annashay 
Sheriff Letz is called to investigate a brutal beating in the visitor’s lot of a remote prison, and must navigate his community’s sordid underbelly.
| Image generated with OpenAI |
The prison visitor’s lot was empty. So was the gun, half-hidden in the nearby grass and still warm like the trembling body next to it.
Bodies are like black holes – one minute radiating light, the next minute collapsing and rapidly pulling in all things into the emptiness of a crime scene’s event horizon, even at midnight. Evidence. Witnesses. Bystanders. Paramedics. Reporters. And cops, the crude color commentators of the grim and gruesome.
“Holy shit, is this guy dead?”
“No, but he’s gonna wish he was – you see his mug? Looks like he took his face to a hammer fight.”
“Yeah. Who gets their ass beat twenty yards outside of a prison?”
“Hey. Assholes. Stop watching your paramedic porn and start canvassing the area.”
“Aw, c’mon, Sarge, canvassing? At midnight? In a parking lot? For an assault?”
“Oh, you’re positive he’s gonna make it? And if he codes in the next five minutes and this becomes a homicide, what then, Dickless Tracy? Go start canvassing – you aren’t doing shit anyway.”
“Hey, Sergeant? One of the reporters found a gun, said it was right next to the victim when she showed up.”
“A gun? Was he shot?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Did she touch it?”
“Yeah, she picked it up to see what it was. Dropped it pretty quick, though.”
“Well, that’s great, because everyone knows you can’t contaminate evidence as long as you touch it for less than five seconds. Mark and bag it. Now. And take these two and start walking the grid.”
“I thought we were gonna canvass.”
“And I thought deputies obeyed orders, not bitched about them.”
“Hey, heads-up: Sheriff just arrived. Make sure your shit’s wired tight.”
The shortest man in the department, Sheriff Peter Letz did not cut an intimidating figure, but the atmosphere tensed as he crossed the yellow tape. His cops knew he had a degree in library science but also that he’d boxed in college, and they figured he was some kind of jock-genius. Had their investigative aptitude bothered to team up with their appetite for gossip, they would’ve discovered that Letz’s GPA was even less remarkable than his boxing record.
Letz allowed the mystery to color his aura for the same reason he chose his field of study and sport: to be left alone and go it alone. It was also the same reason he’d recently become sheriff of Unktehi County, the state’s least populous region. It wasn’t lonely in the wilderness, nor in the library or boxing ring. Fewer people just meant fewer conversations, fewer complications.
“We got a name for the victim?” he asked Milo Wagner, the department’s most senior sergeant.
Wagner shook his head. “No wallet, no phone.”
“Robbery?”
“In the visitor’s lot of a prison? At midnight? I mean, maybe.”
Letz looked around. Chivington Prison was on the outskirts of Tryson, the county seat and sole incorporated community. The only light for miles was the moon and the prison tower spotlights.
“So what was he doing here? How’d he get here?”
“No idea.”
“Anybody recognize him?”
Wagner turned to watch the paramedics. “You see his face?”
It was Letz’s turn to shake his head. “Not yet.”
“Never seen anybody beat that bad. His own momma wouldn’t recognize him.”
Letz pondered this. “Doesn’t sound like a robbery. Not with that kind of violence.”
“Well, that’s…” Wagner turned back to face Letz. “Much worse.”
Letz nodded to the ambulance. “They’re loading him. Guy must not be dead yet. I’m gonna see if he’s awake and can talk.”
Wagner held up a hand. “One other thing, Sheriff – we found a gun nearby. Victim wasn’t shot, but still thought I should mention it. Reporter found it.”
“A reporter? In Unktehi County?”
“Yeah, Ellen and Vinton’s daughter, Hyannis Grant. She’s freelancing for Channel 6 and doing podcasts. Girl with the tripod camera.” Wagner caught the flashing lights of the ambulance. “Last chance, Sheriff, they’re moving.”
“I’ll catch up with them in Asterius.” Letz saw Grant panning the scene, stopping to train the camera on him. He relaxed his posture and practiced a smile as he started walking over to her.
“Hyannis, right? I’m Sheriff Letz.” He extended his hand. “They said you’re working the cops beat.”
Grant ignored the outstretched palm and peered through her camera. “Sheriff Letz, can you describe what happened here tonight?”
Letz dropped his hand but held on to the smile. “Off the record, not for publication? With the promise that I’ll give you a sound bite later?”
Grant clicked off the camera. In the oscillating prison spotlights, her pale skin and blond hair seemed to glow against her black pants and sweater. “Sure.”
“Don’t have much right now. Victim got beat pretty badly. Unknown on how or why. Don’t even know who he is yet.”
“Thought we were off the record.”
“We are, why?”
“Then why’re you bullshitting me?
“What do you mean?”
“That’s Landon Weeping Water. Senior at Tryson High.”
“How do you know that?”
“How do you not know that?” Grant’s face poured three shots of amusement, exasperation, and curiosity. “The only openly gay person in Unktehi County, and you don’t recognize him?”
“Well, he was beaten within an inch of his life and the ambulance was loading him when I got here,” Letz explained. “Didn’t really get a good look at him.”
“But you saw what he was wearing, right? Faded purple hightops. Minecraft sweatshirt. Blonde highlights.”
“So you knew him?”
“Only from his socials. He talks a lot about the Unktehi Underground, a gay-friendly network of people in the area. He’s been trying to go viral for the last year.”
“Can’t imagine he’s finding a lot of traction with that.”
“Actually, he was, mainly because of the backlash and online bullying. He got some attention from some B-list celebrities obsessed with virtue signaling, and supporting a bullied gay teen in red state America checks a lot of boxes. I think somebody – or a group of somebodies – probably just had enough and decided to settle things offline.”
Pretty solid theory, Letz thought. “Did you mention any of this to the deputies when they collected the gun you found?”
“Did I tell a redneck deputy who kept staring at my tits and calling me ‘girl’ that he should start making a list of all the violent bigots in the county?”
Sheriff Letz stepped back from the whistling kettle of wrath, sizing her up. “How old are you?”
“Don’t be gross,” Grant said. “I’m young enough to be your daughter. Or granddaughter, if you got started young enough.”
“Are you twenty-one?”
“Why’re you asking, creeper?”
“You have to be twenty-one to be a cop in this state. You ever think about trading your camera for a gun?”
Now it was Grant’s turn to size up Letz, her flat gray wolf eyes flicking around his uniform. “I saw you in church last week, Sheriff. St. Mark’s. You remember the gospel verse?”
“Can’t remember the chapter, but it was from Matthew, I think. ‘The harvest is the end of the age -”
“- and the angels are the reapers’,” Grant finished for him. “Don’t suppose you know what the word ‘angel’ means?”
“Messenger.”
“And that’s why I won’t be trading my camera for a gun. I’m not a mercenary, I’m a messenger.”
“Angels don’t always bring just news,” Letz reminded her. “Just ask the Assyrian army.”
“Sheriff?” Wagner nudged Letz from behind, careful not to step in the camera’s line of sight. “Can I show you something?”
“You still owe me a sound bite,” Grant reminded him.
“I’ll be right back,” Letz promised.
As he followed Wagner, Letz pulled a small notebook from his jacket pocket. It was an investigation checklist he’d compiled over the last three decades, procedural wisdom mined from countless errors and oversights. Letz was not blessed with acute observation skills, flashes of insight, or investigative ingenuity. His superpower was simply never committing the same mistake twice and methodically exhausting his checklist.
The list was not quite alphabetical, not quite chronological, not quite categorical, and as Letz saw the word “video” illuminated by the edge of his flashlight, he looked up and counted at least two cameras from the prison covering the parking lot and grassy median. He put a question mark in the box next to “video” and caught up to Wagner.
“What’ve you got?”
Wagner knelt and pointed to the parched grass. “Shell casings.”
“Sharp eyes.” Letz surveyed the vast expanse of prairie. “Just gotta find the bullets.”
“Already did, I think.” Wagner parted a tuft of fescue that had not yet surrendered to the drought. “They’re in the ground.”
With its two majestic stories, the Sandhills Regional Hospital in Asterius was the tallest and most underutilized building in Unktehi County. In fact, Landon Weeping Water was the hospital’s only patient when the paramedics hauled his mangled body into the emergency department, and he was still the only patient deep into the next day.
His face had swollen into a nightmarish blue and purple pulp. Had he been conscious, it’s doubtful he would’ve been able to open his eyes. Or his jaw. However, the annihilation of Weeping Water’s face was not the reason why Dr. Barry Bryner was placing a late afternoon call to the sheriff.
“Letz here.” He jerked the wheel of the cruiser as he struggled to hit the right button on his phone.
“Sheriff? It’s Barry Bryner at Regional.”
“How’s Landon?” Letz preferred to call victims, living and especially deceased, by their first name.
“Still out. Probably be like that for a while. Hey, are you around?”
“Nope, headed back to the crime scene on a follow-up. What’s up?”
“Just did a secondary examination, wanted to give you some info.”
“Hold up, let me put you on speaker phone with one of my sergeants.” Letz tapped his phone and set it in the cupholder between Wagner and him. “Go ahead, Barry.”
“So you know about the broken ribs and facial fractures, right? Pretty standard in these cases. But here’s something weird: his eardrums are both ruptured. Not one, both.”
Letz looked at Wagner, who closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “Okay, Barry, that actually makes sense. Can’t tell you anything more right now, but I appreciate you calling.” Letz tapped the phone and saw that Wagner’s eyes were still closed. “You alright?”
“Ten rounds.” Wagner rubbed his face. “Ten rounds,” he repeated. “Two groups of five spaced a foot and a half apart.”
“Yeah… I know.”
“Somebody put a gun to that kid’s ear, Sheriff. Pulled the trigger five times. Then did the same thing to his other ear. That’s why the bullets were in the ground. Somebody beat him, then left him deaf and not quite dying.”
“You wanna take a break? I can drop you at the coffee shop while I go talk to the warden.”
Wagner slump-shrugged. “What am I gonna do at the coffee shop except think about it?”
Letz nodded, recalling a phrase from the academy. Sometimes the fray is better than being away.
“I heard about that boy, Sheriff. Absolutely the worst thing I’ve heard in a long time.” Warden Steven Nuckolls had the pasty jowls, lurching gut, and hollow eyes of a man who’d spent years watching men rot to death in cells. “I got a boy myself about the same age. You have any idea who did it?”
“Exactly why we’re here, Warden. You got cameras covering the entire perimeter, right? We’re pretty sure the cameras captured at least part of the assault, maybe the whole thing.”
“Where’d it happen?” Nuckolls hefted himself over to a map of the prison.
“That grassy strip just east of the visitor’s lot. Maybe twenty or thirty yards from the yard.”
Nuckolls squinted at the map. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Our coverage ends at the fence.”
“Actually, I saw two cameras pointed out across the lot. Pretty sure they would’ve captured something, even a vehicle coming or going.”
“Yeah, but those cameras are down right now. Electrical short took out the whole lot of them.”
Letz did not trust his cop intuition. He had no misconceptions about his lacking ability to read people or detect lies. He did, however, trust his fear. A lifetime of being undersized and underweight had honed his detection of thugs and tyrants.
And the warden’s hollow-point gaze queued up a single word in Letz’s mind: predator.
“Pardon me, Warden, but if those cameras are down, why could we see their infrared lights last night?”
“Infrared still works, but the cameras can’t record.”
“Fair enough,” Letz said. “But I’m afraid I still have to ask for any video recordings, even if it’s all blank screens. Procedure, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s a problem.” Nuckolls rolled himself over to a drawer and shuffled through a trough of manila folders. “I got the updated mutual aid agreement from the county attorney. Looks good to me, but I gotta have our legal counsel look at it first. And without a current agreement between us, I can’t give you any video. Technically, you can’t even be on the premises in an official capacity without it. Just a liability thing.”
“So you want us to leave?” Wagner rose, and Letz wasn’t sure if he was about to storm out or storm the warden’s desk.
“Of course not,” Nuckolls said. The corners of his mouth twitched, confirming for Letz that the warden’s primary pleasure was the discomfort of others. “We can give you a tour if you like. Peruse the yard, visit solitary, see the chair.”
In other words, Letz thought, walk among two hundred violent felons, sit in the hole, and tour an execution scene.
“We’ll pass on that.” Letz rose and stood next to his simmering deputy. “Any idea when you’ll get to that mutual aid agreement? Goes both ways, you know.”
“We’ll be fine, Sheriff, but I appreciate your concern. Shouldn’t be more than a few days.”
Hyannis Grant was waiting in the visitor’s lot when Letz and Wagner walked out.
“You following us?” Letz kidded her.
“Yep,” she replied. “Did you get any video from the warden?”
Letz caught the circles under her bloodshot eyes, saw that she was wearing the same outfit, and figured she’d probably been staking out his vehicle long after he’d left the crime scene and went to bed.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “For both our sakes. And we’re still off the record, by the way. I don’t need you following me and you don’t need to be running yourself into the ground, so let’s do this: you stop badgering me and I’ll give you an interview when this case is done.”
“Exclusive?”
Letz nodded.
“Deal,” Grant said. “So… did you get any video?”
“No details before the arrest. That’s part of the deal.”
“Nuckolls has the video, Sheriff. Or had the video. It’s probably been destroyed.”
Letz contemplated her confidence. “Why’re you so sure?”
“The same reason I know he probably invoked some bullshit mutual aid excuse.”
Wagner, having lost one power struggle with the warden, started blustering. “Listen, girl, if you got information -”
Letz cut him off. “There’re no girls here, Sergeant. Just two cops and a reporter.” He shifted his weight, blading his body and drawing Grant’s blazing eyes away from Wagner. “Hyannis, if you know something – or know somebody who does – you gotta tell me. For Landon’s sake.”
“What and who I know won’t help you. Yet.”
“I’m not gonna give you an interview if I find out you withheld information.”
“Won’t be a problem, Sheriff.” Grant crossed the visitors’ lot to her pick-up, ignoring the catcalls and hooting from the prison yard.
Letz got into the cruiser and started the engine, but Wagner stood surveying the prison. Near the edge of the frontage road that wound past the yard was a billboard with tangled strips waving in the wind.
“What would you say,” asked Wagner, “if I bought that billboard for a month with the words, ‘Fuck you, Warden Nuckolls?'”
“I would say crude insults don’t motivate people,” answered Letz. “Especially people who wear them as a badge of honor. I’d say you’d need something a bit more sophisticated.”
On the drive back to Tryson, Letz pulled out his phone and dropped it in the cupholder again. “We’re gonna conference with Hayes and Unger, see if they’ve turned up anything.”
“Only been a day,” commented Wagner.
“We’re already getting stonewalled,” Letz replied. “And it’s not like we have a bunch of leads.”
Hayes and Unger were eating dinner at Tryson’s only restaurant when Letz called.
“Fryer’s down at Ollie’s, Sheriff – no fries until further notice.”
Letz grimaced. When Hayes led with food, it meant he was bored. And boredom meant no leads. “Tell me you have something more relevant to report.”
“Nope. We did send the gun, casings, and bullet fragments to the lab, but that’ll take at least six weeks. At best. Too bad the kid lived – we can expedite homicide stuff.”
“I’m sure his parents feel the same way.”
“Talked to his dad,” Unger piped up. “Mom’s dead. Apparently, Landon should’ve been home right after the football game. His dad had no idea where he was until we notified him.”
“Did dad say if he was having problems with anybody?”
“Everybody and nobody.” Unger sounded like his mouth was full. “He wasn’t shy about telling folks he was gay, and there were incidents. At school, online, but nothing physical, not even threats. Just bullying and the usual ‘kill yourself’ comments. That’s all.”
That’s all, Letz thought. “Who’d you talk to at school?”
“”Everybody we could.” Unger coughed, and Hayes laughed, “You dumbass, are you choking?” More coughing and then Unger’s raspy voice crawled through the phone.
“Teachers. Administrators. Students. The problem is, everybody who talked to us didn’t have a problem with Landon. And everybody who did told us we could go fornicate with ourselves.”
“Hey, did you get video from the prison?” Hayes broke in.
Letz watched the question scorch Wagner’s face red. “Warden Nuckolls is of the opinion that because we don’t have a current signed mutual aid agreement, he can’t give us the video.”
“That dipshit. He knows that cuts both ways, right? Like, what happens if one of his rapists escapes and he needs our canine and deputies for tracking and roadblocks?”
“I know, Hayes.”
“So we’ve got nothing,” Wagner fumed. “No actionable evidence, no witnesses, no video, nothing except a kid in a coma with two ruptured eardrums.”
Letz continuing driving, watching the sun give up on the day. “Tactical retreat,” he said. “Let’s take a breath, get a good night’s rest, and figure out our next steps tomorrow morning. Ten-thirty, my office.”
Letz hung up the phone and rolled down the window. He found the white noise of the highway semi-hypnotic, a way to examine and rotate a problem in his mind, probing for irregularities or rough edges. But tonight, the near-homicide of Landon Weeping Water was a smooth black stone, slipping, falling, sinking.
Letz let it slip away. One of his mentors, reflecting on the importance of rest in solving stubborn problems, had amended a Christian maxim. Sleep sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible. Solutions had never come to him in dreams, but he always enjoyed the comforting possibility. He listened to the rushing wind and drove home to dream.
Screaming greeted Letz as he walked into the Unktehi County Sheriff’s Office the next morning. Not a scream, a hailstorm of screaming, the human voice wracked beyond all octaves and pitch.
Letz rushed up the stairs and into the report writing room. Wagner, Unger, and Hayes were sitting around a cell phone on a table. The phone was playing a video, but the trio of lawmen weren’t watching. Wagner had his eyes closed, Unger had his head in his hands, and Hayes was staring out the window.
“What’s this?” Letz slid the phone around and paused the video.
“Somebody dropped it through the delivery slot last night,” said Unger. “It’s Landon’s phone.”
“And the video?”
“Him getting assaulted. At least part of it. You can see him running, falling and getting punched, then running again. At some point, he threw his phone over the prison fence and into the yard – probably to preserve the video – and it kept recording.”
“You watch the whole thing?”
All three deputies nodded.
“And?”
No answer. Then Hayes said in a strained and low voice, “Just keep playing it, Sheriff.”
Letz tapped the phone and the video resumed. The screen showed one of the partially illuminated guard towers in the background. The screaming continued. Then the fleshy sounds of punches and kicks.
“What -” Letz began, but Wagner raised a hand.
“Just wait.”
And then Letz saw it, the faint flickering of shadows in the guard tower, barely discernible.
“Are those… guards?” Letz looked around at his men. “But this was called in by a trucker – he got lost and was turning around in the lot. The guards saw it happen?” No responded, no one looked at him, and as the video continued to play, Letz realized why.
The screams got louder, but then there were words. One word, actually, just a single desperate prayer for rescue screamed over and over and over again until Letz fell into a seat next to the stricken deputies.
“Dad!” Landon Weeping Water screamed through the phone. “Dad! Dad! Daddy!”
Then five gunshots.
“Dad! Daddy! Daddy!”
Five more gunshots. Then the slap-crack of more pummeling. And laughter. And finally, the slamming of doors and screeching of tires.
The video continued playing into silence. The shadows in the tower departed. And the four lawmen contemplated having heard a boy being beaten unconscious, screaming for his father to save him.
A cell phone rang, but no one moved.
“Think that’s you, Sheriff,” Wagner finally said.
Letz pulled out his phone and tapped it, still staring at Landon’s.
“Letz? Is that you?” Warden Steven Nuckolls shouted through the phone. “You think this is funny, asshole?”
Letz thought of the shadows in the guard tower. “What do you want, Nuckolls?”
“What I want is this billboard taken down. Now.”
“What’s the problem with your billboard?” Letz looked over at Wagner, who shrugged.
“Why don’t you get your ass out here and tell me what the problem is?” Nuckolls hung up.
Letz pulled his cruiser keys from his pocket. “Unger, will you and Hayes go through the video? See if you can grab stills, maybe identify suspects. Get the state police to help process the rest of the phone, if you need.” He eyed Wagner. “You’re with me. We’re going back to Chivington.”
The billboard did not say, “Fuck You, Warden Nuckolls.” Instead, a lingerie-clad redhead, back arched, eyes closed, mouth gasping, was spread across a freshly papered billboard in full view of the prison yard. An ever-growing group of inmates were swarming the fence, whooping, hollering, some grabbing their crotches.
“Is this funny to you, Letz?” Nuckolls shouted at him. They were standing by the side of the road in front of the billboard.
Letz took one final look at the redhead before getting in his cruiser.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Nuckolls screamed.
Letz rolled down his window. “Back to work. Nothing illegal going on here.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do now? Keep the entire prison locked down? Forever?”
“There’s a number on the billboard,” Letz said. “Maybe call and ask them to politely take it down.” He drove off and saw Nuckolls flipping him off in his rearview mirror.
“Should I ask?” Letz looked over at Wagner, who was heaving with laughter.
“It wasn’t me, Sheriff.” Wagner wiped his eyes. “But I kinda wish it was.”
“You get anything from the video?” Letz peered over Unger’s shoulder at his computer screen.
“Plenty,” Unger grunted. He slid a series of photos over to Letz. “The images are a little grainy, but you can definitely make out faces.”
Letz knew the faces but not the names. “Landon’s classmates?”
“Yeah, I didn’t know their names, but Hayes coaches football. He picked out every one of them.”
“Did you guys talk to them yesterday?”
“Yup. Every single one. And every single one told us to pound sand.”
Letz clapped him on the back. “Get on the phone with the county attorney, tell him we need help drafting warrants. Then call Judge Rapp and let her know we’ll be out later today. I’ll start typing, too.”
He was about to walk away when Unger slid a photo across the congested desk, a blurry picture of a pale-skinned youth in mid-snarl. Unger thumped it twice. “That one might interest you.”
“Who is it?”
“Present prick, future asshole. A chip off the old block. Name’s Jeremy Nuckolls.”
Hyannis Grant was finishing a grilled cheese sandwich when Letz walked into the cafe.
“Got some updates for you,” Letz said. “May I sit?”
“Sure,” Grant said, sliding him a menu. “But the -”
“- fryer’s out,” Letz said. “Yeah, I heard.” He held the menu briefly, then exhaled and pushed it off to the side. “Still off the record?” Grant nodded and Letz leaned forward. “We caught a break. We’re about to arrest five people for the aggravated assault of Landon Weeping Water, two of them juveniles.”
“When?”
“Later today or tomorrow. We’ve been working on the warrants for the last few hours. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m not asking you to confirm or deny anything, I just want you to listen.
“Landon videoed part of the assault and then threw his phone into the prison yard, but it somehow made its way back to us. I think a guard found it on one of the inmates, figured out who it belonged to, and dropped it at the station anonymously. I also think that guard is how you knew that Warden Nuckolls wouldn’t give up the video from the prison cameras.”
Grant followed Letz’s eyes down to her ring finger, adorned by a very modest engagement band.
“I’m just telling you this because if there is a guard helping you, he must be pretty loyal to you or just want to do the right thing. Probably both. But that billboard…” He looked hard into Grant’s eyes and found flint and steel. “Well, whoever had that billboard put up essentially doused the prison with gasoline and seriously pissed off Nuckolls. And I sure wouldn’t want somebody who did the right thing to get hurt.” Letz looked through the dirty haze of the cafe windows. “Pretty nice weather. Maybe a good day to call in sick, maybe leave early.”
Grant’s eyes drifted over to her phone. Letz stood up. “I promised you that exclusive, and I’ll hold up my end if you do. Nothing gets printed until I say so, okay?”
Grant nodded, and Letz’s phone rang as he headed towards the door.
“Sheriff?” Wagner was panic-panting. “We got a big fucking problem.”
The billboard had changed. Gone was the lingerie model. In its place was a black background with six giant white words: “Warden Nuckolls took my picture down.”
“I swear to God, Sheriff, this wasn’t me.” Wagner stared at the prison yard. “I was just driving out to Judge Rapp’s to get the warrants signed when I saw it.”
Letz didn’t answer. Like Wagner, his eyes were fixed on the tinder box two hundred yards away. About three dozen orange-clad inmates were walking into the yard. A few headed to the weight bench, a few others to the basketball court. The majority, however, waded over to the fence expectantly. And then stopped in sudden sex-deprived shock. Letz tensed and Wagner actually took a step back.
A guttural shout vaporized the silence.
“What the fuck?”
The yard caught fire in the first minute. Windows were smashed in the second. Weights were used to jam closing doors, thwarting containment, and the fury burned through the kitchen, cafeteria, and infirmary. The phrase “she’s gone” infected every cell and rage-lit every past grievance until fire and debris coursed through every unit.
Letz caught a group of guards bursting out of the entrance, rifles in hand. One guard, half-dressed in riot gear, began shouting instructions and the small band ran to surround the fence. Amid the frenzy, a small white pick-up hauled into the lot and collided to a stop against the prison bus. Hyannis Grant jumped out and ran over to the guard shouting orders. He hug-grabbed her before pushing her back towards the truck, pointing to the exit.
Letz’s phone rang and Wagner was astonished when he answered it.
“I see you out there, asshole.” Nuckolls’ voice was suffocating in the background destruction. “You’ve made your point. I’ll get you the surveillance video. Now get in here and get me the hell out.” The howls in the background sounded supernatural.
“Must have some good binoculars in there, Warden,” replied Letz, walking out of Wagner’s earshot. “But I can’t do it. Mutual aid agreement hasn’t been signed. Liability, remember?”
“Fuck your liability,” Nuckolls shouted. “Get me out. Now.”
“I’m going to arrest your boy, Steven.” The smoke from the prison hung like sin over the gates of hell. “Him and his friends. And I’m gonna hang as many felonies on them as I can.” There was screaming echoing from the phone, but Nuckolls was silent. “You still there, Warden?”
“Listen, Sheriff, one lawman to another – you do what you gotta do. But get me out. Please. Especially if you’re going to arrest Jeremy. Every boy needs his father.” The smashing of glass nearly drowned out the word father.
Letz thought about Landon, how the last sound that registered in his ears was his own voice screaming for his dad. “No, Warden, every boy does not need his father. I think you’ve poisoned that well for long enough.”
Letz hung up and walked back to Wagner. “Get everybody on the perimeter. We’re gonna wait for back-up from the state. They don’t come out, and we don’t go in. No exceptions.”
The evening sunset owed its calm brilliance to a late season forest fire two states away, but Letz liked to pretend it was from the lingering tear gas. The peace of penance. The main prison parking lot was still full of state police debriefing about the riot, so he’d relocated to the deserted visitor’s lot.
His phone rang, and Hyannis Grant broke the evening reverie.
“You make any arrests yet, Sheriff?”
“As soon as we get the warrants signed. Afraid we were dealing with a situation this afternoon.”
“I heard. And I talked to the billboard company,” said Grant. “They said a company called The Soule Purpose purchased those billboards, paid double for a mid-day change.”
“And?”
“It’s a reference to the Sand Creek Massacre. Colonel John Chivington and his troops slaughtered hundreds of women and children. But one soldier told his men to stand down and even later testified against Chivington: Silas Soule.”
“Murdered a few months after testifying.” Letz watched the sun pour down crimson on the white marble marquee welcoming visitors to Chivington Prison.
“Very poetic,” Grant complimented him. “So how’s the warden? I saw him get stretchered out.”
“Same as Landon – still in a coma. How’s your guy?”
“I called him right after I talked to you at the cafe. He didn’t leave early – refused actually – but he was ready. Probably saved every guard in that place.”
“Tell him I’m still going to need to talk to him about how he found Landon’s phone.”
“I will,” promised Grant. “Hey, why’d they attack Landon anyway, do you know?”
“Not sure. Maybe because he was gay, maybe because he was Native, maybe both. I just know that the three defining features of this county have always been water, wheat, and -”
“Violent bigotry?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, look who they chose for their prison’s namesake,” Grant pointed out. She paused. “You know that if Nuckolls ever wakes up, he’s gonna kill you, right?”
Letz smiled. “Maybe. But do you remember what I said about angels delivering not just news? In the Old Testament, whenever angels showed up, something seriously bad but deeply righteous was about to go down. I think Nuckolls knows the harvest has arrived – he knows the reapers are coming.”
Letz’s phone beeped twice and he saw Wagner’s number on the screen. “I’m gonna have to let you go, Hyannis, one of my sergeants is calling. Give me a call tomorrow about that interview.” He switched calls. “Warrants all signed, Milo?”
“All signed,” Wagner confirmed. “Who do you want to hook first?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure young Jeremy Nuckolls is at the hospital. His father is unwell, I hear. Let’s start there.”
“Okay, Sheriff, meet you there in about twenty.”
The sun cut like a buzzsaw across the top of the prison and was gone. Letz cruised out of the prison’s lengthening shadow and headed for the hospital. The wind whipped through the prison yard and out into the fields, snapping the last uncut stalks of wheat.
