Small Town Secrets

It was a dark, musky morning when the little girl set out on her own to explore the back woods by her grandma’s house. She’d heard stories about kids coming up missing and floating down the river that ran through the woods, parallel to her grandma’s neighborhood, but she didn’t believe them. ‘They were just trying to scare me, those neighborhood kids’, she would tell herself, trying to sooth her fears. She was a city kid. Not raised in a small town, like North Vernon or Hayden, Indiana. She felt out of place. Like she didn’t belong. She knew she stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone else in town was white. She was the only person as far as she had seen, that wasn’t white. Normally she thought nothing of her skin color, as she was raised in a white affluent neighborhood in California, but out here, in the backwoods part of this small town, she was very self-conscience. Every year, her mother would drop her off for a month or two while she’d take off gallivanting around the world, exploring new places, meeting new people. Or maybe she was just meeting up with a lover or two. The little girl never knew and never cared. Didn’t give it much thought. She saw her mother as a caretaker. She provided shelter, food and clothes. She knew her mother cared and loved her. Isn’t that all that mattered? Being there every day wasn’t a necessity. Not even a requirement. It made her independent. She relished that about herself. She never felt the 9 years she really was. Her grandma was the same way. Independent, strong, Irish… her grandma spoiled her with sundaes and money to go into town to buy models or puzzles. She liked that. But this morning was different. She didn’t sleep well last night. She kept hearing noises, and not that of her grandma snoring in the next room. More like that of children laughing or was that screaming? She had to find out and the sounds came from the river below. Her grandma never paid her no mind. Told her to get out of the house, make friends. Do something. So today, she was doing just that. Something. The little girl doesn’t know how far she had wandered out into the woods, when she heard the crack of a branch coming from behind her. She turned in time to see everything around her go black.

9 years later…

“Dagnabbit!!!”, he exclaimed as he hit the desk fan for the umpteenth time that summer. The sweat pouring down his face was just a small indication of his discomfort that morning. It was the hottest summers they’d seen in nearly a decade, the radio had mentioned that morning. “I’ll say”, he muttered to himself. Jasper was sitting at his desk, a pathetic excuse for a sheriff, he had come to office by mistake, or as some might say, pure chance. The old sheriff turned out was taking from the books, not accounting for all donations coming to the sheriff’s office to build the new jail cell. When word got out of his wrong doings, the sheriff high-tailed it out of town with all the donations in tow. That left the deputy to step up and take over. That meant Jasper. Still green, many might say. He was that kid in the back of the class who slept. He was that kid you would see turning his parent’s garage into his own personal gym. He was that kid tinkering with his old Mustang, who’s father would often be heard muttering, ‘That kid’s never gonna amount to nuthin’. He smoked bud, he drank beer he took from his father’s stash in the garage and he read skanky magazines. Jasper became a deputy after he got busted for possession and the judge offered him two options. Jail or job. He figured if he worked for the city he could get away with anything. He was in shape, for the most part, and passed all the physical fitness training to become a deputy. Smarts weren’t a requirement and he liked that most of his days consisted of sitting around, spittin’ tobacco and crackin’ dirty jokes with the inmates. Even the old sheriff grew on him. He liked that old buzzard. Sheriff Hardy was as cantankerous as they came. Crude, filthy and didn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but himself. So when the town elected Jasper Van Sickle to be the new town sheriff, well, there wasn’t much he could do but utter a word of thanks.

Abby, the county clerk, came into the office. Saw the scene of Jasper sweatin’ like a pig in a smokehouse, the broken fan on the floor and the desk clear of all work objects except for one girly magazine which Jasper always has on hand. “What is it, Abs?” Jasper asked without even looking up from the magazine. She handed him a file without another word and walked out of the office. She was quiet but a very efficient clerk. She was a looker, long legs, in shape and a pretty face. But very serious about her duties and she had no respect for Jasper. She saw him as a child, a delinquent, but had to admit he was still better to work for than the old sheriff. Sheriff Hardy use to grab her or slap her ass all the time. No respect as a female. He had once told her that women were property and belonged in the kitchen not the workplace. Jasper grabbed the file and flipped through the contents. It was an old case. He buzzed Abby to find out why this was coming to him after all this time. She filled him in that a call had come into dispatch, stating some hunters were in the woods and stumbled upon a human skull. Jasper grumbled inwardly, knowing a case like this would require more than his remedial skills could provide. He called the only person he knew who could help him.

Shelby was exhausted, having just come in from New York, chasing after yet another missing person. It tugged at her every time one of these cases came up. She felt it was personal from the moment she opened the file and got to know the person’s history until she closed the file. Sadly, most of the findings came up with the person having deceased many years passed, but at least it was closure for the family, she would surmise. It was a way to keep going. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to keep doing what she did. Getting out of a very long, hot shower, Shelby grabbed herself a glass of red wine, enjoying the terry cloth robe she snagged from Macy’s while she was in New York and walked over to her answering machine. She figured it was one of her many brothers and sisters or her mother. They loved her and called her often. Sometimes too often, as she always felt guilty for not staying behind in North Vernon. Indianapolis wasn’t far, just an hour or so away, but sometimes it felt a world away from the small town she calls home. Just as she predicted, the first two calls were from her mother and one of her older sisters. She was an aunt again. Her sister, Leslie, just gave birth to a 7 lbs baby boy. She would have to remember to call or stop in for a visit one of these weekends. But being a forensic examiner had unpredictable hours and her scheduled varied from week to week. The third message stopped her cold in her tracks. She nearly dropped her glass of wine. It was a voice from the past. Jasper. Jasper Van Sickle, the loner, the black sheep, the stoner, as many of the kids would call him. She always thought of him as handsome, if only his hair wasn’t so greasy and he didn’t smell like pot all the time. The only message he left was his name and a phone number. She wondered what was so important. After all these years, and not once had they ever spoken after graduation. In recollection, Shelby thought they only spoke on one or two occasions, as was required during class group assignments. But other than that, they didn’t socialize. She was a cheerleader. She came from a large Methodist family. Her father was the town’s reverend, up until he disappeared 9 years ago. No explanation. It’s what got her started in her line of work. 5 years after the disappearance, the day before graduation, Sheriff Hardy came to their door and informed her mother that they found her father. He was at the county morgue at that time, but had been found, or more like, his remains had been found. Someone had buried him in a shallow grave on the edge of the cemetery in Hayden. Hayden was a small town. Population less than 300. Someone had to know something. But the sheriff said no one was talking and no matter what her mother did, she never could find out the truth. So Shelby went to IC, got a medical degree and specialized in forensic science. In a way, she was searching for her father the only way she knew how. Through science.