Sheriff Dearborn lifted his Chicago Bears travel mug to his lips and blew into the round O cut into the burnt orange lid before he took a drink. Hazelnut. Dearborn’s favorite. He smacked his lips, puffed a cooling breath into the navy blue tumbler, and took another sip. Trish had added an extra sugar packet even though she knew he was trying to cut out the sweet stuff.
He set his coffee mug down as he approached Goodeville’s last traffic signal. The red light painted the hood of his white-and-gold cruiser a pale Christmas crimson. His thick, calloused fingers drummed against the steering wheel as he waited for the light to turn green. Dearborn had only seen a few cars on his final patrol of the night. The passenger and rear seats had all been full of teenagers who’d rolled down their windows and given the sheriff big, goofy, and if he was being honest, fairly tipsy grins and waves as they passed by. The designated drivers had remained focused on the road, and that’s really all he needed to see. The sheriff wasn’t in the habit of busting kids for being kids. He’d leave that to their parents.
The light turned green and Dearborn left the vibrant Main Street in his rearview and slipped under the blanket of darkness that covered cornfields and country houses. He took another sip of coffee and craned his neck to peer up at the sky. Clouds had rolled in while he’d been in his office completing the day’s paperwork. Another sip. That’s when Trish had made his coffee. Sweet, sweet coffee. Sweet, sweet Trish. He reached up to the transceiver attached to the shoulder of his uniform and squeezed the talk button. “Two sugars?”
Trish answered immediately. “I figured it wasn’t really cheating if you didn’t add the sugar in yourself.” The dispatcher’s voice rang back clear and smooth as if the new Alexa his nephew had set up for him at home had followed him into his car.
Dearborn fumbled with the buttons on his walkie-talkie. The darned device had always been too small for his hands. “You’re too good to me, Trish.”
“Don’t count your chickens just yet, Sheriff. I just got off the horn with old Earl Thompson. He’s been snooping around the field out by Quaker Road. Said he’ll meet you out there. He also said—oh dagnabit, I had it right here…” Papers rustled as Trish dug through her notes.
Trish’s dispatch station was a mess of Post-its, origami farm animals, and photos of her Yorkie, Pepper. Over the years, Dearborn had learned that a good leader doesn’t force his team to fit into a certain mold. He allows them to be themselves. He rubbed the burnt orange and navy BE YOU sticker stuck to the center of his steering wheel. He and Matt Nagy couldn’t both be wrong.
“If it was a snake, it would’ve bitten me.” Trish’s laughter tinkled through the cruiser like wind chimes. “Old Earl said that ‘there’s a ruckus out there at that old olive tree.’” She’d lowered her voice and made it tremble with age. “‘Not that I’m surprised. Who plants one olive tree? A twisted, mangled one, no less. Been giving me the heebie-jeebies my whole life.’ All one million years of it.” She paused. “I added that last part myself.”
Dearborn’s barrel chest shook with a chuckle. Trish always made him laugh. “I was hoping to end my shift on time tonight, er”—he glanced down at his watch: 02:36—“this morning, but I’m only a couple minutes away. I’ll head over and check out the ruckus.”
The sheriff flipped on his high beams as he drove deeper into the dark.
“What do you make of them planting just one olive tree all those hundreds of years ago?” Papers continued to rustle as Trish spoke, and Dearborn could picture her folding the small squares into another barnyard animal for her desktop menagerie.
He took another drink and let the sweet hazelnut drift across his taste buds as he considered Trish’s question. He had never much thought about it. As a high schooler, he’d go to parties out by the aging olive tree or the lone apple tree on the other side of town or the single cherry or palm that encircle Goodeville. He’d always felt strong and protected while he was out near one of the trees. But get any teenage boy liquored up and he’d be liable to feel like Superman. Now, many years older and much, much wiser, Dearborn felt a bit like one of those lone trees–—waiting, guarding, aging.
A flutter of pages. “I think it’s pretty neat.” Trish clucked. “Adds a bit of flavor none of the other towns have. Not sure that’s what the founders were aiming for when they planted them…”
“I tend to agree with you, Trish.” It wasn’t the most honest thing he could’ve said. Dearborn tended to agree with folks a lot more than he actually agreed with them, but sometimes little white lies kept the peace and helped build trust. And a team was nothing without trust.
Sheriff Dearborn’s blinker lit up the night air with a Halloween glow as he turned off the main road onto the craterous drive that passed by the ancient olive. The first-aid kit he kept in his passenger seat rattled as the cruiser bounced along the gravel. Dearborn grimaced while he did his best to pass more potholes than he hit. He closed in on Earl’s parked shiny red truck as the beams from his headlights bobbed against the olive tree’s gnarled trunk like he was a boat at sea and it, a buoy.
He rubbed at the pain sprouting in his neck. His old U of I football injury always acted up whenever he was out on these unpaved roads. He’d have to sit down with the mayor again. Outside city limits needed just as much care as inside.
“I’m not sure why you bother checking up on everything old Earl calls in,” Trish said, bringing him back to the matter at hand. “Especially with your neck the way it is. By my count, this is ruckus number thirty-two, and that’s just this year. Old Earl might beat last year’s Ruckus Record.”
The Ruckus Record. Dearborn’s clean-shaven cheeks plumped with a grin. That was another thing that cluttered Trish’s desk. She’d decorated a small piece of poster board in fancy hand-drawn calligraphy she’d learned in one of the art classes down at the fancy new craft store, Glitter and Glue. After Dearborn returned from checking out the latest call from Earl, he would come back to the precinct and watch Trish light up as she chose which of her many stickers to add to the poster board. It was a small thing, childish even, but it was a thing they shared only with each other.
He pulled behind Earl’s pickup and put his car in park. “It’ll give us a reason to open up that new pack of stickers you bought. Big, silver disco ball–looking stars, weren’t they?”
Trish’s laughter made his chest tighten.
“Oh, you caught me.” She giggled. “I can’t hide anything from your sharp investigative skills. And I just cannot stay out of that darned craft store.”
Dearborn dug through the first-aid kit for the aspirin and popped a couple before he unbuckled his seat belt and threw open his door. “If Earl’s going to beat last year’s record, we’ll need all the stickers we can get.”
He unclipped the flashlight from the belt fastened around his waist and shined the light through the back window of the truck. Empty.
A faint acrid, smoky scent wafted toward him on the crisp night breeze. He took a deep inhale and followed the smell into the grass away from the tree and the truck and the suspected ruckus.
Dearborn winced as he craned his neck to talk into the transceiver. “Someone’s been out here smoking—probably kids. I’ll take a closer look and make sure they didn’t leave any cigarette butts behind. Don’t want this whole field going up.”
“Ten-four.” Trish was silent for a moment before she came back on the radio, her voice light and airy in that hen-like way it got when she came across a juicy bit of town gossip. “You know, old Earl hasn’t been the same since Debbie left him for that spin instructor over in Chicago.”
Raindrops splatted against Dearborn’s back and the grass swayed around his shins. Each burst of wind through the fields brought with it the steady whoosh of waves on a coastal shoreline. Dearborn paused and savored the moment before resuming his march through the grass.
“That was back a year or so after the town put in the train,” he said as he cast his beam back and forth over the blades’ puffy tops. “What was that, five years ago now?”
A whole world of changes had happened on the heels, or maybe on the tracks was a more fitting description, of the new commuter train that ran in a loop from Chicago through Joliet, Bloomington, Champaign-Urbana, Rantoul, and Kankakee before bisecting Goodeville. It had saved the town from a fate too many small Midwestern municipalities had succumbed to and brought with it thriving shops and train cars packed with weary city folk desperate for the sappy slow pace of picturesque Goodeville. The commuter train had also brought Trish to Goodeville. Dearborn didn’t have one complaint.
Papers rustled as Trish came back over the radio. “Five whole years this August. You know, old Earl was a member of the board that decided to bring the train into Goodeville. Without it, Debbie would be home and you wouldn’t have to deal with the old coot calling every other day and sending you out on wild-goose chases. If that’s not old Earl’s bad luck, I don’t know what is.”
Dearborn paused and sniffed the air. The scent had died. He took a few steps to the right, back toward Earl’s empty truck and the road and the olive tree, and sniffed again. There it was. He wiggled his nose and followed the scent like a basset hound.
“Yeah, poor Earl,” he murmured into his walkie-talkie as he left the grass and crossed the road.
“Poor Earl? If you don’t mind me saying, you should really be thinking, poor you.” She sighed. “In as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never even come close to finding your Debbie.”
Gravel crunched under his boots as he passed through the white cones of light from his high beams. “I don’t need a Debbie, Trish. I have you.” Through the steady hum of the radio, he could practically hear her plump cheeks flush with heat. He scratched the back of his neck as warmth pricked his own.
Dearborn cleared his throat and pressed the talk button. “I’ll check in after I’ve sussed out the situation. I’m headed right toward the olive tree.” Another sniff. “Maybe Earl stumbled onto something real this time.”
“He would love that.” Trish clucked. “Be safe out there.”
The line went quiet as Dearborn headed into the stretch of grass. He wiped the spits of rain from his face and rubbed the tip of his square nose. The closer he got to the tree, the thicker the stench. It bit at his nose and made his eyes water.
“Earl,” he called as he swept the beam from his flashlight over the grass. “Where’d you get off to?”
The gravel crunched behind him and he spun around. He squinted through his tear-swirled vision. “Earl?” he hollered once again as he shined his flashlight along his car, Earl’s truck, and then the road’s shoulder. The white light struck something shiny. The hairs on the back of Dearborn’s neck bristled. His mouth went dry as his fingers found his gun holster. His eyes burned and tears and rain and snot leaked down his face as he quickly, expertly closed in on the glinting metal.
Sheriff Dearborn’s stomach hollowed as the scene came into view. The buckles of Earl’s suspenders twinkled in the flashlight beam like trapped lightning bugs. The old man’s fingers threaded through the tall grass as if he laid there, peacefully staring up at the stormy night’s sky. Bile burned the back of Dearborn’s throat as he shined his light on Earl’s face. Blood streaked the man’s wrinkled brow and cheeks, and rain pooled in the raw red hollows where his eyes had been.
Hazelnut and sick coated Sheriff Dearborn’s tongue and he pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. He was a leader, and with a death like this—a murder like this—his town would need him to lead, need him to be strong.
The sheriff leaned into his radio. “Trish, send an ambulance to Quaker Road and wake up Carter. Wake up the coroner. Everyone! We need to—” Dearborn’s eyelids slammed shut as the smoky scent intensified.
Footsteps slid across the gravel behind him.
Dearborn unbuckled his holster and drew his sidearm. “Who’s out there?” Tears welled and blurred his vision. “Who’s out there?!”
A shadow crossed his beam of light and grass mashed under heavy feet.
The acrid, burning scent was palpable, stringy sizzles of electricity biting at his eyes and nostrils. Dearborn opened his mouth to bark a command and the snapping jolts surged past his parted lips. His gun and flashlight thumped against the ground as he dropped to his knees and gripped his throat.
“Sheriff, you okay?” Trish called out into the dark and rainy night. “Sheriff?” Her voice tightened with panic. “Frank?!”