LITMIR.BIZ

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Allie might have inherited some of her brother’s mental illness. She confided in me some time back that an aunt had had schizophrenia and had killed herself as a result, and these things can run in families. Granted, at thirty-something, Allie is a bit old only now to be manifesting signs of the illness, which typically present in the late teens and early twenties. That’s when it first appeared with Danny, and the guy’s been struggling with it for more than a decade now.

      I reassure Allie with some verbal gobbledygook about how our minds can play tricks and make us see things that are suggested to us when we’re under high emotional stress. It’s not complete nonsense; this can and does happen to people all the time and might have happened to Allie. But something in my gut says this isn’t the case.

      It looks like further contemplation will have to wait because Devo is telling me that he just got a call from the sheriff’s department asking Sorenson for an assist on a call for a welfare check.

      “The daughter of a farmer who lives not too far outside our city limits said she hasn’t been able to reach her father all day and that’s not like him,” Devo explains.

      “Maybe he took a trip,” I suggest.

      “Daughter claims the guy is a homebody who never goes anywhere, especially since his wife died four years ago. She says she has a standing call time with him every Friday evening. And since today is her birthday, she’s certain her father wouldn’t miss the call tonight unless something was wrong. The girls—he has two daughters, both living in Minnesota—are thinking he might be ill or injured.”

      “Or maybe he has a new relationship in his life,” I counter.

      “Maybe,” Devo says with a shrug. “Either way, this is the kind of call your position is designed to help with. If the guy is hurt, or if he’s depressed, or having a mental breakdown of some sort, you can step in. If it turns out to be nothing, I think your presence will help minimize our intrusion to some degree.”

      “Okay, give me a minute. I’ll meet you outside.” I check in with Dr. Finnegan and leave my number in case I’m needed for anything more with Danny, though the plan for now is to reassess him when the medication wears off and determine if he’s safe to be sent home with his sister.

      Five minutes later, Devo and I are back in the cruiser, Roscoe inside his carrier, heading out of town.

      “Do you get a lot of assist calls for stuff outside the city limits?” I ask Devo.

      “Depends. The sheriff’s office shares a lot of duties with us and they assist us here in town when we need extra manpower. We often share investigations, too. Right now, the sheriff’s office is short-staffed, so they utilize us when they can for help with things. Something like a welfare check isn’t likely to involve any jurisdictional issues unless a crime has been committed. If we find that’s the case, then the sheriff’s department will need to come out to the site and take charge, though we can continue to assist.”

      “It’s nice that you guys all work together,” I observe. “No competition issues between you then?”

      “I didn’t say that,” Devo says with a roll of his eyes. “Things can get territorial at times, especially when there’s fun stuff like a big drug bust or a murder. But for the penny-ante stuff, like traffic accidents and welfare checks, it’s not a problem.”

      “Murder is fun then?” I say, giving him an arch look.

      “No, that’s not what I meant,” he says. He squirms in his seat and gives me an annoyed look.

      I chuckle at his discomfort. “I get it. You guys are all a bunch of adrenaline junkies. You’re like the ER staff and the EMS folks.”

      “I suppose,” Devo says. “Nights like last night drive me a little crazy.”

      My first night on the new job was a quiet one. The only calls that came in were for a nuisance noise complaint from a man whose neighbor was having a party that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning with lots of loud revelers and pounding music, and a call from a lady who lives along the river and found a huge snapping turtle on her back deck when her dogs started barking and wouldn’t stop. Devo informed me that the cops serve as animal control during off hours, so we had to figure out a way to dispatch the critter, as the lady was afraid to let her dogs out into the yard to do their business. Devo picked the turtle up by its tail and carried it down to the river, where he then let it go. The turtle was none too happy about this ignominious dispatch and it tried its darnedest to snake its long neck over its shell and bite Devo’s hand while it was being carried, but Devo never flinched. I admit, I was impressed.

      Since those two calls were the only ones we had, the rest of our eight-hour shift was spent with Devo driving and me yakking at him about everything under the sun. I downed several high-octane coffees before and during the shift so I could stay awake, and I was wired. I suspect this is why Devo didn’t look happy to see me at the start of our shift tonight, though so far we are keeping ourselves well occupied.

      He turns off the highway onto a rutted dirt and gravel drive and shifts into park. His headlights had briefly illuminated a newspaper tube and a mailbox with the name Fletcher applied to the side of it in reflective, sticky letters mounted on a post at the base of the driveway. Devo gets out to check them and finds two newspapers in the tube and several pieces of mail in the mailbox.

      He leaves them and gets back in the car, steering it up the drive, which takes us toward a weathered old barn with a fieldstone foundation, a common site in these parts. But before we reach the barn, the drive veers to the left and splits off, with one portion leading to the resident farmhouse and another leg going off toward a silo, some other outbuildings, and, eventually, the barn.

      The farmhouse is typical for the area: white, two-story, a large propane tank positioned beside it, the exterior of the house showing its age and in bad need of a paint job. I’m betting it’s not much better on the inside. All the windows in the house are dark and it appears as if no one is home. Then again, it’s nearly two in the morning, so the occupants may simply be asleep.

      “Isn’t this an odd time to be doing a welfare check?” I ask Devo. “Anyone who is home will likely be sleeping.”

      “It would be for most people,” he says. “but the daughter told the sheriff’s department that her father typically gets up around two-thirty or three in the morning, a habit born out of all his years of farming. So, if we wake him at two, it’s not that far outside his normal hours. If no one answers we can take a cursory look around, but unless we find something alarming, we’ll likely come back later and try again.”

      The drive forms a circle in front of the house, making its way around a giant old oak tree that I’d bet is a hundred years old or more. Devo pulls up by the front porch and shifts the car into park. He updates our location via his radio and then the two of us get out and make our way up the wooden steps to the front door. There is a screen door that creaks as Devo opens it. The main door has glass in the upper half of it, a lace curtain hanging on the inside. Devo looks for a doorbell but there is simply a hole in the wall where one might have been. With a sigh, Devo knocks hard on the door’s glass.

      We wait, and I listen to the gentle soughing of the warm night breeze through the branches of the oak tree. After a minute or so, Devo knocks again, harder this time, and he announces that we are the Sorenson Police Department. Still no answer.

      I reach down and try to give the doorknob a turn. It doesn’t move and Devo chastises me with a “Hey, don’t do that.”

      “Should we go around back?” I suggest. “I’ll bet there’s another door.”

      Frowning, Devo agrees, and he leads the way off the front porch and heads around the far side of the house, the part we haven’t put eyes on yet. He scans the windows as we go—they are all dark, just like the front windows and those on the other side of the house—and we find one near the back that is open. We round the corner to the backyard, past an older model, rust-scarred pickup parked on the grass, and a sudden gust of wind rises up and lifts the hair off my neck. With it comes a smell

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