t going nowhere.”

------

In a large house on the west side of Langford, Sandy Daniels had just walked into her bedroom when the house phone rang again. She was wearing a pair of baggy black shorts, a white Langford tee-shirt and ankle socks on her feet.

Her dark hair was put up in a bun. It had been a long day for her and a night of relaxation was on the agenda. Just minutes earlier, the phone rang but nobody was on the other line when she answered.

Sandy looked at the caller I.D. and saw the number was from a private caller. That normally meant somebody trying to sell something, but sometimes her fiancée, Michael Hunt, would call her like this because he knew how much those kinds of calls bothered her. She really didn’t want to mess with them, if it was a sales person,but also didn’t want the phone tied up so Sandy answered the phone.

For a few seconds, there was nothing coming through the phone. Slowly, somebody started breathing, slowly at first but the pace increased quickly.

“Michael, this isn’t funny,” she said.

“This isn’t Michael,” the caller said. This voice was much different, for sure.

“Squiggy, Michael isn’t here.”

The line was dead for a few seconds. “This isn’t Squiggy.”

Sandy removed the phone from her ear and stared at it for a few seconds. “Who is this?”

“That isn’t important.”

“I kind of like to know who I’m talking to.”

“All you need to do is pass on a message.”

Sandy waited for a second. This was a strange one. She was used to strangeness from living in Langford all her life, but this was a topper.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

“Tell your little boyfriend he’ll never see the sun rise.”

-----

The shape of Aaron Sanders’ body had finally loosened the sheriff from his admiration of the magazine. This was a new one for him. From some forty years of law enforcement, he had seen many dead people.

Even some that had been shot. But never one that wound up looking like this. The sheriff knew this was beyond his grasp and he needed help. The OSBI, Oklahoma’s version of the FBI, had been called and two agents had been dispatched.

He didn’t particularly enjoy dealing with the OSBI, but this was too much. The sheriff was from the northern part of the county and didn’t know many people in Langford or further south.

“You know him?” he said.

“Never seen him before,” Michael said. “I bet Squiggy knows him. Maybe he’ll show up after they quit gloating over capturing the shooter.”

He pulled his cell phone from the holder on his belt to call Squiggy. As he dialed the number, his phone went off. He answered, but whoever the caller was could not be heard. Michael looked at the bars and saw reception for his cell wasn’t good in this building. It actually wasn’t all that great anywhere in downtown Langford, so he walked toward the front of the building.

Michael stopped near the front window and looked out over downtown Langford. He had a good view of the Review and noticed the lights were still on inside and the front door was unlocked.

“Can you hear me now?” he said.

“Yes!” the caller answered. It was Sandy and she sounded rather frantic.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just got a call from somebody and...” she paused for a second.

“Who was it?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

“What did he want?”

“For me to tell you that you won’t see the sun rise tomorrow!”

“Do what?” Michael said.

Her reply was drowned out by a huge roar that shook the window and made Michael jump back.

He looked across the street and dropped the phone. “Oh no!”