Slade's Folly

Week One

Chapter 1

He'd gotten the call around 11:45 that night. By then, Sheriff Jackson Hargraves had put his two daughters to bed and was about to hop in the shower after having settled with a beer and ESPN. One of his deputies, Will Cho, had called and said there was a multiple homicide in the woods just outside Slade's Folly.

"It's bad Jackson," he said. His voice was shaky. Whether it was the cold or the sight of the bodies, neither appealed to Jackson, especially at this time of night.

"We put in a call to forensics in Seattle, but they probably can't get here until tomorrow. The county coroner is also out of town for the week."

"Alright," Jackson said, rubbing his eyes, "Give me an hour and I'll be up there."

His wife saw that look and they smiled at each other. It was a look she knew all too well by now. She pat his chest and made him a thermos of coffee. He put his sheriff coat and black cowboy hat back on. It had been a long day (they always were) and late night calls were part of the job.

The good people of his home had elected him and he was proud to represent and serve them. It was more vital that the homicides happened to be outside his hometown and that helped spur him on during the long dark drive. He was elected two years ago and ran on the platform of knowing the land and the people. It had been mostly a quiet run and he was a shoe-in for the position. He had good deputies that patrolled the county and helped answer calls and calm situations down before they ran rampant. Every now and then there was the occasional drunk who said he would come back to the bar with a gun or some local Indians who were growing and smoking some stuff they shouldn't have, but the problems, and the people, were simple. A lot of the land was covered in mountains and forests, the towns weren't bigger than a few thousand at most. It was a place people came to escape and those who were born here didn't feel a need to go anywhere else. He loved it here. Jackson had grown up in Slade's Folly and married his high school sweetheart, Natalie.

She was happy to stay. They both loved the isolation the area provided and wanted to raise a family away from the "civilized world". When he expressed his interest in becoming the sheriff for Okanogan county, she was on board. Natalie helped set up events and campaigned with their daughters, going door to door and canvassing. By that point Jackson had already served for ten years as a deputy, working closely with the previous sheriff and getting a well earned, albeit rough, knowledge of the people and the trappings their lives entailed. He was known for being a tough, austere man with a gruff manner and exterior, but he also had the reputation of being Oscar Hargraves' grandson. Oscar had been sheriff himself about thirty years prior. He was known as a WWII vet of the Pacific Theater. A fair and firm man who genuinely helped a lot of people and went beyond his job responsibilities.

People would stop Jackson on the street and regale him with stories about his grandfather. His favorite, or rather the one he heard most often, was about Roger Billings. He was quite the ladies man when he wasn't drunk, and just damn stupid when he was. Oscar had received a call one afternoon that Roger had gotten drunk at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday and stopped by the home of one of his women in waiting, Marjorie Welsh. She let Roger in, but neglected to tell him that her husband was taking a nap upstairs. Not that it would have bothered Roger anyway. They got to fornicating downstairs, Roger lifting off her sundress and proceeding to bend her over the couch and the wife trying to cover her mouth, when Roger and Marjorie turned around to see her husband, Duke, standing on the steps, eyes hot with fury. He ran back upstairs and the girl told Roger to get out before he came back with his gun. Roger ran towards the front door, pants still around his ankles and tripped and crashed through the screen door then fell down the porch steps before getting back up and running to his car. He started it, and gunned the engine down the street, looking back in the mirror to see the husband throwing the wife off him as she struggled to pull the rifle away. The next thing he saw was a hole emerging in the middle of the rearview mirror. He turned around and saw the glass had a nice round hole with a fractured web of cracked glass shooting out in all directions.