Chapter 4

The sheriff’s office wasn’t hard to find, located at the end of the main street, in a small building that housed the courthouse, police station, and mayor’s office. The building was divided into a two-story center section with two one-story wings on either side.

The two-story center held the city’s town hall, which was mostly just a clerk’s office that handled tickets, permits, and the like, a storage room for records, and the mayor’s office. Taylor had read somewhere the mayor was also the owner of the grocery store and wondered if people needed to see him about the store did they come here, or did they have to go there if they had town business.

The courthouse was on the left side of the building and was really just a single courtroom and the judge’s office. As small as it was, Silver Plains was the largest city in the county, which stopped just short of Odessa, which meant anyone who needed to see a judge was forced to drive here instead of dealing with it in their own town. Taylor imagined for some, that could be a pain, considering the size of the county. On the map he’d looked at, some of the cities that would still be under this judge’s jurisdiction were almost seventy miles away. That was life in the desert, apparently.

The right side of the building held their actual destination, the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was actually a county official, and not law enforcement for only Silver Plains. It had probably been located here because this was where the courthouse was. It also meant the few deputies the county had were forced to patrol a pretty large chunk of land, which probably meant that people were forced to deal with many problems themselves. Of course, this was West Texas, which also probably meant everyone was armed and might have preferred dealing with problems without the sheriff getting involved.

Just like with the courthouse side of the building, it wasn’t particularly large for what a police station and jail needed to be. Taylor wondered if they had more than one or two cells in total. If he had to guess, they only housed people when absolutely necessary and most likely sent anyone awaiting trial to a state penitentiary.

They pushed through the glass doors that separated the building’s lobby from its three parts and into the police station, where an older woman manned a counter that separated the fairly small room from the five by ten foot area used as some kind of reception. It seemed a bit unnecessary, since there were only four desks behind her and two doors that led into what he guessed was the jail. He didn’t even see anything that looked like a sheriff’s office.

“Captain Chenier,” the woman said, looking up at them. “How can we help you?”

“We need to see Sheriff Martin,” he said, actually looking past her to a woman sitting at one of the four desks behind her.

“These’re the Feds you mentioned, Jim?” the woman, who Taylor assumed was the sheriff, said, standing up and walking over to the counter.

“Hi, I’m Agent Whitaker, this is Agent Taylor.”

“I guess y’all can come on back to my office,” she said, waving them to follow her.

Her office turned out to be through one of the two doors he’d noticed and contained the precinct’s break room slash armory. Taylor imagined something like this would give most law enforcement professionals heartburn, but maybe they had to make do with the little space they had.

One wall had three gun cabinets, while the other contained filing cabinets and a refrigerator. In the center of the room was a plastic fold-out table with six fold-out metal chairs around it. The sheriff flopped down in one of the chairs and propped her feet up on the table, leaning back.

Taylor had a hard time getting a read on her. She seemed a bit on the short side and she wore her dark hair down and loose, which most cops chose not to do, since it both got in the way and could be a liability when wrestling with a suspect. She also wore a noticeable ring on her right index finger. It had a black band with a small inset stone. It wasn’t a graduation ring, at least not one that he’d ever seen before, or any kind of wedding or engagement ring. Even still, most cops wore only a simple plain band if they were on the job, since anything more might get damaged or lost. Whitaker kept hers on a chain around her neck, tucked inside her dress shirt and undershirt, to make sure she didn’t lose it, and she was an FBI agent who didn’t often have to deal with drunks.

The rest of her, however, was just like any other cop he’d met. Her uniform was bulky, probably because she was wearing a vest, which most uniformed police did on duty, with a bulky belt holding all the sundries cops needed throughout the day. Her shoes were standard police issue, like she’d picked up everything from the same catalog, except worn in, which meant she wasn’t just a show pony.

“So, I guess you folks have questions?”

“Some, but we also wanted to stop in and introduce ourselves. While we’ll mostly be working on the base, it looks like there’s enough of a connection to the town itself that our investigation will extend here as well. I like to extend the courtesy of an official introduction to local law enforcement, since we might have to work with each other,” Whitaker said.

“Friendly of you. I’m Sheriff Martin. You said you’re Agent Whitaker and the grumpy looking man’s Agent Taylor, and that there’s Captain Chenier. Consider us introduced.”

“Right,” Whitaker said, caught off guard by her nature.

Taylor, however, found he liked her right away. She had a bullshit-free kind of attitude he appreciated.

“Getting down to business, I wanted to get your read on what’s been happening in your town, Sheriff. Even with an Army base here, I’m assuming murders in a town this size can’t be all that common, so two civilians in as many months has to be a big deal.”

Whitaker gave him a side-eyed glace that he knew meant he was going off script and she didn’t like it. She preferred playing it closer to the vest with locals, since they usually had their own agendas and motives in their jurisdictions, which sometimes got in the way of their investigation. Taylor could appreciate that, and normally approved of the attitude, since a lot of local sheriffs and police chiefs were little more than tin-pot dictators, more focused on maintaining control of their local fiefdoms or getting reelected than anything else.

“Well, for one, you’re assumptions about our town here are wrong. Not that you don’t have us rightly pegged as a small southern town where nothing much happens, and a few years ago you’d have been pretty well on the money. This year though, things have been a bit more exciting.”

“You’ve had more than just these two murders?” Taylor asked, surprised.

“We have. Over the last three years, we’ve had nine murders, not counting the two the Army has taken jurisdiction over.”

“Nine? I haven’t looked at crime stats for small towns in a while,” Whitaker said, “but that seems like a lot.”

“It is. By comparison, that’s as many as we’ve had in the previous fifty years combined.”

“Why so many? I know some small towns have started having issues with drug problems. Meth and the like,” Whitaker said.

“That might be so, but that’s not what happened here. None of the murders seem connected to drugs or any crime at all. Two of them happened in the same two months as the two the Army has claimed responsibility for.”

“You’ve had four murders in two months?” Taylor asked.

“Yep.”

Taylor turned to look at Chenier, who held up his hands.

“The sheriff has already made the suggestion I think you’re about to. We looked into them. There’s no sign that those murders are in any way connected to what’s happened on the base.”

“In a town of fewer than two thousand people, you’re telling me that there were four murders connected to the problems at Fort Chilton and just two coincidental murders in the town, and they’re in no way connected.”

“That’s what I said,” the sheriff said.

“I know that sounds bad, but you just heard her,” the captain said. “We’ve had nine murders in three years, counting those two. Clearly, there’s something going on here that has nothing to do with what’s happening on the base.”

“Do we know that? I find it hard to believe that they went fifty years with no murders and over a three-year period they’ve had a rash of murders and you’ve had a black market ring pop up on base, and they’re in no way connected.”

“Again, that’s what I said.

“Coincidences happen; it doesn’t mean there’s some big conspiracy here. The problems on base didn’t start until a year ago, which means that two years of those increased murders happened before a single thing went missing from the base. They’re unconnected events, and the Army isn’t about to start claiming responsibility for local matters.”

“How can you be sure that the first time Fort Chilton had a problem with supplies going missing was a year ago? A lot of units rotate in and out of the base, and a lot of supplies, both attached to those units and delivered to supply them, end up missing.”

“I know you two are hotshot investigators sent across the country to look at the big problems, but I’m not some idiot yokel. What crime we do have is because people got drunk or an argument got out of hands. These murders though; all of them cold-blooded without an explanation. We brought in forensic techs all the way from El Paso for the last two, and they found nothing. No fingerprints, no blood that wasn’t the victim’s, nothing that shouldn’t have been at the scene. Sound familiar?”

“Did you look into any of these murders,” Taylor asked the captain.

“No, because they had no clear ties to Fort Chilton or the army in any way. The sheriff is also leaving out some information. The last murder was a stripper and the one before that a notorious drunk. Maybe we should consider if that falls into the ‘people who got drunk or had an argument’ category of local crime. There are plenty of explanations for those murders outside of the Army. She’s also failing to mention it’s almost election time again, and her constituents have started noticing all these unsolved murders.”

The sheriff dropped her feet to the ground with a thump and pushed herself up with her palms against her knees.

“Well, as much of a pleasure it is to work with the Army, I have things to do today. So, if there won’t be anything else?”

“Sheriff Martin, could you get us copies of whatever you have on these local murders and any other crime that you think might be connected?” Whitaker asked. “I promise we’ll take this seriously, and give it our full intention.”

“You’re not seriously taking her seriously?” Chenier said, angrily.

“We believe in having all the information available when conducting an investigation, Captain. Small towns like this and Army bases do NOT operate in a vacuum and if you can’t see a string of murders starting not long before the Army noticed it was missing supplies might be connected, then I have concerns about your abilities to investigate anything. Now, I’m not saying you’re wrong and I’m not saying these murders are connected to the Army. What I am saying is I want to have the full picture so I know what we’re talking about. Refusing to even look at something that might be potentially connected is stupid, at the very least.”

Chenier’s face reddened and he turned and stormed out of the sheriff’s office.

“What’s that people always say about me, being the one without tact,” Taylor said, grinning at Whitaker. “Sheriff, it was a pleasure. Just send those documents over when you get a chance.”

Taylor gave a single wave to the sheriff before turning and following the captain out. He found the captain pacing by the staff car he’d been driving, muttering to himself.

“You’ll have to forgive her, Captain. She believes in doing everything by the book, and they’re big on getting information.”