Dead Dreams: A Dakota Mystery

By M.K. Coker

Dreams can inspire, crush—and even kill.

For Sheriff Karen Mehaffey, going for the stars—the sheriff’s stars—wasn’t turning out to be a dream come true. Flood waters are rising along with the thermometer, and the last thing she needs is a homicide. Detective Marek Okerlund, on the other hand, welcomes any distraction from the anniversary of his wife’s death and from his mother-in-law’s unannounced visit.

When Karen calls back her old classmate Adam Van Eck to look after his ailing mother, he reluctantly returns from pounding the boards on Broadway—and is found days later, shotgun in hand, with his mother planted dead in her garden.

Who other than Adam could possibly want the retired schoolteacher dead? The only link to her life outside her garden is the Dream Team, a group of high school students dreaming up ways to revitalize the dying county of Eda, South Dakota.

With the detritus of dead dreams all around, Karen and Marek must flush out a killer. Before the levee breaks.

DEAD DREAMS is a character-driven police procedural of a rural bent. Second in series. Word Count: 91,000. Occasional profanity. Minimal gore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.K. Coker
• Release date: Dec 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301290079

M.K. Coker

M.K. Coker grew up on a river bluff in southeastern South Dakota. Part of the Dakota diaspora, the author has lived in half a dozen states, including New Mexico, but returns to the prairie at every opportunity.

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DEAD DREAMS

A Dakota Mystery

M.K. Coker

Copyright © M.K. Coker. All Rights Reserved.

Cover Art by Glendon S. Haddix of Streetlight Graphics.

Smashwords Edition: December 2012

If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use or under an authorized lending program, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

The Dakota Mystery Series:

Dead White

Dead Dreams

To my parents

Who never crushed my dreams

And waited (patiently) for them to come true!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

No one said what you were supposed to do when the dream died.

When you’d sunk your talent, your time, and your youth into it; distanced yourself from family and sacrificed having your own; traveled, sweated, and dreamed.

All because you believed.

Adam Van Eck turned off the asphalt onto the gravel road. The old springs on the bench seat screeched as he sank lower into the numbness that had begun before he’d crossed the New York line.

For over two decades, he’d waited for the big break on Broadway. They said perseverance would give it to him. So many close calls, but no curtain calls. Yes, he worked; they said he should be grateful, that many didn’t. But those roles hadn’t been the kind that stretched you, that left you hanging on a rush of fear, that pushed you to heights you didn’t think yourself capable of. Because if you didn’t take the audience over those heights, you fell from them.

The grit of gravel dust kicked up through the open window.

How he missed it; oh, not here. His soil, his soul, had other skies, other horizons. His land had no gravel running through it, even if it took grit. He missed the stage keenly. The physicality of it, the body as instrument, with glottal stop, with spit and consonant, the whole of it tuned to one thing: to be another, so completely as to bring others into that dream.

In his world, dreams were turned into reality.

What had happened to his dream, the one he’d nurtured in the gambrel-roofed barn on the section line that ran down an infinite horizon to nothingness? He’d written it in his head, how he’d left the sorry state of nowhere to take the big city by storm. But as the years stretched on without that big splash in the Big Apple, he waited and worked for fame. Each time he’d thought he finally made it, he got the regretful call, the offer of a bit part in yet another musical instead of a drama, the pep talk that he could play better than his agent.

Next time. You keep working at it. You’ve got real talent. Real spark. Don’t give up. You’ve just got to pay your dues.

He’d worked harder at his craft than his father had worked the land. He put everything he had into it, only to end up dead broke and in hock to a friend for seven months’ rent. Everything he owned rattled behind him in a midget-sized U-Haul.

The last off-Broadway musical had folded nineteen months ago, and he hadn’t been picked up for another. Then he lost his side job at the warehouse and, proving bad things happened in threes, his agent dumped him after a final, failed audition.

You’re getting too old to break through. It’s a young man’s business. Hell, you’re still a great singer. Give lessons. Direct for a change. Go back to Fargo or wherever you’re from and wow them on the little stage. I can’t keep stringing you; you’re finished here. Don’t bother finding another agent. Find another career.

Panic had silenced him.

Acting wasn’t a career. It was his life, one he’d been prepared for, in a strange way, as a child out in the middle of nowhere.

Pick yourself up and go on. Take what you can. There’s always tomorrow.

You got knocked out by too little rain or too much, by fungus or grasshoppers, by an early freeze or a late one, by hail or wind, but there was always next year.

If you still had your land, that is, and his had been pulled out from under him.

Without a role, an audience, what was he?

Hot air blew through the busted windows of the ancient Ford he’d bought with the security deposit from the tiny apartment he’d occupied in New York for the last twenty years.

What kind of life was it, to want, but never be?

Because when that life-changing call had finally come, it hadn’t been from the casting crew of his latest audition, but from the sheriff of Eda County, South Dakota.

He was a wanted man.

***

Sheriff Karen Okerlund Mehaffey had spent the hot, dry day of midsummer killing dreams. She glanced at the sun-seared paper on the dash of the Suburban, uncovered after she’d served up a divorce, five small claims, and a foreclosure notice. And that didn’t count the jury summonses she’d delivered beforehand.

Paper pusher, her father had once called the occupation when asked what he did by a dimwitted census taker. Arne Okerlund had been wearing his sheriff’s uniform at the time. Karen passed the faded Dutch Corners population sign, which stated 78, but she doubted it. Like her entire county, this town at the western edge of Eda County was losing the numbers game.

Diminishing returns.

She brushed a tangle of sweaty hair from her temple and pushed up the bill of her sheriff’s cap. The air conditioning was on the blink again. She needed to take the Suburban in for repair, but she was under strict orders to make do, a common condition in rural South Dakota.

She chugged down lukewarm water from the once-cold bottle she’d stashed under the dash. Then she rubbed the emptied container against her forehead and let moisture drip down her face.

Six months ago, a bizarre homicide in a blizzard had threatened to unpin her shiny new badge as acting sheriff. Had she really wished to trade snow for the dog days of summer?

Actually, snow was what had brought her out to Dutch Corners. Lots of it. From the Rocky Mountains, it had melted and flowed into the rivers and, with spring rains, swelled them to record highs. Their local river, the Big Jammer, flowed flatter than most, meaning the water would meander and malinger over field and bale.

Large swaths of the nearby cornfields sprouted stunted, pale-green stalks. Too much water, despite the heat. But farther on, well away from the river, the corn stood tall and dark. All of it would be under water if the levee broke. The town of Dutch Corners wouldn’t be far behind.

She pulled to a stop in front of the levee, stacked high with earth and sandbags, and eyed it doubtfully. Would it hold?

The waft of rot—earthy, damp, and decayed—assailed her, carried by the ever-present wind. She held up a hand to the man in the Bobcat. He gave her a brief nod and kept on shoring up one side of the levee.

A grizzled man in a seed cap straightened from where he bent over an open gunnysack. He set down a shovel of sand, dug his hands into his back, then frog-marched himself over to her. Sheriff.

Mr. King. How’s it going?

Frank King shrugged. Not bad.

She was surprised to see so few people. Do you need more help? I can turn out more for you, I’m sure, than this. Usually impending disaster brought out the best in her rural constituents. Good neighbors were as prized and cultivated as state-fair-winning heifers.

I got my sons. He nodded toward the silhouetted figure in the Bobcat and at two others, one still a teenager, who filled sandbags. And a bunch of folks are on a late lunch break the ladies put on at the fairgrounds. They’ll be back soon.

Even as he spoke, a parade of pickups pulled up with bed-loads of helpers. Old and young. Able-bodied and worried. She decided to overlook the blatant disregard of the seatbelt laws. Implements of husbandry were exempt and might, in a stretch, cover pickup trucks.

Sheriff, have you heard from the Corps or the National Guard? one of the Good Samaritans asked. Are we going to get help?

We can take care of ourselves, Frank King grumbled, but she knew he too waited for word of the cavalry.

Custer wouldn’t win this day either.

I contacted them, Karen said. But they said the levee is on private land—farmland, at that. They’ve got bigger priorities up in Pierre and down in Dakota Dunes. They told me to start advising people to pack up and evacuate, since the waters are rising and rain is forecast later in the week. I’ll hold off with a full evacuation order, but pass the word.

A tall redhead said, So just because my home is in Dutch Corners, it doesn’t matter?

It’s all about the numbers, another redhead said, likely his sister for the same burst of freckles. We don’t count.

More pickups and cars arrived. One had a Missouri plate, another Colorado. Probably families who’d moved away but came back to pitch in, or maybe just good-hearted folk who’d heard help was needed. It happened.

Now that she’d delivered her bad news, she had to go hand out more, but first, she needed gas. If the county commissioners wanted to start saving money, they’d do better to provide her with a Mini Cooper than the gas-hog she drove.

Happy that the cavalry had arrived in the form of local militia, she made her farewells then drove into the little town of Dutch Corners. A few boarded-up buildings huddled around the one-pump gas station like pallbearers over a grave, slowly letting down the dead, unwilling to give up the last tie to life. If things didn’t turn around, the plague of decay would soon infect her own town of Reunion, the county seat.

Karen gassed up, got another bottle of water, and left cash on the counter when no one appeared to take it. Then she headed back home. The asphalt shimmered in the heat. The temperature was pushing one hundred degrees. Without the shade trees found in the towns or shelter belts around farmhouses, like islands in an agricultural sea, there was no relief from the sun.

She glanced again at the last paper on the dash. Procrastination had never been one of her faults. As a former dispatcher, she knew a 911 call wasn’t something you could put off until later. You dealt with it, got it done, and moved on to the next.

Procrastination, a shrink had once said in a management class she’d taken, was often a manifestation of fear. So what did she fear? Killing a dream. Not just a dream, but the dream. The American Dream.

Instead of doing what she was supposed to, she turned off the lonely two-lane highway onto a gravel road. Surely a few minutes to check on an ailing constituent would be within her purview as sheriff.

Some care had been taken to keep up the old homestead, which was surrounded by beds of bright flowers and, in a side garden, every kind of vegetable. Though even out here, she could see the water had seeped in and turned parts of the produce to rot. Too much of a good thing. Normally, the area was more prone to drought than flooding.

Karen pulled around the farmhouse—and stomped on the brake. The old woman stood on the porch steps, her thin hands clutching a shotgun pointed at a man whose back was to Karen.

Adrenaline surged, flooding her system. Karen fumbled with her own gun, pulling it out of the holster, then slipped out of the Suburban, using the door as a shield. She reached back in and thumbed the radio to call her dispatcher.

She wanted shoulder radios for herself and her men, but the commissioners wouldn’t sign off on them. Radios or deputies, Commissioner Harold Dahl had told her, which was a no-brainer. She was already short a reserve deputy and two graveyard-shift deputies.

Tammy, we’ve got a potentially dangerous situation here. She read off the address on the little blue sign at the farm entrance. All the rural places had them now, with numbers as long as the populations were short. I’ve got a woman holding a gun on a man, and it’s—

Wait, wait! her dispatcher interrupted. Woman on man? That’s one for the books. Tammy Nylander wasn’t just her dispatcher but also her day jailer. Unless you’re the one doing it, of course. The belly laugh rang through the radio with a weight that equaled the woman’s heft. You want backup or is the poor man outgunned?

Backup was at least half an hour away, a fact of life—and death—in rural South Dakota. No, I just wanted to let you know in case something happens. If you don’t hear from me within fifteen minutes, send in the cavalry. Which at that point would be her lone detective, the last man standing.

Now wait a minute, Karen. You can’t go into a situation like that all by your lonesome. Her tone had turned, if not precisely professional, far more authoritative. Don’t you remember what happened to that poor deputy over in—

The man stumbled back as the woman aimed the shotgun.

Karen dropped the radio and raised her Smith & Wesson over the top of the door. Police! Freeze!

Unfortunately, the one who stopped, or tried to, wasn’t her aim. The shotgun discharged with enough kick to send both the woman and the man to the ground.

CHAPTER 2

The first thing Karen noticed about the fallen man was the pointy-toed cowboy boots.

In the Dakotas, the demarcation line between work boots and cowboy boots roughly coincided with the Missouri River. Technically, her domain in East River produced farmboys, not West River cowboys. But it didn’t always work that way.

Next, she noted the sleek ash-blond hair tied back in a ponytail, the finely drawn details of the androgynous face. Though he looked younger, she knew he was her age.

All her adrenaline siphoned off.

Good thing you fell on your ass before she got the shot off, or you’d be history. With one hand, she picked up the shotgun that had fallen to the ground, then held out the other hand to help him to his feet. Did you get any buckshot, Romeo?

With a grimace, he shook his head and brushed dirt from his jeans. He kept his eyes locked on the woman. Her unwashed blond hair straggled over her thin face like a string mop. Her dingy terry-cloth bathrobe sagged to spill out a breast dimpled like a grape beyond ripeness. One hand rose, fisted on the fabric, and yanked it up to her throat.

Who are you? the woman demanded of the man.

He reached out to her then pulled his hand back when she cringed. I’m your son. Adam.

Ivy Van Eck sank down to the steps, a dreamy smile blooming on her face. My boy’s going to build me a mansion one day. Her gaze lifted to the forever-skies. There are mansions there. Then fell to earth. You’re not my boy. He’s a star.

Adam may have spent much of his life expressing the emotions of others and maybe it made him an expert in the face of any emotion, but Karen had never seen that kind of devastation—and as sheriff, even for only a year, she’d seen her share.

Mrs. Van Eck. For whatever reason, the woman seemed to respond to Karen’s brisk tone. Do you know who I am?

Why, Karen Okerlund, isn’t it? All grown up. Ivy rubbed at her temple. I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Did I offer you tea? I have something on the stove, don’t I? Without another word, she went back into the house, the belt of her terry robe trailing in her wake.

Adam stuck a hand in the front pocket of his jeans. The other hand missed, skimmed over threads, then dangled, a hand without a home. I don’t understand. She wasn’t like this, not last I talked to her a couple weeks ago. I know you said she was going downhill, that she refused to see a doctor, but…

When the woman had wandered into the sheriff’s office earlier that week, Karen hadn’t recognized her.

I’ve lost my place, she’d said in a wavering voice, fighting with dignity. Lost her marbles, more like, Karen had thought, but she asked politely, How did you lose it?

The earnest face furrowed. Where’s the sheriff? He can help me.

I am the sheriff.

The woman giggled, a surprisingly girlish sound. And I’m the pope. Then she stiffened. Pardon me. It isn’t nice to make fun of other people’s religion.

I’m not Catholic.

Why should you be?

Fortunately, Kurt Bechtold had come in then and, because he had family ties in Dutch Corners, recognized Ivy. Karen herself should have, even if it had been over twenty years since she’d last seen the mother of her Romeo.

The screen door clattered closed, bringing Karen back to the present. She does better in familiar surroundings, Adam. I noticed that before. It’s why I wasn’t so concerned; she seemed almost normal, back in her kitchen. She said she’d just take some aspirin for a headache, that she’d be fine. I couldn’t force her to see a doctor. Karen hesitated then handed the shotgun to Adam. Keep it out of her hands, somewhere safe. I don’t want her shooting the next person who comes to her door.

He took the gun, his face still part devastation, part disbelief. Alzheimer’s doesn’t happen that fast, does it?

I don’t think so. Maybe it’s some kind of stroke. Not a big one like my dad had but mini-strokes.

Your dad had a stroke? I didn’t know. Is he…?

Oh, he’s recovered, fully functional now except weakness on one side and some minor brain glitches. She had to hope Ivy Van Eck would improve as well, once the woman got medical attention. Like I told you on the phone, she wouldn’t go to see Doc Hudson, and I couldn’t force her, so I drove her home then called you.

She’d had her deputies return Ivy’s car. The woman had left it, keys still in the ignition, at Milstead’s Bakery. The thought made Karen’s stomach grumble. She hadn’t been hungry when she’d started out on her paper route, so she’d missed breakfast. I should get going.

Please, won’t you come in? Just for a bit. He winced as a teakettle whistled. It should be iced tea, but… please?

Until the shock wore off, she decided. His mother had nearly just killed him then trampled on his dreams. And she well knew that Mrs. Van Eck had always been his biggest supporter.

Karen went inside, welcoming the cooler air, though hardly cold with only a ceiling fan stirring the lazy air.

Adam pointed toward a hall table where an answering machine flashed 17 messages. When I couldn’t get a hold of her, I packed up and came home right away. If I hadn’t called my cousin, I’d have been even more worried, but he told me he’d seen her out gardening, though he didn’t talk to her.

They walked into the kitchen, the heart of any rural farmhouse. Large, with an old-fashioned wood stove, it probably was where most of the habits of living were performed, from eating to accounting—whether financial or personal. On one long counter, a bottle of aspirin sat opened, nearly empty.

Ivy carefully poured hot water into cups, her terry robe thankfully retied. She turned and presented the cups, without tea bags, and Adam and Karen quietly took them.

Without action to guide her, Ivy looked confused. The night shattered.

Karen swallowed. Okay, she thought. I can do this. When?

I heard it, the other night, shattering. Did I break? She held up her hands, fragile, blue-veined, the skeleton laid bare by the sunlight streaming through the windows.

Death wasn’t always the worst way to lose someone.

Adam gently gathered the fragile hands in his own. Mom, on Monday, I’m taking you to the doctor.

She squinted up at him. Who are you?

A tear leaked down his face. ‘I am Nobody.’ His voice hitched. ‘Are you Nobody Too?’

Mrs. Van Eck, retired schoolteacher and lover of poetry, didn’t recognize the Emily Dickinson quotation, even though Karen did. Barely. English hadn’t been her strong suit.

When Karen got back on the road, she thumbed the radio. Tammy, all’s clear here.

And, she said silently, I’m fine, Dad. She knew he’d be listening in, waiting, feeling useless. As he’d said once, she’d taken his job as sheriff, and he’d taken hers of dispatcher. Plenty of people still called 22 Okerlund Road instead of Tammy when things went wrong.

You had four more seconds, and I was gonna deputize Old Billy and come after you.

Old Billy Tabor was, for the moment, their only guest in the jail. Drunk and orderly was how they referred to their repeat offender. If they arrested him for horning in on parties he hadn’t been invited to, he’d kindly hold out his hands and give a full accounting of what and how much he’d drunk.

Billy treated the jail like a full-service hotel. Given he lived in a shack on his sister’s farm, that wasn’t too surprising. So far, none of them could figure out how to deter him, as any punishment would require a longer stretch in said hotel. And no one wanted to send him up to the Big House.

What happened? Tammy asked.

Ivy Van Eck tried to shoot her son.

Adam’s back? Hooey. He must be a good actor to fool his ma. Doesn’t he remember that pulling a stunt like that can get you killed out here?

It wasn’t a stunt. She just didn’t recognize him. Period.

Oh. Sad.

Very. I’ve got one more stop, then I’ll be in the office. Over and out. She glanced again at the last paper. Mostly out.

***

Her father had told her, long ago, of the three things he never turned over to his men: notifications, evictions, and the microphone.

Karen drove into the abandoned lot where the meatpacking plant for Plains Beef, Inc. had stood only six months ago, a shiny edifice of renewal as promised five years before.

Now PBI was nothing but a concrete slab—where crabgrass sprung up through cracks in the former kill floor—surrounded by feral corn plants and bones of the dead. Most of PBI’s multi-ethnic workforce had left Reunion to follow the company wherever it had gone next. Rumor had it that the media-damaged company had renamed itself High Country Beef and relocated to Wyoming. And as had been their habit, jumping from state to state, all they’d left behind were dead dreams.

The trailers in the nearby field had been hauled off, one by one. She wasn’t sure where, perhaps the dump or the next job site. Over the months, she’d evicted more and more tenants who’d been unable to keep up with their leases. Most hadn’t even bothered, just up and left, leases be damned.

And she couldn’t blame them, not when they’d been damned by a company that, tarnished by murder and drugs, had snuck off in the middle of the night.

Only one trailer remained, a metal-hulled monstrosity that wavered mirage-like in the heat. All the windows were flipped up like the paper tabs on an Advent calendar. Would that it was as cool as the Christmas season. But then she’d be bitching about the cold. A Dakotan could bitch about the weather most times of the year.

Cautiously, Karen ascended the rickety stairs, peeled not only of paint but also pulp. The screen door gave her an instant view inside, though the occupants were oblivious to her arrival. A tabletop fan whirred, shifting papers and napkins.

It must be stifling, she thought. How could they stand it?

Of course, they hadn’t had air conditioning in Bosnia either. She knew it got hot; she’d been there. Had met and lost her medic husband there, in a manner of speaking, as he was one of the half-dozen Americans wounded in the entire offensive.

The older man at the table—his bulky glasses falling down his thin nose and his long fingers clasping a mechanical pencil—worked on what she guessed would be equations. Ahmed Sabanovic, known to all as Dr. Ahmed, former civil engineer, currently out-of-work meatpacker, had a love for all things mathematical. He found it fun, he said.

What a waste of potential, she’d often thought.

Across from him, a teenage boy sat with a thick book open, poring over the text. In the kitchenette, a thirtyish woman in a blue dress and gauzy headscarf worked on meat-filled cabbage rolls called sarma, fragrant enough to make Karen salivate.

If Karen didn’t know better, she’d have guessed father, mother, and son. But she did know: father, daughter, grandson. The wife was dead, the daughter raped, and the boy—Saban—his father was a nameless Serbian soldier.

Dr. Ahmed? she asked through the screen.

Alarmed, the man surged to his feet. Sheriff? What is matter?

"The matter, Grandfather, Saban said, looking up from his book. You always forget the articles."

In any other teenager, that would have been said with scorn, an eye roll, or pity, not with the patient respect the boy showed.

The elder man nodded. Thank you, Saban. I will learn better now you teach me.

The boy looked ready to dissect that offering as well, but Karen interrupted. I’m sorry, Dr. Ahmed. Truly. She held up her paper. It’s an eviction notice.

Eviction? The man looked bewilderedly at Karen, then at his grandson, who shrugged. Dr. Ahmed rose and let her in, fear rounding the gold-green eyes behind his clunky glasses. Is it… to deport? That word appeared to be in the vocabulary of all three Sabanovics. We are sent back?

No, no, she said, hoping that was true. She didn’t know the rules. Did the inability to find work mean they’d have to return to the homeland that had decimated their family? The landlord, the owner, he wants his trailer back.

Or he wanted his land back. The lease only had a month more to go and wasn’t going