This past Tuesday on my daily bike ride, I got this idea about changing my new novel’s hero, to a younger private detective than Joe Weems. So, now I have a lot of other changing to do. Here is the first draft of the first chapter of my new novel without a name.
The sun rose but a half hour ago. It was another muggy, dog day August morning in the village of Burnett, population 900—give or take. Silent ground fog slowly made its lift near Burnett's northern outskirts where a small trailer court overlooked a vacant and silent highway 26. A door of a long-in-the-tooth, oxidized blue and white mobile home squeaked as it opened. A miniature schnauzer hurriedly exited the shelter, followed by a slower, fiftyish man with similar hair coloring as the mutt. The dog descended the rusted, steel-grated stairs, yipping and scooting across the highway to the intersecting County C. Standing guard on both sides of the rural road were eight foot tall corn plants in neat, myriad rows.
"Sparky," the man called in an almost whisper. The dog stopped, turned to look only momentarily, turned again, and trotted off. Sparky had a mind of its own. Finally, the dog halted but not because it was obeying its master's request. Something had Sparky's attention. As the man got closer, he saw his pet sniffing at the remains of a road kill sparrow. "Sparky, leave that alone."
Sparky lifted its head. The mutt took in the soft south wind. Growling then barking, the schnauzer scrambled down and back up the other side of the ditch, shot into the cornfield, and disappeared.
"Sparky, c'mere boy."
The dog yipped.
"Sparky."
The man waited. No dog. Head shaking, the man breathed in deeply before crouching and jumping like a wounded horse across the narrow ditch. He entered the same split in the corn rows as did his cur. Instantly, blood-starved mosquitos attacked. "Dammit." Flapping a hand before his eyes at the buzzing insect vampires, he moved forward ever so slowly. "Sparky, goddammit, where are you?"
His pet whined.
Finally, he spied the hound, sniffing and whining and growling at something. No. That was not the sight at all. The dog stood above someone. A woman, lying on the ground, her bra pushed above the breasts. He got closer. Closer still. Countless bugs, for which he had no names—even a few spiders—crisscrossed every part of her. "Ma'am," he tried.
He looked to his dog. The dog, tilting its head, eyeballed its master. Sparky obviously needed explanation. "She's either asleep or passed out from drinking too much at Chance's bar." The man inspected more carefully. "What's that?" Naturally, he didn't expect Sparky to answer. "Looks like a wooden table leg between her legs. I don't think she's sleeping, Sparky."
He thought the ground was shaking as he reached down. The hand jerked back as if its fingers had latched onto a boiling pot absent a handle. "Jesus, she's ice cold." Reaching under Sparky and lifting the whining mutt, he knew only one thing: He was piss-in-the-pants scared.
Quickly, out of the cornfield, down the ditch and then up, he raced to his trailer home's safety. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."
* * *
.
.
.
Moms is to blame. It's that simple. Before she married Joseph "Joe" Howard, I could've warned her not to do that but I wasn't around then. So, after she gave birth to her one and only kid, she named him Jacob.
Everybody else, including Dad, calls me Jake, Jake Howard. Besides having two first names, I told Sam, my ex, shortly before we split, "I'm far from being perfect."
"Far from being perfect?" Sam said, chortling sarcastically I might add, "That is the most ridiculous, outlandish world-class blue ribbon understatement I've ever had the displeasure of hearing." Sam has a wonderful sense of humor.
We still manage to get along. We have to. She's my Gal Friday and handles all my office details, including deciding which clients to accept and, more importantly, which ones not to—based mainly on their credibility and credit reports.
Also, she takes care of my business and personal credit card bills and sends in my bi-annual private detective (PD) license fee to Madison, and before I forget, she also pays office rent and utility bills and makes sure my car and condo and personal liability insurance policies are up to date. Everyone nowadays has a lawyer that's going to sue a PD for not doing the job the client expected. Other than my doing the investigating and footwork, Sam does it all.
She also reminds me whenever I show up at the office that I need to make more money or else she's going to look for another job. It's not my fault she didn't seek alimony. "Do you work for a living, or do you work for free?" she asked.
"I work for money," I told her. "You should know that. You collect it and bank it and make out all the checks."
"Then, why did you accept a job from a ten year old child who doesn't have the finances to pay you?"
I explained to Sam that Michaela Andrews, the sprite in the adjacent condo, hasn't seen her mom for two years. The kid cried her eyes out because her dad just hunches his shoulders every time she asks about her mom. I told Michaela if anyone could find her mother, I could, and, by golly, I would. Me and my big mouth. Naturally, I can't expect a ten year old to pay me a hundred bucks an hour plus expenses, can I?
If you're getting the picture that I make my own problems, you're observant and would make a decent living as a PD. Problems have plagued me my entire life. Sam said every bit of trouble I've had was self-induced, except one.
"How am I responsible for the rest?" I asked.
"Your obstinacy." Sam likes polysyllabic words.
"Ninety-nine out of a hundred people with two first names are headstrong," I told her. "So, believe it or not, I'm normal."
"How about your father?" she retorts.
"He's the exception."
The problem I had nothing to do with happened in the Army—except that I joined. February, 1991. Desert Storm. I won't go into all the particulars but I was one of eight men riding in an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier near the Saudi-Iraq border when a lieutenant colonel in an Apache helicopter let loose a pair of hellfire missiles at us, killing two and injuring six. I was among the wounded.
While I lay in the hospital bed, the copter pilot arrived and made a, "I'm going to offer you what appears to be an apology but isn't." His speech was coated with pure one hundred per cent camel manure. After he finished his evasive tale, I told him what I thought of him, his shooting abilities, addled brain, and bull crap apology.
He went off like a mortar shell with a three second timer and yelled, "I'm not going to stand around and have some snot-nosed nineteen-year-old private-nobody talk to me like that." To this very day, I believe that chopper jockey was the reason I remained a private for the rest of my military career.
After the Army, I returned to my home in Beaver Dam. Yeah, you heard right: Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. I used to catch all kinds of stuff from fellow recruits regarding beavers of all sorts. I'm sure you're getting the picture.
After I loafed around for four months, Moms and Dad hinted I might want to look for a job. Thus, I became a Beaver Dam city cop before I hired on as a Dodge County Deputy Sheriff in the traffic division. I should've been wary of becoming a deputy because my uniform was brown.
One day, a citizen I stopped and ticketed for going eighty in a fifty-five zone said, "The guy ahead of me was going just as fast as me. How come you didn't stop him?"
"You ever go fishing?"
"Yah, I fish. Doesn't everybody?"
"No, but when you do go fishing, do you catch 'em all?"
After his eyes popped and jaw dropped, I headed back to my squad, hoping he'd give me the finger as he passed by. He didn't. Too bad. Instead, he yelled at his embarrassed wife loud enough for me to hear, "Look, he's wearing a brown shirt, just like Hitler's SS troops did."
I couldn't arrest him for making a simple observation, could I?
One early morning I arrested a Dodge County circuit court judge for driving while intoxicated. His court reporter girlfriend, not his wife, and married to another man, was sitting beside him, her hand on his crotch. She was equally soused.
At the next roll call of my shift, the sheriff gave me almighty hell and tore up the ticket right in front of me and my fellow deputies. By the way, sheriffs are politicians and face competition for their jobs every four years in county wide elections. Have I told you what I think of politicians? On the human worth scale, they're about two rungs below child molesters. And I loathe child molesters.
As fast as I could, I turned in my weapon, badge, and brown uniforms.
Not knowing anything but military and law enforcement, I told Sam I wasn't going to work anymore and got drunk and stayed that way long enough for Sam to divorce me. After that, she and Dad and Moms hired a drug and alcohol counselor to hold an intervention on my sorry butt. Everyone was crying, including me. Truth is, I was slobbering. I needed one of those farmer bandanas.
So, I started attending AA meetings. Sober and maybe a little bit nuts, I got this bright idea to apply for a private detective license. I've been a PD for close to twenty years.
By the way, our sheriff seems to be enjoying a lifetime tenure. He still hates my guts. And I still loathe politicians. So, why did I accept a job that forced me to confront him and his loyal undersheriff, his investigators, and his deputies? Sam.
"Why would I want to investigate a murder that took place almost five years ago and was scrutinized by Dodge County investigators for more than a full year before the DA felt he had enough evidence to charge Earl Noble, a former city of Fox Lake police chief?"
Fox Lake's yet another Dodge County small town. The murder victim, Jeanne Marie Bailey, was found in a cornfield in Podunk, I mean, Burnett, a pimple on a dimple on Dodge County's map.
Sam continued to glare at me.
"A circuit court judge—and a jury of the Earl Noble's peers—found him guilty and sent him to Waupun Correctional Institution with a life term. He's done three years already, and according to our local gazette, the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen, it was an open and shut case."
Waupun Correctional is located in Waupun, just another small city, half of it in Dodge County, half in Fond du Lac County. Main Street is the separating point. Live on the south side, you're in Dodge. Live on the north, you're in Fond du Lac. Waupun's about fifteen miles north of Beaver Dam.
"You need the money," said Sam.
"Me?"
"Yes, because you haven't given me an appropriate raise in six years."
"Wasn't my changing your job title enough?"
Sam glared. "So, do you accept the job and award me my raise, or do I look for a new job?"
So, here I am, looking for Michaela's mom, doing some investigating for local lawyers, and now Sam and this murderer's cousin wants me to re-examine the crime all over again to prove the guilty guy is innocent. You know the odds against my doing that? About ninety-nine thousand to one.
Sometimes, I wonder why I keep Sam around.
The sun rose but a half hour ago. It was another muggy, dog day August morning in the village of Burnett, population 900—give or take. Silent ground fog slowly made its lift near Burnett's northern outskirts where a small trailer court overlooked a vacant and silent highway 26. A door of a long-in-the-tooth, oxidized blue and white mobile home squeaked as it opened. A miniature schnauzer hurriedly exited the shelter, followed by a slower, fiftyish man with similar hair coloring as the mutt. The dog descended the rusted, steel-grated stairs, yipping and scooting across the highway to the intersecting County C. Standing guard on both sides of the rural road were eight foot tall corn plants in neat, myriad rows.
"Sparky," the man called in an almost whisper. The dog stopped, turned to look only momentarily, turned again, and trotted off. Sparky had a mind of its own. Finally, the dog halted but not because it was obeying its master's request. Something had Sparky's attention. As the man got closer, he saw his pet sniffing at the remains of a road kill sparrow. "Sparky, leave that alone."
Sparky lifted its head. The mutt took in the soft south wind. Growling then barking, the schnauzer scrambled down and back up the other side of the ditch, shot into the cornfield, and disappeared.
"Sparky, c'mere boy."
The dog yipped.
"Sparky."
The man waited. No dog. Head shaking, the man breathed in deeply before crouching and jumping like a wounded horse across the narrow ditch. He entered the same split in the corn rows as did his cur. Instantly, blood-starved mosquitos attacked. "Dammit." Flapping a hand before his eyes at the buzzing insect vampires, he moved forward ever so slowly. "Sparky, goddammit, where are you?"
His pet whined.
Finally, he spied the hound, sniffing and whining and growling at something. No. That was not the sight at all. The dog stood above someone. A woman, lying on the ground, her bra pushed above the breasts. He got closer. Closer still. Countless bugs, for which he had no names—even a few spiders—crisscrossed every part of her. "Ma'am," he tried.
He looked to his dog. The dog, tilting its head, eyeballed its master. Sparky obviously needed explanation. "She's either asleep or passed out from drinking too much at Chance's bar." The man inspected more carefully. "What's that?" Naturally, he didn't expect Sparky to answer. "Looks like a wooden table leg between her legs. I don't think she's sleeping, Sparky."
He thought the ground was shaking as he reached down. The hand jerked back as if its fingers had latched onto a boiling pot absent a handle. "Jesus, she's ice cold." Reaching under Sparky and lifting the whining mutt, he knew only one thing: He was piss-in-the-pants scared.
Quickly, out of the cornfield, down the ditch and then up, he raced to his trailer home's safety. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."
* * *
.
.
.
Moms is to blame. It's that simple. Before she married Joseph "Joe" Howard, I could've warned her not to do that but I wasn't around then. So, after she gave birth to her one and only kid, she named him Jacob.
Everybody else, including Dad, calls me Jake, Jake Howard. Besides having two first names, I told Sam, my ex, shortly before we split, "I'm far from being perfect."
"Far from being perfect?" Sam said, chortling sarcastically I might add, "That is the most ridiculous, outlandish world-class blue ribbon understatement I've ever had the displeasure of hearing." Sam has a wonderful sense of humor.
We still manage to get along. We have to. She's my Gal Friday and handles all my office details, including deciding which clients to accept and, more importantly, which ones not to—based mainly on their credibility and credit reports.
Also, she takes care of my business and personal credit card bills and sends in my bi-annual private detective (PD) license fee to Madison, and before I forget, she also pays office rent and utility bills and makes sure my car and condo and personal liability insurance policies are up to date. Everyone nowadays has a lawyer that's going to sue a PD for not doing the job the client expected. Other than my doing the investigating and footwork, Sam does it all.
She also reminds me whenever I show up at the office that I need to make more money or else she's going to look for another job. It's not my fault she didn't seek alimony. "Do you work for a living, or do you work for free?" she asked.
"I work for money," I told her. "You should know that. You collect it and bank it and make out all the checks."
"Then, why did you accept a job from a ten year old child who doesn't have the finances to pay you?"
I explained to Sam that Michaela Andrews, the sprite in the adjacent condo, hasn't seen her mom for two years. The kid cried her eyes out because her dad just hunches his shoulders every time she asks about her mom. I told Michaela if anyone could find her mother, I could, and, by golly, I would. Me and my big mouth. Naturally, I can't expect a ten year old to pay me a hundred bucks an hour plus expenses, can I?
If you're getting the picture that I make my own problems, you're observant and would make a decent living as a PD. Problems have plagued me my entire life. Sam said every bit of trouble I've had was self-induced, except one.
"How am I responsible for the rest?" I asked.
"Your obstinacy." Sam likes polysyllabic words.
"Ninety-nine out of a hundred people with two first names are headstrong," I told her. "So, believe it or not, I'm normal."
"How about your father?" she retorts.
"He's the exception."
The problem I had nothing to do with happened in the Army—except that I joined. February, 1991. Desert Storm. I won't go into all the particulars but I was one of eight men riding in an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier near the Saudi-Iraq border when a lieutenant colonel in an Apache helicopter let loose a pair of hellfire missiles at us, killing two and injuring six. I was among the wounded.
While I lay in the hospital bed, the copter pilot arrived and made a, "I'm going to offer you what appears to be an apology but isn't." His speech was coated with pure one hundred per cent camel manure. After he finished his evasive tale, I told him what I thought of him, his shooting abilities, addled brain, and bull crap apology.
He went off like a mortar shell with a three second timer and yelled, "I'm not going to stand around and have some snot-nosed nineteen-year-old private-nobody talk to me like that." To this very day, I believe that chopper jockey was the reason I remained a private for the rest of my military career.
After the Army, I returned to my home in Beaver Dam. Yeah, you heard right: Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. I used to catch all kinds of stuff from fellow recruits regarding beavers of all sorts. I'm sure you're getting the picture.
After I loafed around for four months, Moms and Dad hinted I might want to look for a job. Thus, I became a Beaver Dam city cop before I hired on as a Dodge County Deputy Sheriff in the traffic division. I should've been wary of becoming a deputy because my uniform was brown.
One day, a citizen I stopped and ticketed for going eighty in a fifty-five zone said, "The guy ahead of me was going just as fast as me. How come you didn't stop him?"
"You ever go fishing?"
"Yah, I fish. Doesn't everybody?"
"No, but when you do go fishing, do you catch 'em all?"
After his eyes popped and jaw dropped, I headed back to my squad, hoping he'd give me the finger as he passed by. He didn't. Too bad. Instead, he yelled at his embarrassed wife loud enough for me to hear, "Look, he's wearing a brown shirt, just like Hitler's SS troops did."
I couldn't arrest him for making a simple observation, could I?
One early morning I arrested a Dodge County circuit court judge for driving while intoxicated. His court reporter girlfriend, not his wife, and married to another man, was sitting beside him, her hand on his crotch. She was equally soused.
At the next roll call of my shift, the sheriff gave me almighty hell and tore up the ticket right in front of me and my fellow deputies. By the way, sheriffs are politicians and face competition for their jobs every four years in county wide elections. Have I told you what I think of politicians? On the human worth scale, they're about two rungs below child molesters. And I loathe child molesters.
As fast as I could, I turned in my weapon, badge, and brown uniforms.
Not knowing anything but military and law enforcement, I told Sam I wasn't going to work anymore and got drunk and stayed that way long enough for Sam to divorce me. After that, she and Dad and Moms hired a drug and alcohol counselor to hold an intervention on my sorry butt. Everyone was crying, including me. Truth is, I was slobbering. I needed one of those farmer bandanas.
So, I started attending AA meetings. Sober and maybe a little bit nuts, I got this bright idea to apply for a private detective license. I've been a PD for close to twenty years.
By the way, our sheriff seems to be enjoying a lifetime tenure. He still hates my guts. And I still loathe politicians. So, why did I accept a job that forced me to confront him and his loyal undersheriff, his investigators, and his deputies? Sam.
"Why would I want to investigate a murder that took place almost five years ago and was scrutinized by Dodge County investigators for more than a full year before the DA felt he had enough evidence to charge Earl Noble, a former city of Fox Lake police chief?"
Fox Lake's yet another Dodge County small town. The murder victim, Jeanne Marie Bailey, was found in a cornfield in Podunk, I mean, Burnett, a pimple on a dimple on Dodge County's map.
Sam continued to glare at me.
"A circuit court judge—and a jury of the Earl Noble's peers—found him guilty and sent him to Waupun Correctional Institution with a life term. He's done three years already, and according to our local gazette, the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen, it was an open and shut case."
Waupun Correctional is located in Waupun, just another small city, half of it in Dodge County, half in Fond du Lac County. Main Street is the separating point. Live on the south side, you're in Dodge. Live on the north, you're in Fond du Lac. Waupun's about fifteen miles north of Beaver Dam.
"You need the money," said Sam.
"Me?"
"Yes, because you haven't given me an appropriate raise in six years."
"Wasn't my changing your job title enough?"
Sam glared. "So, do you accept the job and award me my raise, or do I look for a new job?"
So, here I am, looking for Michaela's mom, doing some investigating for local lawyers, and now Sam and this murderer's cousin wants me to re-examine the crime all over again to prove the guilty guy is innocent. You know the odds against my doing that? About ninety-nine thousand to one.
Sometimes, I wonder why I keep Sam around.
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