Death on the Prairie

By Richard Mueller

Death on the Prairie, first in the series of Glen Gleason mysteries. Glen is a man who is dragooned into running for county sheriff against a brutal deputy who may have murdered his predecessor. Glen has to reconcile the shocks of dealing with crime and violence with the desire to spend a quiet life with Anne, the woman he loves. He soon learns that if you do not stop crime where it lives, it will follow you home.

The second in the series--Falling to Iowa--follows the trail of a mysterious corpse that leads to a criminal facilitator and his one-man war against the mob. Glen and Anne are sucked into this maelstrom and their lives are changed forever.

Book three--The Dark of Winter-- finds Glen alone, his life and marriage shattered, and having to track a serial killer on a trail of revenge. And his list of potential victims includes Glen and everyone close to him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Mueller
• Release date: Nov 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465760289

Richard Mueller

Richard Mueller served in the U.S. Coast Guard before moving to Hollywood to work as a writer, first in science fiction and then television and film. He also runs the “best open mic show” in L.A.”

Book preview

DEATH ON THE PRAIRIE

a novel by Richard Mueller

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COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2002, 2010

all rights reserved

Edited by Yvonne Dauphin

Smashwords Edition: October 2011

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or a vendor partner and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Smashwords Edition Photo Credit: Dan Coffey. Used by permission.

Smashwords Edition Cover Design Credit: Shannon Muir. Used by permission.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

MAY 1

MAY 2

JUNE 3

JUNE 4

JULY 5

JULY 6

JULY 7

JULY 8

AUGUST 9

AUGUST 10

AUGUST 11

SEPTEMBER 12

SEPTEMBER 13

OCTOBER 14

OCTOBER 15

NOVEMBER 16

NOVEMBER 17

NOVEMBER 18

DECEMBER 19

FEBRUARY 20

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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DEDICATION

For Rebecca Romnaigh

For Yvonne Dauphin

For Carol Hitner

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MAY

1

I still remember the first conversation I ever had with Bill Drazell. I had just passed through the little town of New Rome, pulling a U-Haul with my thirteen-year-old Toyota, my goal virtually in sight, when I saw those flashing red-and-blue lights in my side-view mirror. Shit, I thought, it was too good to last. No ticket in five years and now this. I pulled off onto the verge, coasted to a stop on the edge of a field of flowers, and waited as the patrol car pulled up behind me, crunching on the gravel. The day was hot and I could hear the buzzing of bugs through my open window. The flowers were yellow, trailing off into the distance. I could tell that they weren’t daffodils, or goldenrods, or goldfinches. Dandelions perhaps, or buttercups. The air smelled of silage, and my skin was sticky with road dirt. Two cars, long black sedans, screamed by in the other direction, but the cop ignored them.

After a minute or so, a six-foot-five, two hundred fifty pound Cornflower County Deputy Sheriff strolled up to my window, his shiny black boots banging on the stones. I was dead tired but I stifled a yawn and did my best to smile.

Officer. What seems to be the trouble?

Step out of the car, please. His voice rumbled oddly when he talked, like his larynx was loose or his throat was full of marbles. It was unnerving. He towered over the car like a red-necked Paul Bunyan. I was looking at his belt buckle, a silver plaque with a bas relief of a Colt Model 1911 in gold. As a motivational tool it was persuasive, and I did as I was told.

I don’t think I was speeding, I began, but if he heard me he gave no sign. He was a pro, schooled to ignore any protest from those he was sworn to serve and protect and intimidate.

Step this way, please. I’d seldom heard a voice with that flat a tone, at least not since Coast Guard boot camp. It was meant to impress upon me the fact that this man didn’t want to hear any of my crap, but his size, nightstick, gun, mace and mirrored sunglasses had already made that point. I stretched my knotted back muscles, wary of making any sudden movement, and followed him to the back of the U-Haul, wondering just what I was going to see there; an alien, a dead body, a chimpanzee riding on the bumper?

Your tail lights are out, he said imperiously, his pen poised to write me a fix-it ticket as soon as I’d delivered my lame excuse.

Oh, I said, thoroughly confused. It’s day time. I wasn’t running with my lights on.

He looked at me with grim sympathy. I meant your brake lights.

I wasn’t using my brakes, I replied. And you started flashing me before I would have put on my brakes, I thought, but decided not to press that point — at least not yet. Something was going on here and I was too tired to figure it out. Better to play the confused innocent that I actually was.

He tilted his head to one side, like a large animal trying to determine whether a smaller animal was edible. You weren’t using your brakes on Pittman Hill?

I should explain that Pittman Hill is a steady 2.75% grade that runs for just over four miles from the town of New Rome to the city limits of West Harlan, the county seat of Cornflower County. I could see West Harlan in the distance, its rooftops nestled in a pleasant patch of trees, the church steeples, the water tower, the Courthouse. A glint of blue, cool and inviting, indicated that College Pond was still there. The bugs seemed suddenly louder. I had driven almost two thousand miles from Los Angeles without a serious hitch to get stopped just three miles short of my goal by King Kong. I leaned back against the U-Haul, its side panel touting the delights of Idaho, and blew air out of my cheeks.

I wasn’t using my gas either, I said carefully. I was just coasting.

At forty miles an hour, pullin’ a trailer?

Downhill, I replied. I was going downhill. It’s a pretty heavy trailer.

He decided to try a different page from the County Cop Fuck You Book. But, when you pulled over to stop, your brake lights didn’t go on then neither. How ‘bout that? How ‘bout it indeed.

I coasted to a stop, I said wearily. It’s a gravel verge. It stopped me just fine. I just coasted. I was beginning to feel positively foolish trying to explain anything to this man.

Verge?

Shoulder.

He looked at me, at the Corolla, at the trailer. Finally he had me get in and pump the brakes. The car lights worked. The trailer lights worked. He made a disappointed rumbling sound in his throat, as if his dinner had just escaped.

My mistake, he said at long grudging last. I was about to ask him if I could go when I realized that he was looking at my license plate. California, he said, his voice still flat, but damp now with a twinge of curiosity.

Yes.

Whereabouts?

Los Angeles.

Hollywood, he said, for the first time with a trace of emotion in his voice. I think it was a combination of fascination and disgust, and I wondered if this was the real reason I was pulled over. Driving while Californian.

Actually, I said, I lived in North Hollywood. In the San Fernando Valley? A suburb, you know…

He was looking at my gray New Balance running shoes. I thought all you Hollywood types wore Goosey loafers. Hollywood types? Me?

No, I said carefully. Most of us wear sneakers.

Like David Letterman.

Yes, though he’s in New York, I replied slowly, aware that if the conversation got any more surrealistic my brain was going to stall out. I’d been driving nonstop since eastern Nebraska and I was suffering from serious road fatigue. I needed a cup of hot coffee to replace the sludge in my thermos, and I didn’t want to get it in jail. I tried to lock eyes with his mirrored shades and just wound up squinting. I felt like an extra in a very long movie by someone I hated, like Tarentino.

Same difference, he grunted at last, as if that explained everything. I must say that in general Iowa is an enlightened land, with one of the highest literacy rates, best school systems, and a college in every county. But it is still the Midwest, and things that are taken for granted on the coasts are slower to take root out here in the land between the rivers. I fully expected to receive a lecture on the evils of cultural diversity from Deputy Sheriff William Drazell, but he merely shrugged and said, Drive safe then. An’ use your brakes from now on.

I watched as he pulled out, spraying my U-Haul with gravel, and disappeared in the direction of West Harlan, Iowa, population 4,578. Moments later, so did I.

And that night, it rained.

* * *

They talk about hundred year storms, roaring elemental monsters that burst out of the Grand Banks and wreck the New England coast, North Pacific blows that break oil tankers in half and hit the beaches of Hawaii with ninety foot waves, even freakish blizzards that sweep down off the Canadian permafrost and dump twelve feet of snow on the prairie, leaving cars under drifts and frost bite, exposure and death in their wake. The rain that hit Cornflower County that night was not in their league, but it was pretty close.

Spring rains in Iowa usually break loose over a dozen states at once, filling the streams, colliding into watercourses like maddened animals, and raising water levels all across the region. Ditches become swamps, ponds become lakes, and lakes spill over roads and farmland. Rivers race, fields flood, bridge approaches go under, and entire towns are cut off. Some of those towns die, as motorboats and DUKWs and helicopters rescue the moderately unlucky. The very unlucky drown, their waterlogged bodies found later, tangled in trees or washed up against levees, face down in dark alluvial mud.

A few weeks of rain causes the Mississippi to look like the delta of the Amazon. Traffic on the river stops as the locks overflow, bridge after bridge is wrecked, rising waters short out the electric motors of railroad engines, levees break, thousands of acres go under semi-liquid slime, the corpses of animals drift in the runoff, the nation mobilizes, and the President arrives in a helicopter and passes out checks to other politicians. During the great flood years like 1965, the nation is literally cut in half. Nothing crosses the Mississippi by land south of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

`This was not one of those years. Not quite, but as storms go, it was a real pisser.

I was spending my first night in a $400-a-month loft apartment that I had rented on a six month lease by phone. It was dusty, and ghostly shadows lurked in every corner, but amazingly the roof did not leak. I sat in the dark on my bedroll with my two old cats and watched the rain out on the street boil up toward the bed of my U-Haul, and suddenly I was desperately homesick.

I had left a lot of friends back in L.A. and life in a vibrant and exciting city. Later in West Harlan, as people got to know me, they would ask why I’d left. I’d give them all sorts of reasons, most of which were one or another variation on the theme of how much I had missed the Midwest, how I had been determined to simplify my life, how I was looking for peace and quiet. They were all lies. I had left because, after almost twenty years in the biz, Show Business, television, I had failed. Because I was approaching my mid-fifties and, like an old walrus at the edge of the colony, I was no longer taken seriously by the young bulls in the herd. The hour dramas and police procedurals I had written for had dried up, and I was reduced to penning documentaries and animation, neither of which paid residuals. Then the California economy began to stumble, and I was facing yet another writers’ strike. It was time to go. I almost didn’t. My friends rallied around and begged me to stay, but we were all in the same boat. Between us we didn’t have a pot to piss in. And Hollywood has no heart for failures.

I did have fifteen thousand in emergency money put away in a safe deposit box. I also had over sixty thousand in credit card debt, so I gritted my teeth and rammed myself through a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. Then I packed up the U-Haul, turned my undeclared assets into Traveler’s checks, and got the hell out of Dodge.

Now I was back in the town where I’d graduated college over thirty years before. It didn’t seem to have changed much, if I ignored the fact that everyone I’d known was either long gone or dead. I would live on my savings, get a part-time job, or maybe teach and write novels. Somehow, things would work themselves out. But right now, in a cold and dark loft with the rain pounding down, I was feeling more like a fugitive than a man who was about to reinvent himself. I was having trouble seeing a future beyond the rain. I petted the two old cats sleeping on my lap and felt very much alone, watching the water coursing down Cavalry Street outside. If there ever was a dark night of the soul, this was a sure candidate to be mine. I tried to weep but couldn’t. I cursed but no one heard me.

The rain. What I did not know as I watched it sheet down was that I was not the only one undergoing a major change that night. And mine was infinitely preferable to the one that Cornflower County Sheriff Frank Hagenbeck was about to experience.

* * *

County Road C21 lies like a gravel slash along the north side of the BNSF tracks, which run to the east out of West Harlan toward the tiny village of Ornament. Ornament contains a three-tube concrete grain elevator, a feed and farm supply, a clapboard grocery store and diner, two taverns, a neatly whitewashed Lutheran church and a dozen small houses. Trains stop there only to work the grain elevator, but on the night of the rain the signal lights were red all along the line due to a washout a few miles to the east at New Harlan, and no trains were moving throughout the eastern third of the state south of Cedar Rapids. Power was also out due to a series of lightning strikes on the transformers and transmission lines. Candles and lanterns burned in a few of the houses, while primal electricity blasted up from the prairie in an arc from the east to the south.

Sheriff Hagenbeck was driving his Crown Victoria patrol car, County One, along C21, looking for washouts, cars off the road and motorists in trouble. As he reached the edge of Ornament, where C21 curved south over the tracks to join up with U.S. 34 on the east side of town, he instead turned north on a gravel road officially designated as X55, but known to everyone in the area as Dinky Creek Road, another farm feeder that wound up toward Morning Sun and Wapello. He was driving on a raised gravel track between dark flooded fields, and some time around 1:00 AM he reached the long, low bridge over Dinky Creek. The rain was pounding down, Dinky Creek was in full flood and the deck of the plank deck bridge was already under an inch of fast-moving water. The Sheriff got out of his cruiser and erected a sawhorse roadblock to close off the bridge and then, for some unexplained reason, he drove out on it himself. Perhaps to set up a block on the north side, for Frank Hagenbeck was a conscientious man who took his responsibilities seriously. His wipers were on high speed and he was using his headlights and searchlight, but he never made it across the bridge, and that’s where they found him next day.

Forty feet out onto the bridge, he had inexplicably turned right, going through the thin steel railings on the eastern side. The heavy engine of the Vic had crashed down into the mud and jammed there, and then the force of the water racing downstream had hit the car and toppled it over onto its roof. At that point Sheriff Hagenbeck was still alive, hanging upside down in his safety belt. Knowing the techniques for escaping from a car underwater, he squirmed out of his shoulder harness and began to roll down his window slowly to equalize the pressure but the Sheriff was not a particularly athletic man, and the blast of cold muddy water coming in slammed him back against the passenger side door, where his elbow cracked the window. Shocked by the freezing water, he managed to hold his breath as the pressure equalized and then attempted to open the door, but both doors had wedged deep enough in the muddy stream bed to make this impossible. It was at that moment that Frank Hagenbeck began to panic and lose air.

He tried to pull himself through the open window, forgetting that he was still wearing his gun belt and suddenly he was jammed solidly in the window, unable to move forward or back. And that is where he died, and where a farmer named Lance Nofziger found him the next morning. It was a miserable way to go, but the inquest ruled that it was an accident and so it remained.

* * *

There was one other pivotal moment that happened that night, but it was far away in a quiet neighborhood in New York City. A woman, on her way home from a late supper, was on the point of letting herself into her brownstone on the upper West Side when she witnessed a violent crime nearby on the street. The light above her door was burned out, so no one saw her, but she caught a license number reflected by a streetlight. If she had known who the car belonged to, she probably would have done her best to forget that she’d seen anything, but being a good citizen, she called the police, and set in motion a sequence of events that would reach even to West Harlan.

And both incidents would soon come crashing into my life like runaway trains.

* * *

I was awakened around ten by the warble of sirens. Piecing things together later I determined that these belonged to the ambulance and patrol car bringing in the waterlogged body of Sheriff Hagenbeck, but at that time all I could think of was the ongoing rain, which had slackened with the coming of dawn to a steady pour. Outside, traffic was moving slowly on Cavalry Street and the drains seemed to be handling the runoff. I was impressed by the drainage system. This much rain in L.A. would have sent my entire neighborhood into the Pacific Ocean. I dressed in an old coverall fed the cats and went out to check on the U-Haul.

There was a plastic-wrapped parking ticket on the windshield of my car. I had expected that. Parking violation: ten dollars. In Los Angeles it would have been at least forty. I opened the trailer and found no water damage, but the rains could increase at any time so I decided to unload as much as possible by myself and then hire some kids to help me with the furniture. After clearing out most of my books and clothing, I changed out of my wet clothes and went looking for a place to have lunch.

A block down Mallon Street where it meets the eastbound lanes of U.S. 34 was Astroburgers, a small comfortable diner, all chrome and plastic. It was a throwback from the fifties that I had not remembered seeing when I was going to school here in the seventies, which meant that it must have come in with the nostalgia boom of the eighties. I had a cheeseburger and fries, a perpetually refilling coke, and a piece of cherry pie. Outside of the pie, which was stale, the meal was just what I needed, and I allowed myself a moment to relax, but only a moment. The window was slick with continuous rain and, looking out at the traffic on U.S. 34 shooting up rooster tails of water, I decided that I had better get my trailer unloaded before things got worse. This might be only the first wave of a series of big storms coming in from the north, and I knew I needed to use the time I had before things got worse. I asked the bottle blond waitress, who vaguely resembled the actress Melinda Dillon and whose name badge announced that she would answer to ‘Tess,’ where I could hire a couple of kids to help me unload a U-Haul.

Why you want kids? she asked curiously. There’s usually half a dozen rednecks and Mex’cans hanging around the pool hall over on Railroad Avenue. They work cheap.

I don’t want it done cheap, I said. I want it done right.

She smiled and nodded, as if I’d passed some sort of secret test, then leaned into the kitchen and called, Jimmy. A moment later a tall red-headed boy in a Pearl Jam tour t-shirt with an impressive spray of acne across his jaw looked out.

Yes, Ma’am, he replied, his voice a broken baritone.

What time you get off?

Jimmy glanced at the clock and shrugged. Three, I guess.

Well, this man needs to get a U-Haul unloaded. Where was that?

Just a block down on Mallon and Cavalry, I said, adding a useless gesture. I’ll pay twenty bucks.

I don’t get off until three, Jimmy said stubbornly.

Tess shook her head. This place’ll be dead today, she said. Jose can handle the dishes. You go help this gentleman…what did you say your name was?

Glen Gleason.

Jimmy stuck out his hand. Jimmy Ferguson. He had a surprisingly strong grip for such a beanpole physique. Wiry, probably a farm kid. Look, I’d love to make twenty dollars, but if Biff comes in —

I’ll sign your chit, said Tess. If he comes in I’ll tell him I sent you to the market for lettuce and onions. Now scoot.

As Jimmy went to get his coat, I thanked Tess. She shrugged it off. I’m happy to help. You just move to town?

Yes. Got in last night.

Where from?

Los Angeles.

She laughed incredulously, as if I’d said that I was from Mars. Why’d you want to move to this town from Los Angeles?

I grew up in the Midwest, I said, spinning out the first installment of what was to become my standard lie. I decided I wanted to come home.

Suit yourself, she said with a smile. Sometime when you come in you can tell me all about Los Angeles.

That was the last thing I wanted to talk about but I smiled and said, Okay.

Okay, then, Tess said brightly. I guess I know how to get return customers. Then she turned away to welcome two farmers in feed caps and bib overalls who’d come in for lunch. I used the opportunity to make my exit.

Jimmy was waiting on the sidewalk, watchcap down to his eyebrows, bundled up in a parka, hiding his face inside the hood, presumably from the mysterious Biff. As I headed up Mallon Street he fell in beside me, striding along without a word, his boots banging on the wet sidewalk. I was curious to ask him about his working arrangement, which sounded like some form of indentured servitude, but I figured that it would wait. After all, I could be in West Harlan for a long time. Best not to use up all of the interesting stories right away.

The rain had soaked the buildings on Mallon up to head level and the downspouts were pouring out torrents of brackish water as the rain pounded the dirt off of the roofs, but as we reached the U-Haul, the rain slackened down to a cold drizzle. Jimmy asked me how much stuff we had to unload. I opened the doors and showed him. He whistled, looked up at the building that was to become my new home, and shook his head.

Stairs or elevator?

Stairs, I’m afraid.

Mind if I call in some help? He whipped out a cell phone and called someone named Wally. Ten minutes later, as we were angling my plastic-covered sofa out of the trailer, a rusted-out blue Honda Civic drove up and a chubby kid with stringy brown hair got out. He looked a bit like Meat Loaf. Introducing himself as Waldo ‘Wally’ Villiers, he pitched in and we got the furniture moved in just over an hour. Wally Villiers may have looked flabby but the fat was thin over well-worked muscle. He was a farm kid who had the potential to be a power lifter. When we finished I gave each of them twenty bucks and, deciding that I wasn’t yet ready to give up human companionship, asked about restaurants in town other than Astroburgers.

You don’t like Astroburgers? Jimmy asked with an air of slight disappointment. Indentured servant or not, Jimmy was loyal.

I like it, I said, but I don’t want to make a religion of it. Jimmy nodded and went back to playing with my two cats, Hank and Murray, so Wally, who appeared to enjoy talking more than Jimmy, gave me the verbal chef’s tour of culinary West Harlan.

There’s almost nothing beyond the railroad tracks but Pizza de Resistance next to the radio station on Iowa Avenue and a pretty good coffeehouse called Cyberdrip just north of the college. I noticed that he pronounced ‘Resistance’ correctly in the French manner. The fast food places are all on 34 east and west of town, including two McDonalds’ for some reason, and a Carl’s Junior that burned out last fall. The Roadhouse, which is a steak joint, is south of the Fair Grounds on 218. And there’s a good coffee shop in the basement of the courthouse, but it tends to leak when it rains. Outside of those, you’ve got three choices. There’s a decent Mexican place on Lincoln called The Jumping Bean—

You’re kidding.

Hey, Wally laughed. They were going to call it ‘La Cucaracha’ until someone told them what it meant.

I take it’s not run by Mexicans.

No, Armenians I think, but the food is good and cheap, if I’m any judge…

And he is, Jimmy muttered, patting his stomach.

Shut up, convict. Wally spread his ham hands. Hey, you’re from L.A. If anyone should know Mexican food it’d be you. You be the judge.

There’s Edelweiss, Jimmy said. Out on H46, the county road back of the high school. It’s a real rockin’ joint.

Yeah. German heritage, big meals and beer. Everything but a Hitler Youth kid singing ‘The Future Belongs to Me’. We don’t go there much. It’s pricey and we can’t drink yet.

Legally, said Jimmy with a wink.

Legally. They shared a laugh. But it’s still not my cup of tea. It’s more for the blue-haired crowd, Wally said. And there’s Moscone’s.

Jimmy grinned, and the two smiled, sharing a moment of reverence. Moscone’s — they pronounced it Moss-cones — is the best Italian food in the county.

In the state, said Wally.

Oh yeah.

I nodded, convinced that they at least believed it. We shoved the furniture into the approximate positions where it would stay for the duration, and then Jimmy took his leave. He wanted to check back in at Astroburger’s and make sure that everything was copasetic with Tess.

He’s worried about Biff, Wally said after Jimmy had left.

I noticed, I said. Who’s Biff, and why does Jimmy have a problem with him?

Wally paused, as if the very mention of Biff made him uncomfortable, but his natural garrulousness won out. Biff is a cop, a Sheriff named Bill Drazell, who busted Jimmy for being drunk and disorderly.

And was he?

Wally shrugged. Drunk? Probably not. Drinking? Probably. Disorderly? Almost certainly.

I told Wally how I’d met Deputy Sheriff Bill Drazell and that he had struck me as a thoroughly humorless bastard. Wally laughed.

Scary, isn’t he? He does everything but goosestep.

Well, I wasn’t about to mess with him, I replied, but I did talk him out of ticketing me.

Oh no you didn’t, Wally said, picking up the plastic-wrapped parking