Bad Axe County

by John Galligan

  “You don’t know what they did.”

  “I will when you tell me.”

  “Good.”

  After she handed Angus Beavers off to Deputy Eleffson, she realized by the sharpness of gravel that she was still barefoot. That same moment, Deputy Schwem appeared with her socks and boots.

  She sat down to put them on. She forgot why she sat down. She lay back on gravel in a puddle grown warm under the sun. The spring sky was scrubbed cloudless, sapphire blue. Next moment of awareness, Yttri’s breath was in her ear.

  “Sheriff, you’re going to be all right. Bishops Coulee EMS is a minute out, I can hear them coming. Just stay down.”

  Then she was in a bed. The bed was moving toward flashing blue-and-red lights. Shiny white doors swung open to a place where she could rest.

  FIVE DAYS AFTER

  Robert V. Check @bobcheck

  Tweet tweet a little bird is asking you to sign for nomination of Interim Sheriff Kick she’s a keeper VFW 4-9 Mon #dairyqueen #yougogirl #kickherin

  69

  “You sit right here, young lady,” Bob Check told her, pulling out the chair next to his. “Next to a friend.”

  She did so. She squared her uniformed shoulders, drawing the sore shoulder up to level, and sent a tight smile around the conference table. Bad Axe County board chairperson Marge Joss made an announcement to the audience beyond.

  “Now that the sheriff is here, the Bad Axe County board of supervisors, as required by state law, will proceed to closed session in order to consider a personnel matter.”

  Chairperson Joss looked over her reading glasses at the modest crowd of Bad Axers who sat in the gallery on folding chairs. One of them was Deputy Yttri, looking exactly Olaf the Handsome in slacks, a blazer, and a tie, his hair stuck straight up and shining like gold. The interim sheriff had put him up for special commendation by the board. When she walked in he was just tucking his certificate into a folder he had brought with him. The district attorney, wheezy old Baird Sipple, remained seated beside Yttri, the two of them talking with their heads together, not paying attention until Marge Joss rumbled her throat.

  “State law, gentlemen. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re not a member of this board, out you go.”

  When Yttri and Sipple had followed the other spectators out of the room, Chairperson Joss passed out copies of a document to the board.

  “Every one of these copies comes right back to me at the end of this discussion.”

  Supervisors were present from seventeen of the county’s twenty-one townships. As the copies made their way around, the sheriff silently read over her statement one more time.

  The recent formation of a special county commission to review my conduct in office brings to light the need of any community to have confidence in its leaders, especially those whose job it is to protect that community and enforce its laws. Routine inquiries are required anytime there is significant loss of county property, and also, more important, anytime an officer injures or kills someone.

  She had worked hard on the wording, Harley and Denise as her reluctant editors.

  It is because these routine inquiries have raised legitimate doubts about my conduct that the commission was formed. However, before the commission begins to put precious resources toward this work, I wish to respect the efforts by some members of this board to move past a history of mistrust and problematic behavior within the Bad Axe County Sheriff’s Department.

  Did she really mean it? It was twenty-four days after she had accepted what should have been the job of her dreams. It was five days after she had shot Baron Ripp. And, yes, she really meant it.

  For this reason, I ask that you accept my resignation as interim sheriff of Bad Axe County, effective immediately.

  She heard the murmurings of surprise as board members skimmed and got the gist. Chairperson Joss said, “Sheriff, resignation may seem appropriate to some on this board, but it’s still unexpected. Will you explain?”

  * * *

  The idea had come to her in stages over the last few days, beginning a few hours after she shot Baron Ripp in violation of department protocol, of protocol anywhere, clearly to maim him. Sophie Ringensetter’s body was still at the morgue, her family on the way. Pepper Greengrass was still on the run, her family also notified. The sheriff had walked out of the hospital a second time and gone home to see her own family.

  Harley had met her in the yard. He had hugged her long and hard. She had swallowed what she had to say, not sure how to say it. When secretly and helplessly you mistrust someone you love, and you are wrong, and you are ashamed, do you try to put into words the weakness of your soul? Or do you just hang on for dear life?

  She had held on, and held on, until his neck was wet with her tears. She had whispered into it, “I’m always so afraid to lose you.”

  * * *

  She had hugged the kids, taken a shower, hugged them again, and gone back to work. That afternoon in a meeting with District Attorney Sipple, she had admitted what had really happened with Brock Pabst—thereby opening herself to multiple questions of misconduct—and then she had arrested Pabst on a long list of charges. That evening she had difficult meetings with the mother of Pepper Greengrass, negligent and sullen, and the family of Sophie Ringensetter, devasted as their daughter was confirmed dead, her body under medical examination. The next day she had talked with the FBI about Dermit and Ladonna Weeks, their interstate transport of stolen goods, their potential human trafficking. The FBI advised her they would open a case. That same day, she had remembered to give Denise the thumb drive with her list of could-haves.

  “I’m on it,” Denise had told her, “like a duck on a june bug.”

  “I should just let it go,” she offered. “I know I should. I let it go once before.”

  “No, you didn’t. You can’t let it go.”

  The thesis of her offer to resign as sheriff had occurred to her right then.

  “Then I should probably leave. We should probably leave the coulees.”

  Denise had looked back at her with the gritty refusal of a coulee girl to back down.

  “The hell you’ll leave the coulees. Heidi, we want you here. We need you here. You need to be here.”

  Denise had gone to the door of the dispatch room, looked up and down the hall to make sure they were alone.

  “I know this one guy,” she began. “Well, I know a lot of guys—but I know this one guy down in Crawford County. He’s tight with that new preppy chick district attorney who came to see you last week. He talked to her, and she’s on your side. You don’t need to fight the open-records exemption. Here’s a copy of the case file on your parents. It’s open now to you privately, if you know what I mean. What you’ll see is pretty basic. Sheriff Skog considered hardly any suspects, dicked around and dragged his feet, and when the trail led past Cecil Mertz, he just shut the whole investigation down and settled for murder-suicide, rather than expose the fact that he knew for decades that Mertz was selling illegal firearms and that he took bribes to look the other way. Here you go.”

  Her hands had trembled as she accepted the file.

  “Her name is Cindy Puma, the DA, I mean, and she’s awesome. She plans to push Skog out of office by the end of the month.”

  * * *

  One day later, after Lyman Beavers was laid to rest beside his wife in the Red Mound Cemetery, she had questioned Angus in more detail. His version of Sophie Ringensetter’s murder agreed with his uncle Walt’s, and she had worked with Sipple to make sure Angus was released on his signature. She had driven him home, and she had tried not to feel appalled by the mess of Beavers Salvage. Maybe Angus would work on it. At least the house hadn’t burned down yet. Angus said he was thinking about building something new.

  “Take care of your sister,” she told him.

  “I will.”

  “My husband heard you’re back in the Bad Axe. He’s player-manager of the Rattlers now. Depending on how things work out, I’m sure he’
d love to have you in the lineup.”

  Angus had blushed. “We’ll see.”

  “OK. Good.”

  “Depends on what I need to do to get things right for me and Brandy. And how much trouble I’m in with the law.”

  “We’ll work on that,” she had promised.

  * * *

  The next day was when the misconduct questions began to catch up with her. For one thing, she had given DA Sipple multiple complex legal problems with her retraction of her “don’t remember” story and her admittedly extralegal handling of the whole Pinky Clausen / Brock Pabst / Walt Beavers crime wave. For another, she had totaled two sheriff’s cruisers in a twenty-four-hour period, one while under strict prohibition not to drive a county vehicle. She saw no point in denying her disregard for rules or her recklessness. Could there be something wrong with her judgment—so went the argument—if it came with a two-cruiser price tag? And so the special commission had been formed to investigate what she had already asked herself: did she have any business being the Bad Axe County sheriff? She had decided to spare the resources they would spend in saying no.

  * * *

  She had been driving back from Beavers Salvage that afternoon, wondering if Denise could really do anything with her list of men who might have murdered her parents, thinking she would just ask for the thumb drive back and start talking to Harley about their next move in life, when her cell phone buzzed in her shirt pocket.

  “Go ahead, Rhino.”

  “It’s good news, bad news, I guess. We just got a call from Sergeant Louden of the Minnesota State Patrol. They found Lund’s truck at a travel plaza in Albert Lea. It had been sitting there at least two days. A witness saw a girl with long black hair catching a ride with a trucker heading west. A female trucker. Sergeant Louden extended the Amber Alert out through Montana, but I’m thinking maybe she’s OK.”

  “Let’s pray. Keep me posted.”

  “Then Marge Joss called. She wants to know what our internal investigation protocol is—you know, for officers shooting people.”

  “I’ll bet she does.”

  “She wonders if you were trained by Hollywood.”

  “Of course I was.”

  “Me, I don’t wonder, Sheriff. I would have shot him in the nuts. Then the face. And then the chest, like I’m supposed to. I’m just telling you.”

  “I know, Rhino. Thanks.”

  70

  Later on the fourth day she had ridden with Olaf the Handsome to interview Ripp at the ICU in La Crosse, where they were prepping him to have his shattered leg amputated.

  Ripp had completely startled them with his story. He was conscious, but drugged up to the point of feeling delusionally expansive, as if they had come to listen to a great man share the noteworthy events of his life. He seemed unconcerned that his leg was about to be gone, more concerned to set the record straight, make sure that credit was given where credit was due.

  Yes, he understood that he had been arrested, charged with kidnapping and rape. Yes, he understood that they could use anything he said against him. But how stupid were they? Then he laughed at them.

  “Them players never killed her. Hell, you got it all wrong.”

  “Could you say that again? They didn’t kill Sophie Ringensetter?”

  “Oh, hell no,” he said proudly. “I did that.”

  Yttri, taking notes and operating a recorder, had to look at her, both of them struck speechless. Finally she said, “You killed her, because . . .”

  “Because what’s mine is mine. Dumb girl just didn’t get that.”

  The sheriff felt sick and had to look away, seeing in her mind Harley with that different girl at the Ease Inn, begging him to take her anywhere else—anywhere away from Baron Ripp, she guessed now.

  “So you killed her because she was unfaithful? By getting raped? Do I understand you correctly?”

  “You do understand that correctly, Dairy Queen, yes, you do.”

  “You strangled her.”

  “With my goddamn belt, yes, I did.”

  “And then you threw her in Walt Beavers’s truck? Why?”

  “I figured the way those two fellas was standing out there talking like they knew every damn thing about baseball, who shoulda played and who shouldn’t, that they had to be with the team. It didn’t matter to me. Hell, stupid little bitch woulda cowgirled every one of them. But when you’re mine, see, you don’t play like that. I believe I made that understood.”

  The sheriff had to look away from him. “Then you left town,” Yttri managed to say after a long and brutal stretch of note taking. “Otto Koenig saw you. You worked in the fracking fields in North Dakota.”

  “I did.”

  “You were gone until sometime this winter.”

  “I was.”

  “What made you come back?”

  A weird shift had occurred. Ripp had changed his angle in the bed. He had sort of backed up and relaxed as if to get cozy, focused his druggy eyes on her, like this was a seduction and he was making good progress. She had shivered as she glanced at Yttri. Olaf the Handsome had turned ugly with rage and disgust.

  “Hell, I was rich out there until I was laid off. Then I got into the shard and the shaboo and all that. I started stealing copper wire, equipment, shit all over the place out there, and I got wind that Dermit and Gibbs and Lund and them had a thing going back here and they could fence it. One time Ladonna sent me back west with a girl, and I thought, shit, I can do that myself, boys out there’ll pay big money for fresh meat if it comes in tenderized.”

  Yttri had nearly choked. “Tenderized . . . ?” His big hands gripped the corners of his legal pad like he was hanging on to keep himself from lunging in. Ripp gave him a clueless little nod, man to man. “You know, all the gristle pounded out of their stupid little minds.”

  * * *

  “Wait out here,” she had told Yttri after they had left the room.

  She had gone back in and closed the door. This time, without Yttri around, Ripp had looked afraid of her. She set her phone down, touched RECORD.

  “You are just barely alive,” she reminded him.

  “I know.”

  “You’re alive because you claimed to have information I want.”

  “I do.”

  “Every single syllable you say to me had better ring exactly true. If not, I’ll come back. What’ll happen then is you’ll attack me, and this time I’ll blow your infected brains out all over that bed. Now, speak.”

  71

  But she still hadn’t believed him.

  Jerrold Mickelson, Ripp had told her. S’more. Mickelson had killed her parents.

  But that was too easy.

  He knew Mickelson was a terrifying freak who was dead and could never be questioned. Ripp was still saving himself with bullshit, in the same way he had first gotten his hooks into her by mentioning the Colt and Whiz-Bang bullets, which he could have learned about from Cecil Mertz.

  A stolen pressure washer, Ripp had told her. A barn burglary gone wrong, a faked murder-suicide by Mickelson to cover his tracks, dumbshit Sheriff Skog lapping it up. Mickelson had tried to sell Ripp her dad’s stolen pressure washer. This was Ripp’s claim. But it was bullshit. Her dad had never owned a pressure washer.

  She knew that. After the wrong gun was returned, trying to prove that something else was stolen, anything else, she had gone through her dad’s machinery maintenance checklist. Everything had been accounted for. Nothing was missing but the Colt and the bullets. She had searched the barn, the house, her mom’s jewelry boxes, nothing. Nothing was gone except for the Colt, the bullets—and life as she had known it.

  * * *

  She had left Ripp in the hospital and gone after the players that afternoon, hoping for rape charges now instead of murder. The medical examiner had found the semen of four different men preserved inside the girl’s frozen body. On a first-degree rape charge, the sheriff knew, it was going to be he said, she said, and Sophie Ringensetter was dead. But there
wasn’t going to be any way around the fact that the girl had been a minor, and therefore could not consent. Statutory rape and sex-offender status for life, at the very least.

  She had picked up third-basemen Curtis Strunk in Vernon County coming out of the Viroqua Walmart with his wife and baby daughter and a cartload of soda pop and packaged food. He had stood there in his wife’s gaze of disbelief and then disgust, and then he had popped wide open on the spot, telling her what happened, calling their gang rape a “train,” the girl so drunk she couldn’t walk on her own. His wife pushed the grocery cart away to their truck across the parking lot and left him standing there.

  Sherman Ossie, located at The Pickle Jar, a pub in the town of Hefty, had said the same, in tears. He had heard rumors she was dead, Ossie said. He had always figured one of the other guys had done it, to keep her quiet. He had always known he should say something, but . . .

  Next she had gone after Wade Gibbs, right fielder and nephew of deceased sheriff Ray Gibbs, at the public boat landing in Blackhawk Locks. Word had traveled fast. Gibbs knew why she was there, and he had tried to run—squealing out of the parking lot with a half-trailered boat shedding fishing poles and minnow buckets into traffic on the Great River Road. She had let him go. Two hours later he had turned up at the Public Safety Building and confessed to the same thing that Strunk and Ossie had told her. Yes, they all had sex with her. No, they didn’t kill her. No, he had no idea where Sophie Ringensetter had disappeared to later, Wade Gibbs said. He had always figured Scotty Clausen had done something with her.

  That was her next arrest, at the Clausen Meats central office in La Crosse. The son of Pinky Clausen, free of consequences like the rest of them for 1,337 days, had already lawyered up. He and his dad.