James lay in bed, staring at the ceiling for hours. Finally he realized there was no way he was going to get any sleep, so he got out of bed and went into the living room to watch television.
Early the next morning Sharon’s cousin, Sarah Infante, who lived two miles away, in one of only three other houses on the dirt road, drove out to Sharon’s house to check on her. She knocked on the door, but received no answer. Fearing her eccentric, and now severely distraught, cousin may have taken her own life, Sarah quickly drove home and called the sheriff’s office. She was told that an officer would be out immediately. Sarah then drove back to Sharon’s house and waited.
About seven minutes after Sarah returned, a county patrol car pulled in the driveway and parked behind her car — good reaction time considering the distance covered, but not fast enough in Sarah’s opinion. She wouldn’t have been satisfied if the patrol car had been waiting in the driveway when she returned to Sharon’s house.
Deputy Darren Woolford stepped out of the patrol car, and Sarah, who had been sitting on the hood of her car, chain smoking cigarettes as fast as she could get them out of her purse and to her mouth, walked briskly over and met him halfway.
Tossing a cigarette butt to the ground, Sarah fumbled with her pack trying to get another out with her trembling hands. Before Darren could ask a single question, Sarah started chattering answers. “I’m Sharon’s cousin, Sarah. Sarah Infante. After what happened yesterday I promised her aunt, my mother, Nelda Wiggins, that I would check up on her this morning on my way to work. I got here around six-thirty. She didn’t answer the door when I knocked. I tried the door but it’s locked. God, I hope she’s okay. I mean, I hope she hasn’t done anything stupid. That horse was her life you know. It was all she had. Momma is worried sick about her.” Sarah had more to say, but her trembling hands finally managed to get the cigarette out of the pack, so she stopped talking while she placed it to her lips and concentrated on keeping the wind from blowing out the tiny flame coming from her lighter as she tried to light the cigarette.
The brief silence gave Darren the opportunity to drawl out, “Just calm down, Miss.”
Darren Woolford was a tall country boy from Center, Texas. He was thirty-three years old, but still had the boyish face of a teenager. In an attempt to make himself look less like a sixteen year old, Darren had grown a mustache, or at least attempted to grow one. The end result was that the scattered blond hairs on his upper lip only made him look like a sixteen-year old who was trying to grow a mustache.
“Are you sure she’s home?” Darren asked.
“Of course I’m sure she’s home,” Sarah snapped, her eyes still focused on the tiny flame as she continued her efforts to light her cigarette. “Her truck’s parked right over there. Right where she always parks it.” Still without moving her eyes, she nodded her head in the direction of red Dodge pickup parked in an open garage.
“Maybe someone came and picked her up?” Darren ventured.
“Hell, no,” Sarah snapped. Finally getting her cigarette lit, she took a tremendous drag before continuing. “The woman lives ten years like a hermit with only her and that horse. Do you think she would take off and go out of town shopping the day after her horse turns up dead?”
That wasn’t exactly what Darren meant, but he could see he was getting nowhere, so he let it drop.
He started toward the front door with Sarah right behind him, yapping like a vicious terrier. “And what took you so long to get out here? I’ve been here for almost thirty minutes waiting. Doesn’t that car get up over thirty miles an hour? Or do you even know how to drive it?”
Ignoring her, Darren stepped up on the front porch.
He knocked on the door.
Behind him Sarah spoke in an exasperated tone, “I’ve done tried that.”
Still ignored the woman, Darren called out, “Mrs. Perrett! This is Deputy Darren Woolford of the Newton County Sheriff’s Department.” He knocked again. “Mrs. Perrett!”
“I said I’ve done tried that,” Sarah said with her hands on her hips, her cigarette bobbing up and down as she spoke. “I hollered and no one answered.”
Darren tried to open the door. It was locked.
“I told you it was locked.” Sarah said in a scornful voice that was rapidly becoming very irritating to Darren.
Darren turned to her. “Do you have a key?”
“Well, no,” Sarah replied tartly. “The woman’s a hermit. She wouldn’t give Jesus Christ a key if he showed up at the door askin’ for one.”
“Did you try the back door?”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at him. She hadn’t thought of the back door.
When Darren turned away from her to start around the house toward the back a satisfied smirk found its way to his face. Sarah followed him around the corner of the house, this time without a word.
When they went up the steps to the back porch, they found the back door wide open.
Darren stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Perrett!”
He stepped inside.
Sarah started to follow him inside, but she had already sucked her cigarette down to the filter and was in desperate need of another. She tossed the butt to the ground, then tried to use her uncooperative hands to get another one out of the pack. While her trembling hands attempted to grasp an elusive cigarette, her eyes scanned the pasture behind the house. She saw the yellow police ribbon surrounding the pen and the barn. She had just retrieved a cigarette and placed it in her mouth when something in the pen caught her eye.
The cigarette fell from her lips.
She screamed.
Darren came running back out of the house. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Sarah just pointed to the corral and screamed again.
It was difficult to tell for sure what he was seeing; he started toward the barn to investigate. At first, it looked like the guys from A&M had failed to remove all of the mutilated horse yesterday, and there was still a gory chunk or two in the pen. Darren started across the backyard, but he didn’t even make it halfway before he realized that the gory chunks of meat were what was left of a human being.
He turned and sprinted back to his car to call for the sheriff.
Sheriff Oates and Deputies Woolford and Price stood over a white sheet. Blood had soaked through in many places on the sheet, leaving no doubt as to the grisly sight underneath.
Bill looked in the direction of the house. “There comes the little pecker-head.”
The two deputies followed his gaze and saw a chubby little man in spectacles carrying a small notepad descending the hill from the house.
Justice of the Peace T. J. Simmons held the distinction of being the only man in the last fifteen years to be elected to office in Newton County without Sheriff Oates' vote of confidence. During the last election year a drug task force swept through Newton and Jasper Counties arresting a number of people, one of which happened to be a Newton County Commissioner. A group of Newton county newcomers led by a retired Beaumont lawyer named Walter Sykes began to cry out that the county government was corrupt. Mr. Sykes promptly ran for sheriff, while one of his buddies ran for mayor of the city of Newton, another ran for the vacated county commissioner seat, and yet another, T. J. Simmons, ran for Justice of the Peace for Precinct Two. The Newcomers Party, as the group was jokingly known as throughout Newton County, was largely unsuccessful. Walter Sykes and the other two men were soundly defeated, but T. J. was helped out by a convenient scandal when the rumor broke loose that Michael Salter, the current J. P. for Precinct Two, was having an affair with Ruby Keinzel, the organist of the First Methodist Church of Newton, where Michael and his family were also members. When Michael admitted to the affair, he found himself in the middle of a divorce. He tried to patch matters up with his church family by publicly asking for forgiveness. Nevertheless, the damage was done; Michael Salter lost the election by twelve votes.