Murders of the Sixth Kind

Legends of Tsalagee #2 — Chapter 1

Author’s note: The chapters presented here in ILLUMINATION Book Chapters are from the second novel in my Legends of Tsalagee mystery series. The release date hasn’t been set, but I expect it will be late summer, early fall 2021. In the meantime, I’m looking for beta readers. If interested, please visit my website and contact me via email for more information.

One

Static. “Cal, Sunny called in to report another murder.” Static.

The lawman keyed the mike. “Another one? Why’s she keep calling these murders,” he asked the dispatcher.

Static. “Guess she determined whoever she found dead looked to be killed with malice aforethought.” Static.

“Lot of killings going on out there,” the deputy came back. “That’s, what… fourth one this month?”

“Third. The other’n was for attempted murder. Better go see your uncle, Cal.”

“Ten-four, Pete. I’ll check it out.”

Deputy Calvin Bluehorse turned the white SUV — a Chevy Tahoe officially called Unit Two — onto County Road 17, but he didn’t switch on the light bar or hit the accelerator. The first time Cal slid behind the wheel of the old war wagon, the spring of ’14 his rookie year, he named it Sherman, after the iconic World War II tank. The old Tahoe drove like a tank and had seen a few battles. With seats well-worn by ten years of hard use, the dash faded and cracked in a few places, it had seen better days. Despite a couple shop stays for bodywork, the veteran vehicle still showed a few scars, the gold stars on the doors a little faded. Sherman, Sherm, was like a trusted old horse to the deputy.

He’d been down this road before, as a deputy to the sheriff of Unega County, and as a beseeching nephew. The whole thing seemed kind of silly. He would never arrest his Uncle White for what he’d done; everybody knew that, even the complainant. But they got the call, so he had to drive out and talk to him. No need to go to Sunny’s place yet. He’d get his uncle’s side of the story first.

Cal wheeled Sherm the Tahoe through the cattle guard entrance and drove up the hundred yards of gravel drive to his uncle’s house. It’d been over an hour since Miz Griggs — Sunny — had phoned in her murder complaint, so the deputy didn’t know exactly White’s whereabouts. Might’ve come to the house for lunch, so he’d check there first. Stepping out of the truck, he heard the distant pop of gunfire. Couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like the .357. He drove around to the back of the house, past the barn and chicken coop, stopping at the aluminum gate in the barbwire fence that closed off the back pasture. Two more shots popped through the mid-morning air. Past the gate Cal proceeded along the two-track trail wandering across the fallow pasture to the woods some quarter mile away. He lowered his window, heard two more shots. His uncle’s camo-painted ATV sat at the wood’s edge. White stood off twenty yards behind a weather-worn wooden picnic table, loading a big revolver, right cheek pooched with a wad of Red Man.

The tobacco pouch stuck out of the old cowboy’s jeans hip pocket. Wore his usual western-cut shirt with pearl-snap pocket flaps, today’s a green plaid. Topped his buzzcut head with one of his ball caps. This one a sweat-stained, plain O.D. with the gold and black 1st Cav shield on the crown. Besides ball caps, his headgear included a couple of cowboy hats, which he’d wear depending on his mood and the weather. This was a ranch cap. His town caps were nicer, cleaner. The best of the lot was a black cap with the National Defense, Vietnam Veteran, and Vietnam Campaign ribbons embroidered horizontally across the crown. Gold words “Vietnam” and “Veteran” bracketed the ribbons above and below. “Vietnam Vet” curved along one side of the bill, in case you didn’t notice the other. He wore that one to football games, parades, Memorial Day ceremonies, and such. Today he was shooting out back, so the 1st Cav O.D. would do.

Several other firearms lay across the tabletop — two rifles and another pistol. Down a shallow tree-spotted valley and back up the opposing slope targets stood at varied distances. Two-liter plastic bottles filled with blue water sat on a log. Metal silhouettes of various game animals stood in the open. Out about a hundred yards lurked a man-sized metal silhouette painted to look like a stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorist.

Stopping Sherm next to the four-wheeler, Deputy Bluehorse shoved the gear lever into Park and shut off the engine. The old rancher glanced up as the deputy approached, continuing to load the pistol. “Mornin, Cal,” he said. “Seen ya coming.”

“Mornin, Uncle White. Guess you know why I’m here.”

“Wanting to sharpen up some on your shootin skill, I expect. Hear you could use it.”

True enough. Cal had never mastered pistol shooting, just enough to qualify. Took a lot of guff in the department. But in his six years behind the badge, he’d never fired his sidearm on duty. The deputy looked at the targets down range. “Nope. We got another complaint.”

White spat. He preferred the Silver Blend of the chewing tobacco. It being sugar-free; he figured it’d be healthier. “Sunny again, I reckon. Damned old hippie.”

“She said you shot another one of her gnomes.”

“Is that one uh them little statues she keeps plantin ever’where? Talkin to her, you’d think they’s alive. Says they got spirits.”

Cal knew the stories, but reserved judgement on his uncle’s long-time neighbor. “They’re garden gnomes, Uncle White. This is the second or third one you’ve destroyed. She’s still looking for you to pay for those whose heads you already shot off, which you told me you would do; pay her, that is. That’s willful and malicious destruction of private property. I could cite you for that. It’s a misdemeanor for every instance unless they’re valued at over two hundred and fifty bucks; then it’d be a felony.”

White put a brown stream of spit two feet in front of the deputy’s right boot.

“Your shooting out here upsets her,” Cal continued. “Says it upsets her animals, too. She’s afraid a stray bullet may hit one… or her.” Cal knew there was no law against White’s shooting out here, his property and his gun range. He also knew nobody in the county handled guns safer than White. But Sunny had complained, so he passed it along to White.

“Aw, hell, Cal. I’m just out here shootin at targets. You know that, and you know I don’t shoot reckless. As for them concrete dwarfs, she deliberate put ’em at the fence line lookin towards my house like voodoo or sumpin.” He spat. “Damn things is creepy, so I sent ’em on to concrete dwarf hell. She’s just wanting to be her usual pain-in-the-ass self, that’s all. What she’s best at.”

The deputy looked at the fence line and headless gnomes, couldn’t disagree. “I know, Uncle White, but you can’t keep doing that. Besides, you’re shooting into her property. Now, if you don’t pay her for the ones you beheaded, I’m gonna have to haul you in.”

The uncle laughed at his nephew, sent a spit sideways. Cal slapped a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Why don’t you call it a day out here. C’mon, I’ll take you to Arlene’s and buy you lunch.”

Following the ATV across the pasture, dispatcher Pete’s voice broke over the deputy’s radio. “Unit Two, Headquarters.” Cal keyed the mike, “Go ahead, Pete.”

“Cal, you need to go over to Tubbeeland; looks like we’ve got a real one this time. Dove hunter over there discovered a body.”

“Where, exactly? Tubbees have a lot of land with a lot of Tubbees living on it.”

“Mile section one-oh-five. Go to Madelaine Tubbee’s house off-road One-ninety; believe the hunter’s there now, he’ll take you to it. It’s back in that big pastureland somewhere.”

“Unit Three, do you copy?”

“Five by, dispatch,” came a female voice.

“Renata, can you back up Cal at the scene? Doc Roth is on the way, too.”

“Ten-four.”

At the pasture gate Cal leaned out and hollered to his uncle, “Have to take a raincheck on that lunch, Uncle White. I got another call.”

White gave his nephew a dismissive wave.

Deputy Bluehorse headed west. He would proceed three miles, then turn south for three more; that’d put him at Road 190 where he’d go west again for about a half mile, putting him at Madelaine Tubbee’s gate. An ornate wrought iron work over-arched the entry to her property. It marked the north entrance of the four by four-mile sections of land, the sixteen square miles, ten thousand plus acres known as Tubbeeland. At the top of the arch was the Tubbee brand — a horizontal line atop a capital A, the “Bar A,” also old Amos Tubbee’s initials.

Madelaine, now seventy-four, was the daughter of the late Ted Tubbee and the granddaughter of Amos Tubbee. Although Madelaine was the widow of Ron Collins, her husband for forty-two years before a head-on collision with a semi ended it, she kept the Tubbee name; a famous one in these parts.

Before his death in 1901, Patriarch Amos became one of the richest and most influential men in the Choctaw Nation. Although he could trace his ancestry directly back to the legendary Chief Mushulatubbee of the Removal days, Amos made his name and money the old-fashioned way — he earned it. Or so it was told.

Like most of his kin, he started out farming, working on the family farm as a boy and young man. Twelve when the Civil War came to the Nations, most of his people aligned with the Southern Cause. He, contrarily, followed the Creek leader Opothleyahola. Tough times for the Indians following the war, especially for those who fought with the Confederacy. But Amos Tubbee’s position with the Union made things easier for his family and even benefitted Amos.

The United States allowed him to keep the small bit of land his family owned. Seized by the post-war Federal government, Amos bought up some of his ex-Confederate neighbors’ land, that of Creeks and Cherokee. Amos bought not only the people’s land, but some of their assets, mainly the livestock. He Established a trading post near the settlement of Tulsey Town. Trading food and clothing and other living essentials for cattle and pigs and horses, the animals more of a currency than the scarce coinage or bills. His livestock herds grew, and he sold them to buyers from Chicago, his horses to the military, traded his pork to Texans for more cows. And he bought more land. Some thought it a mystery he could afford so much land in such a brief period.

Amos had three wives and four sons, all of whom inherited Amos’s land and fortune, splitting it four ways. Over the years, the sons’ off-spring and their off-spring inhabited the land. After that cartoonist in California started up a place called Disneyland, the locals around Tsalagee began referring to the Tubbee estate as Tubbeeland.

It had the land mass of a theme park, but no rides, apart from horses and an Angus bull or two, if you were so inclined. Only Tubbees lived on it, sort of a self-imposed reservation. Son Ted’s twenty-five-hundred-acre parcel, and now that of his only heir, Madelaine, occupied the northeast quadrant.

Deputy Renata Ortega’s vehicle, along with the coroner’s van, stood in front of the simple ranch-style house when Cal crossed under the iron arch. Renata stood on the porch steps, talking to a man he didn’t recognize. He thought the young woman too pretty for a lawman… person. The bulk of the regulation equipment belt and sidearm, didn’t diminish her slender and athletic appearance. Leastwise, those thoughts always distracted Cal when he saw her.

Doc Roth, along with his twenty-one-year-old assistant Lewis Twobirds, stood off to one side talking to Madelaine Tubbee. Russ Roth, Tsalagee’s medico for over forty years, served as the de facto county coroner while that position remained open. That had been about seven years now. But he still sent the sheriff a bill. They all looked toward Deputy Bluehorse as his SUV approached.

The man continued talking to Renata as Cal walked up. “… seen nothing like it; pretty gruesome,” he said. He paused and looked at Cal, as did Deputy Ortega.

“What we got?” Cal asked.

“This is Mister Turner,” she said, head-pointing. “He was out dove hunting on Miz Tubbee’s land, found a body in a cornfield; male, completely naked, mutilated.”

Cal nodded. “Can you take us to it?” he asked Mr. Turner.

“Right in here somewhere,” Turner said, pointing. “’Bout fifteen rows in.” Cal stopped the Tahoe ten yards from the edge of the field of tall, faded green stalks. Lewis Twobirds pulled the coroner’s van up alongside the deputy’s unit, and they all got out.

High, thin clouds that warm September afternoon smeared the sun and dulled the shadows. The rustle of the dry cornstalks in the slight wind the only sound. No birds sang, nothing. Cal experienced this kind of environment before, as if death hovered and the living things kept quiet. “Show us,” he said in a soft voice, himself feeling an urge to whisper.

Turner rubbed the stubble on his chin, looking into the cornstalks. He pointed. “You walk in through there, you’ll come to it. I’d just as soon not see it again.”

The four of them spread out, walking through the dense corn rows. “Over here,” Renata called. The others gathered to her voice where they looked at the nude body in the dirt. He lay on his side; one arm extended above his head, one in front of him, the palm and fingers of the hand on his face, across his eyes; his legs crossed at the knees. The ground, the surrounding cornrows, showed no disturbance, no blood.

Doc Roth slipped on the pair of blue latex gloves he held, and crouched beside the body, looking it over, deciding where to touch first. “Incisions on the lower back,” he said. He examined the cuts. “Appears the kidneys taken.” He slid the man’s hand off his face and grabbed his chin, turning the face upward.

Renata sucked in air between her teeth. Lewis took a small step backwards and stage-whispered, “Holy crap!”

Both eye sockets were empty; no lids, no blood, just pinkish-blue holes in the dead-white face. Doc Roth moved the jaw downward and looked inside the mouth, examining it from several angles. He pulled a penlight from his shirt pocket and shined it inside. “Looks like a tongue excision, too,” he said. He aimed the light inside the eyeholes for a better look.

He turned the body onto its back, searching for other wounds. Found a T-shaped slice in the abdomen starting above the navel, another on the ground side of its neck. The coroner stood. “Exsanguination,” he said.

“What?” Cal asked.

“This man’s death didn’t occur here. Nothing about the scene says so. He’s drained of blood.”

“Drained of blood?”

“Yes. I’d say before the removal of his eyes and tongue,” Doc said. “Then dumped in this cornfield.” He squatted again and parted the abdomen cuts with his left forefinger and thumb, pointing the penlight up into the slice. “Liver’s gone… hard to tell what else, besides the kidneys. We’ll get a more thorough look at the morgue.”

“Okay,” Cal said. “We need to look around before you take the body.”

The deputy stepped to the corpse and squatted on his haunches, studied the face. The man had black hair; thick, straight, and ear-length. Possibly Native American, but hard to tell without the eyes. Hispanic? Asian? Doc guessed his age somewhere between twenty to thirty. Anyway, Cal didn’t believe it was anyone he knew. “I don’t recognize this guy,” he said.

“Don’t believe his own mother would,” Renata offered.

Cal stood. “Well, let’s check the area. Look for footprints. Soft dirt like this, oughta be some prints.

“Lewis, you got your camera?” Doc asked.

“Yeh,” the boy said, still distracted by the horrific sight. He’d never seen a homicide. Even car wreck fatalities weren’t as ghastly as this.

“Get some pictures,” Doc Said.

“Start with the body. If we find any footprints, get those, too,” Cal added.

They combed the area for the next hour, but found virtually nothing, not even a broken corn stalk. One set of footprints turned up, that of the hunter, and they came across their own prints as they circled about. Cal concluded Doc was right: somebody had carried the body into the field and deposited it there. With the loose dirt, the killer could’ve brushed out any prints.

© 2021 by Phil Truman. All rights reserved PTI Publishing Broken Arrow, OK

This is a work of fiction. All persons and events depicted sprang from the mind of the author.

Shout outs: Liam Ireland, The Garrulous Glaswegian, Stuart Englander, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Phil Rossi, Karen Madej, Keri Mangis, S.W. Lauden, Carol Anne Shaw, Ulf Wolf, Thewriteyard, Britni Pepper, Carla Woody, Nicole Maharaj, Maria Rattray, Simon Dillon, Harry Seitz, Roz Warren, Bebe Nicholson, Dr. Preeti Singh,