Zeb Hanks Mystery Box Set 1

by Mark Reps

  The murder of Angeline Bright had never been solved. The sad details of her life were as gut wrenching as the crime itself. Her mother’s pregnancy had been stressful and plagued with drunkenness perhaps leading to a defect that caused the child to lisp. Little Angel was only eight years old and in preparation for her Mormon baptism when she was kidnapped and mercilessly slaughtered. A cold chill ran up and down Jake’s spine as his memory allowed the imprisoned details of the funeral day to drift into his thoughts. Angel’s frail body, dressed in white and lying in a child-sized casket, was the epitome of purity and innocence. Jake felt weak as details of that fateful day enveloped him. Angel’s missing heart was never found. Because of the brutal nature of the murder and because it was never solved, the case had stayed in everyone’s mind. Jake eventually resigned as sheriff and devoted his life to finding the killer. But his obsession with finding the murderer cost him more than his job and career. Gone also was his wife, Dawn, and their twenty-five-year marriage. But the ultimate price of his manic fixation was the lack of a firm footing in sanity based reality.

  Jake inhaled deeply as a foggy memory of what now seemed like the distant past came floating through his mind. He had cracked under the strain. A little stint, courtesy of the state mental institution in Phoenix. Psychiatric talk therapy and sedative medications did little to quell the pain burning inside him, followed. With rest and solitude, Jake figured out what the doctors wanted to hear. When he found the stamina to play their game, the state ruled him sane. They released him back into society. Free from the institution but still held captive in his heart and mind, Jake moved into an abandoned desert trailer and began an existence amounting to little more than a steady diet of rot gut whiskey and barely edible food.

  But his demons didn’t stop easily. His daughter, Jenny, a hell raiser since her early blossoming puberty, was the town trollop before she could drive and the town drunk after her daughter was murdered. Too many nights at Red’s Roadhouse had introduced her to a life of rough sex, cheap booze and mind-twisting drugs. When she died tragically a year after Angel’s death, it took everything Jake had to barely maintain his already loose grip on the bottom rung of the ladder.

  Before the psychiatrist, before the Rorschach testing and before the lithium, those images on his ceiling were severely disturbing to Jake. Now they had become merely a way of life. Jake closed his eyes, but the images remained, trapped in a space between muted reality and sublimated hallucination. The cigarette dropped from his hand, landing near the ashtray as he fell back asleep and into the only possibility of escape. But in his sleep were dreams, dreams that held the terror, the loss and the fear that permeated his very being. If there was a God in heaven, He had abandoned hope at the doorstep of Jake Dablo.

  7

  The big Dodge Dakota hummed down Highway 70, returning the sheriff to the Safford city limits shortly after sunset. The billboard above the Town Talk lured him in for a quick bite. It said, ‘Better than Home Cooking (And We Do the Dishes!)’, He had a few hours of pencil pushing and paper shuffling awaiting him at the office. That kind of crap could wait. It wasn’t going anywhere. Supper and a little jawboning would go a long way towards lifting the burden of the day a few inches off his shoulders.

  The lifeblood of the café was Doreen Nightingale, a Rubenesque woman in her middle thirties with ash-blonde hair stacked like a whirling beehive on her head. She was never without a smile on her face and an acerbic quip at the tip of her tongue. She wore lipstick which defined Ruby Red. Blush with sparkling flecks dotted her cheeks making her eyes twinkle electric blue. This unique packaging created a sassy, sexy, bohemian, free spirit that Zeb found attractive from the moment he had first laid eyes on her.

  Doreen was new in town by Safford standards, a half dozen years. She had won her way into the hearts of the locals who treated her as one of their own, often confiding in her over a cup of coffee. She was privy to most of the wag and tongue gossip that kept the ears of Safford burning. Never one to betray a confidence, Doreen knew when to keep her mouth shut and when to spread the word. Casual and confidential conversations may well have brought people into the café, but it was one delectable Tex-Mex burger that kept them coming back. Sheriff Zeb Hanks had a distinct weakness for both.

  “Evening, Sheriff,” squeaked Maxine Miller.

  The painfully shy waitress who doubled as the Town Talk’s assistant manager was the polar opposite of the brassy Doreen. Zeb had once asked Doreen why she had come to hire such a mousy little gal like Maxine. Doreen told him she did it for the same reason she rimmed the chili bowl special with orange slices, that being no particular reason at all. It was just her way of doing things. In the same conversation, she suggested that if he didn’t like the way she did things, she was certain any of the other cafes in Safford would be more than glad to have him dirty their dishes. Like just about everything surrounding Doreen convention took the back seat to invention.

  “Howdy do, Sheriff Zeb.” Doreen’s voice echoed through the back half of the cafe. “How’s everything hangin’ tonight?”

  The sheriff was eminently thankful that no one, other than the blushing Maxine, was within earshot of Doreen’s wisecrack. The general public could easily make hay with a remark like that one, especially in a town as Mormon as Safford. Zeb’s gut reaction was to respond in a sexually playful fashion to Doreen’s quip. Some clever retort of his own. Low and loose and full of juice or looking for a spark and a place to park. But he thought better of it and let her sass linger in the air unrequited as he hung his ten-gallon hat and took a stool at the counter.

  “Good evening, Miss Doreen. I’m a starving steer,” replied Zeb. “What you got cooked up special for a lonesome cowboy tonight?”

  Doreen leaned forward, exposing more than a little of the creamy, white flesh of her generous bosom as she placed utensils and a paper place mat in front of her sheriff.

  “Everything round my neck of the woods is special, hon,” she said.

  The sly wink accompanying her sexual innuendo produced a rosy pink tint on the sheriff’s cheeks to say nothing of the stirring it created elsewhere. Standing nearby, a wide-eyed Maxine was all ears.

  “Well, in that case, I would like…”

  The sheriff paused, soaking in Doreen’s coyish body language and flirtatious ways like rays of sunshine on a cloudy winter day. The look in her eyes, a subtle swaying motion of her hips and a full profile view of her tightly confined breasts made it clear her playful game was meant for his pleasure. This was exactly what he needed after a day like he had.

  “I would like...”

  The sheriff felt his heart firing at high speed, like the time he had that fancy coffee at a Starbucks in Phoenix. His mouth became suddenly dry, his tongue as chalky as that of an old hound dog waking from a long nap. If she wasn’t having a little fun at his expense, she was coming on to him like gangbusters. For a man who could take one look at a criminal and know what they were thinking, Zeb was as illiterate as a newborn babe in the woods when it came to reading Doreen. His voice box cramped as it uttered in a stammer.

  “I would like…”

  “What you’d like...is me,” whispered Doreen.

  The sexy waitress’s sultry voice sent Zeb into a near dream state as, once again, she flexed her femininity inches from his face. His eyes fought from crossing as, with a delicate touch, the scarlet nail of her index finger traversed the soft space between her breasts in ever so sensuous circles.

  “What you’d like is me…to make the decision for you. Isn’t that right, sunshine?”

  The pink hue of the sheriff’s cheeks deepened to crimson. Even his chest felt flush.

  “Here you go, tiger.”

  Doreen reached beneath the counter by the cash register. From a secret space, she grabbed a Chinese fan, flared it open and refreshed the sheriff by creating a gust of cool breeze for his hot skin.

  “You’re actin’ like a radiator with a busted fan belt and lookin’ like a fresh beet ju
st plopped into boilin’ water. Maybe I’d better call in Doc Yackley to check your blood pressure?”

  Handing the fan to the sheriff, Doreen performed an effortless pirouette and floated into the kitchen. The sheriff, transfixed by the gentle side to side swaying of her tightly garbed buttocks, gave the fan a genuine workout.

  Witnessing the red-hot interchange, the sheepish Maxine dropped her jaw as well as a plate she was clearing from a table. The loud crash of ceramic on vinyl was little more than a faint background noise to the pair involved in the mating ritual.

  Zeb was still fanning the blush from his face when Doreen returned from the kitchen with his dinner. He barely managed to lower his thermometer reading.

  “One Wednesday night special. Made just for you with these here lovin’ hands,” said Doreen with a wink. “With a little somethin’ extra special tossed in at no charge.”

  Her teasing hint of ‘somethin’ extra special’ caused him to gulp as his imagination shifted into high gear at the thought of what that might mean.

  “One Tex-Mex with all the trimmings, black beans with Momma’s homemade salsa and one Braeburn apple, sugar, cut just the way you like it. Bite size with no bruises and no rough edges around the core.”

  If the roadway to a man’s heart had a single route and that being through the stomach, Doreen should have been an executive for Rand McNally.

  “This is perfect, just perfect. Thank you, Doreen,” said Zeb. “How can I ever thank you for such good cooking and for looking after me the way you do?”

  “You’ll think of somethin’, Sheriff,” she said. “A man of your style and imagination can always think of somethin’.”

  As Doreen attended to some new customers, Zeb caught himself wondering how each bite could taste better than the last. Even more so he dreamed of how nice it would be to sit around and gab with Doreen until the moon was high in the sky. But duty called. He finished his fine supper and neatly tucked four crisp one-dollar bills under his coffee cup. Doreen, busy waiting on a customer across the room, rolled her head and tossed him a wink. He pinched the brim of his hat between thumb and finger and headed out the door. To feel better than he did at this moment would be impossible.

  Sticking the pencil behind her ear, Doreen eyed Zeb’s tight jeans as he left the café.

  The Dodge Dakota practically drove itself back to the station as Zeb fantasized a thousand thoughts of Doreen. He daydreamed of lying in bed, half draped with sheets. Doreen Nightingale snuggled softly against his chest as he blew perfect rings of smoke out the open window toward a distant moon. But his castle in the air disappeared like the puff of smoke it was as he bumped against a stack of files Helen had placed on the edge of his desk, sending them flying in a dozen directions.

  “What a freakin’ moron,” he mumbled to himself.

  Hoping he hadn’t undone too much of Helen’s hard work, Zeb heard only the steady ticking of the grandfather clock as he picked up the fallen papers. A glance at the slowly moving clock hands set his mind in motion. Long ago he had trained himself to know what criminals were up to by the time of day. The hours between six and nine p.m. were his favorite because criminals generally socialized like normal human beings during these hours. It was a pretty safe bet little would happen until night passed into total darkness. He picked up the last of the files and mused.

  “Let’s see, what have we got here?”

  Zeb blurted out an involuntary chuckle as he read the most recent complaint from the widow Grehlick regarding vandalism at the abandoned cotton mill. Deputy Steele’s report stated the widow Grehlick was frightened by a snapping noise. When she stuck her head out the door to investigate, some youngster back talked her, calling her an ‘old bitty’. The widow, well into her eighties, didn’t take kindly to sass.

  The sheriff recalled back when he and his older brother, Noah, had broken in their new slingshots on that very same building twenty-five years earlier. His old man had gotten a little liquored up that year and gone along to help bust out the windows. It was the only time Zeb ever recalled having fun with his father. Just about every boy who grew up in Safford over the past half century had tested his aim on that building. With forty or fifty vandalism complaints about the old mill during his tenure alone, the sheriff pondered how the building could possibly have any windows left unbroken. He set the widow’s complaint to the side and gave the small stack of speeding tickets a quick once-over.

  Four speeding citations, two issued for running a red light and one for an illegal U-turn by the deserted railroad tracks. The tickets, all issued to good taxpaying citizens, bore the signature of Deputy Steele. The sheriff knew she was anxious to prove herself, but there were better ways to make the right impression with the locals. He made himself a note to talk with her about the difference between the intent and the letter of the law. Jake Dablo had done the same thing for him after Zeb arrested the mayor for making an illegal U-turn. Passing a little practical wisdom and common sense on to her was part of the job.

  Zeb straightened the papers and was about to push away from his desk when he noticed a telephone message taped to the shade of his desk lamp. The note, written in Helen’s crispest handwriting, was straightforward and wholly unexpected. It said, ‘Please Call Jake Dablo’. The sheriff flipped it over to see if Helen had written more on the back. She hadn’t. He turned the note over and reread it. ‘Please Call Jake Dablo’.

  Zeb hadn’t had a phone call from Jake in over a year, maybe more. A man like Jake Dablo was damn unlikely to wait that long between calls and not leave some sort of a message. However, it was October eighteenth, the black letter day in Jake’s life. The lack of a message troubled Zeb as a brutally ugly thought came to mind. Could Jake be suicidal? Zeb knew that the down side of human nature often reached its nadir on anniversary dates of tragic events. The more the possibility of such an action seeped into his brain, the harder he worked to push it away.

  “Nah, couldn’t be,” he assured himself. “Jake ain’t like that. That’s the coward’s way out. Jake’s no lily-livered quitter.”

  Zeb knew if Jake had been depressed, Helen would have heard it in his voice. Helen, just being Helen, would have passed that information along to him in half a heartbeat. Carefully peering over his secretary’s desk, he garnered a quick look to see if perhaps there wasn’t a longer message she had written but forgotten to put on his desk.

  Zeb felt invasive touching anything in Helen’s work zone. Carefully, he returned each item he moved on the immaculate desk to its original spot. As he returned a small box of paper clips to its original position, his hand brushed against a piece of scratch paper covered with Helen’s doodling. Curious as to what filled Helen’s mind when it wandered, he picked it up and held it under the light. She’d written the date, October 18, underlined three times with heavy lines. Following the 18 were three darkened question marks. Zeb lightly traced a finger across what she had written. October 18???

  The sheriff stuffed the note to call Jake Dablo into his shirt pocket, nearly cutting his finger on the broken fragment of tail light plastic. Once again, his eyes were drawn toward Helen’s absentminded musing. Rolling his fingers over the date, he reached into his pocket and reread the note before glancing up at the grandfather clock. It was getting late. Jake was probably three sheets to the wind, passed out in bed, hugging a whiskey bottle like it was some long-lost lover. Besides, if it really had been important, Helen would have done something to let him know.

  Zeb walked back to his desk, wondering what Jake and Helen had discussed. Jake was a man of few words. Helen probably did most of the talking. He considered calling Helen. It was nine-thirty. She would be at the church for the Wednesday night Relief Society meeting until ten. With Helen at the helm, no elderly Mormon in the area went without comfort in time of need. Every sick person was visited daily, and no child’s basic needs were left unmet. It probably wasn’t a good idea to bother her when she was at her highest and mightiest. He winced, knowing he wouldn’t
sleep until he knew what was going on with Jake.

  Trepidation caused his heart to flutter as he thought of the peacemaker that Jake had never drawn. Would its first use be against its owner? Jake had suffered enough for a dozen people in this lifetime. He didn’t deserve to end it all by putting a slug from a revolver into his brain. If Jake did something foolish and Zeb had the chance to stop it and didn’t, he would never forgive himself.

  Zeb picked up the phone and punched in the numbers. If Jake didn’t answer, it didn’t necessarily mean he had killed himself. Twenty rings and no answer didn’t settle the matter in his head or his heart. Sheriff Hanks took a deep breath, the fatigue from a long day making every bone in his body ache for a little shuteye.

  “Goddamn it, Jake. Pick up the phone. Come on, Jake. Please pick up.”

  Listening to ten more unanswered rings did little more than give him a sore ear.

  “Shit! Jake, you’d better be passed out drunk with a smile on your face if I’m driving all the way out there tonight.”

  8

  The night sky, glistening in starlight, lit his way down the country back road to Jake’s trailer. Zeb rolled down the window and listened to the night. Howling dingoes sang in the distance as a lost lamb bleated for its mother. The ewe’s response was quick in coming, starting a call and response between the lost and the frightened. The desert, unforgiving and harsh, rarely made allowances for the weak and defenseless. Maybe the frightened baby sheep would be the exception rather than the rule.