Serendipity (Animal Heros From The Land Of Manyana Book 1)

by Summer Foovay

  Serendipity

  Book One Animal Heros from The Land of Manyana

  By Summer Foovay

  Copyright 2018 ©Summer Fey Foovay All Rights Reserved

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Cover art ©2018 Summer Fey Foovay

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Settling Down

  Curtis and Kathy Tyler were having a great time living on the road in their motor home when they stopped at a little town in New Mexico. As she always does, Kathy went exploring the little town on foot for the first few days and here is what she found.

  The cutest little yellow adobe hexagonal house you ever saw in your life. And it was for rent for the measly sum of $200 a month. They paid more than that for the lot rent for their motor home, most places. But they weren't ready to settle down.

  A job notice on a bulletin board for an Animal Control/Code Enforcement Officer. Kathy used to be an Animal Control officer, a long, long time ago in a very big city, before she and Curtis got sick of big city living and hopped in the motor home. She wondered what on earth an Animal Control/Code Enforcement officer would have to do in this little town. At first glance it appeared to be about six blocks long and four blocks deep, and she hadn't seen a single pet, although she could hear roosters crowing. But they weren't ready to settle down.

  When she visited the library – something as sure as the sun rising if a town had a library, Kathy had to visit it – she found they had a few computers, and gave a few computer classes. Curtis was a computer nerd – and back in the day – had volunteered for the computer lab in a local library, doing classes, fixing computers, and this and that. He would love helping out in this little library computer lab. But they weren't ready to settle down.

  Bit by bit the little house wormed its way into their dreams. After all, the motor home needed some repairs, as did the little car they towed along. Some extra money sure wouldn't do them wrong, although they did okay on Curtis's disability, and Kathy's little income from writing Kindle books. But that sure was a cute little house, and the little job sure seemed tailor made.

  So, after a couple of weeks of discussing it and going back and forth they decided, what the hell. Kathy applied for the job, they rented the little house, and Curtis started volunteering at the library a couple days a week.

  There was a little delay on Kathy's job while the three folks on the City Council argued about it. Two of them were from families that had been living in this little town since before Poncho Villa crossed the border and raided it. Another City Council member was a real troublemaker. Another big city person who had picked up and moved into this little town to get out of the city. You either liked Marlon Webb or you hated him. Lots of folks found his big city ways and expectations irritating – they wanted things to always be like they had been 'cause that had always been good enough for their parents, grand parents, great grand parents – you get the picture. Others thought a little progress wouldn't hurt the little town. In the end, Marlon won out simply because there were no other applicants for the Animal Control/Code Enforcement job, and Kathy got hired without the least idea of what all went on in the Council meetings. Marlon was thrilled, because he had managed to get someone who wasn't everyone else's cousin or sister, or baby mama – so he thought some actual code enforcement might occur.

  Curtis and Kathy found themselves quite content. As Kathy had suspected – the town actually included a little more acreage than you would think at first. There were two outlying housing developments that were started with high hopes and were now limping along selling a house now and then by cutting the prices and lowering the bar for financing to almost nothing. One of them was restricted to seniors, and if there was a violation it generally had to do with someone's Chihuahua pooping on someone else's lawn, or a yard that got overgrown because Grandpa couldn't manage it any more. A fence was prescribed for one, a high school kid working part time for the other, and no reason for writing tickets or charging fines.

  The other housing area was a bit more trouble. The standards had been lower here to begin with, so while the houses were nice new two and three bedroom ranch homes on sometimes as much as three acres the owners were not infrequently ne'r do wells, overwhelmed single mothers, and what passed for the criminal element. This close to the Mexican border there was a bit of one, although mostly the only crimes committed in the little town were by someone passing through with a big load of something no one wanted to know about.

  All was well until Kathy got a couple dozen reports of a terrible smell coming from a certain house. The neighbors told her it was just one old man living there alone, and everyone avoided him because of his terrible temper. She thought she might feel a little sorry for him. So she opened the gate and forged through armpit high weeds and knocked on his door. The smell was awful, up close, and one she could not mistake. Some large animal had died and been left out to nature. Not so unusual as you would think. If your horse died of old age, it was hard to know what to do. There was a fella who had a farm nearby, Woodrow Harrison, who had a front-end loader. For fifty bucks or so he would dig you a hole and tip the horse, or whatever it was – into it and bury it for you. Maybe it was a deer or a coyote and the old man didn't want to pay, or he simply didn't know what to do.

  The old man never did answer the door – so Kathy went looking around the property. Stepping around a huge old prickly pear patch, she flushed a couple of vultures and found the source of the smell. It was a large animal, and dead – but not quite what she expected.

  It was the dead body of a woman, and a step or two beyond her, another one, and a step or two beyond her – Kathy didn't stop to count – she turned and bolted for her truck and got on the radio. The dispatcher wanted to have a little argument with her about contacting the Staties, and finally allowed Kathy to talk to the Sheriff. Hours later, a bemused deputy arrived – expecting to find that big city little lady code officer was all excited about nothing.

  Unlike Kathy, he threw up.

  And then the dispatcher called the State Police.

  Discovery

  It was less than half an hour before the first State Police car arrived. Meanwhile, since the call had gone out over the general emergency channel for all law enforcement, volunteer fire departments and so on in the area, everyone who had heard the code for a dead body had shown up to see what was going on. The local paramedics were the first on the scene, with their ambulance. Kathy couldn't help but think it was long past time for them to be zooming in with lights whirling and siren screaming – but they probably almost never got to run Code Three out here and had to make the best of it. The Fire Chief had concluded that there might somehow be some sort of need for the fire truck – so it was there, too, fully manned and lights flashing. Anyone who didn't make it to the station was there in their personal cars and trucks – every single volunteer firefighter for Columbus – including a few in their 70s and 80s who hadn't lifted a fire hose in twenty years. There were at least a few volunteers from every other volunteer fire department in Luna County – just in case their help was needed.

  The newcomers found Deputy Donald Dobermann, inevitably known locally as Deputy Dawg, sitting in his squad car with the air conditioner blasting, looking decidedly green around the gills and bright red in his sun chapped fac
e, doing the best he could to act like the officer in charge. He told all and sundry that the poor little city lady code officer had been the one to vomit at the crime scene and all the men – most of them were men – had a good laugh.

  Code Enforcement/Animal Control Officer Kathy Tyler was outside of her vehicle, leaning on the door of the white half ton Chevy cage truck that served as her rolling office, with her arms crossed and a stony look on her face that caused the men to stay at a distance while they turned their backs and laughed at her. She did not get the opportunity to explain to those men that Deputy Dawg had steadfastly maintained that what she was seeing was probably just a bear, skinned for the trophy and left to dry up in a ditch. They sure could look human sometimes, he assured her with a smile. He chuckled right up until he saw the first woman's body – no doubt she was human, and then the second, and then he had turned and promptly thrown up right between the two corpses before staggering on shaky legs back to his patrol car to get on the radio.

  Being gentlemen, of course, the locals weren't going to make that poor little lady officer go back there again, and Deputy Dawg insisted he had to wait there at the road for the State Troopers so he could lead them into the scene when they got there. Most of them were not highly trained professionals (although a few of them watched Major Crimes or CSI on TV) and there was still a general air of some skepticism so a delegation of three or four firemen (including the paramedics – just in case) set off in the direction pointed out by Deputy Dawg. A few other men wandered here and there around the borders of the property, hoping to see something interesting.

  There were even neighbors, one from each side of the property, and one from each corner of the road facing it. They could hardly miss lights and sirens on their little one lane gravel and dirt road and truth to tell, they had been talking a bit amongst themselves about the place for weeks. Having lived in the desert for anywhere from a few years to a lifetime, they had a pretty good idea what that smell was that was making life miserable for everyone within a couple miles each way – depending on which way the wind was blowing. See and hearing all form of emergency vehicles screaming up to their quiet little crossroads had gotten their attention. They had all slowly but surely wandered up from their own bits of property and now stood in two little knots of people, waiting to find out what was going on. Two knots because three of them were of the "desert rat" variety – not much different from the old man who owned the property in question and the other knot was made up of two well off couples who had built their retirement homes in sunny New Mexico hoping for peace and quiet. Which they got, mostly. Maybe a little too much.

  The lot was at the T intersection of a gravel road that led west off the highway, that ended at a dirt road that crossed it going north and south, petering off at both ends to a ranch gate. The old man’s place was about five acres in a square shape desultorily fenced with a bunch of wood posts made of saplings, spare boards and yucca sticks strung with two or three strands of barb wire. At each corner there was a good stout wood corner fence made up of cut up telephone poles on the two front corners, and some old 4 x 4s on the back corners that looked like they had probably been salvaged from some earlier homestead somewhere. It was hard to decide whether the wire was holding the posts up or the posts were holding the wire up. The tumbleweeds blown up against the fence in piles three or four feet high were more of a detriment to anyone casually trying to get onto the property than the actual fence was.

  In the center of the front fence line there was a twelve foot welded pipe stock gate in two panels hung on stout metal poles at either end, as if having a really intimidating gate was enough to discourage casual visitors. It might have been more secure if the two panels had not had about a three-foot gap between them, bridged only by a heavy logging chain that was decorated with a massive, rusted padlock – which was open. It was through there that both Officer Tyler and Deputy Dawg had entered. Since the gate was not locked and they were checking on the welfare of a citizen, strictly speaking they had not trespassed. Good thing since about every three feet there was some sort of "No Trespassing" sign wound into the wire of the fence all the way around the place.

  In this part of New Mexico most of the ground is caliché – rock hard packed sand over gravel in a thin layer, with solid rock beneath it. Only takes a few trips over that with a vehicle – like the one ton flatbed Ford you could see inside the fence – to make your own road of sorts. The Ford was parked in front of a rambling house that had most likely started life as a one-room adobe hut. Over the centuries rooms had been added out of whatever was handy. Screens were nailed over the holes serving as windows. From where she stood leaning on her truck Kathy could see one room made from corrugated aluminum siding, another of wood likely salvaged from some other home or barn. There was no sign of curtains – or electricity or running water for that matter – although the old man must have a well at least in order to survive out here.

  But maybe he hadn't survived. Kathy had banged on the door for a good twenty minutes before she walked around the house, wondering if maybe there was a back entrance. What she found in back was a shed of more corrugated tin built out from the back of the house, open on one side with some very old musty straw bedding over the dirt floor. A path ran along the open side of the shed, with piles of wood, tin, fencing wire including more barbed wire, chicken wire, and even some insulators and electric fence wire, along with t-posts, most of them bent, and a pile of yucca stalks mixed with ocotillo branches, dried and hollow, that many locals used for fencing.

  The narrow path ran downhill between the shed and the junk pile to a shallow gully. At the end it was blocked by a wide, thick stand of prickly pear cactus a good six feet tall and probably twenty feet in diameter, and it was on the other side of that barrier, down in the gully, that the bodies were tossed. If the smell hadn't gotten so strong as to alert the neighbors, they might never have been found, concealed as they were in a runoff cut some three or four feet deep, six foot wide, and running probably the length of the property. It might be a part of some old trail – ruts left by wagon wheels two hundred years ago still scarred the desert and could be traced by the slightly greener mesquite bushes along their edges.

  On the other side of the cut the land sloped off gently into a shallow bowl. It might be a desert playa – a lake a few inches deep that existed for a day or two every decade when the monsoon rains were heavy enough to actually gather and stand on top of the hard caliché. Tiny frogs and fairy shrimp would come to life from the mud and frantically find mates, reproduce and attempt to start another generation before the water dried up and was gone. Water birds, waders and gulls, ravens and vultures, would appear from miles around to feast – along with badgers, raccoons, ring tailed cats, and many smaller mammals right up to the coyotes, foxes, and the occasional Mexican wolf. Antelope, deer, Oryx, maybe even desert bighorn sheep would arrive as if summoned by magic for a drink only to vanish again into the desert and the mountains surrounding the playa.

  When she stumbled onto the bodies, Kathy had raised her eyes and seen this little depression filled with soft sugar sand and this was where she rested her mind. On the vision of a little shallow lake, it's waters milky with minerals and teaming with life. Then she turned her back on death and did what had to be done.

  About the time the volunteers put up the delegation to go look at the bodies, the first State Police car finally pulled up. Bright yellow letters on the blue front fender stated the trooper was a sergeant. Usually Sgt. Ramona Morales would not be the first officer to respond to a scene, but on this particular day she had been the closest. Other Staties were on their way, but she knew if the scene were truly that of a homicide, she would soon be called in to take charge anyway. She had a pretty good idea of what might be going on out there, too, so she figured the sooner someone trained was there, the better.

  Kathy took note that the State Police car was the first official vehicle to arrive without lights flashing and siren screaming. She allow
ed herself a small smile when she saw the officer who swung out of the car was a woman. Sgt. Morales wasn't much taller than Kathy – probably about 5 foot six, and easily outweighed the slight Animal Control officer by a good one hundred pounds – well packed and nicely arranged into curves even a State Troopers uniform couldn't conceal. The Sergeant stood and took one look at the situation before radioing for more help.

  She shouted at the little delegation headed down the path to stop, and when they ignored her, used the speaker function on her radio to get their attention. After telling all of them to get back to their cars and wait for instructions she hung up her mike and then looked around. Deputy Dawg was struggling to get up out of his cruiser – he was a big man and had trouble getting in and out of the low-slung sedan, especially with everything on his utility belt getting hung up on everything in the car. For no better reason than he felt like he wanted it, he also had his shotgun in one hand. Sergeant Morales sighed and looked the other way, which was when she spotted Kathy leaning on her cage truck.

  The locals were ignoring her order to go back to their cars and had instead formed a little crowd standing around the front gate waiting and gossiping about the curvy but solid looking lady Statie. Shaking her head, Morales walked over to Kathy.

  "Sergeant Ramona Morales." She introduced herself, holding out a hand to shake.

  Kathy took it and gave it a good shake, noting the hard calluses and strong grip as she introduced herself, "Officer Kathy Tyler, Columbus Code Enforcement and Animal Control."

  "You found the body?"

  "Yes. We've had a number of complaints about a smell coming from the property. The gate was unlocked, so I went in and knocked at the door. Receiving no answer, I walked around to find a back door, followed the path behind the house and found the bodies. It is more than one. A lot more. I came back to my truck and called it in. I asked for the State Police but was referred to the Sheriffs department – they do our law enforcement here in Columbus. Deputy Dobermann arrived about 30 minutes later and I showed him the scene. He puked on it. Then called you."